Life and Conditions of the People of Hindustan (1200–1550 A.D.) c4.s2.t3.8

Language: English

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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