HINDOSTANI LITERATURE. Hindustani is the ver nacular of the part of India called Hindostan,—that is, the Jumna and Ganges valleys as far east as the river KOsi, Rajputana, Cen tral India (Bundelkhand and Baghelkhand), the Narmada valley as far west as Khandwa, and the N. half of the Central Provinces. It does not include the Punjab (though the town population there speak Hindustani) or Lower Bengal.
In this region various dialects prevail. The people of the towns use chiefly the form of the language called Urdu or Rekhta, stocked with Persian words and phrases, and ordinarily written in the Persian character. Urdu is a Turkish word meaning a camp or army and is the origin of horde. Rekhta means "scattered," refer ring to the way in which Persian words are intermixed with those of Indian origin ; it is used chiefly for literary Urdu. The far more numerous country folk speak different forms of Hindi, derived from the Prakrits and literary Sanskrit, written in the Devanagari or Kaithi character. Of these the most important from a literary point of view are Marwari and Jaipuri (spoken in Rajputana), Brajbhasha (about Mathura and Agra), Kanauji (the lower Gan ges-Jumna Doab and W. Rohilkhand), Eastern Hindi, also called Awadhi and Baiswari (Eastern Rohilkhand, Oudh and the Benares division of the United Provinces) and Bihari (Bihar or Mithila, comprising several dialects). High Hindi is a modern literary development of the dialect of Western Hindi spoken about Delhi and northwards to the Himalaya, which has formed the vernacu lar basis of Urdu; the Persian words in Urdu have been replaced by words of Sanskritic origin, and the indigenous order of words in the sentence is more strictly adhered to than in Urdu, which under the influence of Persian has admitted many inversions.
Nearly all the early vernacular literature of Hindustan is in verse. The only known exceptions are a work in Hindi called the Chaurasi V arta and a few commentaries on poems. Both Hindi and Urdu are, as literary languages, at first intruders upon ground occupied by Sanskrit and Persian, representing respectively Hindu and Muslim culture. They differ in that the elevation of Hindi to a literary speech represents, mainly, a revolt against Brahman monopoly while Urdu has been cultivated by authors who have themselves appreciated and used the polished Persian. Both San skrit and Persian continue to be employed by Indian writers, but for popular purposes the vernaculars are now used almost exclusively.
The subject may be conveniently divided as follows : I. Early Hindi, of the period during which the language was being fashioned as a literary medium out of the ancient Prakrits, represented by the old heroic poems of Rajputana and the litera ture of the early Bhagats or Vaishnava reformers, i.e., from about A.D. I I oo t0 1550; 2. Middle Hindi, representing the best age of Hindi poetry, from about 155o to the end of the 18th century; 3. The rise of literary Urdu, from about the end of the 16th century, reaching its height during the 18th; 4. The modern period, marked by the growth of a prose litera ture in both dialects, and dating from the beginning of the 19th century.
I. Early Hindi.—Our knowledge of the ancient metrical chronicles of Rajputana is still imperfect, and is chiefly derived from Tod's Annals and Antiquities of Rajasthan (published in 1829-1832), which is founded on them. It is in the nature of com positions of this character to be perpetually revised; they are the production of the family bards of the dynasties whose fortunes they record, and they are constantly added to, and their language modified. Round an historical nucleus legends accumulate ; later redactors endeavour to systematize and to assign dates, but the mass has the character of ballad literature. The materials used by Tod are nearly all still unprinted, and his important manuscripts are now deposited in the library of the Royal Asiatic Society in London.
Omitting a few fragments, the earliest author of whom any por tion has as yet been published in the original text is Chand Bardai, court bard of Prithwi-Raj, the last Hindu sovereign of Delhi. His poem, entitled Prithi-Raj Rasau (or Raysa) is a vast chronicle in 69 cantos, comprising a general history of his period. Of this a small portion has been printed, under the editorship of Mr. John Beames and Dr. Rudolf Hoernle, by the Asiatic Society of Bengal; but the difficult nature of the task prevented both scholars from making much progress. A fresh critical edition of the text by Pandit Mohan Lal Vishnu Lai Pandia at Benares, under the aus pices of the Nagari Pracharini Sabha, was completed in 1913. Chand was a native of Lahore, which had for nearly years (since 1023) been under Muslim rule when he flourished, and the poem contains many Persian words. In its present form the work is a redaction made by Amar Singh of Mewar (early 17th cen tury), more than 400 years after Chand's death. There is, there fore, considerable doubt whether we have in it much of Chand's original composition. The detailed dates contained in the Chron icle have been shown by Kabiraj Syamal Das to be in every case about ninety years astray. The Mongols (Book XV.) are brought on the stage more than 3o years before they actually set foot in India, and are related to have been vanquished by the redoubtable Prithwi-Raj. The Chronicle, nevertheless, appears to contain a considerable element which, from its language, may belong to Chand's age, and represents the earliest surviving document in Hindi. "We have certainly in his writings some of the oldest known specimens of Gaudian literature, abounding in pure Apabhramsa 8auraseni Prakrit forms" (Grierson).
It is difficult to form a just estimate of the poem as literature. The language, essentially transitional in character, consists largely of obsolete and obscure words. Chand appears to exhibit the merits and defects of ballad chroniclers. There is much that is spirited in his descriptions ; and the characters of the Rajput war riors are often sketched with skill and animation. Sound, how ever, frequently predominates over sense, and the narrative is car ried on with wearisome iteration.
Chand may be taken as the representative of a long line of suc cessors, still continued in Rajput states. Many of their composi tions are still popular as ballad literature, but are known only in the oral versions of professional singers. One of the most famous is the Alha-khand, reputed to be the work of a contemporary of Chand called Jagnik or Jagnayak, of Mahoba in Bundelkhand, who sang the praises of Raja-Parmal, a ruler whose wars with Prithwi-Raj are recorded in the Mahoba-Khand of Chand's work. Alha and Udal, the heroes of the poem, are famous warriors in popular legend, and the stories connected with them exist in an eastern recension, current in Bihar, as well as in the Bundelkhandi or western form which is best known. Another celebrated bard was Sarangdhar of Rantambhor, who flourished in 1363, and sang the praises of Hammir Deo (Hamir Deo), the Chauhan chief of Rantambhor who fell in a heroic struggle against Sultan `Ala'uddin Khilji in 1300. He wrote the Hammir Kdvya and Hammir Rasau, of which an account is given by Tod. Another, but much later, work is the long chronicle, Clihattra-Prakas, or the history of Raja Chhatarsal, the Bundela raja of Parma, who was killed, fighting for Prince Dara-Shukoh, in the battle of Dholpur won by Aurangzeb in 1658. The author, Lal Kabi, has given in this work a history of the valiant Bundela nation (translated by Captain W. R. Pogson in 1828, and printed at Calcutta).
Mention may be made here of a remarkable composition, a poem entitled the Padmawat, the materials of which are likewise derived from the heroic legends of Rajputana. The author Malik Mohammed of Ja'is, in Oudh, was a Muslin devotee, to whom the Hindu raja of Amethi was greatly attached. Malik Moham med wrote the Padmawat in 154o, the year in which Sher Shah Sur ousted Humayun from the throne of Delhi. The poem is com posed in pure vernacular Awadhi, with no admixture of traditional Hindu learning, and is generally found written in the Persian char acter, though the metres and language are thoroughly Indian. It professes to tell the tale of Padmawati or Padmini, a princess cele brated for her beauty who was the wife of the Chauhan raja of ChitOr in Mewar. The story turns upon the attempts of `Ala'uddin Khilji, the sovereign of Delhi, to gain possession of her person. The heroic and tragic tale of the siege of Chitor in 1303 by `Ala uddin will be found related in Tod's Rajasthan, i. 262 sqq. Malik Mohammed takes great liberties with the history, and explains at the end of the poem that all is an allegory. A critical edition of this notable and popular poem has been prepared by Sir G. A. Grierson and Pandit Sudhakar Dwivedi and a later edition (1924) has been published by the Nagari-pracharini Sabha, Benares.
The literature of the Bhagats, or Vaishnava saints, who propa gated the doctrine of bhakti, or faith in Vishnu, as the popular religion of Hindustan, has exercised a powerful influence upon the national speech and poetic literature. It is also of high intrinsic interest. Nearly the whole of subsequent Hindi poetry is impressed with Vaishnava doctrine, which, like Buddhism many centuries before, was essentially a reaction against caste and Brahmanical influence. Many of the writers were non-Brahmans, often of the lowest castes. As Siva was the popular deity of the Brahmans, so was Vishnu of the people ; and while the literature of the aivas and Saktas is almost entirely in Sanskrit, and exercised little influ ence on the popular mind in N. India, that of the Vaishnavas is largely in Hindi, and constitutes the great bulk of what has been written in that language.
The Vaishnava doctrine is commonly carried back to Ramanuja, a Brahman who was born about the end of the II th century, at Perambur near the modern Madras. His works, which are in Sanskrit and consist of commentaries on the Vedanta Sutras, are devoted to establishing "the personal existence of a Supreme Deity, possessing every gracious attribute, full of love and pity for the sinful beings who adore him, and granting the released soul a home of eternal bliss near him." The Deity has on several occasions become incarnate for the salvation of mankind, and of these incarnations two, Ramachandra, the prince of Ayadhya, and Krishna, the chief of the Yadava clan and son of Vasudeva, are pre-eminently those in which it is most fitting that he should be worshipped. Both incarnations had for many centuries attracted popular veneration, and their histories had been celebrated in epics and in Puranas or "old stories"; but it was apparently Ramanuja's teaching which secured for them their exclusive place as the ob jects of bhakti—ardent faith and personal devotion. The adher ents of Ramanuja were, however, all strict Brahmans; the new doctrine had not yet penetrated to the people.
Ramanuja himself dealt mainly with philosophic conceptions of the Divine Nature. His mantra, or formula of initiation, if Wilson was correctly informed, implies devotion to Rama; but Vasudeva (Krishna) is also mentioned as a principal object of adoration. It is stated that in his worship of Krishna he joined with that god as his Sakti, or Energy, his wife Rukmini ; while the later varieties of Krishna-worship prefer to honour his mistress Radha. The great difference between these two forms of Vaish nava faith appears to be a later development ; but by the time of Jaideo (about 125o) the theme of Krishna and Radha, and the use of passionate language drawn from the relations of the sexes to express the longings of the soul for God had become fully established ; thenceforward the two types of Vaishnavism di verged more and more.
The cult of Rama is founded on family life. Its morality springs from the sources of human piety which in all religions have wrought most in favour of pureness of life, of fraternal helpful ness and of humble devotion to a loving Parent, who desires the good of mankind. That of Krishna, on the other hand, had for its basis the legendary career of a hero, whose exploits are marked by a kind of elvish wantonness ; it has more and more developed that side of devotion which is perilously near to sensual thought. It is claimed for its first leaders that their hearts were pure, and that the language of erotic passion which they use is mystical and allegorical. This is probable ; but the fervent impulses of adora tion undoubtedly made way in later times for those of lust and lasciviousness.
The worship of Krishna, especially in his infant and youthful form (which appeals chiefly to women), is widely popular in the neighbourhood of Mathura, the capital of that land of Braj where he lived as a boy. Its literature is mainly composed in the local dialect called Brajbhasha. That of Rama, though general through out Hindostan, has since the time of Tulsi Das adopted for poetic use the language of Oudh, called Awadhi or Baiswari, a form of Eastern Hindi. These two dialects are to this day the standard vehicles of poetic expression.
Subsequently to Ramanuja his doctrine appears to have been set forth, about 1250, in the vernacular of the people by Jaideo, a Brahman of Bengal, author of the Sanskrit Gitd Govinda, and by Namdeo or Nama, a tailor of Maharashtra, of both of whom verses are preserved in the Adi Granth of the Sikhs. But it was not until the beginning of the 15th century that the Brahman Ramanand, a prominent Gosdin of the sect of Ramanuja, having had a dispute with the members of his order, left the community, migrated to N. India and addressed himself to those outside the Brahman caste, thus initiating the teaching of Vaishnavism as the popular faith of Hindostan. Among his twelve disciples was a Muslim weaver, the celebrated KABIR (see separate article). One short Hindi poem by Ramanand is contained in the Adi Granth, and Sir G. A. Grierson has collected hymns (bhajans) attributed to him and still current in Mithila or Tirhut. Both Ramanand and Kabir were adherents of the cult of Rama, who is regarded as identical with the Deity. A contemporary of Ra manand, Bidyapati Thakur, is celebrated as the author of numer ous lyrics in the Maithili dialect of Bihar, expressive of the other side of Vaishnavism, Krishna-worship, the aspirations of the worshipper being mystically conveyed in the character of Radha, the cowherdess beloved of Krishna. These stanzas of Bidyapati afterwards inspired the Vaishnava literature of Bengal, whose most celebrated exponent was Chaitanya (b. 1484). Mira Bai, "the one great poetess of northern India" (Grierson), was daugh ter of Raja Ratiya Rana, Ruthor, of Merta in Rajputana, and was married in 1413 to Raja Kumbhkaran of Mewar. She was devoted to Krishna in the form of Ranchhor, and her songs have a wide currency in northern India.
An important compilation of the utterances of the early Vaish nava saints or Bhagats is contained in the sacred book, or Adi Granth, of the Sikh Gurus. Nanak, the founder of this sect (1469-1538), took his doctrine from the Bhagats (see KABIR) ; and each of the 31 rags, forming the body of the Granth, is fol lowed by texts from the utterances of Vaishnava saints, chiefly of Kabir, while the book's bhog or conclusion contains more verses by the same authors, as well as by a celebrated Sufi, Shekh Farid of Pakpattan. The body of the Granth (q.v.), being in old Panjabi, falls outside the scope of this article ; but the old Hindi extracts included in it are a precious store of specimens of authors some of whom have left no other record. The Adi Granth, which was put together about 1600 by Arjun, fifth Guru, sets forth the Sikh creed in its original pietistic form, before it assumed its militant character.