rubāʽī, mas̤navī and mars̤iya, and is counted the third, with Saudā
and Mīr Taqī, among the most eminent of Urdū poets. His fame
chiefly rests upon a much admired mas̤navī entitled the Siḥru-l-bayān,
or “Magic of Eloquence,” a romance relating the loves of
Prince Bë-naẕīr and the Princess Badr-i Munīr; his mas̤navī called
the Gulzār-i Iram (“Rose-garden of Iram,” the legendary ʽĀdite
paradise in southern Arabia), in praise of Faizābād, is likewise
highly esteemed. Mīr Muḥammadī Sōz was an elegant poet, remarkable
for the success with which he composed in the dialect
of the harem called Rekhtī, but somewhat licentious in his verse; he
became a darwēsh and renounced the world in his later years. Jur’at
was also a prolific poet, but, like Sōz, his ghazals and mas̤navīs are
licentious and full of double meanings. He imitated Saudā in satire
with much success; he also cultivated Hindī poetry, and composed
dohās and kabittas. Miskīn was another Lucknow poet of the same
period, whose mars̤iyas are especially admired; one of them, that
on the death of Muslim and his two sons, is considered a masterpiece
of this style of composition. The school of Lucknow, so founded and
maintained during the early years of the century, continued to
flourish till the dethronement of the last king, Wājid ʽAlī, in 1856.
Ātash and Nāsikh (who died respectively in 1847 and 1841) are the
best among the modern poets of the school in the ghazal; Mīr Anīs, a
grandson of Mīr Hasan, and his contemporary Dabīr, the former of
whom died in December 1875 and the latter a few months later,
excelled in the mars̤iyah. Rajab Alī Beg Surūr, who died in 1869,
was the author of a much-admired romance in rhyming prose entitled
the Fisānah-e ʽAjāib or “Tale of Marvels,” besides a dīwān. The
dethroned prince Wājid ʽAlī himself, poetically styled Akhtar, was
also a poet; he published three dīwāns, among them a quantity of
poetry in the rustic dialect of Oudh which is philologically of much
interest.
Though Delhi was thus deserted by its brightest lights of literature, it did not altogether cease to cultivate the poetic art. Among the last Moguls several princes were themselves creditable poets. Shāh Ālam II. (1761–1806) wrote under the name of Āftāb, and was the author of a romance entitled Manz̤ūm-i Aqdas, besides a dīwān. His son Sulaimān-shukoh, brother of Akbar Shāh II., who had at first, like his brother authors, repaired to Lucknow, returned to Delhi in 1815, and died in 1838; he also has left a dīwān. Lastly, his nephew Bahādur Shāh II., the last titular emperor of Delhi (d. 1862), wrote under the name of ẕafar, and was a pupil in poetry of Shaikh Ibrāhīm ẕauq, a distinguished writer; he has left a voluminous dīwān, which has been printed at Delhi. Maṣḥafī (Ghulām-i Hamdānī), who died about 1814, was one of the most distinguished of the revived poetic school of Delhi, and was himself one of its founders. Originally of Lucknow, he left that city for Delhi in 1777, and held conferences of poets, at which several authors who afterwards acquired repute formed their style; he has left five dīwāns, a Taẕkira or biography of Urdū poets, and a Shāh-nāma or account of the kings of Delhi down to Shāh ʽĀlam. Qāim (Qiyāmuddīn ʽAlī) was one of his society, and died in 1792; he has left several works of merit. Ghālib, otherwise Mirzā Asadullāh Khān Naushāh, laureate of the last Mogul, who died in 1869, was undoubtedly the most eminent of the modern Delhi poets. He wrote chiefly in Persian, of which language, especially in the form cultivated by Firdausī, free from intermixture of Arabic words, he was a master; but his Urdū dīwān, though short, is excellent in its way, and his reputation spread far and wide. To this school, though he lived and died at Agra, may be attached Mīr Walī Muḥammad Naẕīr (who died in the year 1832); his mas̤navīs entitled Jogī-nāma, Kauṛī-nāma, Banjāre-nāma, and Buṛhāpe-nāma, as well as his dīwān, have been frequently reprinted, and are extremely popular. His language is less artificial than that of the generality of Urdū poets, and some of his poems have been printed in Nāgarī, and are as well known and as much esteemed by Hindus as by Mahommedans. His verse is defaced by much obscenity.
4. Modern Period.—While such, in outline, is the history of the literary schools of the Deccan, Delhi and Lucknow, a fourth, that of the Fort William College at Calcutta, was being formed, and was destined to give no less an impulse to the cultivation of Urdū prose than had a hundred years before been given to that of poetry by Walī. At the commencement of the 19th century Dr John Gilchrist was the head of this institution, and his efforts were directed towards getting together a body of literature suitable as text-books for the study of the Urdū language by the European officers of the administration. To his exertions we owe the elaboration of the vernacular as an official speech, and the possibility of substituting it for the previously current Persian as the language of the courts and the government. He gathered together at Calcutta the most eminent vernacular scholars of the time, and their works, due to his initiative, are still notable as specimens of elegant and serviceable prose composition, not only in Urdū, but also in Hindī. The chief authors of this school are Ḥaidarī (Sayyid Muḥammad Ḥaidar-bakhsh), Ḥusainī (Mīr Bahādur ʽAlī), Mīr Amman Luṭf, Ḥafīẕuddīn Aḥmad, Shēr ʽAlī Afsōs, Nihāl Chand of Lahore, Kāẕim ʽAlī Jawān, Lallū Lāl Kavi, Maẕhar ʽAlī Wilā and Ikrām ʽAlī.
Ḥaidarī died in 1828. He composed the Ṭoṭā-Kahānī (1801), a prose redaction of the Ṭūṭī-nāmah which has been already mentioned; a romance named Ārāish-i Maḥfil (“Ornament of the Assembly”), detailing the adventures of the famous Arab chief Ḥātim-i Ṭai; the Gul-i Maghfirat or Dah Majlis, an account of the holy persons of the Muhammadan faith; the Gulzār-i Dānish, a translation of the Bahār-i Dānish, a Persian work containing stories descriptive of the craft and faithlessness of women; and the Tārīkh-i Nādirī, a translation of a Persian history of Nādir Shāh. Ḥusainī is the author of an imitation in prose of Mīr Ḥasan’s Siḥru-l-bayān, under the name of Naṣr-i Bēnaẕīr (“the Incomparable Prose,” or “the Prose of Bēnaẓīr,” the latter being the name of the hero), and of a work named Akhlāq-i Hindī, or “Indian Morals,” both composed in 1802. The Akhlāq-i Hindī is an adaptation of a Persian work called the Mufarriḥu-l-qulūb (“the Delighter of Hearts”), itself a version of the Hitōpadēša. Mīr Amman was a native of Delhi, which he left in the time of Aḥmad Shāh Durrānī for Patna, and in 1801 repaired to Calcutta. To him we owe the Bāgh o Bahār (1801–1802), an adaptation of Amīr Khusrau’s famous Persian romance entitled the Chahār Darwēsh, or “Story of the Four Dervishes.” Amman’s work is not itself directly modelled on the Persian, but is a rehandling of an almost contemporary rendering by Tahsīn of Etāwā, called the Nau-ṭarz-i Muraṣṣaʽ. The style of this composition is much admired by natives of India, and editions of it are very numerous. Amman also composed an imitation of Husain Wāʽiz Kāshifī’s Akhlāq-i Muḥsinī under the name of the Ganj-i Khūbī (“Treasure of Virtue”), produced in 1802. Ḥafīẕuddīn Ahmad was a professor at the Fort William College; in 1803 he completed a translation of Abu-l-Faẓl’s ʽIyār-i Dānish, under the name of the Khirad-afrōz (“Enlightener of the Understanding”). The ʽIyār-i Dānish (“Touchstone of Wisdom”) is one of the numerous imitations of the originally Sanskrit collection of apologues known in Persian as the Fables of Bīdpāī, or Kalīlah and Dimna. Afsōs was one of the most illustrious of the Fort William school; originally of Delhi, he left that city at the age of eleven, and entered the service of Qāsim ʽAlī Khān, Nawāb of Bengal; he afterwards repaired to Hyderābād in the Deccan, and thence to Lucknow, where he was the pupil of Mīr Ḥasan, Mīr Sōz and Mīr Ḥaidar ʽAlī Ḥairān. He joined the Fort William College in 1800, and died in 1809. He is the author of a much esteemed dīwān; but his chief reputation is founded on two prose works of great excellence, the Ārāish-i Mahfil (1805), an account of India adapted from the introduction of the Persian Khulāṣatu-t-tawārikh of Sujān Rāe, and the Bāgh-i Urdū (1808), a translation of Saʽdī’s Gulistān. Nihāl Chand translated into Urdū a mas̤navī, entitled the Gul-i Bakāwalī, under the name of Maẕhab-i ʽIshq (“Religion of Love”); this work is in prose intermingled with verse, was composed in 1804, and has been frequently reproduced. Jawān, like most of his collaborators, was originally of Delhi and afterwards of Lucknow; he joined the College in 1800. He is the author of a version in Urdū of the well-known story of Sakuntalā, under the name of Sakuntalā Nāṭak; the Urdū was rendered from a previous Braj-bhāshā version by Nawāz Kabīshwar made in 1716, and was printed in 1802. He also composed a Bārah-māsā, or poetical description of the twelve months (a very popular and often-handled form of composition), with accounts of the various Hindu and Muhammadan festivals, entitled the Dastūr-i Hind (“Usages of India”), printed in 1812. Ikrām ʽAli translated, under the name of the Ikhwānu-ṣ-ṣafā, or “Brothers of Purity” (1810), a chapter of a famous Arabian collection of treatises on science and philosophy entitled Rasāilu Ikhwāni-ṣ-ṣafā, and composed in the 10th century. The complete collection, due to different writers who dwelt at Baṣra, has recently been made known to European readers by the translation of Dr F. Dieterici (1858–1879); the chapter selected by Ikrām ʽAlī is the third, which records an allegorical strife for the mastery between men and animals before the king of the Jinn. The translation is written in excellent Urdū, and is one of the best of the Fort William productions.
Srī Lallū Lāl was a Brahman, whose family, originally of Gujarāt, had long been settled in northern India. What was done by the other Fort William authors for Urdū prose was done by Lallū Lāl almost alone for Hindī. He may indeed without exaggeration be said to have created “High Hindī” as a literary language. His Prem Sāgar and Rājnīti, the former a version in pure Hindī of the 10th chapter of the Bhāgavata Purāna, detailing the history of Kṛishṇa, and founded on a previous Braj-bhāshā version by Chaturbhuj Misr, and the latter an adaptation in Braj-bhāshā prose of the Hitōpadēs̄a and part of the Pancha-tantra, are unquestionably the most important works in Hindī prose. The Prem Sāgar was begun in 1804 and ended in 1810; it enjoys immense popularity in northern India, has been frequently reproduced in a lithographed form, and has several times been printed. The Rājnīti was composed in 1809; it is much admired for its sententious brevity and the purity of its language. Besides these two works, Lallū Lāl was the author of a collection of a hundred anecdotes in Hindī and Urdū entitled Latāif-i Hindī, an anthology of Hindī verse called the Sabhā-bilās,
