Twilight of the Sultanate c16.s6.2

c16.s6.2

The beginnings of all literatures are to be found in poetry, for man feels first and reasons afterwards. The first poet of Hindustani was Amīr Khusru, Tūti-i-Hind or Parognet of India.¹⁰⁸ Khusru was the first to employ Persian metres in Hindi, a language he loved and praised¹⁰⁹ and in which he wrote many couplets. By the fifteenth century Hindi had got a definite shape as is evident from the works of Kabīr, Raidās and many other saints of the fifteenth century, whose contribution to the development of languages will be studied later on. Suffice it here to say that these saints travelled extensively. They preached in Hindi and most probably conversed with the people in the same language wherever they went. Thus Hindi or Hindustani seems to have been understood all over northern India and had attained the position of a national language. However, it had its variations in various regions of the country. Rajasthani developed in Rajasthan, western Hindi (both Brajbhāsa and Kharī bolī) in western U.P., Avadhī in eastern U.P. and Bihari in Bihar. Kharī bolī did not become popular till the eighteenth century, but during the fifteenth century many books in Avadhī were written. Qutban, a disciple of Shaikh Burhān of the Chishtia order and a protege of the Sultan of Jaunpur composed, in 1501, his *Mrigāvatī*. It is a Rajput romance with little allegorical elements; but Manjhan's *Madhu-mālatī* (composed in the early years of the 16th century) has great imagery and deep allegory.