THE GOLDEN AGE 2. Middle Hindl.—The second period, that of middle Hindi, begins with the reign of the emperor Akbar (1556-1605) ; and it is not improbable that his sympathy with his Hindu subjects, and the peace which his organization of the empire secured had an important effect on the great development of Hindi poetry which now set in. Akbar's court was itself a centre of poetical composition, and Sanskrit works were translated into Persian. The court musician Tan Sen is still renowned, and many verses composed by him in the emperor's name survive to this day. Akbar's favourite minister and companion, Raja Birbal, was a musician and a poet, and held the title of Kabi-Ray, or poet lau reate ; his verses and witty sayings are still popular in northern India. Other nobles of the court were also poets, among them the Khan-khanan, `Abdur-Rahim, whose dohas and kabittas are still esteemed, and Faizi, brother of the annalist Abul-Fazl.
By this time the worship of Krishna as the lover of Radha (Rddhd-ballabh) had been systematized, with its chief habitation at Gokul, near Mathura, by Vallabhacharya, a Brahman from Madras. Born in 1478, in 1497 he chose Braj as his headquarters, thence making missionary tours throughout India. He wrote chiefly in Sanskrit ; but among his immediate followers, and those of his son Bitthalnath (who succeeded him in 1530), were some of the most eminent poets in Hindi. Four disciples of Val labhacharya and four of Bitthalnath, who flourished between 1550 and 1570, are known as the Asht Chhap, or "Eight Seals," and are the acknowledged masters of the literature of Braj bhasha. Their names are Krishna-Das Pay-ahari, Sur Das (the Bhat), Parmanand Das, Kumbhan Das, Chaturbhuj Das, Chhit Swami, Nand Das and Gobind Das. Of these the most celebrated is Sur Das, who was descended, as he claims, from the bard Chand Bardai. The traditional dates of his birth (1483) and death (15 73) seem to be placed too early. His many hymns (bhajans) to Krishna have been collected in the Sir Sager, said to contain 6o,000 verses. This work is considered the high-water mark of Braj devotional poetry.
The great glory of this age (coinciding with the Elizabethan age of English literature) is Tulsi Das (q.v.). He and Sur Das between them are held to have exhausted the possibilities of the poetic art.
A period of artifice and reflection followed, when many works were composed dealing with the rules of poetry and the analysis and the appropriate language of sentiment. Especially famous is Kesab Das, a Brahman of Bundelkharicl, who flourished in the reigns of Akbar and Jahangir. His works are the Rasik-priya, on composition (1591), the Kavi-priyd, on the laws of poetry (i 6o i ), the Ramachandrika, dealing with the history of Rama (i6ro), and the V igyan-gi to (r 6 r o) . This elaboration of the poetic art reached its highest point in Bihari Lal, whose Sat-sai, or "seven centuries" (1662), is the most remarkable example in Hindi of the rhetorical style in poetry.
Side by side with this literary cultivation of the themes of Rama and Krishna, there grew up a class of compositions dealing with the lives of the holy men who guided the development of the popular religion. The most famous is the Bhakta-mala, or "Roll of the Bhagats," by Narayan Das, Nabha Das, or Nabhaji, a Dom of the Deccan, who had in his youth seen Tulsi Das, and flour ished in the early 17th century. His work consists of rob stanzas in chhappai metre, each setting forth the characteristics of some holy personage, and expressed in a brief and obscure style. Its date falls between 1585 and 1623. The book was furnished with an ikd (supplement or gloss) in the kabitta metre, by Priya Das in 1713, gathering up, in an allusive and disjointed fashion, the stories related of each saint. This again was expanded about a century later by Lachhman into a work called the B/iakta-sindhu. From these nearly all our knowledge of the lives of the Vaishnava au thors is derived, and much of it is of a dubious character. Another work, dated 1551, named the Chaurasi Varta, is devoted to stories of the followers of Vallabhacharya. It is attributed to Gokulnath, son of Bitthalnath, son of Vallabhacharya.
The themes of the many authors who succeeded the great period of Hindi poetical composition which extended through the reigns of Akbar, Jahangir and Shah Jehan exhibit no novelty. (See the list of Hindi authors drawn up by Sir G. A. Grierson, and printed in the Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1889.) The courts of Chhatarsal, raja of Parma, who died in 1658, and of several rajas of Bandho (now Rewah) were famous for their patronage of poets; and the Mogul court itself kept up the office of poet laureate even during the fanatical reign of Aurangzeb.
Such, in brief outline, is the character of Hindi literature during the period when it grew and flourished through its own original forces. Founded by a popular and religious impulse comparable to that which, nearly 1,600 years before, had produced the doctrine and vernacular literature of Jainism and Buddhism, and cultivated largely by non-Brahman authors, it was the legitimate descendant in spirit, as Hindi is in speech, of Prakrit literature. Entirely in verse, it adopted and elaborated Prakrit metrical forms, and car ried them to a high pitch of perfection. It covers a wide range of style, and, at its best, expresses a rich variety of human feeling. It deserves much more attention in Europe than it has received. The few who have explored it speak of it as an "enchanted gar den" (Grierson), abounding in beauties. Above all it is genuinely popular. The ballads of Rajput prowess, the aphorisms of Kabir, Tulsi Das's Rdmayan, and the bhajans of Sur Das are to this day carried about everywhere by wandering minstrels, and have found their way to the hearts of the people.
3. Literary Urdu.—The origines of Urdu as a literary lan guage are somewhat obscure. The popular account refers its rise to the time of TimUr's invasion (1398) . It is even claimed that a divan, or collection of poems, was composed in Rekhta by Masud, son of Sa`d, in the late 11th or early 12th century, and that Sa`di of Shiraz and his friend Amir Khusrau of Delhi made verses in that dialect before the end of the 13th century. This, however, is im probable. During the early centuries of Muslim rule in India Mus lim writers used the language and metrical forms of the country. Persian words early made their way into the popular speech ; they are common in Chand, and in Kabir's Hindi verses. Much confu sion is due to the want of a clear understanding of what Urdu really is.
Literary Urdu differs from Hindi rather in its form than in its substance. The grammar, and, mainly, the vocabulary, of both are the same. The really vital point of difference is the prosody. Hardly one of the metres taken over by Urdu poets from Persian agrees with those used in Hindi. In the latter language it is the rule to give the short a inherent in every consonant or nexus of consonants its full value in scansion (though in prose it is no longer heard), except occasionally at the metrical pause; in Urdu this is never done, the words being scanned generally as pro nounced in prose. Most Hindi metres are scanned by the number of meitrds or syllabic instants—the value in time of a short syllable —of which the lines consist; in Urdu, as in Persian, the metre follows a special order of long and short syllables.
The question, then, is not : When did Persian first become inter mixed with Hindi in the literary speech?—for this process began with the first entry of Muslim conquerors and continued for centuries before a line of Urdu verse was composed—nor: When was the Persian character first employed to write Hindi?—for the written form is but a subordinate matter. We must ask: When was the first verse composed in Hindi according to the forms of Persian prosody? Then, and not till then, did Urdu poetry come into being. This appears to have happened, as already men tioned, about the end of the 16th century. Meantime the ver nacular vocabulary had been gradually influenced by Persian. The translation, under Akbar, of Sanskrit works into Persian had brought the indigenous and the foreign literatures into contact. The Hindi spoken about Delhi and northwards was naturally the form of the vernacular most subject to foreign influences; and with the extension of Mogul territory, this idiom was carried abroad by the Imperial armies, and was adopted by the Muslim kingdoms of the Deccan as their court language some time before their overthrow by Aurangzeb.
The first impulse to literary composition in Urdu was given, not in the north, but at the Mohammedan courts of Golkonda and Bijapur in the south, both situated amid an indigenous population speaking Dravidian languages. The literature thus inaugurated had nothing to do with the idiom or ideas of the local people, but was from the beginning an imitation of Persian models. The qasida or laudatory ode, the ghazal or love-sonnet, usually of mystical im port, the marsiya or dirge, the masnavi or narrative poem with coupled rhymes, the /ii ja or satire, the rubd`i or epigram—these were the types which Urdu took over ready-made. And with the forms were appropriated also all the conventions of poetic diction. The Persians had elaborated a system of rhetoric and a stock of poetic images which, in the exhaustion of original matter, made the success of the poet depend chiefly upon artifice and conceit. Few of the most eloquent passages of later Persian verse admit of satisfactory translation into any other language. The same is true of Urdu poetry. Until quite modern times, there is scarcely any thing in it which can be called original. Differences of school, which are made much of by native critics, are to us hardly per ceptible.
Shuja`uddin Nuri, a native of Gujarat, a contemporary of Ak bar, is mentioned as the most ancient Urdu poet after Amir Khusrau. Several ghazals by him are said to survive. Kull Kutb Shah of Golkonda, who reigned from 1581, and his successor `Abdullah Kutb Shah, have both left collections of verse. During the reign of the latter Ibn Nishati wrote two works which are still famous as models of composition in Dakhni; they are inasnavis entitled the Tfiti-ndma, or "Tales of a Parrot," and the Pliul-ban. The first is an adaptation of a Persian work by Nakhshabi, but de rives ultimately from a Sanskrit original ; this collection has been frequently rehandled in Urdu, and is the original of the Totd Kaheini, one of the first works in Urdu prose, composed in 18o1 by Muhammad Haidar-bakhsh Haidari of the Fort William College. The Plcul-ban is a love tale, likewise translated from a Persian work. Another famous work which probably belongs to the same place and time is the Story of Kdmrup and Kald by Tahsinuddin. It was published (1836) by M. Garcin de Tassy. Though the work of a Muslim, its personages are Hindu. The incidents somewhat resemble those of the tale of as-Sindibad in the Thousand and One Nights.
The court of Bijapur was equally distinguished. Ibrahim `Adil Shah (1579-1626) was the author of a work in verse on music entitled the Nau-ras or "Nine Savours," which, however, appears to have been in Hindi rather than Urdu. A successor of this prince, `Ali `Adil Shah, had as his court poet a Brahman known poetically as Nusrati, who in 1657 composed a masnavi entitled the Gulshan-i `Ishq, or "Rose-garden of Love," a romance on an Indian theme. The same poet is author of a long masnavi entitled the `Ali-neima, celebrating the Shah.
The first generally accepted standard of form, however, a stand ard which suffered little change in two centuries, was established by Wall of Aurangabad (about 1680-1720) and his contemporary and fellow-townsman Siraj. The former of these is commonly called "the Father of Rekhtah"--Bdbd-e Rekhta; and the im mense development attained by Urdu poetry in northern India during the 18th century was due to his initiative. Little is known of Wall's life. His Kulliydt or complete works have been pub lished by M. Garcin de Tassy, with notes and a translation of selected passages (Paris, 1834-1836).
The first of the Delhi school of poets was Zuhuruddin Hatim, who was born in 1699 and died in 1792. In 1719 the diwdn of Wall reached Delhi. Hatim was the first to imitate it in the Urdu of the north, and was followed by his friends Nail, Mazmun and AbrU. Two diwdns by him survive. One of his pupils was Rafi us-Sauda, the most distinguished poet of northern India. Khan Arzu (1689-1756) was another of the fathers of Urdu poetry in the north. He is chiefly renowned as a Persian scholar, but his Urdu works are also highly esteemed. He was the master of Mir Taqi, who ranks next to Sauda as the most eminent Urdu poet. Arzu died at Lucknow, whither he betook himself after the de vastation of Delhi by Nadir Shah (1739). Another eminent Delhi poet was In`amullah Khan Yaqin, who died during the reign of Ahmad Shah , aged twenty-five. Another was Mir Dard, pupil of Shah Gulshan (who is said to have instructed Wall) ; his diwdn is extremely popular. He died in Sauda and Mir Taqi are the most distinguished Urdu poets. The former was born at Delhi about the beginning of the i8th century. He left Delhi after its devastation, and settled at Luck now, where the Nawab Asafuddaulah gave him a jdgir, and where he died in 1780. His poems are numerous, and cover all styles of Urdu poetry; but it is to his satires that his fame is chiefly due, and in these he surpassed all other Indian poets. Mir Taqi was born at Agra, but early removed to Delhi, and in 1782 repaired to Lucknow, where he likewise received a pension; he died at an advanced age in 181o. His works are voluminous, including six diwdns. Mir is counted the superior of Sauda in the ghazal and masnavi, while the latter excelled him in the satire and qasida.
The rapid decay of the Mogul empire in the i8th century trans ferred the literary centre from Delhi to Lucknow, the capital of the flourishing state of Oudh. Arzu, Sauda and Mir all ended their days there ; they were followed by a school of Lucknow poets hardly inferior to those who had made Delhi illustrious. Here they were joined by Mir Hasan (d. 1786), Mir SOz (d. i800) and Qalandar-bakhsh Jur'at (d. 181o), also refugees from Delhi, and illustrious poets. Mir Hasan was a collaborator of Mir Dard, and first settled at Faizabad and subsequently at Lucknow; he excelled in the ghazal, rubd'i, masnavi and marsiya, and is counted the third, with Sauda and Mir Taqi, among Urdu poets. His fame chiefly rests upon a much admired masnavi entitled the Siliru-l baydn, a romance relating the loves of Prince Be-nazir and the Princess Badr-i Munir; his masnavi called the Gulzdr-i Iram, in praise of Faizabad, is likewise highly esteemed. Mir Muhammadi Soz was an elegant poet, remarkable for his compositions in the dialect of the harem called Rekhti, but somewhat licentious in his verse. Jur'at was also a prolific poet, but his poems are licentious and full of double meanings. He imitated Sauda in satire with much success; he also cultivated Hindi poetry. Miskin was an other Lucknow poet of the same period, whose naarsiyas are es pecially admired. The school of Lucknow continued to flourish till the dethronement of the last king, Wajid `All, in 1856. Atash and Nasikh (who died respectively in 1847 and 1841) excelled in the ghazal; Mir Anis and his contemporary Dabir, the former of whom died in December 1875 and the latter a few months later, in the marsiyah. Rajab All Beg Surur, who died in 1869, was the author of a much-admired romance in rhyming prose entitled the Fisdnah-e `T jdib or "Tale of Marvels," besides a diwdn. The de throned prince Wajid `All himself, poetically styled Akhtar, was also a poet ; he published three diwans, among them a quantity of poetry in the rustic dialect of Oudh which is philologically of much interest.
Delhi, meanwhile, was not altogether eclipsed. Among the last Moguls several princes were themselves creditable poets. Shah Alam II. (1761-1806), who wrote under the name of Aftab, his son Sulaiman-shukoh, and his nephew Bahadur Shah II., the last titular emperor of Delhi (d. 1862), who wrote under the name of Zafar, and was a pupil of Shaikh Ibrahim Zauq, a distinguished writer, were all poets. Mashaf i (Ghulam-i Hamdani) , who died about 1814, was one of the leaders of the revived poetic school of Delhi. Leaving Lucknow for Delhi in 1777, he held conferences of poets, at which several notable authors formed their style. Qaim (Qiyamuddin `All) was one of his society, and died in 1792; he has left several works of merit. Ghalib, otherwise Mirza Asa dullah Khan, laureate of the last Mogul, who died in 1869, was the most eminent of the modern Delhi poets. He wrote chiefly in Persian, of which language he was a master; but his Urdu diwan, though short, is excellent in its way. To this school, though he lived and died at Agra, may be attached Mir Wall Mohammed Nazir (who died in 1832) ; his masnavis as well as his diwan are extremely popular. His language is often obscene, but less arti ficial than that of most Urdu poets, and some of his poems are as much esteemed by Hindus as by Muslims.
Haidari composed the Totd-Kahani (18o1), a prose redaction of .the Tziti-namah mentioned above; a romance Araish-i Malifil; the Gul-i Maghfirat or Dah Majlis, an account of the holy persons of Islam; the Gulzar-i Danish, a translation of a Persian work containing stories descriptive of the failings of women; and the Tarikh-i Nadiri, a translation of a Persian history of Nadir Shah. Husaini is the author of an imitation in prose of Mir Hasan's Sihru-l-bayan, under the name of Nasr-i-Benazir, and of a work adapted from a Persian version of the Hitopadesa, named Akhlaq i Hindi, or "Indian Morals," both composed in 5802. Mir Amman wrote the Bagh o Bahar (1801-02), an adaptation of Amir Khusrau's Persian romance, the Chahar Darwesh. Amman's much admired work is not itself directly modelled on the Persian, but is a rehandling of an almost contemporary rendering by Tahsin of Etawa. Amman also composed an imitation of Husain Wa`iz Kashifi's Akhlaq-i Mulzsini under the name of the Ganj-i Khubi. Haf izuddin Ahmad was a professor at the College; in 5803 he completed a translation of Abu-l-Fazl's `lyar-i Danish, under the name of the Khirad-a f roz. The `lyar-i Danish is an imitation of the originally Sanskrit collection of apologues known in Persian as the Fables of Bidpai, or Kalilah and Dimna. Afsos was one of the most illustrious of the Fort William school ; originally of Delhi, he left that city as a boy, finally joined the college in 1800, and died in 1809. He is the author of a much esteemed diwan; but his two chief works are in prose and of great excellence, the Araish-i Mahfil (1805), an account of India adapted from the introduction of the Persian Khulasatu-t-tawarikh of Sujan Rae, and the Bagh-i Urdii (18o8), a translation of Sa`di's Gulistan. Nihal Chand trans lated into Urdu a inasnavi, the Gul-i Bakawali, under the name of Mazhab-i `Ishq; this is in prose intermingled with verse, and was composed in 1804. Jawan was originally of Delhi and after wards of Lucknow; he joined the College in 180o. He is the author of a version in Urdu, called Sakuntald Natak, of the well-known story of Sakuntala. He also composed a Barah-masa, or poetical description of the twelve months, with accounts of Hindu and Mo hammedan festivals, entitled the Dastur-i Hind. Ikram `Ali trans lated, under the name of the I khwanu-,c-sa f a (18 i o ), a chapter of a famous loth century Arabian collection of treatises on science and philosophy entitled Rasailu I khwani- c-aa f a. The complete collection, due to different writers who dwelt at Basra, has been made known to European readers by the translation of Dr. F. Dieterici (1858-79). Kram `Ali's translation is one of the best of the Fort William productions.
Sri Lallu Lal was a Brahman of Gujerati extraction. What was done by the other Fort William authors for Urdu prose was done by La llu Lal almost alone for Hindi. He in fact created "High Hindi" as a literary language. His Prem Sagar and Rajniti, the former a version in pure Hindi of the loth chapter of the Bhaga vata Purana, detailing the history of Krishna, and founded on a previous Braj-bhasha version by Chaturbhuj Misr, and the latter an adaptation in Braj-bhasha prose of the Hitopadesa and part of the Pancha-tantra, are unquestionably the most important works in Hindi prose. The Prem Sagar was begun in 1804 and ended in 181o; it enjoys immense popularity in northern India. The Rajniti, composed in 1809, is much admired for its sententious brevity and the purity of its language. Lallu Lal was also the author of a collection of a hundred anecdotes in Hindi and Urdu entitled Lataif-i Hindi, an anthology of Hindi verse called the Sablia bilas, a Sat-sai in the stork of Bihari-Lal called Sapta-satika and several other works. He and Jawan worked together at the Sing hasan Battisi (18o1), a redaction in mixed Urdu and Hindi of a famous collection of legends of King Vikramaditya ; and he also aided Jawan in writing the Sakuntala Natak. Mazhar `Ali Wild was his collaborator in the Baital Pachisi, a collection of stories similar to the Singhasan Battisi; and he aided Wila in the Urdu Story of Madlipnal, a romance originally composed in Braj bhasha by Moti Ram.
The works of these authors, though compiled and published under European superintendence and intended for the instruction of the Company's officers, are essentially Indian in taste and style, enjoyed a very wide reputation, and set the standard of prose composition in Urdu and Hindi for fifty years. Meanwhile, among the Muslims of northern India, another almost contem poraneous impulse did much for the expansion of Urdu, and, like the work of the Vaishnava reformers in moulding literary Hindi, gave an invaluable impetus to composition. This was the reform in Islam led by Sayyid Ahmad and his followers.
Sayyid Ahmad was born in 1782, and received his early educa tion at Delhi; his instructors were two learned Muslims, Shah `Abdul-l-Aziz, author of a celebrated commentary on the Qur'an, and his brother `Abdu-l-Qadir, the first translator of the Qur'an into Urdu. Under their guidance Sayyid Ahmad embraced the doctrines of the Wahhabis. He gathered round him a large number of disciples, among others Ismail Haji, nephew of `Abdu-1`Aziz and `Abdu-l-Qadir, the chief author of the sect. After a course of preaching and apostleship at Delhi, Sayyid Ahmad set out in 1820 for Calcutta, attended by numerous adherents. Thence in 1822 he started on a pilgrimage to Mecca, whence he went to Con stantinople, and there gained many disciples. He travelled for nearly six years in Turkey and Arabia, and then returned to Delhi. The religious degradation and coldness which he found in his native country strongly impressed him, and he and his disciples established a propaganda throughout northern India, reprobating the superstitions which had crept into the faith and preaching holy war against the Sikhs. In 1828 he started for Peshawar, attended by, it is said, upwards of ioo,000 Indians, and accom panied by his chief followers, Haji Ismail and `Abdu-l-Hayy. He was furnished with means by a general subscription. At the beginning of 1829 he declared war against the Sikhs, and in time made himself master of Peshawar. His Afghan allies, however, deserted him. He fled across the Indus and, with Haji Ismail, was slain in 1831 in combat with the Sikhs. Wahhabi doctrines have spread in India, and still occasion much controversial writing.
The translation of the Qur'an by `Abdu-l-Qadir was finished in 1803, and first published by Sayyid `Abdullah, disciple of Sayyid Ahmad, in 1829. The Tambiliu-l-ghafilin, or "Awakener of the Heedless," a work in Persian by Sayyid Ahmad, was rendered into Urdu by `Abdullah, and published at the same press in 1830. Ha j i Isma`il was the author of a treatise in Urdu entitled Taqwi yatu-l-Iman ("Confirmation of the Faith"), which had great vogue among the following of the Sayyid. Other works were also composed by the disciples of the Tariqah-e Muharnmadiyya/i, as the new preaching was called.
Printing was first used for vernacular works by the College Press at Fort William, at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th century, and all the compositions prepared for Dr. Gilchrist and his successors mentioned above were printed. But the expense of this method precluded its extensive use and mov able types were not well suited to the Persian characters. Lithog raphy was introduced about 1837, when the first press was set up at Delhi, and immediately gave a powerful stimulus to the multiplication of literature. In 1832 the vernaculars were substi tuted for Persian as the official language of the courts and the acts of the legislature, and this at once led to a great increase in vernacular technical terms. Thirdly, the spread of education in subjects of Western learning not only greatly enlarged the popular vocabulary, but led to the use of a simpler style, and the abandon ment wholesale of florid ornament. Lastly, the establishment of a vernacular newspaper press had far-reaching cultural and literary consequences.
All these revolutionary agencies were ,already at work when, following on the Mutiny of 1857, the transfer of the government of India from the Company to the Crown inaugurated a new era. Since 186o their operation has become extremely rapid and far reaching. The use of lithography annually gives birth to hundreds of works. The extension of education has created a mass of schoolbooks, and the spread of instruction in English and the activity of translators have filled the vernaculars with new words drawn from that language. The newspaper press, in Urdu and Hindi, now counts hundreds of journals. Of this great body of literary production it is possible to speak only in general terms. Style and vocabulary are still in a somewhat fluid condition, and the subjects treated are almost as various as they are in European literatures. Much of the work produced has little claim to literary excellence, and we may content ourselves with mentioning a few writers whose influence and authority make it probable that they will hereafter be known as leaders in the new culture.
One of the first effects of the new literary inspiration seemed to be the extinction of poetical composition as previously prac tised. With the deaths of Zauq (1854) and Ghalib (1869) of the Delhi school, and those of Anis (1875) and Dabir (1876) of Lucknow, the end of Urdu poetry appeared to have come. The new age was intensely practical and had no time for sentiment, or taste for mystical conceits. Moreover, poetical composition in India has always owed much to court patronage. The thrones of Delhi and Lucknow had passed away, and only at Hyderabad in the Deccan, under the patronage of the Nizam, were laureates still honoured; the last of these, Mirza Khan Dagh (1831-1905), enjoyed a wide reputation as a graceful and eloquent poet.
But prose and material prosperity did not succeed in monopoliz ing the genius of the people. The great movement of reform and liberalism in Islam led by Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan (1817-1898) found its bard in Sayyid Altaf Husain of Panipat, poetically styled Hali. Hall was a pupil of the famous Ghalib, whose life he wrote and of whose writings he published an able criticism. At the age of forty he came under the influence of Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan, and devoted his great poetic gifts to the service of his co-religion ists. He published much verse, of which an interesting specimen will be found in the edition of his Ruba`is or quatrains (I or in number), with an English translation, by Mr. G. E. Ward (Oxford, 1904) ; in this is included a famous poem setting forth his ideals in poetry—simplicity, avoidance of exaggeration and unreality, direct appeal to the heart, and above all sincerity. He inaugurated a new and vigorous poetic school. He died in 1915.
Perhaps the most memorable of all Hali's compositions is his long poem in six-line stanzas (called musaddas) on "the flow and ebb of Islam" (1879), which had an extraordinary influence in stimulating enthusiasm in the cause of Muhammadan progress. In it he draws, in simple but eloquent language, a sketch of the past glories of Islam, and contrasts with this its subsequent degradation in Hindustan. The poem is still recited and imitated in the Punjab and United Provinces. Hali also wrote an admirable life of Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan, entitled Hayat-i !avid.
Another writer whose work, though chiefly in prose, deals with poetry and poetic style, is Maulavi Mohammed Husain Azad, professor of Arabic at the Government college, Lahore. His biographies of Urdu poets, with criticisms of their works, entitled Ab-i Hayat, is a standard work. His style is much admired. Azad was the pupil of Zauq, of whose poems he has published an anno tated edition. Among his other works in prose are Nairang-i Khayal, an allegory dealing with human life; and Darbar-i Akbari, an account of the reign of Akbar. He died in 1910.
Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan's life and work are dealt with else where. Among his literary achievements may be mentioned the Asarus-Sanadid ("Vestiges of Princes"), an excellent account of Delhi and its monuments, first lithographed in 1847. His essays and occasional papers, published in the Aligarh Institute Gazette (started in 1864), and afterwards (from 1870 onwards) in a periodical entitled Tahzibul-Akhlaq (or "Mohammedan Social Reformer"), handle all the problems of religious, social and edu cational advancement among Indian Muslims—the cause to which his life was devoted. His great Commentary on the Qur`dn, in seven volumes, the last finished only a few days before his death in 1898, is carried to the end of Surah xx., a little more than half the book. In him Urdu prose found its most powerful wielder for the diffusion of modern ideas, and the movement which he set on foot has been the spring of the best literature in the language during recent years.
Another excellent writer of Urdu is Shamsul-`Ulama Maulavi Nazir Ahmad of Delhi, who is the author of a series of novels of domestic life, which have had a wide popularity, and have been specially serviceable in the education of Indian women. These are entitled the Mir'atul-`Arus, Taubatun-Nasuh, Banatun-Na`sh, I bnul-W aqt and Ayama. Nazir Ahmad was the principal trans lator into Urdu of the Indian Penal Code (1861), which is reck oned a masterpiece in the exact rendering of European legal ideas; and he is the author of the best Urdu version of the Quran. He was closely associated with Sir Sayyid Ahmad Khan.
The novel is one of the most noteworthy features of recent literary composition in Urdu. India has always been rich in stories and romances; but the modern novel, as understood in Europe, is a new development. The most admired Urdu novel is a work entitled Fisana-e Azad, by Pandit Ratan-nath Sarshar of Lucknow. The story is remarkable for its vivid pictures of Lucknow society, and its faithful delineation of character. An other good writer is Maulavi `Abdul-Halim Sharar. He was editor of a monthly Lucknow periodical called the Dil-gudaz, composed in European style, and in it his novels, which are all of an historical character, in the style of Sir Walter Scott, originally appeared. The best are `Aziz and Virgina, a tale of the Crusades, and Man sur and Mohina, a story of India at the time of the invasions of Mahmud of Ghazni.
Although Urdu chiefly represents Muslim culture, its use is by no means confined to Muslims. Not only is the most popular Urdu novelist a Hindu, but the statistics of the vernacular press show that this form of the language is widely used by Hindus.
"High Hindi" has scarcely adapted itself to modern require ments with the thoroughness displayed by Urdu. It is taught in the schools where the population is mainly Hindu, and books of science have been written in it with a terminology borrowed from Sanskrit. But Sanskrit is far removed from the daily life of the people, and most works in this style are read only by Pandits, the great bulk of them dealing with religion, philosophy and the ancient literature. There are a fair number of Hindi and Hindi Urdu journals; but many of them are exclusively religious in character, and several, though written in Devanagari, employ a language akin to Urdu. The old dialects of literature, Awadhi and Braj-bhasha, are now only used for poetry.
The most noticeable authors in Hindi since the middle of the 19th century have been Baba Harishchandra and Raja Siva Prasad, both of Benares. The former (1850-1885) was an en thusiastic cultivator of the old (dialect) poetic art. He published, in the Sundari Tilak, an anthology of Hindi poetry, and, as well, a quantity of old texts, with much added matter. He also wrote biographies and critical studies. In history especially he cleared up many problems. In his Kashmir Kusum, or history of Kash mir, a list is given of about a hundred works by him. He was also the real founder of the modern Hindi drama. Raja Siva Prasad (1823-1895) published many educational works which have greatly contributed to the formation of a form of Hindi not excessively Sanskritized, and not rejecting current Persian forms. The society at Benares called the Nagari Prachcirinzi Sabha' ("So ciety for promoting the use of the Nagari character") has, since the death of Harishchandra, been active in the publication of useful works in Hindi, besides conducting a systematic search for old mss.
best account in English of Hindi literature is Dr. G. A. Grierson's Modern Vernacular Literature of Hindustan, issued by the Asiatic Society of Bengal in 1889 ; the dates in this work, which is founded on indigenous compilations, have, however, in many cases to be received with caution. Before it appeared, Garcin de Tassy's admirable Histoire de la litterature Hindouie et Hindoustanie, and his annual summaries of the progress made from 185o to 1877, were our chief authority. For the religious literature of the Vaishnava sects, Professor H. H. Wilson's Essay on the Religious Sects of the Hindus (vol. i. of his collected works) has not yet been superseded.