Chapter XX: Act 1894: transferred to the district councils of every rural district (6)

An important compilation of the utterances of the early Vaishnava
saints or _Bhagats_ is contained in the sacred book, or _Adi Granth_,
of the Sikh _Gurus_. Nanak, the founder of this sect (1469-1538),
though a native of the Punjab (born at Talvandi on the Ravi near
Lahore), took his doctrine from the _Bhagats_ (see KABIR); and each of
the thirty-one _rags_, forming the body of the _Granth_, is followed
by a compilation of texts from the utterances of Vaishnava saints,
chiefly of Kabir, in confirmation of the teaching of the _Gurus_,
while the whole book is closed by a _bhog_ or conclusion, containing
more verses by the same authors, as well as by a celebrated Indian
Sufi, Shekh Farid of Pakpattan. The body of the _Granth_ (q.v.), being
in old Panjabi, falls outside the scope of this article; but the
extracts included in it from the early writers of old Hindi are a
precious store of specimens of authors some of whom have left no other
record in the surviving literature. The _Adi Granth_, which was put
together about 1600 by Arjun, the fifth _Guru_ of the Sikhs, sets
forth the creed of the sect in its original pietistic form, before it
assumed the militant character which afterwards distinguished it under
the five _Gurus_ who succeeded him.

2. _Middle Hindi._--The second period, that of middle Hindi, begins with the reign of the Emperor Akbar (1556-1605); and it is not improbable that the broad and liberal views of this great monarch, his active sympathy with his Hindu subjects, the interest which he took in their religion and literature, and the peace which his organization of the empire secured for Hindostan, had an important effect on the great development of Hindi poetry which now set in.[12] Akbar's court was itself a centre of poetical composition. The court musician Tan Sen (who was also a poet) is still renowned, and many verses composed by him in the Emperor's name live to this day in the memory of the people. Akbar's favourite minister and companion, Raja Birbal (who fell in battle on the north-western frontier in 1583), was a musician and a poet as well as a politician, and held the title, conferred by the Emperor, of _Kabi-Ray_, or poet laureate; his verses and witty sayings are still extremely popular in northern India, though no complete work by him is known to exist. Other nobles of the court were also poets, among them the _Khan-khanan_ 'Abdur-Rahim, son of Bairam Khan, whose Hindi _dohas_ and _kabittas_ are still held in high estimation, and Faizi, brother of the celebrated Abul-Fazl, the Emperor's annalist.

By this time the worship of Krishna as the lover of Radha _(Radha-ballabh)_ had been systematized, and a local habitation found for it at Gokul, opposite Mathura on the Jumna, some 30 m. upstream from Agra, Akbar's capital, by Vallabhacharya, a Tailinga Brahman from Madras. Born in 1478, in 1497 he chose the land of Braj as his headquarters, thence making missionary tours throughout India. He wrote chiefly, if not entirely, in Sanskrit; but among his immediate followers, and those of his son Bitthalnath (who succeeded his father on the latter's death in 1530), were some of the most eminent poets in Hindi. Four disciples of Vallabhacharya and four of Bitthalnath, who flourished between 1550 and 1570, are known as the _Asht Chhap_, or "Eight Seals," and are the acknowledged masters of the literature of Braj-bhasha, in which dialect they all wrote. Their names are Krishna-Das Pay-ahari, Sur Das (the Bhat), Parmanand Das, Kumbhan Das, Chaturbhuj Das, Chhit Swami, Nand Das and Gobind Das. Of these much the most celebrated, and the only one whose verses are still popular, is Sur Das. The son of Baba Ram Das, who was a singer at Akbar's court, Sur Das was descended, according to his own statement, from the bard of Prithwi-Raj, Chand Bardai. A tradition gives the date of his birth as 1483, and that of his death as 1573; but both seem to be placed too early, and in Abul-Fazl's _Ain-i Akbari_ he is mentioned as living when that work was completed (1596/7). He was blind, and entirely devoted to the worship of Krishna, to whose address he composed a great number of hymns (_bhajans_), which have been collected in a compilation entitled the _Sur Sagar_, said to contain 60,000 verses; this work is very highly esteemed as the high-water mark of Braj devotional poetry, and has been repeatedly printed in India. Other compositions by him were a translation in verse of the _Bhagavata Purana_, and a poem dealing with the famous story of Nala and Damayanti; of the latter no copies are now known to exist.

The great glory of this age is Tulsi Das (q.v.). He and Sur Das between them are held to have exhausted the possibilities of the poetic art. It is somewhat remarkable that the time of their appearance coincided with the Elizabethan age of English literature.

To these great masters succeeded a period of artifice and reflection, when many works were composed dealing with the rules of poetry and the analysis and the appropriate language of sentiment. Of their writers the most famous is Kesab Das, a Brahman of Bundelkhand, who flourished during the latter part of Akbar's reign and the beginning of that of Jahangir. His works are the _Rasik-priya_, on composition (1591), the _Kavi-priya_, on the laws of poetry (1601), a highly esteemed poem dedicated to Parbin Rai Paturi, a celebrated courtesan of Orchha in Bundelkhand, the _Ramachandrika_, dealing with the history of Rama, (1610), and the _Vigyan-gita_ (1610). The fruit of this elaboration of the poetic art reached its highest perfection in BIHARI LAL, whose _Sat-sai_, or "seven centuries" (1662), is the most remarkable example in Hindi of the rhetorical style in poetry (see separate article).

Side by side with this cultivation of the literary use of the themes of Rama and Krishna, there grew up a class of compositions dealing, in a devotional spirit, with the lives and doings of the holy men from whose utterances and example the development of the popular religion proceeded. The most famous of these is the _Bhakta-mala_, or "Roll of the _Bhagats_," by Narayan Das, otherwise called Nabha Das, or Nabhaji. This author, who belonged to the despised caste of Doms and was a native of the Deccan, had in his youth seen Tulsi Das at Mathura, and himself flourished in the first half of the 17th century. His work consists of 108 stanzas in _chhappai_ metre, each setting forth the characteristics of some holy personage, and expressed in a style which is extremely brief and obscure. Its exact date is unknown, but it falls between 1585 and 1623. The book was furnished with a _ika_ (supplement or gloss) in the _kabitta_ metre, by Priya Das in 1713, gathering up, in an allusive and disjointed fashion, all the legendary stories related of each saint. This again was expanded about a century later by a modern author named Lachhman into a detailed work of biography, called the _Bhakta-sindhu_. From these nearly all our knowledge (such as it is) of the lives of the Vaishnava authors, both of the Rama and the Krishna cults, is derived, and much of it is of a very legendary and untrustworthy character. Another work, somewhat earlier in date than the _Bhakta-mala_, named the _Chaurasi Varta_, is devoted exclusively to stories of the followers of Vallabhacharya. It is reputed to have been written by Gokulnath, son of Bitthalnath, son of Vallabhacharya, and is dated in 1551.

The matter of these tales is justly characterized by Professor
Wilson[13] (who gives some translated specimens) as "marvellous and
insipid anecdotes"; but the book is remarkable for being in very
artless prose, and, though written more than 300 years ago, shows that
the current language of Braj was then almost precisely identical with
that now spoken in that region. A specimen of the text will be found
at p. 296 of Mr F. S. Growse's _Mathura, a District Memoir_ (3rd ed.,
1883).

It would be tedious to enumerate the many authors who succeeded the great period of Hind poetical composition which extended through the reigns of Akbar, Jahangir and Shahjahan. None of them attained to the fame of Sur Das, Tuls Das or Bihari Lal. Their themes exhibit no novelty, and they repeat with a wearisome monotony the sentiments of their predecessors. The list of Hindi authors drawn up by Dr G. A. Grierson, and printed in the _Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal_ in 1889, may be consulted for the names and works of these _epigoni_. The courts of Chhatarsal, raja of Panna in Bundelkhand, who was killed in battle with Aurangzeb in 1658, and of several rajas of Bandho (now called Riwan or Rewah) in Baghelkhand, were famous for their patronage of poets; and the Mogul court itself kept up the office of _Kabi-Ray_ or poet laureate even during the fanatical reign of Aurangzeb.

Such, in the briefest outline, is the character of Hind literature during the period when it grew and flourished through its own original forces. Founded by a popular and religious impulse in many respects comparable to that which, nearly 1600 years before, had produced the doctrine and literature, in the vernacular tongue, of Jainism and Buddhism, and cultivated largely (though by no means exclusively) by authors not belonging to the Brahmanical order, it was the legitimate descendant in spirit, as Hindi is the legitimate descendant in speech, of the Prakrit literature which preceded it. Entirely in verse, it adopted and elaborated the Prakrit metrical forms, and carried them to a pitch of perfection too often overlooked by those who concern themselves rather with the substance than the form of the works they read. It covers a wide range of style, and expresses, in the works of its greatest masters, a rich variety of human feeling. Little studied by Europeans in the past, it deserves much more attention than it has received. The few who have explored it speak of it as an "enchanted garden" (Grierson), abounding in beauties of thought and phrase. Above all it is to be remembered that it is genuinely popular, and has reached strata of society scarcely touched by literature in Europe. The ballads of Rajput prowess, the aphorisms of Kabir, Tulsi Das's _Ramayan_, and the _bhajans_ of Sur Das are to this day carried about everywhere by wandering minstrels, and have found their way, throughout the great plains of northern India and the uplands of the Vindhya plateau, to the hearts of the people. There is no surer key to unlock the confidence of the villager than an apt quotation from one of these inspired singers.

3. _Literary Urdu._--The _origines_ of Urdu as a literary language are somewhat obscure. The popular account refers its rise to the time of Timur's invasion (1398). Some authors even claim for it a higher antiquity, asserting that a _diwan_, or collection of poems, was composed in _Rekhta_ by Mas'ud, son of Sa'd, in the last half of the 11th or beginning of the 12th century, and that Sa'di of Shiraz and his friend Amir Khusrau[14] of Delhi likewise made verses in that dialect before the end of the 13th century. This, however, is very improbable. It has already been seen that during the early centuries of Muslim rule in India adherents of that faith used the language and metrical forms of the country for their compositions. Persian words early made their way into the popular speech; they are common in Chand, and in Kabir's verses (which are nevertheless unquestionable Hindi) they are in many places used as freely as in the modern dialect. Much of the confusion which besets the subject is due to the want of a clear understanding of what Urdu, as opposed to Hindi, really is.

Urdu, as a literary language, differs from Hindi rather in its form than in its substance. The grammar, and to a large extent the vocabulary, of both are the same. The really vital point of difference, that in which Hindi and Urdu are incommensurable, is the _prosody_. Hardly one of the metres taken over by Urdu poets from Persian agrees with those used in Hindi. In the latter language it is the rule to give the short _a_ inherent in every consonant or _nexus_ of consonants its full value in scansion (though in prose it is no longer heard), except occasionally at the metrical pause; in Urdu this is never done, the words being scanned generally as pronounced in prose, with a few exceptions which need not be mentioned here. The great majority of Hindi metres are scanned by the number of _matras_ or syllabic instants--the value in time of a short syllable--of which the lines consist; in Urdu, as in Persian, the metre follows a special order of long and short syllables.

The question, then, is not When did Persian first become intermixed with Hindi in the literary speech?--for this process began with the first entry of Muslim conquerors into India, and continued for centuries before a line of Urdu verse was composed; nor When was the Persian character first employed to write Hindi?--for the written form is but a subordinate matter; as already mentioned, the MSS. of Malik Muhammad's purely Hindi poem, the _Padmawat_, are ordinarily found to be written in the Persian character; and copies lithographed in Devanagari of the popular compositions of the Urdu poet Nazir are commonly procurable in the bazars. We must ask When was the first verse composed in Hindi, whether with or without foreign admixture, according to the forms of Persian prosody, and not in those of the indigenous metrical system? Then, and not till then, did Urdu poetry come into being. This appears to have happened, as already mentioned, about the end of the 16th century. Meantime the vernacular speech had been gradually permeated with Persian words and phrases. The impulse which Akbar's interest in his Hindu subjects had given to the translation of Sanskrit works into Persian had brought the indigenous and the foreign literatures into contact. The current language of the neighbourhood of the capital, the Hindi spoken about Delhi and thence northwards to the Himalaya, was naturally the form of the vernacular which was most subject to foreign influences; and with the extension of Mogul territory by the conquests in the south of Akbar and his successors, this idiom was carried abroad by their armies, and was adopted by the Musalman kingdoms of the Deccan as their court language some time before their overthrow by the campaigns of Aurangzeb.

It is not a little remarkable that, as happened with the Vaishnava reformation initiated by Ramanuja and Ramanand, and with the Vallabhacharya cult of Krishna established at Mathura, the first impulse to literary composition in Urdu should have been given, not at the headquarters of the empire in the north, but at the Muhammadan courts of Golkonda and Bijapur in the south, the former situated amid an indigenous population speaking Telugu, and the latter among one whose speech was Kanarese, both Dravidian languages having nothing in common with the Aryan tongues of the north. This fact of itself defines the nature of the literature thus inaugurated. It had nothing to do with the idiom or ideas of the people among whom it was born, but was from the beginning an imitation of Persian models. It adopted the standards of form and content current among the poets of Eran. The _qasida_ or laudatory ode, the _ghazal_ or love-sonnet, usually of mystical import, the _marsiya_ or dirge, the _masnavi_ or narrative poem with coupled rhymes, the _hija_ or satire, the _ruba'i_ or epigram--these were the types which Urdu took over ready-made. And with the forms were appropriated also all the conventions of poetic diction. The Persians, having for centuries treated the same themes with a fecundity which most Europeans find extremely wearisome, had elaborated a system of rhetoric and a stock of poetic images which, in the exhaustion of original matter, made the success of the poet depend chiefly upon dexterity of artifice and cleverness of conceit. Pleasing hyperbole, ingenious comparison, antithesis, alliteration, carefully arranged gradation of noun and epithet, are the means employed to obtain variety; and few of the most eloquent passages of later Persian verse admit of translation into any other language without losing that which in the original makes their whole charm. What is true of Persian is likewise true of Urdu poetry. Until quite modern times, there is scarcely anything in it which can be called original.[15] Differences of school, which are made much of by native critics, are to us hardly perceptible; they consist in the use of one or other range of metaphor or comparison, classed, according as they repeat the well-worn poetical stock-in-trade of the Persians, or seek a slightly fresher and more Indian field of sentiment, as the old or the new style of composition.

Shuja'uddin Nuri, a native of Gujarat, a friend of Faizi and
contemporary of Akbar, is mentioned by the native biographers as the
most ancient Urdu poet after Amir Khusrau. He was tutor of the son of
the _wazir_ of Sultan Abu-l-Hasan Kutb Shah of Golkonda, and several
_ghazals_ by him are said to survive. Kuli Kutb Shah of Golkonda, who
reigned from 1581, and his successor 'Abdullah Kutb Shah, who came to
the throne in 1611, have both left collections of verse, including
_ghazals_, _ruba'is_, _masnavis_ and _qasidas_. And during the reign
of the latter Ibn Nishati wrote two works which are still famous as
models of composition in Dakhni; they are _masnavis_ entitled the
_Tuti-nama_, or "Tales of a Parrot," and the _Phul-ban_. The first,
written in 1639, is an adaptation of a Persian work by Nakhshabi, but
derives ultimately from a Sanskrit original entitled the
_Suka-saptati_; this collection has been frequently rehandled in Urdu,
both in verse and prose, and is the original of the _Tota-Kahani_, one
of the first works in Urdu prose, composed in 1801 by Muhammad
Haidar-bakhsh Haidari of the Fort William College. The _Phul-ban_ is a
love tale named from its heroine, said to be translated from a Persian
work entitled the _Basatin_. Another famous work which probably
belongs to the same place and time is the _Story of Kamrup and Kala_
by Tahsinuddin, a _masnavi_ which has been published (1836) by M.
Garcin de Tassy; what makes this poem remarkable is that, though the
work of a Musalman, its personages are Hindu. Kamrup, the hero, is son
of the king of Oudh, and the heroine, Kala, daughter of the king of
Ceylon; the incidents somewhat resemble those of the tale of
as-Sindibad in the _Thousand and One Nights_; the hero and heroine
dream one of the other, and the former sets forth to find his beloved;
his wanderings take him to many strange countries and through many
wonderful adventures, ending in a happy marriage.

The court of Bijapur was no less distinguished in literature. Ibrahim
'Adil Shah (1579-1626) was the author of a work in verse on music
entitled the _Nau-ras_ or "Nine Savours," which, however, appears to
have been in Hindi rather than Urdu; the three prefaces (_dibajas_) to
this poem were rendered into Persian prose by Maula Zuhuri, and, under
the name of the _Sih nasr-i Zuhuri_, are well-known models of style. A
successor of this prince, 'Ali 'Adil Shah, had as his court poet a
Brahman known poetically as Nusrati, who in 1657 composed a _masnavi_
of some repute entitled the _Gulshan-i 'Ishq_, or "Rose-garden of
Love," a romance relating the history of Prince Manohar and
Madmalati,--like the _Kamrup_, an Indian theme. The same poet is
author of an extremely long _masnavi_ entitled the _'Ali-nama_,
celebrating the monarch under whom he lived.

These early authors, however, were but pioneers; the first generally
accepted standard of form, a standard which suffered little change in
two centuries, was established by Wali of Aurangabad (about 1680-1720)
and his contemporary and fellow-townsman Siraj. The former of these is
commonly called "the Father of Rekhtah"--_Baba-e Rekhta_; and all
accounts agree that the immense development attained by Urdu poetry in
northern India during the 18th century was due to his example and
initiative. Very little is known of Wali's life; he is believed to
have visited Delhi towards the end of the reign of Aurangzeb, and is
said to have there received instruction from Shah Gulshan in the art
of clothing in a vernacular dress the ideas of the Persian poets. His
_Kulliyat_ or complete works have been published by M. Garcin de
Tassy, with notes and a translation of selected passages (Paris,
1834-1836), and may be commended to readers desirous of consulting in
the original a favourable specimen of Urdu poetical composition.

The first of the Delhi school of poets was Zuhuruddin Hatim, who was
born in 1699 and died in 1792. In the second year of Muhammad Shah
(1719), the _diwan_ of Wali reached Delhi, and excited the emulation
of scholars there. Hatim was the first to imitate it in the Urdu of
the north, and was followed by his friends Naji, Mazmun and Abru. Two
_diwans_ by him survive. He became the founder of a school, and one of
his pupils was Rafi us-Sauda, the most distinguished poet of northern
India. Khan Arzu (1689-1756) was another of the fathers of Urdu poetry
in the north. This author is chiefly renowned as a Persian scholar, in
which language he not only composed much poetry, but one of the best
of Persian lexicons, the _Siraju-l-lughat_; but his compositions in
Urdu are also highly esteemed. He was the master of Mir Taqi, who
ranks next to Sauda as the most eminent Urdu poet. Arzu died at
Lucknow, whither he betook himself after the devastation of Delhi by
Nadir Shah (1739). Another of the early Delhi poets who is considered
to have surpassed his fellows was In'amullah Khan Yaqin, who died
during the reign of Ahmad Shah (1748-1754), aged only twenty-five.
Another was Mir Dard, pupil of the same Shah Gulshan who is said to
have instructed Wali; his _diwan_ is not long, but extremely popular,
and especially esteemed for the skill with which it develops the
themes of spiritualism. In his old age he became a _darwesh_ of the
_Naqshbandi_ following, and died in 1793.

Sauda and Mir Taqi are beyond question the most distinguished Urdu
poets. The former was born at Delhi about the beginning of the 18th
century, and studied under Hatim. He left Delhi after its devastation,
and settled at Lucknow, where the Nawab Asafuddaulah gave him a
_jagir_ of Rs. 6000 a year, and where he died in 1780. His poems are
very numerous, and cover all the styles of Urdu poetry; but it is to
his satires that his fame is chiefly due, and in these he is
considered to have surpassed all other Indian poets. Mir Taqi was born
at Agra, but early removed to Delhi, where he studied under Arzu; he
was still living there at the time of Sauda's death, but in 1782
repaired to Lucknow, where he likewise received a pension; he died at
a very advanced age in 1810. His works are very voluminous, including
no less than six _diwans_. Mir is counted the superior of Sauda in the
_ghazal_ and _masnavi_, while the latter excelled him in the satire
and _qasida_. Sayyid Ahmad, an excellent authority, and himself one of
the best of modern authors in Urdu, says of him in his
_Asaru-s-Sanadid_: "Mir's language is so pure, and the expressions
which he employs so suitable and natural, that to this day all are
unanimous in his praise. Although the language of Sauda is also
excellent, and he is superior to Mir in the point of his allusions, he
is nevertheless inferior to him in style."

The tremendous misfortunes which befell Delhi at the hands of Nadir
Shah (1739), Ahmad Shah Durrani (1756), and the Marathas (1759), and
the rapid decay of the Mogul empire under these repeated shocks,
transferred the centre of the cultivation of literature from that city
to Lucknow, the capital of the newly founded and flourishing state of
Oudh. It has been mentioned how Arzu, Sauda and Mir betook themselves
to this refuge and ended their days there; they were followed in their
new residence by a school of poets hardly inferior to those who had
made Delhi illustrious in the first half of the century. Here they
were joined by Mir Hasan (d. 1786), Mir Soz (d. 1800) and
Qalandar-bakhsh Jur'at (d. 1810), also like themselves refugees from
Delhi, and illustrious poets. Mir Hasan was a friend and collaborator
of Mir Dard, and first established himself at Faizabad and
subsequently at Lucknow; he excelled in the _ghazal_, _ruba'i_,
_masnavi_ and _marsiya_, and is counted the third, with Sauda and Mir
Taqi, among the most eminent of Urdu poets. His fame chiefly rests
upon a much admired _masnavi_ entitled the _Sihru-l-bayan_, or "Magic
of Eloquence," a romance relating the loves of Prince Be-nazir and the
Princess Badr-i Munir; his _masnavi_ called the _Gulzar-i Iram_
("Rose-garden of Iram," the legendary 'Adite paradise in southern
Arabia), in praise of Faizabad, is likewise highly esteemed. Mir
Muhammadi Soz was an elegant poet, remarkable for the success with
which he composed in the dialect of the harem called _Rekhti_, but
somewhat licentious in his verse; he became a _darwesh_ and renounced
the world in his later years. Jur'at was also a prolific poet, but,
like Soz, his _ghazals_ and _masnavis_ are licentious and full of
double meanings. He imitated Sauda in satire with much success; he
also cultivated Hindi poetry, and composed _dohas_ and _kabittas_.
Miskin was another Lucknow poet of the same period, whose _marsiyas_
are especially admired; one of them, that on the death of Muslim and
his two sons, is considered a masterpiece of this style of
composition. The school of Lucknow, so founded and maintained during
the early years of the century, continued to flourish till the
dethronement of the last king, Wajid 'Ali, in 1856. Atash and Nasikh
(who died respectively in 1847 and 1841) are the best among the modern
poets of the school in the _ghazal_; Mir Anis, a grandson of Mir
Hasan, and his contemporary Dabir, the former of whom died in December
1875 and the latter a few months later, excelled in the _marsiyah_.
Rajab Ali Beg Surur, who died in 1869, was the author of a
much-admired romance in rhyming prose entitled the _Fisanah-e 'Ajaib_
or "Tale of Marvels," besides a _diwan_. The dethroned prince Wajid
'Ali himself, poetically styled Akhtar, was also a poet; he published
three diwans, among them a quantity of poetry in the rustic dialect of
Oudh which is philologically of much interest.

Though Delhi was thus deserted by its brightest lights of literature,
it did not altogether cease to cultivate the poetic art. Among the
last Moguls several princes were themselves creditable poets. Shah
Alam II. (1761-1806) wrote under the name of Aftab, and was the author
of a romance entitled Manzum-i Aqdas, besides a _diwan_. His son
Sulaiman-shukoh, brother of Akbar Shah II., who had at first, like his
brother authors, repaired to Lucknow, returned to Delhi in 1815, and
died in 1838; he also has left a _diwan_. Lastly, his nephew Bahadur
Shah II., the last titular emperor of Delhi (d. 1862), wrote under the
name of Zafar, and was a pupil in poetry of Shaikh Ibrahim Zauq, a
distinguished writer; he has left a voluminous _diwan_, which has been
printed at Delhi. Mashafi (Ghulam-i Hamdani), who died about 1814, was
one of the most distinguished of the revived poetic school of Delhi,
and was himself one of its founders. Originally of Lucknow, he left
that city for Delhi in 1777, and held conferences of poets, at which
several authors who afterwards acquired repute formed their style; he
has left five _diwans_, a _Tazkira_ or biography of Urdu poets, and a
_Shah-nama_ or account of the kings of Delhi down to Shah 'Alam. Qaim
(Qiyamuddin 'Ali) was one of his society, and died in 1792; he has
left several works of merit. Ghalib, otherwise Mirza Asadullah Khan
Naushah, laureate of the last Mogul, who died in 1869, was undoubtedly
the most eminent of the modern Delhi poets. He wrote chiefly in
Persian, of which language, especially in the form cultivated by
Firdausi, free from intermixture of Arabic words, he was a master; but
his Urdu _diwan_, though short, is excellent in its way, and his
reputation spread far and wide. To this school, though he lived and
died at Agra, may be attached Mir Wali Muhammad Nazir (who died in the
year 1832); his _masnavis_ entitled _Jogi-nama_, _Kauri-nama_,
_Banjare-nama_, and _Burhape-nama_, as well as his _diwan_, have been
frequently reprinted, and are extremely popular. His language is less
artificial than that of the generality of Urdu poets, and some of his
poems have been printed in Nagari, and are as well known and as much
esteemed by Hindus as by Mahommedans. His verse is defaced by much
obscenity.

4. _Modern Period._--While such, in outline, is the history of the literary schools of the Deccan, Delhi and Lucknow, a fourth, that of the Fort William College at Calcutta, was being formed, and was destined to give no less an impulse to the cultivation of Urdu prose than had a hundred years before been given to that of poetry by Wali. At the commencement of the 19th century Dr John Gilchrist was the head of this institution, and his efforts were directed towards getting together a body of literature suitable as text-books for the study of the Urdu language by the European officers of the administration. To his exertions we owe the elaboration of the vernacular as an official speech, and the possibility of substituting it for the previously current Persian as the language of the courts and the government. He gathered together at Calcutta the most eminent vernacular scholars of the time, and their works, due to his initiative, are still notable as specimens of elegant and serviceable prose composition, not only in Urdu, but also in Hindi. The chief authors of this school are Haidari (Sayyid Muhammad Haidar-bakhsh), Husaini (Mir Bahadur 'Ali), Mir Amman Lutf, Hafizuddin Ahmad, Sher 'Ali Afsos, Nihal Chand of Lahore, Kazim 'Ali Jawan, Lallu Lal Kavi, Mazhar 'Ali Wila and Ikram 'Ali.

Haidari died in 1828. He composed the _Tota-Kahani_ (1801), a prose
redaction of the _Tuti-namah_ which has been already mentioned; a
romance named _Araish-i Mahfil_ ("Ornament of the Assembly"),
detailing the adventures of the famous Arab chief Hatim-i Tai; the
_Gul-i Maghfirat_ or _Dah Majlis_, an account of the holy persons of
the Muhammadan faith; the _Gulzar-i Danish_, a translation of the
_Bahar-i Danish_, a Persian work containing stories descriptive of the
craft and faithlessness of women; and the _Tarikh-i Nadiri_, a
translation of a Persian history of Nadir Shah. Husaini is the author
of an imitation in prose of Mir Hasan's _Sihru-l-bayan_, under the
name of _Nasr-i Benazir_ ("the Incomparable Prose," or "the Prose of
Benazir," the latter being the name of the hero), and of a work named
_Akhlaq-i Hindi_, or "Indian Morals," both composed in 1802. The
_Akhlaq-i Hindi_ is an adaptation of a Persian work called the
_Mufarrihu-l-qulub_ ("the Delighter of Hearts"), itself a version of
the _Hitopadesa_. Mir Amman was a native of Delhi, which he left in
the time of Ahmad Shah Durrani for Patna, and in 1801 repaired to
Calcutta. To him we owe the _Bagh o Bahar_ (1801-1802), an adaptation
of Amir Khusrau's famous Persian romance entitled the _Chahar
Darwesh_, or "Story of the Four Dervishes." Amman's work is not itself
directly modelled on the Persian, but is a rehandling of an almost
contemporary rendering by Tahsin of Etawa, called the _Nau-tarz-i
Murassa'_. The style of this composition is much admired by natives of
India, and editions of it are very numerous. Amman also composed an
imitation of Husain Wa'iz Kashifi's _Akhlaq-i Muhsini_ under the name
of the _Ganj-i Khubi_ ("Treasure of Virtue"), produced in 1802.
Hafizuddin Ahmad was a professor at the Fort William College; in 1803
he completed a translation of Abu-l-Fazl's _'Iyar-i Danish_, under the
name of the _Khirad-afroz_ ("Enlightener of the Understanding"). The
_'Iyar-i Danish_ ("Touchstone of Wisdom") is one of the numerous
imitations of the originally Sanskrit collection of apologues known in
Persian as the _Fables of Bidpai_, or _Kalilah and Dimna_. Afsos was
one of the most illustrious of the Fort William school; originally of
Delhi, he left that city at the age of eleven, and entered the service
of Qasim 'Ali Khan, Nawab of Bengal; he afterwards repaired to
Hyderabad in the Deccan, and thence to Lucknow, where he was the pupil
of Mir Hasan, Mir Soz and Mir Haidar 'Ali Hairan. He joined the Fort
William College in 1800, and died in 1809. He is the author of a much
esteemed diwan; but his chief reputation is founded on two prose works
of great excellence, the _Araish-i Mahfil_ (1805), an account of India
adapted from the introduction of the Persian _Khulasatu-t-tawarikh_ of
Sujan Rae, and the _Bagh-i Urdu_ (1808), a translation of Sa'di's
_Gulistan_. Nihal Chand translated into Urdu a _masnavi_, entitled the
_Gul-i Bakawali_, under the name of _Mazhab-i 'Ishq_ ("Religion of
Love"); this work is in prose intermingled with verse, was composed in
1804, and has been frequently reproduced. Jawan, like most of his
collaborators, was originally of Delhi and afterwards of Lucknow; he
joined the College in 1800. He is the author of a version in Urdu of
the well-known story of Sakuntala, under the name of _Sakuntala
Natak_; the Urdu was rendered from a previous Braj-bhasha version by
Nawaz Kabishwar made in 1716, and was printed in 1802. He also
composed a _Barah-masa_, or poetical description of the twelve months
(a very popular and often-handled form of composition), with accounts
of the various Hindu and Muhammadan festivals, entitled the _Dastur-i
Hind_ ("Usages of India"), printed in 1812. Ikram 'Ali translated,
under the name of the _Ikhwanu-s-safa_, or "Brothers of Purity"
(1810), a chapter of a famous Arabian collection of treatises on
science and philosophy entitled _Rasailu Ikhwani-s-safa_, and composed
in the 10th century. The complete collection, due to different writers
who dwelt at Basra, has recently been made known to European readers
by the translation of Dr F. Dieterici (1858-1879); the chapter
selected by Ikram 'Ali is the third, which records an allegorical
strife for the mastery between men and animals before the king of the
_Jinn_. The translation is written in excellent Urdu, and is one of
the best of the Fort William productions.

Sri Lallu Lal was a Brahman, whose family, originally of Gujarat, had
long been settled in northern India. What was done by the other Fort
William authors for Urdu prose was done by Lallu Lal almost alone for
Hindi. He may indeed without exaggeration be said to have created
"High Hindi" as a literary language. His _Prem Sagar_ and _Rajniti_,
the former a version in pure Hindi of the 10th chapter of the
_Bhagavata Purana_, detailing the history of Krishna, and founded on a
previous Braj-bhasha version by Chaturbhuj Misr, and the latter an
adaptation in Braj-bhasha prose of the _Hitopadesa_ and part of the
_Pancha-tantra_, are unquestionably the most important works in Hindi
prose. The _Prem Sagar_ was begun in 1804 and ended in 1810; it enjoys
immense popularity in northern India, has been frequently reproduced
in a lithographed form, and has several times been printed. The
_Rajniti_ was composed in 1809; it is much admired for its sententious
brevity and the purity of its language. Besides these two works, Lallu
Lal was the author of a collection of a hundred anecdotes in Hindi and
Urdu entitled _Lataif-i Hindi_, an anthology of Hindi verse called the
_Sabha-bilas_, a _Sat-sai_ in the style of Bihari-Lal called
_Sapta-satika_ and several other works. He and Jawan worked together
at the _Singhasan Battisi_ (1801), a redaction in mixed Urdu and Hindi
(Devanagari character) of a famous collection of legends relating the
prowess of King Vikramaditya; and he also aided the latter author in
the production of the _Sakuntala Natak_. Mazhar 'Ali Wila was his
collaborator in the _Baital Pachisi_, a collection of stories similar
in many respects to the _Singhasan Battisi_, and also in mixed
Urdu-Hindi; and he aided Wila in the preparation in Urdu of the _Story
of Madhonal_, a romance originally composed in Braj-bhasha by Moti
Ram.

The works of these authors, though compiled and published under the
superintendence of Dr Gilchrist, Captain Abraham Lockett, Professor J.
W. Taylor, Dr W. Hunter and other European officers of the college of
Fort William, and originally intended for the instruction of the
Company's officers in the vernacular, are essentially Indian in taste
and style, and, until superseded by the more recent developments of
literature noticed below, enjoyed a very wide reputation and
popularity. They may, indeed, be said to have set the standard of
prose composition in Urdu and Hindi, and for the first half of the
19th century their influence in this respect continued almost
unchallenged. Side by side with them, among the Musalman population of
northern India, another almost contemporaneous impulse did much for
the expansion of the Urdu language, and, like the work of the
Vaishnava reformers in moulding literary Hindi, gave an impetus to
composition which might otherwise have been lacking. This was the
reform in Islam led by Sayyid Ahmad[16] and his followers. In all
Eastern countries religion is the first and chief subject of literary
production; and the controversies which the new preaching aroused in
India at once afforded abundant material for authorship in Urdu, and
interested deeply the people to whom the works were addressed.

Sayyid Ahmad was born in 1782, and received his early education at
Delhi; his instructors were two learned Muslims, Shah 'Abdul-'Aziz,
author of a celebrated commentary on the Qur'an (the _Tafsir-i
'Aziziyyah_), and his brother 'Abdu-l-Qadir, the writer of the first
translation of the holy volume into Urdu. Under their guidance Sayyid
Ahmad embraced the doctrines of the Wahhabis, a sect whose preaching
appears at this time to have first reached India. He gathered round
him a large number of fervent disciples, among others Isma'il Haji,
nephew of 'Abdu-l'Aziz and 'Abdu-l-Qadir, the chief author of the
sect. After a course of preaching and apostleship at Delhi, Sayyid
Ahmad set out in 1820 for Calcutta, attended by numerous adherents.
Thence in 1822 he started on a pilgrimage to Mecca, whence he went to
Constantinople, and was there received with distinction and gained
many disciples. He travelled for nearly six years in Turkey and
Arabia, and then returned to Delhi. The religious degradation and
coldness which he found in his native country strongly impressed him
after his sojourn in lands where the life of Islam is stronger, and he
and his disciples established a propaganda throughout northern India,
reprobating the superstitions which had crept into the faith from
contact with Hindus, and preaching a _jihad_ or holy war against the
Sikhs. In 1828 he started for Peshawar, attended by, it is said,
upwards of 100,000 Indians, and accompanied by his chief followers,
Haji Isma'il and 'Abdu-l-Hayy. He was furnished with means by a
general subscription in northern India, and by several Muhammadan
princes who had embraced his doctrines. At the beginning of 1829 he
declared war against the Sikhs, and in the course of time made himself
master of Peshawar. The Afghans, however, with whom he had allied
himself in the contest, were soon disgusted by the rigour of his
creed, and deserted him and his cause. He fled across the Indus and
took refuge in the mountains of Pakhli and Dhamtor, where in 1831 he
encountered a detachment of Sikhs under the command of Sher Singh, and
in the combat he and Haji Isma'il were slain. His sect is, however, by
no means extinct; the Wahhabi doctrines have continued to gain ground
in India, and to give rise to much controversial writing, down to our
own day.

The translation of the Quran by 'Abdu-l-Qadir was finished in 1803,
and first published by Sayyid 'Abdullah, a fervent disciple of Sayyid
Ahmad, at Hughli in 1829. The _Tambihu-l-ghafilin_, or "Awakener of
the Heedless," a work in Persian by Sayyid Ahmad, was rendered into
Urdu by 'Abdullah, and published at the same press in 1830. Haji
Isma'il was the author of a treatise in Urdu entitled
_Taqwiyatu-l-Iman_ ("Confirmation of the Faith"), which had great
vogue among the following of the Sayyid. Other works by the disciples
of the _Tariqah-e Muhammadiyyah_ (as the new preaching was called) are
the _Targhib-i Jihad_ ("Incitation to Holy War"), _Hidayatu-l-Muminin_
("Guide of the Believers"), _Muzihu-l-Kabair_ wa-l-Bid'ah ("Exposition
of Mortal Sins and Heresy"), _Naslhatu-l-Muslimin_ ("Admonition to
Muslims"), and the _Mi'at Masail_, or "Hundred Questions."

Printing was first used for vernacular works by the College Press at
Fort William, at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th
century, and all the compositions prepared for Dr Gilchrist and his
successors which have been mentioned were thus given to the public.
But the expense of this method of reproduction long precluded its
extensive use in India, and movable types, though well suited for
alphabets derived from the Sanskrit, were not equally applicable to
the flowing and graceful characters of Persian. Lithography was
introduced about 1837, when the first press was set up at Delhi, and
immediately gave a powerful stimulus to the multiplication of
literature, both original and editions of older works. In 1832 the
vernaculars were substituted for Persian as the official language of
the courts and the acts of the legislature, and this at once led to
the transfer to the former of a mass of technical and forensic terms
which had previously been only to a limited extent in popular use.
Thirdly, the spread of education in subjects of Western learning, for
which text-books (many of them translations from English) were
required, not only greatly enlarged the vocabulary of the common
speech, but led by degrees to the use of a simpler and more direct
style, and the abandonment wholesale of the florid and artificial
ornament which was the legacy of the Persian literature upon which
Urdu prose had at first modelled itself. Lastly, the establishment of
a vernacular newspaper press, which lithography had rendered possible,
placed within the reach of a continually widening public the means of
becoming acquainted with new ideas in every department of culture, and
practised the writers who contributed to it in the art of wielding
their mother-tongue with effect in its application to European themes.

All these revolutionary agencies were at work, though in a tentative
and limited fashion, when the great change, following on the Mutiny of
1857, of the transfer of the government of India from the Company to
the Crown inaugurated a new era. Since 1860 their operation has become
extremely rapid and far-reaching. The use of lithography both for Urdu
and Hindi annually gives birth to hundreds of works. The extension of
education through both public and private agency has created an
immense mass of school-books, and the spread of instruction in English
and the activity of translators have filled the vernaculars with a
multitude of new words drawn from that language. The newspaper press,
in Urdu and Hindi, now counts over two hundred journals, the majority
issued in the United Provinces of Agra and Oudh and in the Punjab, but
a few at Madras, Hyderabad, Bangalore, Bombay and Calcutta. Of this
great body of literary production it is possible to speak only in
general terms. Style and vocabulary are still in a somewhat fluid and
unsettled condition, and the subjects treated are almost as various as
they are in European literatures. Much, indeed, of the work produced
has scarcely any claim to literary excellence, and in the crowd of
writers we may content ourselves with mentioning only a few whose
influence and authority make it probable that they will hereafter be
known as leaders in the new culture.

One of the first effects of the new literary inspiration seemed to be
the extinction of poetical composition as previously practised. With
the deaths of Zauq (1854) and Ghalib (1869) of the Delhi school, and
those of Anis (1875) and Dabir (1876) of Lucknow, the end of Urdu
poetry appeared to have come. The new age was intensely practical and
eager to engage in the race for material and political advancement,
and had no time for sentiment, or taste for mystical conceits.
Moreover, poetical composition in India, as in other Eastern
countries, has always owed much to the patronage of courts and
princes. The thrones of Delhi and Lucknow had passed away, and the new
rulers showed little interest in this form of achievement. Only at
Hyderabad in the Deccan, under the patronage of the Nizam, were
laureates still honoured; the last of these, Mirza Khan Dagh
(1831-1905), enjoyed a wide reputation as a graceful and eloquent
master of the poetic art.

But prose and material prosperity did not succeed in monopolizing the
genius of the people. The great movement of reform and liberalism in
Islam led by Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817-1898) found its bard in
Sayyid Altaf Husain of Panipat, poetically styled Hali--an ambiguous
_nom-de-plume_ now generally taken in the sense of "modern," or
"up-to-date." Hali in his youth was a pupil of the famous Ghalib,
whose life he has written and of whose writings he has published an
able criticism. At the age of forty he came under the influence of Sir
Sayyid Ahmad Khan, and from that time devoted his great poetic gifts
to the service of his co-religionists. He has published much verse, of
which an interesting specimen will be found in the edition of his
_Ruba'is_ or quatrains (101 in number), with an English translation,
by Mr G. E. Ward (Oxford, 1904); in this is included a famous poem
addressed to his muse, setting forth his ideals in poetry--simplicity,
avoidance of exaggeration and unreality, direct and emotional appeal
to the heart, and above all sincerity. There can be no doubt that he
has succeeded in becoming the leader of a new poetic school, which
shows much vigour and promise.

Perhaps the most memorable of all Hali's compositions is his long poem
in six-line stanzas (called _musaddas_) on "the flow and ebb of Islam"
(1879), which has had an extraordinary influence in stimulating
enthusiasm in the cause of progress among the Musalmans of the north
of India. In it he draws, in simple and direct but searching and
eloquent language, a rapid sketch of the glories of Islam in the past,
its principles and precepts, and the sources of its strength; and then
turns to contrast with this picture the degradation and decay into
which it had, when he wrote, fallen in Hindostan. Never have the vices
and shortcomings of a people been lashed by one of themselves with
more vigorous denunciation, or with more earnestness of moral purpose.
In his preface he explains how the poem came to be written--after a
youth spent in heedlessness and unsettlement, at the instigation of
Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan, and in the cause of that great reformer. The
poem is still recited and imitated by Muslims in the Punjab and United
Provinces, though the picture which it presents of Indian Musalmans is
no longer wholly applicable to the community. Hali has recently
completed a life of Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan in two volumes, entitled
_Hayat-i Javid_ ("eternal life"), a work of great merit.

Another writer whose work, though chiefly in prose, deals with poetry
and poetic style, is Maulavi Muhammad Husain Azad, lately professor of
Arabic at the Government College, Lahore. He has not himself composed
much verse; but his biographies of Urdu poets, with criticisms of
their works, entitled _Ab-i Hayat_ ("Water of Life," Lahore, 1883), is
by far the best book dealing with the subject. His prose style is much
admired. As Hali was the pupil of Ghalib, so was Azad that of Zauq, of
whose poems he has published a revised and annotated edition. His
other works in prose are _Qisas-i Hind_, episodes of Indian history
arranged for schools; _Nairang-i Khayal_, an allegory dealing with
human life; and _Darbar-i Akbari_, an account of the reign of Akbar.

Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan's life and work are dealt with elsewhere. Among
his literary achievements may be mentioned the _Asarus-Sanadid_
("Vestiges of Princes"), an excellent account of Delhi and its
monuments, which has passed through several editions since it was
first lithographed in 1847. His essays and occasional papers,
published in the _Aligarh Institute Gazette_ (started in 1864), and
afterwards (from 1870 onwards) in a periodical entitled
_Tahzibul-Akhlaq_ (or "Muhammadan Social Reformer"), handle all the
problems of religious, social and educational advancement among Indian
Musalmans--the cause with which his life was identified. His great
_Commentary on the Qur'an_, in seven volumes, the last finished only a
few days before his death in 1898, is carried to the end of Surah xx.,
a little more than half the book. In him Urdu prose found its most
powerful wielder for the diffusion of modern ideas, and the movement
which he set on foot has been the spring of the best literature in the
language during recent years.

Another excellent writer of Urdu is Shamsul-'Ulama Maulavi Nazir Ahmad
of Delhi, who is the author of a series of novels describing domestic
life, of a somewhat didactic character, which have had a wide
popularity, and from their admirable moral tone have been specially
serviceable in the education of Indian women. These are entitled the
_Mir'atul-'Arus_ (or "Brides' Mirror"); _Taubatun-Nasuh_ ("the
Repentance of Nasuh"), _Banatun-Na'sh_ ("the Seven Stars of the Great
Bear"), _Ibnul-Waqt_ ("Son of the Age"), and _Ayama_ ("Widows"). But
Nazir Ahmad is a man of many sides; before he took to novel-writing he
was the principal translator into Urdu of the _Indian Penal Code_
(1861), which is reckoned a masterpiece in the exact rendering of
European legal ideas; and more lately he gave to the world the best
Urdu version of the Quran. He has been a popular lecturer on social
subjects, displaying a rich vein of humour, and in his old age even
ventured upon verse. During the latter portion of his life he was most
closely associated with Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan.

The novel is one of the most noteworthy features of recent literary
composition in Urdu. India has from time immemorial been rich in
stories and romances of adventure; but the description of actual life
and character in action, as the modern novel is understood in Europe,
is quite a new development. The most admired production of this kind
in Urdu is a work entitled _Fisana-e Azad_, by Pandit Ratan-nath
Sarshar of Lucknow. The story, which is very long, is remarkable for
the faithful and vivid pictures of Lucknow society which it presents,
and its exact and lifelike delineation of character; it appeared
originally as a _feuilleton_ of the _Awadh Akhbar_, of which paper the
author was at the time editor. Another good writer in the same branch
of literature is Maulavi 'Abdul-Halim Sharar, also a native of the
neighbourhood of Lucknow, but settled at Hyderabad. He was editor of a
monthly periodical called the _Dil-gudaz_ ("melter of hearts"), which
contained essays and papers in European style, and in it his novels,
which are all of an historical character, in the style of Sir Walter
Scott, originally appeared. The best are _'Aziz and Virgina_, a tale
of the Crusades, and _Mansur and Mohina_, a story of which the scene
is laid in India at the time of the invasions of Sultan Mahmud of
Ghazni.

Although Urdu chiefly represents Musalman culture, its use is by no
means confined to adherents of that faith. It has just been mentioned
that the most popular Urdu novelist is a Hindu (a Brahman from
Kashmir); and the statistics of the vernacular press show that this
form of the language is widely used by Hindus as well as Musalmans.
Thus, of eighty periodicals in Urdu published in the United Provinces,
twenty-nine are conducted by Hindus; similarly, in the Punjab, of
forty-eight Urdu journals, twenty are edited by Hindus.

"High Hindi" has scarcely adapted itself to modern requirements with
the thoroughness displayed by Urdu. It is taught in the schools where
the population is mainly Hindu, and books of science have been written
in it with a terminology borrowed from Sanskrit, in place of the
Persian terms used in the other dialect. But Sanskrit is far removed
from the daily life of the people, and the majority of works in this
style are read only by Pandits, the great bulk of them dealing with
religion, philosophy and the ancient literature. There are
thirty-seven Hindi and four Hindi-Urdu journals in the United
Provinces; but many of them are exclusively religious in their
character, and several, though written in Devanagari, employ a mixed
language which admits Persian words freely. The old dialects of
literature, Awadhi and Braj-bhasha, are now only used for poetry; High
Hindi has been a complete failure for this purpose.