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Life and Conditions of the People of Hindustan (1200–1550 A.D.) c4.s2.t3: III. Literature

Life and Conditions of the People of Hindustan (1200–1550 A.D.) c4.s2.t3

Language
English

Contents

III. Literature

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Thanks to the efforts of the Orientalists we have a number of books on various subjects : folklore and fiction ; poetry and songs; practical arts; and a few compendiums of legal and political precepts, besides other books of Hindu and Muslim mystics and religious reformers.

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1. Folklore and Fiction.—Few words are needed to recommend to a student of social history the examination of folklore. Folklore lacks the flourish and glamour of a court chronicle, and the accuracy and lucidity of other books of history or historical documents. But in its own way it professes ‘to reconstruct a spiritual history of Man, not as exemplified by the outstanding works of poets and thinkers, but as represented by the more or less inarticulate voices of the ‘folk.’¹ The claims of Folklore to the status of a scientific study are being slowly recognized. The period under review begins with the voluminous collection of stories, namely, the *Jawami‘-ul-Hikayat* of Muhammad ‘Awfi. The author lived in the reign of Sultan Iltutmish and dedicated his great work to his minister, Nizam-ul-mulk Junaidi. It is a neatly compiled book, carefully classified into chapters and sections according to its contents.² It was too early to expect from a Muslim writer an intimate touch with the social life of the country of his domicile. Thus the *Jawami‘-ul-Hikayat* speaks more of foreign Muslim centres, like Ghazni and Bagdad, and very little of Multan or Delhi. It does not forget, however, to give some interesting side-lights on the life of the Sultans. As a whole, its value is meagre. *Purush-Pariksha* of Vidyapati Thakur, though written in the conventional style of the contemporary books of ethics, is very useful for our purpose.³ It starts with an examination of Hindu ethical ideals, and illustrates its moral from illustrations with examples from the ancient as well as from the contemporary social life; the range of choice of historical examples does not exclude the Muslims or the lower Hindu classes. As a whole, our period is marked by the decay of Sanskrit literature, and we can turn with profit to the rising Prakrits or provincial dialects for information of value.

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¹ Krappe, Int., XV.

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² A list of contents of the book with a valuable introduction was recently published on behalf of the Gibb Memorial Fund Series, by M. Nizam-ud-din in 1929.

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³ The date of Vidyapati Thakur is not yet fixed with certainty. B.K. Chatterji holds that he was definitely alive from 1400 A.D. to 1438 A.D. (vide *J.D.L.*, 1927, 36). I have used an old English translation published in Bombay presumably for school or college purposes.

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Under Sher Shah flourished the famous poet of Oudh, Malik Muhammad Jaisi, who wrote and sang in his sweet native Awadhi, and was proud of the fact. In some ways, he was greater even than Amir Khusrau, for while the latter was more or less confined in his treatment to Muslim society and adhered to the orthodox view of Islam, the former had drunk deep at the springs of both Hinduism and Islam, and was, as a matter of fact, more Hindu than Muslim in his outlook on life. He is the oldest vernacular poet of Hindustan of whose works we have any uncontested remains.¹ In his well-known book *Padumavati*, Malik Muhammad Jaisi deals with the events of the popular story of Raja Ratansen of Chitor : the marriage of the Raja with Padumavat, a princess of the distant Simhala ; his battle against ‘Ala-ud-din Khalji and imprisonment in Delhi ; and finally, his thrilling escape from the royal prison through the device of his queen and the valour of his two loyal adherents. The Simhala of the story (popularly believed to be Ceylon) is no other than an average Hindu capital in Northern India. The descriptions of the seas and the southern countries (given in the book to meet the requirements of Hindu dramatic conventions) are so fanciful that it may be doubted if the author ever ventured to go beyond the limits of the Doab and Oudh. Another book of fiction is the story of Baz Bahadur and Rupamati of Malwa which was composed by Ahmad-al-Umrei, and is now available in Crump’s rendering published under the title ‘Lady of the Lotus.’ It is an interesting though a sad poem and gives valuable side-lights on social life in Malwa.

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¹ Compare Grierson, *Padumavat Int.*, 2. Two of the poems of Malik Muhammad Jaisi are now available—the *Padumavat* and the *Akhrawat*. The *Padumavat* was edited in part by Grierson and Dvivedi in 1869 and was stopped on the death of the Hindu scholar. The *Akhrawat* was published by the Nagari pracharini Sabha of Benares in 1904.

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2. *Poetry and Songs.*—Besides Amir Khusrau and Amir Hasan there were numerous other Persian poets whose works have disappeared, as was mentioned earlier. The poems of Badr-i-chach are available, and slight references to other poets are made by Bada'uni in his history. But the value of these poems is meagre for our immediate purpose. They are composed in a foreign language and their style is highly conventional. The Persian poets on the whole are very different from the poets of the land, who sang in their own language. To name only two of them, Mukand Ram and Chandi Das of Bengal are famous, and no student of social history can fail to turn to them without pleasure and profit.¹ The more important poetic activity was, however, shown in composing devotional religious songs (the Bhakti songs) which are an extremely valuable source for the study of social conditions. Their tone, in general, is gloomy, and their criticism of social life somewhat unbalanced; but they disclose a wealth of information and reveal the deep emotions which moved the people of that age. There are rich collections of these songs from all parts of Hindustan.

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To enumerate but a few representative names: Lalla in Kashmir, Nanak in the Punjab, Kabir in the Upper Gangetic plains, Vidyapati Thakur in Bihar and Orissa, and Chaitanya in Bengal, are the great prophets of the popular religion of Hindustan during our time.² The songs of numerous others are given in the sixth volume of Macauliffe's work, while some new poems are being slowly brought to light by the Visva-Bharati and other Indian periodicals. I have deliberately excluded from the present study a more detailed examination of the writings of Muslim Sufis in Hindustan. The Sufis in general are so conventional in their treatment, that they show a more or less complete detachment from the life of common people and their spiritual wants. They fight shy of recognizing the social changes which a closer association and mutual interaction of Hindus and Muslims were bringing about in Muslim society. As a matter of fact, the Sufis lived in more intimate touch with the social currents of life than any other class among the Muslims, but they found themselves between two stools, facing danger from opposite directions. They were dissatisfied with the whole of orthodox Muslim life, but they did not dare to question the power of the theologians who led the people, covering themselves with the rigid interpretation of the Muslim dogma.

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They similarly disapproved of the life and manners of the Muslim aristocracy, but they were too much afraid of the power of the ruling classes to offend them by strong opposition or even by honest criticism. They had very little to give to the common people which was not inconsistent with the accepted version of the orthodox Islam, and thus exposed them to the charge of heresy or heterodoxy. So the Sufi works have little use for our present purposes. I have, however, used the Zakhirat-ul-muluk of Hamadani (died 1384 A.D.) and the Saha, if of Shaikh Sadr-ud-din (died 1536 A.D.) to represent the Sufi viewpoint. An orthodox Muslim is, however, somewhat different. Even if he is not interested in the life of 'the infidels', he is interested in keeping the Muslims pure from their taint; he is not a little interested in securing the reward of the next world by converting an infidel to Islam. It is somewhat difficult to draw a line between a Sufi and an orthodox Muslim in practical religion except in extreme cases when a Sufi superimposes some mystic and occult doctrine on Islam and stretches the sense and meaning of both Qur'an and the Tradition to meet his ends, and the orthodox refuses to go beyond the literal interpretation of the Muslim dogma. Composed on the orthodox lines are two books, the *Matla-ul-Anwar* of Amir Khusrau and the *Tuhfa-i-Nasa'ih* of Yusuf Gada. The book of Khusrau, which I have already mentioned, is a bitter exposition of the heterodox manners of his age.

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He deals with all classes of Muslims and with every phase of moral life. The *Tuhfa-i-Nasa'ih* is expository rather than critical. In this didactic poem, addressed to his son in the form of advice, the author gives a general survey of Muslim life in India from an orthodox standpoint. Its particular interest lies in showing how far Hindu beliefs and practices and other common superstitions were being incorporated into the scheme of orthodox Muslim life in Hindustan.¹

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¹ Mukand Ram has been put in the later part of the 16th century. Some interesting extracts of his poems are given in J.N. Das Gupta's 'Bengal in the Sixteenth Century'. T. D. Gupta has recently published his 'Aspects of Bengali Society' in J.D.I., Calcutta (1927-29), using mainly literary data from the Bengali language for a study of social history of Bengal which includes the examination of Bengali poetry, ballads, and folk-songs.

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² The songs of Lalla have been rendered into English by R. C. Temple. The text with translation was published by Grierson and Barnett. Nanak's songs and hymns have been incorporated in the Granth Sahib, the sacred book of the Sikhs, and are to be found in an English rendering in the first volume of Macauliffe's 'The Sikh Religion;. The Bijak of Kabir is now available in a careful English translation by Rev Ahmad Shah. The songs of Vidyapati—the Padavali Bangiya (which, as opposed to his Sanskrit book referred to earlier, is composed in his native Maithili)—were translated and published by Coomaraswami and Arun Sen. His peculiarity lies in being a Krishnite and in singing of the loves of Radha and Krishna. Chaitanya was not so fortunate as to have left a collection of songs but the contemporary biography of Das Kaviraj, completed in 1582 after many years of devoted labour, is a document of great historical value. The second part of this biography which deals with six years of Chaitanya's pilgrimages is available in the English translation of J. N. Sircar. The account of his wanderings introduces us to the hopes and fears of the common people and to the gradual assimilation by Muslims of Hindu ideas.

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¹ Yusuf Gada was a pupil of the celebrated Shaikh Nasir-ud-din Chiragh of Delhi and composed the book in 1393 (Ethe, 732). The book contains only 776 verses, but the author claims to have given a complete exposition of the orthodox beliefs and practices to the reader (compare T., 29).

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3. Practical arts and Compendiums.—There are a few books on practical arts which are quite useful for a study of contemporary social life. For example, the *Kitab-i-Nimat Khana-i-Nasir Shahi*, a compendium of culinary art, gives numerous recipes for making scents, cosmetics, ottos, and for preparing a variety of foods and delicacies². Another, named *Hidayat ur-rami*, gives a comprehensive guidance to archers and those interested in the use of bow and arrow³. The most important book, however, of this nature is the *Fiqh-i-Firuz Shahi*. It is a compendium of civil and ecclesiastical law and has an interesting history. It was originally compiled by one Ya'qub Karrani who died without finishing the book. The posthumous work was brought to the notice of Firuz Shah Tughluq who ordered its revision and enlargement and thus the book took its present shape. It gives legal precepts which were probably meant for the guidance of the Judiciary, but this is by no means certain. It may be safely said, however, that these semi-judicial compilations, even though they may not be compared with modern legal codes, do not on that account lose their historical value. They reflect the social conditions in a more lucid manner than other books and are to be valued accordingly.¹ Another book, not exactly a compilation of ‘ecclesiastical decisions, advices, and admonitions’ (vide Ethe) but rather a kind of political guide to a prince and a code of political ethics, is the Fatawa-i-jahandari of Ziya-ud-din Barani. Together with another earlier compilation of a similar nature the Adab-ul-muluk of Fakhr ud-din Mubarak Shah, it throws some light on the political ideas of the times. But the tone of these compilations is theoretical rather than practical. In any case, their value in elucidating social developments is very little. We are not required to go into a closer examination of their contents for our present purposes.²

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² The only copy of the MS. in the India Office collection (copied between 1634-1535 A.D.) is without a date of composition or the name of the author and Ethe does not assign any date for its composition (*vide* Ethe, 1499). Considering the evidence of its contents and after examining the MS. I am inclined to believe that it was composed in Malwa before 1500 A.D. under the Khalji Sultans of Malwa. It is an official guide for the royal kitchen which obviates the necessity of mentioning the name of the author.

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³ The *Hidayat-ur-rami* was composed under Husain Shah of Bengal (904—927 A.D.) (*vide* Rieu, 489).

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¹ The plan of the Fiqh-i-Firuz Shahi follows the orthodox lines of Muslim law-books. It gives the Arabic text and the Persian paraphrasing of the precepts and a summary of the view of other Sunnite legal authorities on the question.

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² This title is given to the MS. in the India Office collection. An abridged form of the same book is named Adab-ul-Herb in the British Museum collection.

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