'Through throats where many rivers meet': The ecology of Hindi in the world of Persian

Indian Economic and Social History Review

Volumn 38, Issue 1, 2001, Pages 33-55

  Phukan, Shantanu ^a  

^a UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA   (United States)

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EID: 23044525312     PISSN: 00194646     EISSN: None     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: None     Document Type: Article

References (62)

1. For a Mughal biography of Ānand Rām see Bindrāban Dās K + hushgo (At + ā al-Rah + mān At + ā, ed.), Safinā-ye K + hushgo, Patna, 1959.
2. For a discussion of his travelogue see Muzaffar Alam nd Sanjay Subrahmanyam, 'Discovering the Familiar: Notes on the Travel Account of Ānand Rām Muk + hlis + ', in South Asia Research, Vol. 16(2), 1996.
3. See also Jamil Jālibī, Tārik + h-i Adab-i Urdū, Vol. 2, Lahore, 1994, pp. 194-98.
4. Ānand Rām Muk + hlis + , Han + gāmah-ye Ishq, Khudabakhsh Library, Patna, MS # 8918, folio 5.
5. This is an association still made today among Indian singers who prefer such eastern dialects as Bhojpuri, over the standard Hindi (Khar + i boli) as also Urdu. The reason they give is that in Bhojpuri the large number of words ending in vowels lend themselves to vocal embellishments (such as gamaks), for it is the vowels that are typically drawn out in singing. Personal communication, Jyoti Pande, October 2000.
6. For a catalogue of the Persian versions of this narrative see Sayyid Amir Hasan Abidi, 'The Story of Padmāvat in Indo-Persian Literature', Indo-Iranica Vol. 15, pp. 1-11.
7. Abidi mentions 12 different retellings, and it is entirely possible that manuscript searches will reveal others. None of these Persian versions is a literal translation, hence my use of the word 'retelling'. For a Persian retelling of Jāyasī's Hindi Padmāvat see Bazmī's Rat o Padam composed for Emperor Jahangir in 1619 C.E.
8. See Abd-al Shukūr Bazmī, (Amir Hasan Abidi, ed.), Dastan-i Padmīvat, Tehran, 1971.
9. For an Urdu retelling see Mir Ziya al-Din Ishrat and Ghulam Ali Ibrat Barelvi, (Khvajah Qutb al-Din Ahmad, ed.), Padmāvat: Tasnif-i do Shā'ir, Lucknow, 1796.
10. Munshī Naval Kishore's press in Lucknow published many editions in 'bhākhā' which, in our terminology is Urdu. See also Muh + ammad 'Abdul Vāhid G + hafarallāh. tr., Padmāvat: Bhākhā Mutarjim, Kanpur, 1905.
11. Muh + ammad Shākir Amrohavī, Padmāvat, Rampur Raza Library, Rampur, MS # 1.
12. Padmāvat, Ibid., folio 31b.
13. Vāsudeva Saran + a Agravāla, for example, does mention that Shākir copied the manuscript in Arabic script, and included an inter-linear Persian translation, but remains silent about the many Persian prose and verse comments which he also included, and which make Shākir's manuscript such a unique source of reader responses. Muh + ammad Jāyasī, (Vāsudeva Saran + a Agravāla, ed.), Padmāvat: Malik Muh + ammad Jāyasī Krta Mahakavya, Mūla aura Sanjīvanī Vyākhyā, Jhansi, 1955, p. 18.
14. For critical editions see Muh + ammad Afz + al (Ak + hlaq H + usain 'Ārif, ed.), Afz + al kā Bārahmāsā ma' Sharh + , Lucknow, 1989;
15. and Muh + ammad Afz + al, (Nūr al-H + asan H + āshmī and Mas + 'ūd H + usain K + hān, eds), Bikat + Kahānī, Lucknow, 1979. All subsequent references are to H + āshmī̈ and K + han's edition.
16. 'Abd al-Haqq, Urdū kī Ibtidā'i Nashv o Numā men + S + ūfiyā-i Kirām kā Kām, Aligarh, 1968, pp. 6-8.
17. This is my summation of Eaton's study of the Sufis of Bijapur and his explanation of their use of Hindi or Hindavi. See Richard M. Eaton, 'Sufis as Literati', in idem, The Sufis of Bijapur: Social Roles of Sufis in Medieval India, Princeton, 1978, pp. 135-74.
18. A simpler version of his arguments appeared in Eaton's earlier article: 'Sufi Folk Literature and the Expansion of Indian Islam', History of Religions, Vol. 14(2), 1974, pp. 117-27.
19. Since the publication of The Sufis of Bijapur in 1978, Richard Eaton has revised his own explanation of Hindi as an instrument of conversion: Personal communication, October 1997. Readers personally familiar with Eaton will know this; however, since the revision has not been made publicly, the explanation remains firmly lodged as a paradigm for understanding the Sufi use of Hindi even while its author questions it. More importantly, however, no new explanations for the use of Hindi by the otherwise Persian-speaking Mughal literati have been put forward. It is thus that I am raising this issue again after a hiatus of some 30 years.
20. On the generic tradition of the Bārahmāsā see Charlotte Vaudeville, Bārahmāsā in Indian Literatures: Songs of the Twelve Months in Indo-Aryan Literatures, Delhi, 1986.
21. A tadbhava, literally 'born from it' is a word derived from Sanskrit, rather than from Persian which, in the course of its historical existence, has gone through sound changes in consonance with the modern South Asian language in which it is used. Thus, 'bikat + ' is a tadbhava word, being derived from the Sanskrit 'vikat + a', meaning, 'immense' or 'terrible.' By analogy, Latinate words in English might be called tadbhava, and Italian words may be said to bear a strongly tadbhava relationship to Latin. Since there is no technical English term describing this process in South Asia ('Latinate' immediately takes us to the specific terrain of Europe and Latin), I will henceforth treat this as an English noun and also use the verb 'tadbhavisation' to refer to the process by which a particular register of speech or writing is 'infused' with an unmodified Sanskrit vocabulary. In the case of north Indian literary texts the opposite of 'tadbhavisation' would be 'Persianisation' or 'Arabicisation', and, more recently, 'Anglicisation.' For the cultural historian and literary critic the issue, then, is the aesthetic, emotional and social consequences of the tadbhavisation of a work which could otherwise have been expressed in another register, such as, for example, the Persian or Arabic.
22. H + ashmī and K + hān, Bikat + Kahānī, p. 33.
23. H + ashmī and K + hān, Bikat + Kahānī, Ibid., p. 44.
24. Rāzī's retelling was called Shama' o Parvānah (The Flame and the Moth) and exists only in unpublished manuscript versions. For an extended discussion of the text, see Shantanu Phukan, 'Through a Persian Prism: Hindi and Padmāvat in the Mughal Imagination', Unpublished Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Chicago, 2000.
25. For a manuscript version see 'Āquil K + hān Rāzī, Shama' o Parvānah, Ethé MS # 1634, British Library, London.
26. For a traditional biography of Rāzī see K + hushgo, Safinah, 1959.
27. For the following comments by Sherānī see Mazhar Mah + mūd Sherānī, ed., Maqālāt-i H + āfiz + Mah + mūd Sherānī, Lahore, 1966, Vol. 2, pp. 99-100.
28. For a more positive appraisal of Bikat + Kahānī see Jālibī, Tārik + h, Vol. 1, pp. 62-69.
29. Quoted in Ugo Enrico Paoli, Il Latino Maccheronico, Florence, 1959, p. 5.
30. See also Siegfried Wenzel, Macaronic Sermons: Bilingualism and Preaching in Late-Medieval England, Ann Arbor, 1994.
31. Feminine experiences and emotions as construed by a Mughal, and not a contemporary, audience. Thus, I do not want to suggest the existence of a stable set of emotions and experiences which are the essential and exclusive domain of women in all historical circumstances, but rather to sketch that range of sentiments which Mughal society deemed the natural domain of women.
32. For the most recent research on the history of the naming of this new vernacular see Sharris + al-Rah + mān Fārūqī, 'Unprivileged Power: The Strange Case of Persian and Urdu in Nineteenth-Century India', Annual of Urdu Studies, Vol. 13, 1998, pp. 10-11.
33. For a traditional biography (tazkirah) of Saudā see Muhammad H + usain Āzād, Āb-i H + ayāt, Lahore, n.d., pp. 141-60.
34. See also Ralph Russell and Khurshidul Islam, Three Mughal Poets: Mīr, Saudā, Mīr H + asan, Cambridge, 1968, pp. 37-69.
35. For his Urdu and Persian ghazals, muk + hammas + āt and satires see Mirzā Muh + ammad Rafi Saudā (Muh + ammad Hasan, ed.), Kulliyāt-i Saudā, Vol. 1, Delhi, 1985.
36. For Saudā's marṡiyās see Kulliyāt, Vol. 2 (editor unnamed), Allahabad, 1971.
37. For Saudā's Punjabi marṡiyā
38. see Saudā marṡiyā ibid., p. 363.
39. For a very self-consciously Deccani use of language by Saudā see marṡiyā ibid., p. 432.
40. For a macaronic Urdu-Persian usage see the marṡiyā in musaddas (sextet): Saudā marṡiyā ibid., p. 376.
41. Saudā marṡiyā Ibid., pp. 524-27.
42. Deccani Urdu ghazal poets like Qulī Qutb Shāh are known for their liberal use of tadbhava words as well as the feminine voice; this, however, is a tradition that dies out in the Deccan by the early eighteenth century; it is, furthermore, a tradition that does not significantly influence either the north Indian Rekhta-Urdu poetic tradition, or the history of its criticism.
43. Even when the home appears in the ghazal it is significant as a 'negative space,' that is, for its inaccessibility to the lover. For example, in G + hālib's famous she'r: main + vahān + pahun + cā to un kī gāliyon + kā kyā javāb? yād thīn + jitnī du 'āen + s + arf-i darbān + ho gayīn + ) (Though at last I reached his [beloved's] home what could I say to his stream of abuses? Every prayer I knew I'd used up to slip past the door-keeper).
44. The vernacularised nature of the marṡiyā, at both the linguistic and thematic levels, has often been noted by Urdu critics. For example, C.M. Naim, 'Urdu in the Pre-Modern Period: Synthesis or Particularism?', New Quest, Vol. 6, 1978, p. 9. Naim writes, 'The marsiya is the one genre of Urdu poetry which, as it developed, managed to maintain its original balance of local and foreign elements. In these elegies the emotions are Indian though the personae are Arabs; the landscape is conventional - sort of vintage ghazal - but the material culture, customs and rituals are Indo-Muslim.' Naim suggests that this is so because the marṡiya writer seeks, above all, to create a tear-jerker which will reduce the assembled Shia gathering to communal and cathartic weeping: 'marsiyas are written to be read before an audience in a majlis, and to make the listeners cry. To succeed in its chief goal a marsiya has to be firmly rooted in the intimate and the local.' Thus, Naim partly anticipates my own argument. Where I differ from him is in suggesting that in addition to aiming generally for a local physical setting, the marṡiyā aims to evoke a set of 'feminine' sentiments and losses, and that this specifically gendered set of emotions are best expressed in an un-Persianised, and hence to the Mughals unpolished, speech. Such a speech was deemed appropriate for the evocation of 'feminine' sentiments largely because this is what the elite Mughal women, and especially domestic women, (not courtesans) spoke at home. I also differ from Naim in drawing connections between the genre of the marṡiyā and other 'feminine speech' genres, like Bikat + Kahānī by Muh + ammad Afz + al.
45. For her dīvān (anthology of poetry) see Zebunnisā Begam (Magan Lal and Jessie Duncan Westbrook, trs), The Diwan of Zeb-un-nisa: The First Fifty Ghazalṡ, London, 1913.
46. We see how the dilemma between educating marriageable girls while still maintaining pardāh was solved in Naz + ir Ah + mad's novel Taubā an-Nasūh + (The Repentance of Nasūh + ). In this nineteenth-century didactic novel, Ah + mad solves the problem of womens' education by having the central female character in the novel, Fahmīdah, open an all-girls' school at her home, thereby bringing the students into a domestic space in the presence of a married woman, rather than sending them out into the relatively more public space of a school. Significantly, if we look at the curriculum prescribed by Ah + mad (and taught by Fahmīdah) we notice that Urdu is taught for practical reasons of being able to deal with life in north India, and so is some elementary Arabic (so the girls may correctly pronounce verses from the Qur'ān). Persian, however, is conspicuous by its absence, to say nothing, of course, of Persian poetry, which would have been regarded as superfluous, if not downright harmful, for girls headed for marriage. See C.M. Naim, 'Prize Winning Adab: A Study of Five Urdu Books Written in Response to the Allahabad Government Gazette Notification', in Barbara Metcalf, ed., Moral Conduct and Authority: The Place of Adab in South Asian Islam, Berkeley, 1984, pp. 309-12.
47. Mirzā Muhammad Hādī Rusvā, Umrāo Jān Adā, Aligarh, 1996 (originally published 1899).
48. For an English translation see David Matthews, tr., Umrāo Jān Adā, Delhi, 1996.
49. For an extended discussion of speech gradations in the novel see Shantanu Phukan, 'Through a Persian Prism', pp. 50-57.
50. Having been published in 1899 Umrāo Jān is not, of course, a 'Mughal' novel, but it is, nevertheless, a good source for recreating the social and material contexts of late Mughal north India because the world it describes - navābi Lucknow - was such a self-conscious heir to Mughal traditions which, I would argue, continued well beyond the final dissolution of the Mughal royalty in 1858.
51. Which is in itself a tadbhavised form of the Sanskrit 'Bhās + ā' and thus hints at the tadbhava nature of this vernacular. Thus, for example, early publications of Padmāvat are titled Padmāvat Bhākhā (Padmāvat in the Vernacular). See Muhammad 'Abdul Vāhid Ghafarallāh, tr., Padmāvat: Bhākhā Mutarjim, Kanpur, 1905.
52. For other earlier uses of this word to refer to an un-Persianised language see Phukan, 'Through a Persian Prism', p. 129.
53. And not just as the virtuous housewife, but also as 'Queen Abode of Truth', opposed to Urdu as the ruthless rival for the throne. For glorious representations of Hindi (and negative ones of Urdu) in late nineteenth-century literature see Christopher King, 'Forging a New Linguistic Identity: The Hindi Movement in Banaras, 1868-1914', in Sandra Freitag, ed., Culture and Power in Banaras, Berkeley, 1989, pp. 179-81.
54. See Gail Minault, 'Begamātī Zubān: Women's Language and Culture in Nineteenth-Century Delhi', India International Centre Quarterly, Vol. 11(2), 1984, pp. 155-70.
55. Maulānā Ashraf 'Alī Thānavi (Barbara Metcalf, tr.), Perfecting Women: Maulānā Ashraf 'Alī Thānavi's Bihishtī Zevar, Berkeley, 1990. See especially p. 321 where the Maulānā promotes the Arabic words for the four directions (mashriq, maghrib) over the tadbhavised Hindi ones (pūrab, pacchim).
56. For a discussion of the predictably populist nature of 'vernacularly imagined communities' see Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism. London, 1983, pp. 69-82.
57. By contrast, she writes: 'Prior to the nation's birth, Tamil was valorized not because it ensured communication between its speakers, enabled the schooling of its citizenry, or facilitated the governance of the populace. Instead, it was held in awe for its demonstrated ability to perform wondrous miracles and command the all-powerful gods.' In Sumathi Ramaswamy, 'Language of the People in the World of Gods: Ideologies of Tamil Before the Nation', Journal of Asian Studies, Vol. 55(4), 1998, pp. 66-67.
58. The anachronistic imposition of our own vernacular ideals to pre-modernity is a distortion which is alive and well in the study of South Asia, especially among politically liberal historians overly-eager to find in pre-modern India glimmers of modern liberal subversions of hierarchic structures. One glaring example of such historiography is Sudipto Kaviraj's attempts at outlining a logic of writing and speaking in pre-modern India. In writing of the rise of vernacular literatures he says: They [i.e. vernacular literatures] arise haltingly, always making reverential genuflexions in the direction of the high tradition and its texts, which they were eventually to undermine. Their first and most impessive texts are attempts to stretch the riches of this high culture towards the lower, culturally deprived orders. Their implicit justification would have been that, if religiosity and aesthetics were significant and valuable for all human beings, those without the use of Sanskrit [or Persian?] should not be deprived of these values. As a result these literatures assume a consciously subaltern relation between themselves and the high classical texts (emphasis added). Sudipto Kaviraj, 'Writing, Speaking, Being: Language and the Historical Formation of Identities in India', in Dietmar Rothermund, ed., Nationalstat und Sprachkonflikte in Sud und Sudostasien, Stuttgart, 1992, pp. 33-34.
59. 'All Qulī K + hān Vāleh Dāghestānī, Riyāiż al-Shu'arā, The British Museum, London, MS, Add. 16.729.
60. The biographic incident recorded by Vāleh is reproduced in Sherānī, Maqālāt, Vol. 2, pp. 67-68.
61. Farīduddīn 'At + t + ār (Sayyad S + ādiq Gauharīn, ed.), Mant + iq al-T + air, Tehran, n.d., pp. 67-88.
62. For an English translation see Afkham Darbandi and Richard Davis, trs, The Conference of the Birds, London, 1984.