CHARACTERISTICS OF THE EARLY URDU LITERATURE BEFORE

we examine the influences from the West, it is necessary to discuss at some length the ideals whichwere responsible for the growth of the early form of Urduliterature and its leading characteristics, in order that we may be able, by comparison, to estimate properly the value and importance of the new literature. Certain questions suggest themselves in this connection : Whatdoes this early literature consist of ? What are its forms ? What its substance ? Does it stand for any ideal or ideals ? or has it any message to convey ? What are the elements of its strength and of its weakness and how did it come to possess the one or the other ? In short, what are the scope and the quality of this literature, and what are the forces that created it ? 

(i) CONDITION OF THE MUSLIM COMMUNITY DURING THIS PERIOD

 We shall take the last question first : What were those forces and ideals which shaped this early literature ? Ananswer to this must be sought in the circumstances of the life of those among whom it grew and developed. Forthis we shall have to look into the political, social, andreligious condition of the Indian Muslims during the 150 years from the death of Awrangzayb in 1707 to the final extinction of the Mogul Empire in 1858. Political.* The reign of Awrangzayb (1658-1707) had1 Among English works dealing with the political history of Indian Muslims from 1707 to 1857, see especially : (1) Lane-Poole, Medieval India ; (2) Sydney Owen, Fall of the Mogul Empire ; (3) H. G. Keeno, Hindustan under the Free-Lances ; (4) A. Lyall, Rise and Expansion of British Dominions in India ; (6) Hunter, Indian Musulmans ; (6) Sir Sayyid Ahmad, Causes of the Indian Mutiny.  witnessed the high-water mark of the Muslim power in India. Never before had their empire in India been so extensive as under the rule of this great Puritan. Still, strange as it may appear, it was during this very reign that the decline of their power began. Indeed the seeds of decayhad already been sown. The Muslims were no longer the same hardy and robust warriors as the veterans of Baburwho had swept over the country and laid the foundationof his empire. The enervating climate of the country, and the luxurious ease and indolence of the Courts of Jahanglr and Shah Jahan had bred effeminacy, and sapped andundermined those qualities and virtues which at one timehad made their ancestors so powerful. The Muslim nobles, who now followed the camp of Awrangzayb, or carried on the administration in the different parts of his empire, were mere" grandees in petticoats/' " who went to war in palanquins." These were not, evidently, the type of men who could run and preserve big empires. Few of them really bore any particular love for the imperial throne. Indeed, someof them would have been only too glad to strike a blow at it had opportunity presented itself. It was only the indomitable will and the indefatigable energy and power of organisation of the emperor, and the fear and terror inspired by the austerity of his personal life, which kept in check, not only the disloyal noblemen within his camp, but those turbulent elements outside, the Sikhs in the Punjab andthe Mahrattas in the Deccan, who were to burst forth andshake the empire to its foundations, as soon as the iron hand of the emperor was laid in dust. Bahadur Shah I (1707-1712), the aged son of Awrangzayb,who succeeded him, though he might probably have, underbetter conditions, played a part worthy of a scion of the House of Akbar, was too powerless to prevent the comingdissolution. After him came Jahandar Shah, a weakminded prince, who was murdered within a year of his accession, followed by Farrukh Siyar, a still more incapable ruler who met the same fate six years later in 1719. Twomore of the same complexion came and went in the verysame year. And then followed the gay and profligate puppet, Muhammad Shah, whose reign of nearly thirty years witnessed that great calamity and scourge, the invasion of India by the Persian tyrant Nadir Shah and the sackof Delhi by him in 1739. This event demonstrated, as nothing else had done since the death of Awrangzayb, that the Imperial dynasty had noeffective hold on the country. It weakened beyond recovery what little central authority there was before, and emboldened not only the avowed enemies of the empire, but evenambitious Muslim governors of provinces to profit by the confusion. So, during the next reign of Ahmad Shah, oneprovince after another seceded under some pretext or other, Bengal under 'All Ward! Khan, the Deccan under the Nizam^'lMulk, and Oudh under the Nawwab Wazir. The Mahrattasraised their head and extended the sphere of their mischief ; so did the Rohillas from Rohilkhand. The lesson was not lost on the Afghans too, who began to lay waste the Punjab. Added to these troubles, the nobles at the central seat of government were growing more and more restive andrebellious, with the result that Ahmad Shah was deposedin 1754, and his successor, 'Alamglr II, murdered in 1759, and the heir-apparent, Shah 'Alam, finding his life in danger, fled to Bengal and sought the protection of the English East India Company, which had established its power there after the battle of Plassey in 1757. The throne of Delhi was vacant. The Mahrattas on the one hand, and the Afghans on the other, seized the opportunity and advancedtowards Delhi, each anxious to usurp the sovereignty of the imperial city. The battle that was fought between themat Panipat near Delhi in 1761, although it shattered for ever the dreams of Mahratta ascendancy in North India, did not  prevent them from repeating their depredations soon after the Afghans, owing to affairs in Afghanistan, had to retrace their steps, leaving desolate Delhi to look after itself. Theclaimant to the throne, Shah 'Alam, was still in exile. Whenhe returned, however, to Delhi in 1764, after the battle of Buxor between the Nawwab Wazir and the English, hedid so practically as a pensioner of the East India Company,on whom he had been obliged, by force of circumstances, to confer the Dlwam or administration of Bengal, of whichthey were already in virtual possession. From this time onward Delhi became the seat of pensioners who kept up a phantom court, and whose diminishing authority as " Emperors/' did not extend much beyond the city of Delhi and its immediate vicinity. Even this did not last very long, for with the outbreak of the IndianMutiny in 1857, and the trial and deportation of BahadurShah Zafar, the last of the House of Timur, what little influence and power the Muslims still enjoyed in Delhi came to a sudden and most inglorious end. Lucknow, the seat of the Nawwab Wazir of Oudh, which, during the declining years of the Court of Delhi, had welcomed and sheltered Muslim emigrants, particularly the literary class, from that city, had already disappeared in 1856, and there was nowno place left in North India to which the Muslims could turn for refuge and support. 1 Bereft of power and wealth, and with nothing else to fall back upon in life, the Muslimcommunity in North India presented, at the close of our period, a pathetic spectacle for which there are few parallels in the history of mankind. Religious and Social. Alongside of this decline in their political power, there was, during the period under review, a gradual disintegration of their religious and social life, which in no small measure contributed to their political downfall. The severe monotheism of Islam which their 1 See also Introduction to Gulshan-i-Hind, Lahore, 1906.  early ancestors had brought with them into India, and its spirit of social democracy, had slowly given place to a crudeanthropomorphism on the one hand, and to a hierarchical conception of society on the other, informed by the religious and social spirit of the Hindu community amidst whomthey had lived for centuries together. Religious. The idea of one God, Transcendent, Omnipotent, and Merciful, and the conception of direct individual responsibility for human action which is so distinctive andfundamental a characteristic of Islam, was obscured in the popular mind by the observance of customs and practices resembling those prevalent among Hindus. The ignorance of the masses, and their superstition, was exploited by the priesthood in its own interests, and belief in the efficacy of charms and amulets, of spells and incantations, signs and omens, palmistry and astrology, and the punctilious observance of rites and ceremonies, came to occupy the place of religion in their daily life, while the more thoughtful andreligious-minded fell under the influence of a special class of priests, who, as " Pirs " or spiritual preceptors, initiated them into the mysteries of the esoteric life. This phase of philosophic Islam, known under the common name of " ufism," found a quite congenial soil in India, where the ascetic ideal and the disciplinary practices of the Yogiswere for long highly valued. Thus the religion of Islam, which was at once so spiritual and practical, and which had awakened nations from agelong stupor, and vitalised and energised them, a religion which once stood for rationalism and progress, ceased underthe influence of pharisaical priests, trading upon the credulity and ignorance of the masses, to be an inspiring and ennobling influence in their life. Not that some of these evils had notcrept into the life of Muslim races before they came to India, but they became much more pronounced and general in this country, owing to the prevailing polytheism and the attendant rites and practices of Hindu society. The formwas kept, while the spirit was lost, and even around this form, excrescences had grown which disfigured it almostbeyond recognition. Social. Nor was it different in social life. The ideal of human equality and brotherhood, which was another basic principle of Islam, gradually gave place to the spirit of caste, and the organisation of society on that basis, which may besaid to constitute the essence of Hindu religion. Sayyidscame to be regarded on the score of their birth with special sanctity like the Brahmins ; and other races, like the Turksand Afghans, and the mass of Indian converts were assigned their graded position in the social scale. Occupations like those of the sweeper, the butcher, and the fuller were stratified into so many castes on a more or less exclusive basis. Manyof the customs relating to birth, marriage, and death, having no sanction either in Islamic theory or practice anywhere abroad, were adopted from the Hindus. Earlymarriages became more frequent, and widow marriages, allowed in Islam and common in other Islamic countries, were discouraged and even looked down upon in accordancewith Hindu notions. The seclusion of women, only partially allowed by religion, became, partly in imitation of Rajput practice, and partly from considerations of pride and prestige, much more rigid in India than anywhere else. And the class of courtesans, who had a recognised and evenan honoured place in Hindu society, came to be patronised by the richer classes of Muslims. Thus all the features of a corrupt and degenerate society were there. Powerhad brought wealth, wealth luxury, and with luxury all the evils which come in its train. Drunkenness and dissolution were rife. The Court set the fashion, and the courtiers and the higher classes of society followed the example. They forsook all manly games and sports, andindulged in such pastimes as cock and partridge fighting,  hawking, pigeon-training and kite-flying. They disdained the pursuit of trade, commerce, or industry. Theirmainstay was administration in its civil and military branches, and as they began to lose their political powerin one part of the country after another, their economiccondition grew steadily worse. The social evils remained, but the wealth to gratify them was no longer there. The condition of Muslim society, therefore, whetherviewed in its political, religious, or social aspect, was, duringthis period, one of gradual degeneration and decay. Noliving principle helped to sustain them in any sphere. The binding force of imperialism, and of a common racial or national consciousness, had disappeared, and in its place particularism in its various forms and with all its disruptive tendencies held sway. The inspiration, and guidance of religion were lost under the influence of sacerdotalism andsterile obscurantism. The principle of social democracy of equality and brotherhood among the followers of a commonfaith ceased to be a cementing bond, and its very antithesis, the division of society into more or less exclusive groups, was at work. The outlook was altogether darkand gloomy, and there was nothing in the life of the Muslimsto clear and brighten it. 

(ii) LIMITATIONS or THE POETS

No wonder then that Urdu poetry, which took its rise in an atmosphere such as this, was uninspiring and lifeless. Nor was there anything in the life and training of the poets themselves to help them to rise above their environmentand hold out to those around them a standard of thoughtand feeling which would have sustained them in their misfortunes and contributed to their moral and social regeneration. In the first place, their educational and intellectual training was a great obstacle in the way of anyhealthy literary production. They were mostly fed and nursed, like everyone else in that age having any sort of claim to literary training, on the then existing Persian poetryand on the literary ideals which it embodied. They considered it part of a liberal education to be thoroughly versedin all the intricacies of Persian prosody as it had been adoptedfrom the Arabs. To follow this system in their writings andto imitate Persian poetry in almost every little detail wastheir one ambition. Nothing with them was entitled to the rank of literature which was not borne out by the exampleof some recognised Persian poet. 1 With such a mentalbackground, therefore, to their literary life, it was notsurprising that they hardly ever felt it desirable to shake off this guidance and pursue a new line of their own. In the second place, circumstances of their material life very rarely allowed them to cultivate an independent mind. Mostof them lived on the bounty and munificence of either the Courts of Delhi and Lucknow or such members of the aristocracy as had any interest in literature. As this patronage, partly owing to the whims and idiosyncrasies of those whooffered it, arid partly to the vicissitudes which overtookthem during this troublous period, was a fluctuating anduncertain element, the Muslim poets were never a prosperous class, who could have taken an independent attitude in literature. It is significant of the state of Muslim society that men like Mir Taqi and Sayyid Insha', great names in the early Urdu poetry, should have died in abject penury. 2 There was in those days no independent Press and no large class of independent reading public who could have afforded these poets the necessary recognition and calmness of mindso helpful in literary pursuits. In these circumstances, the poets were obliged to conform to the taste of their patrons on whom they depended, 1 See also Introduction to Gulshan-i-Hind, Lahore, 1906. 2 See Azad, Ab-i-tfaydt, Lahore, 1899. Also 'Abd u '1-Qadir, NewUrdu Literature, Lahore, 1898.  or of that small class of people who, from time to time, used to congregate, sometimes at their houses, sometimesat the residences of their patrons, and sometimes at the shrines of well-known saints, where " musha'iras " or poetical contests after the fashion of the Persians were held. It was at these literary meetings that the poets usually read most of their compositions for the first time. A hemistich, or sometimes a distich was circulated beforehand to suggest the metre and the rhyme in which they were required to express their thoughts. There was no restriction as regards the choice of subject. The poet could indulge in a variety of themes, from the sublime to the most ridiculous, in oneand the same poem. The aim was to say anything and everything which pleased the composer so long as it was set in the prescribed metre and rhyme. In a short Ghazal or odeof eight or ten lines, the poet was at liberty to dwell on as many different subjects, none of which need have anyconnection with the other. There were, however, certain limitations to this freedom. No subject was to be touched, no figure of speech employed, no idiom or even an illusion used which had not been used by one or other of the writers of the classical Persian poetry. For every little innovation they were asked to cite authority. Poetry thus becameconventional and artificial. It aimed at nothing butclothing in Urdu the thought and imagery of Persian poetry. 

(iii) CLASSIFICATION OF URDU POETRY 

A classification of this Urdu poetry on any scientific lines is not easy, for it is very rarely that the Urdu poetadheres to his subject throughout his poem. Even while he is consciously attempting to write on any set theme, for example a love-story, he very often falls into such repeated digressions and introduces such a large quantity of irrelevant matter, mostly consisting of his own morbid reflections, that not only is the unity of the poem entirely lost, butthe main subject thrown into the background. It is because of this, as well as in imitation of the Persians, that Urdu poets arrange their works (Diwan), not according to the subject, but according to the verse forms they employ. There is a considerable variety of these, and no one is entitled to the name of a poet unless his works showspecimens of all. There are eighteen of these which are rather important. They may be grouped under two heads one comprising those forms which, for some reason or other, have been given special names, the other, of those which derive their names bythe number of lines in each stanza. Of the first, those whichare largely in use are (1) Ghazal, or ode, a short poem usually of four to fifteen couplets, with the first, second, and every alternate line thereafter rhyming together; (2) Qa$lda, or purpose-poem, of thirty to ninety-nine couplets, identical in form with the Ghazal\ (3) Qita', or fragment, similar to Qa$lday but of unlimited length, and with the first two hemistichs not rhyming together; (4) Nazm, same as Qita', but beginning with a rhymed couplet ; (5) Masnawl, or " double rhymed," resembling the rhymed couplet of Pope;(6) Rubdl i> or quatrain, of the type of 'Umar-i-Khayyam ; (7) Tarjl'-Band, or " Return Tie," consisting of a succession of stanzas in the same metre but with a different rhyme;and (8) Tarkib-Band, or " Composite Tie," which differs from TarjV-Band in only certain minor details. The other group chiefly consists of (1) Murabba', or Foursome, a poememploying a succession of four-line stanzas called Band or tie; (2) Mukhammas, or Fivesome; (3) Musaddas, or Sixsome; (4) Miisabba', or Sevensome; (5) Musamman,or Eightsome; (6) Mutassa', or Ninesome; and (7) Mu'ashshar, or Tensome. It may be observed that these verse forms are capable of an endless number of varieties according to the length of the line or the number of long and short or heavy or light syllables, and it is beyond the scope of our subject to describe them with any elaboration. Mention is made of them here only to show how Urdu poetry is hedged in and even lost in a maze of artificial verse forms, and how difficult.it is to understand the spirit, substance, and characteristics of this poetry merely in terms of these forms. We shall therefore attempt to classify Urdu poetryaccording to subject, in so far as it is susceptible of any suchclassification. At the very outset it may be definitely stated that the department of drama was absolutely untouched by the early Urdu poets. In fact they seem to have been quite ignorant of the existence of any suchform of literature. Even if some of them were aware of the Sanskrit drama, they were precluded from exercising their poetical faculty in that direction, simply becausenone of the Persian poets had done so. With the elimination, therefore, of drama, all that we find in the early Urdupoetic literature is either lyrical or epic in substance. The lyrical poetry in Urdu may be divided into four classes Panegyric, Erotic, Didactic, and Elegiac. Panegyric. Most of the poets, as observed above, weredependent for their daily material comfort on the patronageof either the rulers of Delhi and Lucknow, or of the nobility who flourished at their Courts. It was not only the fashion of the day to compose panegyrics after the style of the Persians, but incumbent on them to praise their patrons to their face and extol their real or supposed virtues. The form that lent itself easily to such a subject is the Qaslda. It consists of two parts. The first is known as Nasib, or exordium; the second as Maq$ud, or purpose. Very rarely was there any essential connection betweenthe two, although in theory it was considered part of poetic art to dovetail the one into the other. The subject of the 

exordium might be anything the season of the year in which the poem was composed, or any particular object which the patron held dear, such as his horse or sword, or some moral or philosophical reflection, or an account of the wretched condition of the poet himself. The second part dealt with the qualities of the head and heart of the patronin a grand and pompous style, embellished with gorgeousimagery borrowed from the Persian panegyrists. Thepicture was incomplete and not worthy of consideration if he was not represented as the embodiment of all possible virtues. He might in his real life have been one of the mostworthless of men, but with the poet he was brave as Rustamor Isfandiyar, kind and merciful as 'All, bountiful as Hatim,just as Farldun, magnificent as Jamshidor Afrasiyab, powerfulas Dara or Sikandar (Alexander the Great), wise as Socrates or Aristotle, and so on. Some of these are the legendaryheroes of Persia immortalised in the Shah Ndma of Firdawsi, and the Urdu panegyrist seriously considered it his boundenduty to drag them into his compositions. Indeed, there was no limit to his extravagance ; he would invest his patronwith every noble virtue in order to please him. One poet vied with another in this art of flattery. The more novel the way, the louder the applause that the poet received fromhis hearers, Of the panegyrists in Urdu, Sawda and Sayyid Insha' once enjoyed the greatest popularity. It was theywho brought this art to perfection. Indeed, a few of their compositions are considered to have surpassed, in their charm and style, even those of Anwari and Khaqani, 1 the Persian panegyrists who set the standard. Possibly so. But in spirit and substance the Urdu Qaldas hardly deserve the name of serious literature. 2 They neither represent the real nor portray the ideal. One sometimes wonderswhether the writers had any sense of decency and self1 See Ab'i-ftay&t. 2 See  respect. Even a poet of the rank of Ghalib, at whosefeet the great Hall, the leader of the new movement in Urdupoetry, began to " lisp in numbers/' and who undoubtedlyshowed in some of his Qhazals a spirit of independence suchas his contemporaries or predecessors never possessed, evenhe fell a victim to the tastes and tendencies of his time. In some of his Qasldas addressed to Bahadur Shah, of whose tragic end after the Indian Mutiny reference hasalready been made, Ghalib indulged in a string of suchimpossible similes, metaphors, and epithets, attributing to the feeble and helpless State pensioner powers whichthe mightiest of princes in modern times might blush to own. Erotic. The weaknesses which the panegyric poetry in Urdu represents artificiality, conventionality, insincerity, and an abject dependence on Persian models are to beseen in a more pronounced form in the next division of poetry, viz. the Erotic. It was in this more than in any other department of literature that the early Urdu poets could easily have afforded to strike out an independent line of their own. For the feeling of love is so intensely subjective that it does not require the aid of any artificial devices for its expression. Unfortunately, however, they would notlisten to the natural dictates of the human heart, but mostslavishly went out to the Persian poets for guidance as to what they should feel and how they should give expression to it. They pursued this strange course with such zeal andperseverance that they not only succeeded in vitiating the taste of their own age but have left behind a legacy, the temptation of which has proved too strong even for someof the lyrists of the present time, whose intellectual andliterary training has been conducted largely on Westernlines. Urdu erotic poetry is most voluminous. The largest number of pages in the works of every poet are occupied by  this. It is usually expressed in the form of Ghazal anddeals with love in all its manifold aspects. Outwardly it is voluptuous and bacchanalian in character, but it has become a fashion to read behind its outward form someesoteric or Sufistic meaning, as they do in Persia. Because of this spiritual significance, it is very popular and is held in great estimation by the Muslim community in India. Insome of the writings of the leading poets, such as Mir Dard,Mir Taqi, Zawq and Ghalib, it presents a verbal charm considered hardly less fascinating than some of the best Ohazals in Persian poetry. 1 Still the fact remains, which may not be fully admitted by some of its modern advocates, that it is anextremely artificial poetry. Persian in conception, Persian in feeling, Persian in tone, Persian in imagery, and "Persian even in local colouring, and Persian in its esoteric associations, the erotic poetry in Urdu lives on a few conventional ideas. Without any exaggeration it may be asserted that, shorn of grammatical links, the voluminous literature of Urdu Ohazals may be reduced to a definite number of stereotyped phrases and words which are repeated from oneGhazal to another and by one poet after another. Becauseof the innumerable varieties of metric and of rhyme arrangements to which Ghazal lends itself, this poverty of ideas and of feeling may not be easily discernible. But a careful analysis will at once show the truth of the contention. The literature of the Ghazal had, during the period underreview, a deadening influence on the Muslim community.More than any political event it contributed to their degeneration. Its bacchanalian tendencies and suggestions impaired their moral character. Its Sufistic ideal, instead of purifying their spiritual life, drove not a few among themto the camp of the professional beggar and the ascetic, andits gospel of pessimism gave them a wrong outlook on life and suppressed every desire for material progress. It 1 See Ab'i-ffayat, Lahore, 1899.  was not until the dawn of the new ideals from the West that the serious minded among the Muslim community realised what an unwholesome influence the Ghazal had had ontheir mind and character. 1 Didactic. The didactic poetry in Urdu scarcely presents any better spectacle. It consists mostly of satires whichvery rarely rise above the standard of lampoons and personal gibes and recriminations. The most outstanding name in this field of literature is that of Mirza Rafpu VSawda', a writer whose mental condition, as described by the late Muhammad Husayn Azad, strongly reminds one of AlexanderPope. 2 Epic and Elegiac. The narrative form of poetry occupies aplace in Urdu literature next in importance only to the erotic. It is usually written in the verse form known as Masnawl, or " double rhyme, " and consists very largely of love stories. The subject thus being love, the Masnawlis materially not very different from the Ghazal in its substance and poetic imagery. The most well-known andwidely read Masnawls are the Badr-i-Munir of Mir Hasan,and the Gulzdr-i-Nasim of Pundit Daya Shankar. The aimin these poems is not so much the development of action of the story or the delineation of character of the hero andother personages introduced in it, as the expression of the poet's own personal observations on the different aspects of human life. For this reason a large majority of the Masnawis might as well be classified under the reflective or elegiac form of poetry. The same might be said of that large class of narrative poems by Dabir and Anis, called Marsiyas, dealing with the tragedy of Karbala and the massacre of the family of the Holy Prophet. It must be mentioned that elegies, properly so called, expressing sorrow over the loss of a personal friend or a national hero, were rarely 1 See also Hairs Musaddas, Delhi, 1886. Also Hafiz Nazir Ahmad,On the Present State of Education among Muhammadans, Agra, 1889. 8 For an account of Sawda's life, see Ab-i-flayat, Lahore, 1883.  attempted by the early Urdu poets. They contented themselves instead with writing short chronograms, a form of writing which hardly deserves to be treated as literature. 

(iv) RECAPITULATION 

Such, in brief outline, is the scope and character of the Urdu literature of the period under review. To recapitulate, it was wholly or almost wholly in verse. Prose had notyet been evolved, as Persian still continued to supply the need for it. This literature was thus entirely poetical in purpose, and was essentially subjective in character. Theobjective note was absent from it. Even the subjective element was of a highly artificial and conventional type. The ideals which it represented or embodied were unsuitedto the production of creative literature. In consequence it failed or neglected to hold out to the world at large any living or inspiring message. In fact it went a long way to demoralise and vitiate the taste of those among whom it tookits rise. Still this literature had its own strong point. It fulfilled one good purpose, and that was that in a short period of about 150 years it succeeded, as probably no other literature has done, to form the language through which it expresseditself. It is to the untiring efforts of the poets of the decadent age of artificial poetry we have reviewed that the perfection of Urdu as a vehicle of literary expression is due. That is a distinct service which can hardly beoverlooked, The early poets may thus be regarded as those who came to prepare the language for the easy assimilation of the influences and ideals which began to flow into it with the establishment of British rule in India, and whichwill form the subject of our study in the following chapters.