One. A Garden Now Destroyed

So there is now no hope at all of another such
    master of poetry being born in India.

For he was the nightingale of a garden
    that has been destroyed.

1. The Lost World

By the late eighteenth century, the once-mighty Mughal Empire was in rapid political decline. The magnificent Red Fort itself had been sacked over and over by a series of plunderers: first by Nādir Shāh and his Persians (1739), who carried off the famous Peacock Throne; then by Aḥmad Shāh Abdālī and his Afghans (1757); and finally by Ġhulām Qādir and his Rohillas (1788), who not only despoiled the library but even dug up the palace floors looking for concealed valuables. Toward the end of this period the unfortunate emperor Shāh ‘ālam II (r. 1759-1806), Aurangzeb’s great-great-grandson, had much to endure. He was crowned while a fugitive in Bihar, and did not even manage to return to Delhi until 1772. His political impotence became proverbial; as the saying went, “The realm of Shāh ‘ālam—from Delhi to Palam.”^[1] The emperor knew humiliation, helplessness, and actual poverty. He was “only a chessboard king” (253).

At length he accepted the Marathas as his protectors, and from 1785 to 1803 they were the real power behind his throne. Even then, though, his tribulations were not over. For when the brutal Ġhulām Qādir seized the city in 1788, he was outraged at finding so small an amount of loot—and had Shāh ‘ālam blinded. The Marathas later came to the rescue, retook the city, and restored the blind emperor to his nominal throne. But gradually, amidst the military and political turbulence of the period, the British gained the upper hand over the Marathas; finally, in 1803, Lord Lake took Delhi. For the first time in decades, stability returned to the city. The new conquerors, like the old, valued the Mughal dynasty for its time-honored legitimating power, its continuing hold on the Indian imagination. The British kept Shāh ‘ālam II on the throne until his death three years later, at the age of seventy-nine.^[2]

Despite Shāh ‘ālam’s legal sovereignty, his throne rested uncertainly on layers of nostalgia and remembered glory. He himself as an “emperor” was hopelessly vulnerable. But he had another calling as well: he was a serious poet, as well as a notable connoisseur and patron of poetry. Toward the end of his life, poetry became his chief pursuit. And as a poet, he could feel an unchallengeable pride and confidence. He came from a tradition that knew itself as the center of its cultural world—and knew that its cultural world was the only one that counted. For he wrote in the beautiful court language, Persian, and took full advantage of its rich classical literature and its sophisticated, highly developed array of genres. As Persian poets had done for centuries, he often composed in the brief, intense lyric genre of ghazal (Ġhazal), with its endless romantic and mystical possibilities. And as Persian poets had also done for centuries, he chose a personal pen name (taḳhalluṣ), which he incorporated into the last verse of each ghazal: he called himself “āftāb” (Sun).

Moreover, as North Indian poets had been doing since at least the beginning of the eighteenth century, he composed ghazals not only in Persian, but also in Urdu. Urdu, while still resting firmly on its Indic grammatical and lexical base, was steadily enlarging its repertoire of Persian genres and imagery. As a literary language, Urdu was absorbing almost everything that Indians loved in Persian—so that it was in fact gradually supplanting Persian. Thus it is not surprising that when Shāh ‘ālam II wrote in Urdu, he, like most poets, used the same pen name as he did for his Persian verse. When he composed poetry in the Indic literary language of Braj Bhasha, however, he used a different pen name: his own title “Shāh ‘ālam” (Ruler of the World). He was also fluent in Panjabi, and is said to have known Arabic, Sanskrit, and Turkish. During his reign “the Red Fort once again became a center of literary enthusiasm.”^[3] It was the scene of frequent mushairahs (mushā‘irah), or poetry recitation sessions.

Shāh ‘ālam’s eldest son, Javān Baḳht, shared his love for poetry. “This exalted prince was so inclined toward poetry that he arranged for mushairahs to be held twice a month in his apartments; he used to send his own mace-bearer to escort the distinguished poets on the day of the mushairah, and encouraged everyone by showing the greatest kindness and favor.”^[4] Javān Baḳht, however, died young. When Shāh ‘ālam himself died, the British installed his second son on the throne as Akbar Shāh II (r. 1806-1837). Akbar Shāh composed poetry only casually, because it was the thing to do; playing on his father’s pen name, he called himself “Shu‘ā” (Ray). But the new heir apparent, Akbar Shāh’s son Bahādur Shāh (1775-1862), vigorously sustained the family poetic tradition: he brought poets into the Red Fort, held mushairahs, and pursued his own strong literary interests.^[5]

Bahādur Shāh was a very serious poet. The famous pen name he chose for himself, “Z̤afar” (Victory), was actually part of his given name, Abū Z̤afar Sirāj ud-Dīn Muḥammad Bahādur Shāh. His mother, Lāl Bā’ī, was a Hindu. Bahādur Shāh had been educated entirely within the Red Fort, under his grandfather’s supervision, and had mastered not only Urdu and Persian but Braj Bhasha and Panjabi as well; he composed a volume (dīvān) of poetry in each of these four languages. Like his grandfather, he used two separate pen names: “Z̤afar” for poetry in Urdu and Persian, “Shauq Rang” (Passionate) for the rest of his verse.^[6]

When Akbar Shāh II died, Bahādur Shāh, who was sixty-two years old at the time, duly replaced him on the throne—a throne behind which the British were definitely the real power. The new emperor Bahādur Shāh II (r. 1837-1857) was a man of parts: he studied not only poetry but mystical philosophy as well, and practiced calligraphy, pigeon flying, swordsmanship, horse breeding, riding, and other aristocratic arts. While his dress and most of his tastes were simple and dignified, he enjoyed the company of women: he was much influenced by his favorite wives, and continued to marry an occasional new one even into his sixties and seventies. Living on a fixed British pension, he nevertheless had royal traditions of largesse to uphold, as well as many relatives and dependents to support, so that he was hard-pressed for funds; he used every possible means to increase his income, and his financial affairs were always in disarray.^[7] He certainly felt the difficulty of his position—and sometimes wittily used it as a source of poetic imagery. As he wrote in one of his poems, “Whoever enters this gloomy palace/Is a prisoner for life in European captivity.”^[8]

Bahādur Shāh was a man of “cultured and upright character,” who as a “philosophic prince” could have “adorned any court,” and whose “interests and tastes were primarily literary and aesthetic.” The British certainly viewed him with less and less respect over time; yet, as Percival Spear argues, a large part of their disdain was a function of their own increasingly limited, utilitarian outlook on life. The emperor was “a poet, and so could expect no more consideration than the same men gave to Shelley or Byron or Keats.” But since the emperor was so much loved and esteemed in India, motives of prudence kept British disdain in check.^[9] Even when the physical power of the Mughal emperor was close to nonexistent, his symbolic power as a cultural icon was a force to be reckoned with. As the governor general put it in 1819, the British should seek to avoid any behavior that “might be misinterpreted into a wanton oppression of a dignified tho’ unfortunate Family.”^[10]

Even as the emperor’s royal prerogatives slowly eroded, the decline was managed for the most part with decorum: the hostile British Resident Hawkins, who made a point of violating court etiquette, was soon sent home. “After this, in the deft hands of William Fraser and then Thomas Metcalfe, even the gradual withdrawal of British recognition of the imperial status was smoothed by dignified deference.”^[11] C. F. Andrews makes a similar point: although “real power passed more and more, every year, into the hands of the English,” nevertheless since “the English were, throughout this whole period, very few in numbers,” and since they “did not interfere more than they could possibly help,” the result was a kind of “dual control” that was “not altogether disturbing.”^[12] Peter Hardy notes that in studying the period “one is impressed by how little in feeling and in style of life the educated classes of upper India were touched by the British presence before 1857.”^[13] As Azad later put it, “Those were the days when if a European was seen in Delhi, people considered him an extraordinary sample of God’s handiwork, and pointed him out to each other: ‘Look, there goes a European!’ ”^[14]

Narayani Gupta describes a lively Hindu-Muslim cultural life—conducted entirely in Urdu, by people who had consciously chosen not to learn English. The father of the great Urdu novelist Nażīr Aḥmad (1836-1912) went so far as to tell the boy he would rather see him dead than learning English. As the recently founded (1825) Delhi College developed, not its English section but its Urdu-medium “Oriental” one flourished—and showed itself especially zealous in pursuing the new Western sciences.^[15]

Spear characterizes this period, especially the second quarter of the nineteenth century when the “English Peace” was well established, as a time of prosperity, confidence, urban growth, and religious and cultural harmony. “The Court was the cultural centre, the Hindus dominated the commercial life and the British conducted the administration”; daily life was a matter of mutual accommodation and shared festivals, with “much interchange of civilities and much give and take.” Spear paints an almost (though not quite) idyllic picture: “Old and new for a time met together in the short-lived Delhi Renaissance.”^[16] C. F. Andrews agrees: the “impact from the West” in fact “led to a cultural renaissance which proceeded remarkably from within.”^[17] This Delhi Renaissance was rich in the arts, and extraordinarily influential. Lucknow, untouched by the kind of repeated plundering that Delhi had endured, was a great magnet and center of patronage; but Delhi, as the last Mughal capital, had a special nostalgic appeal. The court was “the school of manners for India” and “a cultural influence of great value”; its prestige and patronage made it “the natural centre of all the arts and crafts.”^[18] Urdu poetry was widely and seriously cultivated: there were not only frequent mushairahs at the Red Fort, but also weekly ones held on the Delhi College premises,^[19] as well as numerous privately sponsored ones. When it came to poets, Bahādur Shāh’s circle included, besides himself, one great poet, several major ones, and literally dozens of highly competent minor poets.

The great poet, Mirzā Asadullāh Ḳhān (1797-1869), who used the pen name “Ġhālib” (Victorious), is now universally recognized as either the first or second greatest classical ghazal poet of Urdu; his reputation is rivaled only by that of Mīr Taqī “Mīr” (c. 1722-1810). Ġhālib came of Turkish stock, and was always proud of his family’s military tradition: his father had died fighting in the raja of Alwar’s army, while his uncle Naṣrullāh Beg had been in the service of the Marathas and then in 1803, when the British took Delhi, had become a commander under Lord Lake. The British pension inherited on this uncle’s death was the mainstay of Ġhālib’s finances throughout most of his life. He was raised in Agra by his mother’s well-off and aristocratic family. At the age of eleven he began writing Persian poetry; he had already, according to his own account, been writing in Urdu for some time. When he was thirteen he was married—by family arrangement, as was customary—to a girl from a wealthy and socially elite background; a year or two later he settled in Delhi, which became his home for the rest of his life.^[20]

Ġhālib’s life in Delhi was firmly grounded in the aristocratic Persianized culture surrounding the court. He always knew who he was, and knew his own worth as a poet; despite his lifelong financial and personal vicissitudes, neither his confidence nor his sense of humor ever really failed him. His complex, metaphysical, “difficult” poetry, however disturbing to conventional tastes, was arresting and undeniably powerful; even during his lifetime he began, so to speak, to be Ġhālib.

But he also had many friends in the British administration, including the Resident John Fraser. He made a two-year journey to Calcutta and took a strong interest in the English influence on view there—including newspapers, as yet unknown in Delhi. (Although he knew neither English nor Bengali, Persian served as an effective link language.) And he certainly thought the Emperor Akbar’s administrative style inferior to that of the English, as he made clear on one occasion to the great reformer Sir Sayyid Aḥmad Ḳhān (1817-1898).^[21]

Ġhālib met the new culture on his own terms and tried throughout his life to make it behave like the old. In some respects, of course, it obliged him. The elaborate etiquette of English ceremonial gatherings was directly borrowed from that of the Mughal court, and Ġhālib set considerable store by it: “In the Government durbars I occupy the tenth place to the right, and the marks of honour prescribed for me comprise a ceremonial robe, seven gifts of cloth, a turban with an embroidered velvet band and jewelled gold ornament to wear in it, a string of pearls and a cloak.”^[22] Such feudal honors were as consciously manipulated by the English as they had always been by the Mughals.^[23]

Ġhālib tried to extend his aristocratic status into more modern realms as well. In 1842 he was invited to be interviewed for the newly created post of Persian professor at Delhi College. A famous anecdote gives a vivid picture of Ġhālib’s arrival, in his palanquin, for the interview. He alighted, but refused to enter the building until Mr. Thomason, the secretary, appeared and gave him the formal welcome to which his aristocratic rank entitled him. Time passed. Finally, Mr. Thomason came out to try to resolve the situation:

[Mr. Thomason] came out personally and explained that a formal welcome was appropriate when he attended the Governor’s durbar, but not in the present case, when he came as a candidate for employment. Ghalib replied, “I contemplated taking a government appointment in the expectation that this would bring me greater honours than I now receive, not a reduction in those already accorded me.” The Secretary replied, “I am bound by regulations.” “Then I hope that you will excuse me,” Ghalib said, and came away.^[24]

Despite his poverty and indebtedness, Ġhālib made the grand gesture with a flourish. Honor was honor, it was clear where it lay, and that was the end of the matter.

Ġhālib tried again and again to teach the new regime manners, especially when it came to the vital question of patronage. He reminded the English that poetry was a uniquely potent art, conferring immortal fame not only on its creators, but also on the patrons whose generosity it celebrated. In 1856 he composed a Persian ode (qaṣīdah) to Queen Victoria, and forwarded it to London through Lord Ellenborough. But he then received a bureaucratic letter suggesting “that the petitioner, in respect to the norms of administrative procedure, should channel his petition through the administrator in India.” He therefore sent his ode again, through the proper channels, along with a letter in which he politely reminded the queen of the well-known and long-established duty that sovereigns owed to poets. (It was indeed a long-established one: more than five centuries earlier, the Indo-Persian poet Amīr “Ḳhusrau” (1253-1325) had used exactly the same line of argument on one of his own patrons.)^[25] Ġhālib pointed out to Queen Victoria that since great kings had customarily “rewarded their poets and well-wishers by filling their mouths with pearls, weighing them in gold and granting them villages and recompense, the exalted queen should bestow upon Ghalib, the petitioner, the title of Mihr-Khwan, and present him with the robe of honour and a few crumbs from her bounteous table—that is, in English, a ‘pension.’ ” He was eagerly awaiting a response—but by then it was 1857.^[26]

The natural source of patronage for Ġhālib would have been the Red Fort. Poets were so much a part of Persianized court life that they often became intimate “boon companions” to the king; in some cases they became “part of the royal paraphernalia” and changed hands along with the throne.^[27] Ġhālib indeed found some support from the court, though never what he needed and felt he deserved. In 1850 he wrote to Bahādur Shāh:

I swear that you too must feel pride in the great kindness of fortune, that you possess a slave like Ghalib, whose song has all the power of fire. Turn your attention to me as my skill demands, and you will treasure me as the apple of your eye and open your heart for me to enter in.…And why talk of the poets of the Emperor Akbar’s day? My presence bears witness that your age excels his.^[28]

The absolute, passionate confidence of Ġhālib’s claim has no bombast in it. He speaks with the impatient certainty of one who knows beyond doubt both what his craft is worth, and what he is worth as a master craftsman.

But although Ġhālib had many admirers and shagirds (shāgird), pupils who studied poetry under his guidance, Bahādur Shāh Z̤afar was not inclined to be one of them. Like any other serious poet, Z̤afar made his own choice of a master or ustad (ustād), who would criticize and correct his verses; apprenticeship was, in poetry as in other arts and crafts, the accepted way to acquire a skill. Z̤afar’s first ustad was Shāh Naṣīr ud-Din “Naṣīr” (Helper) (d. 1838), who was more or less Z̤afar’s contemporary and an important poet in his own right. At the middle and end of every month Shāh Naṣīr sponsored mushairahs, some of which were notorious for the complicated meter and rhyme patterns (t̤araḥ) assigned to be used in the poems recited. Around 1803, however, Shāh Naṣīr left Delhi for the Deccan. Z̤afar then briefly named as his ustad ‘Izzatullāh “‘Ishq” (Love); and after him Mīr Kāz̤im Ḥusain “Beqarār” (Restless), a shagird of Shāh Naṣīr; Beqarār eventually resigned to become Lord Elphinstone’s chief secretary. Z̤afar’s true ustad was Beqarār’s replacement, the major poet Shaiḳh Ibrāhīm “Żauq” (Taste) (c. 1788-1854), who had also been a shagird of Shāh Naṣīr. Żauq and Z̤afar developed such a satisfactory relationship that it remained firm for four decades.^[29] Ġhālib, by contrast, received only a minor token of royal favor: he was commissioned to compose, in Persian, a Mughal dynastic history—a task he found tedious and uninspiring.^[30]

Only when Żauq died in 1854 did Z̤afar finally appoint Ġhālib, the obvious choice, to fill the prestigious post of royal ustad. Z̤afar seems to have done this somewhat grudgingly, and Ġhālib accepted only because he needed the pension that went with the job.^[31] Though he was proud of his position at court—“The Emperor loved me like one of his sons”—Ġhālib complained that the pension was “tiny.”^[32]

While we know a great deal from many sources about the lives of major figures like Żauq and Ġhālib, we know relatively little about their hundreds of less famous contemporaries. Most of our information about minor poets comes from the tazkirahs (tażkirah), traditional anthologies of poetry. One especially interesting and comprehensive tazkirah, The Garden of Poetry (1855) by Mirzā Qādir Baḳhsh “Ṣābir” (Patient),^[33] lists among its 540 contemporary poets no fewer than fifty princes related to Z̤afar. Such royal relatives were usually dilettantes rather than serious poets; their sheer numbers show how socially correct it was in their world to affect literary tastes. An interest in Urdu language and literature had even come to be considered a hallmark of the city itself: “Anyone who had not lived in Delhi could never be considered a real knower of Urdu, as if the steps of the Jāma‘ Masjid were a school of language,” as Maulvī ‘Abd ul-Ḥaq put it. In Delhi poetry “was discussed in every house,” for “the emperor himself was a poet and a connoisseur of poetry” and “the language of the Exalted Fort was the essence of refinement.”^[34]

The Garden of Poetry includes fifty-three Delhi poets who seem fromtheir names to be Hindus (mostly Kayasths and Kashmiri Brahmans)and describes a scattering of poets from unexpected walks of life: “Pairā”(Adorner), a poor water-seller in Chandni Chauk; “Sharīr” (Naughty), a merchant in Panjabi Katra; “Zirġhām” (Lion), a young wrestler; “Z̤arāfat” (Wit), a lady with a colorful past who had now settled into respectability; “Banno” (Girl), a courtesan, who had caught the taste for poetry from her lover, one Gulāb Singh; “Faṣṣād” (Cupper), a barber who was inspired by the company of Shāh Naṣīr; “Farāso,” a Western protégé of Begam Samrū; and others.^[35]

Ṣābir treated the poet Z̤afar, however, as a special case, for he was also the Emperor Bahādur Shāh, “refuge of both worlds, for whom angels do battle, ruler of time and space, lord of crown and seal…at whose command which is the twin of Fate, the revolution of the sky is established.” His literary powers were equally exalted: “Maẓmūns [themes]^[36] of submission in his poetry are equal in rank to pride and coquetry,” and “the radiance of meaning [ma‘nī] is manifest through his words.” For when it comes to poetry, not only words but even the very letters that embody them on paper are magically potent:

The sequences of lines, through the reflection of maẓmūns, are lamp-wicks for the bedchamber of the page. The circular letters, through the effect of meaning (ma‘nī), are the wine-mark on the flagon in the festive gathering of pages. The colorfulness of festive meaning is the glistening of wine; in martial verses, the wetness of the ink is blood and perspiration. In mystical verses, the circular letters are seeing eyes; and in romantic verses, tear-shedding eyes. And in spring-related verses, [the decorations] between the lines are flowerbeds; and in sky-related verses, the Milky Way. The breath, through the floweringness of the words, is the garden breeze; and vision, through the freshness of the writing, is the vein of the jasmine. The line (miṣra‘) has the stature of a cypress; the verse is the eyebrow of the beautiful ones of Khallukh and Naushad.

In short, the emperor’s poetry deserves praise so endless that if “the messenger of Thought” ran for a thousand years, it would still only cover as much distance as “the footprint of a weak ant” by comparison. For, as Ṣābir puns, “from the East/opening verse (mat̤la‘) to the West/closing verse (maqt̤a‘) is the excursion ground of that Sun whose domes are the skies.”^[37] In principle, the emperor was still the center of the universe, just as his ancestors, with their vast domains and absolute powers, had always been.

Not surprisingly, literary people flocked to the court of such an impressive poet-emperor, seeking both learning and patronage. During the period of the Delhi Renaissance two remarkable young men studied in Delhi: Muḥammad Ḥusain, who chose for himself the pen name “Āzād” (Free), and Alt̤āf Ḥusain, who first called himself “Ḳhastah” (Worn Out) but later changed his pen name, very possibly at Ġhālib’s suggestion, to “Ḥālī” (Contemporary). The power that these two came to exercise over Urdu literature and criticism has been unequaled ever since.

Muḥammad Ḥusain Azad was the older of the two. He was born in Delhi, in 1830; his mother Amānī Begam, who came from a Persian émigré family, died when he was only three or four years old. His father, Maulvī Muḥammad Bāqir (c. 1810-1857), who also came from a family of learned Persian émigrés, was a man of versatile talents and played a significant role in the cultural life of his day. Educated at the newly founded Delhi College, Maulvī Muḥammad Bāqir stayed on for a time as a teacher; but he found the salary too low. He then for many years held a series of administrative positions on the collector’s staff, while also erecting a market for foreign merchants, a mosque, and a Shī‘a religious hall (imāmbāṛah) in which he himself sometimes preached. In addition, he involved himself in prolonged and acrimonious Shī‘ite religious controversies.

And as if all this were not enough, he also bought a lithograph press, and in early 1837 launched the Dihlī Urdū Aḳhbār (Delhi Urdu Newspaper), probably the first Urdu newspaper in North India.^[38] The Dihlī Urdū Aḳhbār had, like almost all newspapers of the period, an extremely limited circulation (69 subscribers in 1844, 79 in 1848). It followed a dexterously balanced political line. In a general way it was solidly pro-British, but particular instances of official injustice, corruption, or other wrongdoing came in for criticism. And although it reported—and deplored—many cases of flagrant misgovernment by Indian rulers, including Bahādur Shāh, these were almost always ascribed to the machinations of (evil) courtiers who pulled the wool over a (good) king’s eyes.^[39]

Around 1845 Maulvī Muḥammad Bāqir enrolled his only son in Delhi College. Muḥammad Ḥusain did well there. He was enrolled in the Urdu-medium “Oriental” section, which offered Arabic and Persian rather than English. In both 1848 and 1849 his Urdu essays won prizes; these essays, as his teachers noted, showed the good effects of his family background in newspaper work.^[40] At some point during these years his family arranged his marriage to āĠhā’ī Begam, the daughter of another Persian émigré family. After completing Delhi College’s eight-year curriculum, Muḥammad Ḥusain graduated, probably in 1854. He had started to assist his father in his newspaper work, and in the 1850s his name appears as “printer and publisher” of books produced by the Dihlī Urdū Aḳhbār Press. He continued with this work until 1857.^[41]

Muḥammad Ḥusain Azad later claimed that throughout his childhood and youth he had spent a great deal of time with the poet Żauq, the royal ustad, who was a close friend of his father’s. He claimed Żauq as his own ustad—although at this early stage in his life Azad went to few mushairahs and wrote almost no poetry. He claimed to have been especially intimate with Żauq, and to have received many confidences from him. It seems probable that he had a considerable amount of contact with Żauq, but we have only his word for the nature and intensity of their relationship. His most painstaking and fair-minded biographer, Aslam Farruḳhī, speaks of his “Żauq worship.”^[42] Azad certainly exaggerated at times: he claimed, for example, to have sat constantly at Żauq’s feet, absorbing both “outer” and “inner” (that is, mystical) wisdom, for “twenty years.”^[43] Azad made even more extravagant assertions as well. He claimed that under Żauq’s direction he had read, and made abridgements from, no fewer than 350 volumes of the work of classical poets; later the figure somehow became 750! These claims are quite impossible to accept, though they certainly show the kind of classical literary study Azad most admired.^[44]

Żauq’s death in 1854 must have been a heavy blow. But Azad eventually undertook a project that offered consolation: the editing of Żauq’s ghazals for publication. He planned to do this task slowly, carefully, and lovingly. Moreover, he pursued his own literary work. He took Ḥakīm āĠhā Jān “‘Aish” (Luxury) as his new ustad, in a working relationship that continued until 1857. Azad’s first known poem, a nineteen-verse “continuous ghazal” (Ġhazal-e musalsal), was published in the Dihlī Urdū Aḳhbār. The poem was a meditation on the fleetingness and untrustworthiness of life, and it was called “A History of Instructive Reversals.” It was published, with excellent timing, on May 24, 1857.^[45]

Alt̤āf Ḥusain Hali, born in 1837, was seven years younger than Azad; he came from an old family in the famous town of Panipat, north of Delhi.^[46] Although he was orphaned at the age of nine, he had an affectionate older brother (an inspector of police, who also wrote Persian poetry) and two older sisters who looked after him. He was a bright and promising child, tremendously eager to learn, and was given a traditional basic education. His first teacher was a Ḥāfiz̤, someone who had memorized the whole Quran; Panipat was “famous for the number of its Hafizes,”^[47] and Hali too achieved this formidable feat. Then he began to learn Persian; along with the language, he studied the history, literature, and especially poetry of Iran—but he always described these studies as “elementary.” As he grew older, he himself took the initiative in arranging for an Arabic teacher, but his lessons ended before he had a chance to make as much progress as he wished. He was left unsatisfied: “Although the spontaneous passion for learning in my heart was unbounded, I never had the chance for a regular and continuing education.”^[48] What he longed for was the classical Persian and Arabic training of a traditional Indo-Muslim scholar.

His brother and sisters, however, had other plans for him. When he was seventeen years old, they arranged his marriage to a cousin, Islām un-Nisā, and thus inducted him into the ranks of adulthood. They then pressured him to find work and augment the family income, which was none too large. The young Alt̤āf Ḥusain was a dutiful boy, and everyone in the family made sure he saw his duty clearly. Alt̤āf Ḥusain’s scholarly aspirations were obviously destined to wither on the vine. Given the circumstances, the time and place and culture in which he lived, this was a foregone conclusion.

Alt̤āf Ḥusain, however, then did the only truly astonishing, defiant, flagrant deed in his long, sober, impeccable life. He waited for a night when his new bride was at her parents’ house—and he slipped away. He was not yet eighteen, and had never been anywhere. Yet without hesitation he simply ran away from home. Hali himself, years later, gave his own account of this event: his relatives had “forced” him to marry, and unfortunately this “yoke that was placed upon my shoulders” meant that “apparently now the doors of education were closed on every side.” He took flight, and never apologized for it: “Everyone wanted me to look for a job, but my passion for learning prevailed.” Besides, he added in extenuation, “my wife’s family was comfortably off.”^[49]

Penniless, traveling alone for greater anonymity, he set out to walk the fifty-three miles to Delhi. Even after he arrived, he was sometimes homeless, and so often hungry that his health was affected. But he was able to slake his thirst for knowledge. In later years, far from having regrets, he looked back nostalgically on this time: “I saw with my own eyes this last brilliant glow of Delhi, the thought of which makes my heart crack with regret.”^[50]

In Delhi, he studied Arabic language and literature, including poetry and meter, at a flourishing, “very spacious and beautiful” traditional school (madrasah), the Madrasah of Ḥusain Baḳhsh.^[51] Many years later he described his cultural background at the time.

Although the old Delhi College was then in all its glory, I’d been brought up in a society that believed that learning was based only on knowledge of Arabic and Persian. Especially in the Panipat area, first of all nobody even thought about English education, and if people had any opinion about it at all it was as a means of getting a government job, not of acquiring any kind of knowledge. On the contrary, in fact: our religious teachers called the English schools barbarous. When I arrived in Delhi, at the school in which I had to live night and day, all the teachers and students considered graduates of the college nothing but barbarians.

Hali regretted that during his year and a half in Delhi he hadn’t even gone to look at Delhi College, and had never chanced to meet his distinguished contemporaries who were being educated there. He named three in particular: the great teacher and translator Maulvī Żakā’ullāh (1836-1907?), the famous novelist Nażīr Aḥmad, and Muḥammad Ḥusain Azad.^[52]

If he failed to meet his peers, he lost no time in seeking out the greatest of his elders: he often went to visit Ġhālib, and persuaded him to explain difficult passages in his Urdu and Persian poetry. Treating Ġhālib as an ustad, he showed him his own earliest ghazals. Ġhālib is said to have duly given him iṣlāḤ, “correction,” as an ustad should, and to have encouraged him to persist with his writing. Unfortunately, none of this early poetry—written under the pen name of “Ḳhastah”—has survived.

Hali lay low so successfully that for a year and a half his family had no idea at all where he was, or even whether he was alive or dead. There is no evidence that he would ever have voluntarily returned to them. But in 1855 they learned of his whereabouts, recaptured him, “compelled” him “forcibly, willy-nilly” (as he put it) to leave Delhi, and took him back to Panipat. He had the nerve to run away, but not the nerve to look his elders in the eye and defy them. So ended the great period of his education.

By 1856 Hali had an infant son, and he himself had recognized—or had been forced by family pressure to recognize—the need to find a job. He went alone to Hissar, without connections or references, and managed to get a position in the deputy collector’s office. The salary was small, but at least it would be steady. Hali did his work most conscientiously, and rapidly mastered the office routines. But by then it was 1857.^[53]

1857—the end of this particular world. An upheaval like an earthquake, opening a chasm so deep that no one could see to the bottom. It was the end of the court, and thus a profound “break in cultural as well as political tradition.”^[54] As Andrews puts it, “The renaissance at Delhi gave a sudden illumination to the age.…Light flickered and leapt up for a brief moment before it died away.” But the light did not die of its own accord—Andrews is very clear about that. The light was killed. “More than any other single cause, the Mutiny killed it.”^[55]

Notes

2. Beyond a Sea of Blood

The story of 1857 has been told and retold, from numerous points of view. It indeed began as a mutiny, and the “Mutiny” it has remained in the British historical imagination. It soon spread beyond the army, however, and thus became much more than a mutiny; South Asian historians often describe it as the “First War of National Independence.” For our present purposes we can call it the Rebellion.^[1] By whatever name, it had profound effects on the lives of virtually all urban North Indians.

Bahādur Shāh “Z̤afar,” poet-emperor and English pensioner, was utterly undone by the events of 1857. On the one hand, it has been argued that he was an ardent participant in the Rebellion—that he had been secretly informed about it in advance, that he tried energetically to take charge of it and give it an inclusive, nationalistic character.^[2] It has also been argued that although the Rebellion took him by surprise, at the crucial moment the “Imperial yearnings in his heart” suddenly awoke, and he “entered into the full spirit” of the rebels, for “rather than continue in slavery, it would be preferable even to die.”^[3] On the other hand, he has also been blamed for the collapse of the Rebellion: he failed to rise to this “great occasion” and uphold the kingship, so that although the common people participated in the Rebellion, “the elite remained prey to vacillation,” and “the English had the chance to destroy Delhi.”^[4]

No doubt the prospect of wielding in practice the power he had always claimed in theory was alluring. But Bahādur Shāh was eighty-two years old, and was never able to control the rebels—or even to restrain his own headstrong sons from atrocities like the killing of captured English women and children. He was almost certainly taken by surprise on May 11, when the first rebel soldiers arrived from Meerut and appeared beneath his balcony; he clearly disapproved of their ill-bred, unmannerly behavior. Once they seized the city and claimed him as their emperor, however, he displayed considerable activity on behalf of their cause. He became, in Spear’s words, “a contingently willing accessory after the fact.”^[5]

For he tried to restore order in the city, maintain communal harmony, raise and allocate revenues, and inspire the troops to fight the English instead of despoiling the citizens.^[6] His power was far from absolute, but it was also far from nonexistent. May 17: “The King summoned many of the Sepoys to his presence and spoke to them very severely.” June 17: “The King sent for the chief of the mutineers, and threatened to take poison unless greater discipline were enforced and the oppressions discontinued. The chief promised immediate compliance.” July 2: “The King said it was no use his giving orders, as they were never obeyed, and he had no one to enforce them, but his decree was that the English should be caused not to exist.” August 4: “ ‘We have here 60,000 men in the city, but they have not been able to win a clod of dirt from the English.’ ” August 22: “ ‘If the Sepoys would only leave the city, and employ themselves in collecting the revenue, I should be in a position to pay them, and to protect the lives and property of the citizens.’ ”^[7] His exasperated tone is not that of an absolute ruler, but neither is it that of a helpless, fearful victim.

The emperor’s leverage lay in the fact that the rebels could not afford to lose his services as their symbolic source of authority. Thus his frequent threats to withdraw his cooperation: to hold no more public audiences, to renounce the throne, to retire to some holy place, to “swallow a diamond” and die.^[8] Such threats were noted with pathos and hope in the Dihlī Urdū Aḳhbār:

His Majesty has issued a proclamation wherein he has drawn attention to the fact that the majority of the powerful and influential people cause misery to the loyal subjects of the Emperor.…If the prevailing state of affairs continues, His Majesty wrote, then he would be obliged, since he had little love for worldly goods, to retire to Ajmer, to the shrine of the Khwaja.…It is heard that the above-mentioned had a great effect on the audience when it was read out.^[9]

At other times, however, Bahādur Shāh made strongly anti-British remarks, and even composed martial verses that he sent to his commanding general: “May all the enemies of the Faith be killed today;/The Firinghis be destroyed, root and branch!”^[10] When the British recaptured Delhi on September 18, Bahādur Shāh hesitated, then ultimately refused to accompany the rebels in their flight from the city.

The unfortunate emperor had been placed from the start in an almost impossible position. The British, however, perceived (or chose to perceive) his court as the heart and soul of the Rebellion—and avenged themselves accordingly. They summarily executed a number of Bahādur Shāh’s sons and grandsons and other princes of the blood; still others were sentenced to life imprisonment. The Red Fort, which housed the Mughal court, had always been called the Auspicious Fort; so many of its inhabitants met dire fates that Ġhālib later renamed it the Inauspicious Fort.^[11] As for the emperor himself, he was held for a time in a humiliating kind of captivity, available to be stared at by chance British visitors. Finally he was placed on trial, on ill-conceived charges of sedition. Later historians would recognize that in fact he had never formally renounced his sovereignty: while he might be a defeated enemy king, therefore, he could not properly be considered a rebel.^[12] He was also charged with the death of the British women and children who had been murdered in the Red Fort.

At the trial, the prosecutor argued that “to Mussulman intrigue and Mahommedan conspiracy we may mainly attribute the dreadful calamities of the year 1857”; he sought to show “how intimately the prisoner, as the head of the Mahommedan faith in India, has been connected with the organisation of that conspiracy either as its leader or its unscrupulous accomplice.” Bahādur Shāh’s defense rested on the plea of helplessness: “All that has been done, was done by that rebellious army. I was in their power, what could I do?…I was helpless, and constrained by my fears, I did whatever they required, otherwise they would immediately have killed me.…I found myself in such a predicament that I was weary of my life.”^[13] The emperor was judged guilty on all counts, exiled to Rangoon, and kept under discreet house arrest; he was by this time in a condition of vagueness and partial senility. When he died a few years later, the British buried him secretly in an unmarked grave in a wide field, which was then sown all over with grass.^[14] The last surviving members of the Mughal dynasty were left in conspicuous and humiliating poverty; as Ġhālib later wrote to a friend, “The male descendants of the deposed King—such as survived the sword—draw allowances of five rupees a month. The female descendants, if old, are bawds, and if young, prostitutes.”^[15]

In 1857 Ġhālib was fifty-nine years old, partially deaf, and in uncertain health. He took no significant part in the Rebellion, though it appears that he prudently “continued to maintain relations” with Bahādur Shāh by composing celebratory verse and perhaps appearing once or twice at court.^[16] But he suffered much anxiety and grief, and endured financial hardship when his British pension ceased to arrive. For the most part he shut himself up in his house and began to write an elaborate history of what was happening—in ancient Persian, avoiding all Arabic words. In his history Ġhālib wrote of the disastrous effects of the revolt: one must, he said, “shed tears for the destruction of Hindustan,” which was a ruined land. “City after city lies open, without protectors.…House after house lies desolate, and the abodes of grieving men invite despoliation.”^[17] Delhi College, where Azad had studied, suffered the total loss of its library. The rebels looted the Persian and Urdu books, and tore the English books into fragments that “carpeted all the college gardens to a depth of two inches.”^[18] The prisons had been emptied, and the streets were in a state of anarchy; the city was full of the kind of lower-class ruffians with whom the aristocratic Ġhālib could never feel empathy. Perhaps most painful of all, the postal service had entirely broken down, so that Ġhālib—an indefatigable correspondent, writer of the most irresistible letters in Urdu literature—could no longer get news of his friends in other cities.

When the British recaptured the city in the autumn, however, things suddenly grew much worse. For several days after the assault, British troops ran wild, not only looting and plundering but also killing every able-bodied man they found. Then there followed “a more systematic reign of terror”—indiscriminate shootings, drum-head court-martials and summary hangings—that lasted for several weeks.^[19] During this period Ġhālib and his family led “a prisoner’s life,” barricaded inside their house, so deprived of all news that “our ears were deaf and our eyes were blind.” When Ġhālib’s brother died after many years of insanity, the curfew was so strict that it was difficult even to bury him. “And in this trouble and perplexity, a dearth of bread and water!”^[20]

Even so, Ġhālib was one of the luckier ones: his street contained some houses owned by courtiers of the loyalist maharaja of Patiala, who had arranged for special guards. He and some neighbors were eventually interrogated by a British officer. Ġhālib, ever the aristocrat, reported that the officer had “asked me my name and the others their occupation.” Ġhālib later claimed that he had established his credentials by producing the letter that acknowledged his ode to Queen Victoria. When asked why he hadn’t come over to the British camp, he replied, according to Hali’s account, “My rank required that I should have four palanquin-bearers, but all four of them ran away.” According to his own account, he described himself as “old and crippled and deaf,” unable to do anything but pray for English success. In any case, he was sent home again without harassment.^[21]

Apart from a few such privileged, barricaded, and guarded neighborhoods, however, almost all the people of Delhi, and especially the Muslims, were driven out of the city. Ġhālib said there were hardly a thousand Muslims left in the whole city, while many were living “in ditches and mud huts” outside its boundaries.^[22] They were still outside in December, shelterless in the cold and the winter rains. Not until early 1858 did the Hindus begin to return; the city regained something like a quarter of its former population. Mosques were occupied by troops; many beautiful old buildings had been damaged or destroyed in the fighting or were systematically razed by the British. It was not until July 1858 that the civil courts reopened, and only late in 1858 did Muslims gradually begin to reenter the city.^[23] It was in 1858 that Ġhālib wrote, in a private letter to a friend, an unusual verse-sequence (qit̤‘ah) full of bitterly direct description:

Every armed English soldier
can do whatever he wants.
Just going from home to market
makes one’s heart turn to water.
The Chauk is a slaughter ground
and homes are prisons.
Every grain of dust in Delhi
thirsts for Muslims’ blood.
Even if we were together
we could only weep over our lives.^[24]

Even by the end of 1858 a general permission to return had still not been granted, as Ġhālib noted; it was not given until November 1859, more than two years after the Muslims of Delhi had been expelled from their city—and the city to which they returned was irrevocably transformed.^[25]

A number of the changes made in the city were pointedly symbolic. After 1857 the densely built-up urban areas within three hundred yards of the Red Fort were razed to the ground. The fort itself was “almost entirely cleared of buildings, only a few relics of the old Mughal Palaces being allowed to stand,” with the resulting space occupied by “barracks for European troops.” The majestic Lahore Gate became a bazaar “for the benefit of the European soldiers of the Fort”; the famous Dīvān-e ‘ām (Hall of Public Audience) was “used as a canteen.” The general effect of the many kinds of punitive measures taken after the Rebellion was that people “had been taught to know their masters”; the Delhi area “received a lesson which will never be forgotten.”^[26] Sikh troops were quartered in the Jāma‘ Masjid until 1862; several other mosques were not restored until the 1870s, and the Sunahrī Masjid, outside the Red Fort’s Delhi Gate, not until 1913.^[27] The well-known Madrasah of Ḥusain Baḳhsh, where Hali had studied, stayed closed for eighteen years.^[28] And Delhi College, its library destroyed by the rebels, was kept closed by the British until 1864, when it reopened; but despite its steadily increasing emphasis on English at the expense of Urdu, it was closed again in 1877.^[29]

In the immediate aftermath of the Rebellion, moreover, the invasions, occupations, looting, slaughter, and expulsion of population were followed by further disasters. As Hali put it, after the British reconquest the city became a “howling wilderness.”^[30] In 1860, Ġhālib summed up the sufferings of Delhi:

Five invading armies have fallen upon this city one after another: the first was that of the rebel soldiers, which robbed the city of its good name. The second was that of the British, when life and property and honour and dwellings and those who dwelt in them and heaven and earth and all the visible signs of existence were stripped from it. The third was that of famine, when thousands of people died of hunger. The fourth was that of cholera, in which many whose bellies were full lost their lives. The fifth was the fever, which took general plunder of men’s strength and powers of resistance.^[31]

Normalcy was very slow in returning. Ġhālib continued to mourn the death of a great number of his friends—on both sides. Among the British dead, “some were the focus of my hopes, some my well-wishers, some my friends, some my bosom companions, and some my pupils in poetry.” And among the Indians, “some were my kinsmen, some my friends, some my pupils and some men whom I loved.” Now “all of them are laid low in the dust.”^[32]

The destruction of the neighborhoods, landmarks, and customs of the city was such that, to Ġhālib, Delhi itself had died: Delhi was “a city of the dead.” Did someone ask about Delhi? “Yes, there was once a city of that name in the realm of India.” Whenever his friends inquired about some notable Delhi person or occasion, he replied that Delhi was finished: “All these things lasted only so long as the king reigned.”^[33] In a pessimistic letter to a friend, Ġhālib quoted one of his own shi‘rs (two-line verses): “A sea of blood rolls its waves—if only this were all!/Wait and see what else now lies before me.”^[34] The image obviously rang true for him: two years later he described his life since the Rebellion as that of “a swimmer in a sea of blood in this city.”^[35]

But life had to continue somehow. From 1858 onward, Ġhālib sought to get his pension restored; this proved to be difficult, for he was suspected of collaboration with the rebels, a charge he vehemently denied. He needed the support of the chief commissioner, Sir John Lawrence: “I therefore wrote in the praise of this man of high splendour a ghazal on the theme of spring, congratulating him on his victories and singing of the freshness of the breezes of the unfolding season, and sent it off by post.” He received instructions to resubmit his petition through the commissioner; but when he did so, he was told that “there was no call whatever for a letter comprising nothing but praise and congratulation.”^[36]

Ġhālib had literary sufferings to endure as well. He himself had never kept copies of his own verse, and the two great private libraries in which his friends had carefully collected his works had been sacked and wantonly destroyed by British troops—as had the library at the Red Fort, too. He feared the loss of the poetry that was his life’s great achievement. “A few days ago a faqir who has a good voice and sings well discovered a ghazal of mine somewhere and got it written down. When he showed me it, I tell you truly, the tears came to my eyes.”^[37]

Finally, in May 1860, after so much uncertainty and so many rebuffs that Ġhālib had almost given up hope, the pension was restored and the arrears paid in full. Ġhālib received from Sir John Lawrence a formal letter in Persian, duly written on paper sprinkled with gold dust, thanking him for his laudatory ghazal. This, together with a regular pension he had been receiving for some time from the nawab of Rampur, eased his financial situation somewhat. In February of 1863, his courtly rights—to attend at government durbars and to have the traditional robe of honor bestowed on him—were finally restored. He attended his last durbar in December 1866, where for the first time since the Rebellion these ceremonial robes and gifts were actually presented to him.^[38] Although Ġhālib’s health was failing, and his finances were never what he wished, the flow of letters to and from his many friends and shagirds continued to sustain him. He died in 1869.

In 1857 Azad, twenty-seven years old, had been working with his father at the Dihlī Urdū Aḳhbār Press. The rebels arrived so suddenly, and seized the city so rapidly, that people were left stupefied. This abrupt downfall of the British was, as the Dihlī Urdū Aḳhbār editorialized, a reminder of the Day of Judgment, and was thus “meant to scourge us into obedience to the Divine Will.” It was an event so amazing as to be scarcely credible: “Did what we saw really take place in fact, or did it pertain to the realm of dreams?”^[39]

After the initial shock, Maulvī Muḥammad Bāqir successfully readjusted his loyalties. He apparently tried to save the life of his friend and former colleague, Francis Taylor, the principal of Delhi College, by hiding him from the mob that sacked the college and destroyed its library. The next day the presence of the fugitive was discovered; Francis Taylor, forced to flee in disguise, was caught and beaten to death in the street.^[40] But when Maulvī Muḥammad Bāqir published an article about the killings of various Englishmen, he went out of his way to blacken Francis Taylor’s character. With his years of experience in the collector’s office, Maulvī Muḥammad Bāqir then did what many others were doing: he reported to the new center of authority, the court. The emperor presented him with a robe of honor, and he became a regular advisor, performing a variety of administrative duties.^[41] It seems that on one occasion he even took to the field in command of “two companies of infantry and one of cavalry,” to rescue a revenue train that was being attacked by bandits on its way to Delhi.^[42]

The Dihlī Urdū Aḳhbār took note of the widespread looting, violence, oppression, and economic hardship, expressing the hope “that the Divine Dispenser might so will things that the present anarchy comes to an end and the cause of His Majesty’s worry is totally removed.”^[43] As the weeks wore on, Maulvī Muḥammad Bāqir’s editorials grew more hortatory and anti-British. He changed the name of the paper to Aḳhbār-e Z̤afar doubly appropriate since z̤afar means “victory”—and pointedly issued it on Sundays, “in defiance of the Christian sabbath.”^[44] He wrote at leastone pamphlet arguing that the fight against the English was a religious struggle (jihād), which it was the sacred duty of Muslims to support.^[45]

Azad himself reacted to the shock of the Rebellion by publishing, as we have seen, his first known poem, “A History of Instructive Reversals.” This nineteen-verse “continuous ghazal” appeared on May 24, 1857, about two weeks after the arrival of the rebels. The poem begins with a series of rhetorical evocations of famous dead kings (“Where is the realm of Solomon, and where the sovereignty of Alexander?”) but soon becomes altogether direct and immediate:

Right now it is said that the Christian community of yesterday
was the possessor of ascendant fortune (iqbāl), world-bestowing, world-upholding,
was the possessor of learning and skill and wisdom and cleverness,
was the possessor of splendor and glory and a powerful army.
There was no help! When there emerged
in the world the sword of wrath of the Lord of Fury,
all their jewels of wisdom could not be employed,
all the fingernails of devising and wisdom became useless,^[46]
wisdom and craft and knowledge and cleverness availed nothing—
the Telingas from the East [sic] killed them all right here.
This is an event that no one has ever seen or heard of—
the revolving of the heavens is a strange revolving!
Indeed, just open the eye of instruction a little, oh heedless one—
here, the lips of speech of the people of language are closed.
If you have eyes, the whole reality of the world has been revealed:
beware, oh heart—never place any trust in it!
For instruction, this event is enough for the people,
if God should give a steady wisdom and an alert heart.
What can I say—there’s not enough scope for a breath!
All are gaping like mirrors, with their backs to the wall,
that despite the Christian rulers’ wisdom and vision
they should be erased like this, all at once, without a trace in the world!
When Azad wanted a chronogram (tārīḳh) of this event,
his heart said, Say, ‘Oh you of sight, you should derive a lesson from it.’^[47]

Literarily speaking, this poem can only be called uninspired; but it has a unique historical interest. It is Azad’s only known reflection on the Rebellion, and it emerges from the very midst of the turmoil, from those few months in Delhi when the revolving—the “revolution”—of the wheel of fortune had indeed turned the world upside down.

In the poem the British are referred to only in religious terms, as “Christians,” and the Rebellion too is depicted entirely as a religious lesson arranged by God: it is a stern rebuke to the vanity of kings, and indeed to all human illusions of power. The fate of the Christians reveals “the whole reality of the world,” and “the people” are to take warning: “Beware, oh heart—never place any trust in it!” God may give you sovereignty one day, and the next day He may, without warning, utterly cast you down. The pages of history are full of famous cautionary examples, and now a new one has been added to the series. Azad’s view is typical of contemporary newspaper commentary on the Rebellion.^[48] Although nationalist, anticolonial, politically modernizing responses to the Rebellion no doubt existed, they do not seem to have been widespread within the Muslim elite of Delhi. Azad’s poem shows us how Maulvī Muḥammad Bāqir could change allegiances almost literally overnight: since God had chosen to overthrow one set of rulers and raise up another, what else should one do but accept His manifest verdict? Similarly, when a few months later God chose to restore the British to power, that too had to be accepted—and indeed, by then people must have been somewhat inured to such shocking but “instructive” reversals.

Azad himself apparently seconded his father’s journalistic efforts on behalf of the Rebellion; and after the British retook Delhi, Azad too became, as Farruḳhī writes, “a swimmer in this ocean of blood.” Maulvī Muḥammad Bāqir was arrested, and Azad was summarily expelled from his house at bayonet point, together with his whole joint family including old women and young children.^[49] As Azad later described the scene:

The soldiers of the victorious army suddenly entered the house. They flourished their rifles: “Leave here at once!” The world turned black before my eyes. A whole houseful of goods was before me, and I stood petrified: “What shall I take with me?” My eye fell on the packet of his [Żauq’s] ghazals. I thought, “Muḥammad Ḥusain, if God is gracious, and you live, then all this can be restored. But where will another ustad come from, who can compose these ghazals again?…While these exist, he lives even after his death; if these are lost, his name cannot survive either.” I picked up the packet and tucked it under my arm. Abandoning a well-furnished home, with twenty-two half-dead souls I left the house—or rather, the city. And the words fell from my lips, “Hazrat ādam left Heaven; Delhi is a heaven too. I’m his descendant—why shouldn’t I leave Delhi?” (450)

As they made their halting way out of the city, a stray bullet struck Azad’s year-old baby daughter; after some days in a coma, she died. Having wandered on foot for several days, half-starving, under conditions of the greatest hardship and danger, the travelers made contact with reliable friends. Azad sent the rest his family off to safety, but despite their tears and entreaties, he refused to go with them. Instead he went back to Delhi, to learn his father’s fate.^[50]

There he sought out a Sikh general who was an old friend of his father’s, and who now took pity on his plight. Disguised as the general’s groom, Azad followed him as he rode his horse past the field where Maulvī Muḥammad Bāqir and other prisoners were awaiting execution. Under these painful conditions, father and son exchanged a last long look. Two weeks afterward, Maulvī Muḥammad Bāqir was shot. Azad was hidden by his friend the general and then smuggled out of the city. Although details of this account may be uncertain—Azad’s father was probably not shot but hanged, and probably rather sooner than later—the main outline is at least plausible, and this is the account Azad passed down in his own family.^[51]

Then began a lost time in Azad’s life. There was rumored to be a British arrest warrant out for him; in fact, it was a remarkable piece of luck that he hadn’t been arrested along with his father. While his family stayed with relatives in a town near Delhi, he himself kept moving from city to city, fearing arrest, unable to find a secure niche. For two years or so he wandered, spending time in Lucknow, in Madras, in the Nilgiri hills, in Bombay, in Malwa, and elsewhere; then he spent longer periods in the Punjab, first in Jind, then in Jagraon, where he worked as a calligrapher in a newspaper office.^[52]

Finally, in early 1861 he reached Lahore, where a relative helped him get a low-level job in the postmaster general’s office. Azad was now working directly for the “Christian rulers” who had, only four years earlier, killed his father and destroyed his world. He held the postal job until the end of 1862. It is not clear what he did in 1863—except that during this whole period he was actively seeking a job in the Department of Public Instruction. In pursuit of this goal he composed his first book, a small textbook (now lost) for schoolgirls, and showed it to the appropriate officers. In February 1864, Azad was finally appointed to a clerical position in the Department of Public Instruction.^[53]

During this year he wrote another textbook, The Earring of Good Advice, also for schoolgirls. In this textbook he found occasion to speak elegiacally of “the renowned city, the ancient royal capital of India,” Delhi. “Although it’s been entirely devastated and destroyed, and the inhabitants have been slain and exiled and laid low in the dust, even in their ruined, poverty-stricken condition its people showed an elegance and sophistication that I haven’t seen anywhere else.”^[54] Azad struggled to get on with his life, but it was clear that he bore deep scars. Within a single month he had lost his father, his baby daughter, his work, his friends—and his city. The “terrible sufferings” of the Rebellion “had a crushing effect on his mind,” quenching his youthful high spirits, making him seem older than his age. Even years later, when he used to reminisce with an old friend about 1857, “all these talks ended in tears.”^[55]

Hali suffered less bitterly during the Rebellion. He was in Hissar, it will be remembered, working in the deputy collector’s office. Suddenly Hissar, like many other North Indian cities, was in turmoil. As Hali put it, the “mischief caused by rebellious soldiers broke out in India, and even in Hissar dire events manifested themselves, and government authority disappeared.”^[56] As was so often the case, the rebels in Hissar acted independently: word was brought to the emperor after the fact that five companies of soldiers, who had been joined by three hundred bandits (Mevatī), had murdered the collector and plundered the treasury, and were on their way from Hissar to Delhi.^[57]

Hali, “taking his life in his hands,” set out for Panipat. The roads were now very dangerous; during his journey he was set upon by bandits, and the horse on which he was riding was seized. By the time he at length reached Panipat, traveling on foot, enduring much hardship and danger, the fatigue and bad food had given him a case of dysentery so acute that he was sick for more than a year. Even after a famous physician (Ḥakīm) finally cured him, his stomach, chest, and lungs stayed weak all his life, so that he had to live with much more caution and restraint.^[58]

Although Panipat itself remained quiet during 1857, it rapidly filled with refugees who had been expelled from Delhi without money or possessions. Though only twenty years old, Hali worked so devotedly, compassionately, and soberly among the refugees that he seemed, it is said, like a much older man. Some of the refugees who had taken shelter in his own household stayed on and on. One of these was a ten-year-old girl whose whole family had been killed, and who lived for the rest of her long life with Hali’s family. Writing forty years later, Hali referred to the events of 1857 as “extremely tragic,” such that “even to describe them again as they happened is like rubbing salt into a wound.”^[59]

After the Rebellion itself was over, for a long time “the condition of the country was such that people were afraid to leave their houses. Factories, offices, schools, colleges were all closed.…They say that there was not a neighborhood in Delhi without its gallows,” writes Ṣāliḥah ‘ābid Ḥusain, Hali’s granddaughter and biographer. Hali stayed in Panipat for four years; as his health improved and most of the refugees left, he began studying in an impromptu but persistent way with the most eminent local scholars. But more children were born to him. With extra mouths to feed, the family’s finances grew even more straitened. It was time once more for Hali to look for work.^[60]

In 1861 Hali once again went to Delhi. There he led a hand-to-mouth existence of uncertainty and unemployment. In 1863, however, he fortunately encountered Nawab Muṣt̤afā Ḳhān “Sheftah” (1806-1869), who invited Hali to his city of Jahangirabad, near Meerut, to tutor his children. Sheftah was an important poet and biographer in his own right; his ustad had been the major Delhi poet Momin Ḳhān “Momin” (1800-1852). Since then, Sheftah had been a shagird of Ġhālib’s. Hali and Sheftah formed a warm friendship, and Hali stayed at Jahangirabad for the remaining years of Sheftah’s life. Hali treated Sheftah as an ustad, and later claimed that Sheftah’s correction (iṣlāḤ) of his poetry was even more useful than Ġhālib’s. Both Sheftah and Hali, however, shared a great respect and love for Ġhālib, and occasionally visited him in Delhi. Hali’s life in Jahangirabad was a quiet, retired, congenial one.^[61] It came to an abrupt end in 1869. In February, Ġhālib died; Hali wrote an elegy (marṡiyah) full of grief at the loss of such an ustad: “With his death, Delhi has died”; “There was one light in the city, and it is gone.”^[62] Late in the same year Sheftah too died, so that Hali lost both his ustads almost at once. During this same crucial period, Hali met Sir Sayyid Aḥmad Ḳhān, who was to play a large role in his future. And having no choice, Hali began to look for another job.^[63]

The Rebellion of 1857, together with its brutal, destructive, and long-lasting aftermath, marked the real end of aristocratic Muslim culture in North India. The effects of this deep slash through the fabric of nineteenth-century Indian history have been so profound that it is impossible to enumerate, or even envision, all of them. Metcalf concludes that the “most pervasive legacy” of the Rebellion was perhaps to be found in the “intangible sphere of human relations,” for “a year of bitter racial warfare left an abiding mark on all concerned.”^[64]

There was enormous physical destruction, especially in Delhi. The ruin wrought on lives and property in Delhi was in fact much greater than in any other rebellious city. People were haphazardly killed, systematically executed, imprisoned, expelled from the city, subjected to terrible hardships, arbitrarily stripped of all their property. Many of Delhi’s old Muslim families were almost entirely rooted out. Survivors were scattered and reduced to grief, helplessness, and silence. Libraries were looted, precious manuscripts lost, buildings razed, the city’s old culture devastated.^[65] After the initial “reign of terror” when British troops first retook the city, most of the continuing reprisals were selective and were directed against upper-class Muslims who were thought, with or without reason, to have had ties to the court.

Above all, after more than three hundred years the Mughal court itself was now gone—hopelessly gone, gone forever. Bahādur Shāh had left an equivocal legacy. He certainly joined with the rebels to at least some extent, as indeed his own imperial claims would have almost required him to do. But then he surrendered to the English, and during his “trial” he emphatically repudiated the Rebellion. Nostalgic sympathy for him was widespread: he was a romantic symbol of imperial grandeur and tragic loss. But his legacy could not provide a cultural rallying point for his demoralized people. Not until 1903 was any real effort made to locate his grave and build him a tomb. Even then it was a small effort, and the British created obstacles; only in 1934 was a modest tomb actually built.^[66] It was not for nothing that the Auspicious Fort had been renamed by Ġhālib the Inauspicious Fort.

The Mughal idea of the king as divinely ordained focus and center of the society, axis of the culture in time and space, was still very much alive in eighteenth- and nineteenth-century India. Even new would-be dynastic founders often aspired to such a vision of kingship. When Ṭīpū Sult̤ān assumed royal power (with Mughal approval) in Mysore in 1786, he felt empowered to “reconstitute the universe around himself.” By his command, “measures of distances and weights, names of towns, administrative departments and official titles, units of coinage, and the entire calendar including the days of the week, months, and years, were all transformed.”^[67]

Even as late as 1819, when Ġhāẓī ud-Dīn Ḥaidar, nawab of Avadh, assumed (theoretically) independent kingship—thus setting himself up with British encouragement as a rival to the Mughal dynasty—most of his implicitly universal claims, including a throne and royal canopy apparently based on the Peacock Throne, were drawn directly from Mughal precedent. He created new coins and a new dating system for them, a new royal coat of arms, a new and much more elaborate code of court etiquette based on the sacredness of his person, and a set of newly exalted titles for all and sundry including “Lord of the Age” for himself and “Lord of the World” and “Lord of the Era” for certain of his nobles.^[68] As we have seen, the British, too, had been drawn into this system, holding durbars and bestowing robes of honor, writing formal Persian letters on paper sprinkled with gold dust. These tendencies reached their height in Lucknow: the resident was attended wherever he went by no fewer than forty ceremonial mace-bearers, and “the Residency buildings themselves became ever more like a palace complex.”^[69]

Whatever the actual political facts, the medieval Mughal vision of kingship as absolute universal sovereignty was still widespread and powerful. When such a symbolically awesome king, the center and embodiment of a whole cultural world, falls in some irrevocable way, a great deal may fall with him. His people may well fear for their culture. Thus could Ġhālib write of the lost glories of Delhi, “All these things lasted only so long as the king reigned.” Since the king Bahādur Shāh was also the poet Z̤afar, and preeminently the patron of Urdu and Persian poets, it is not surprising that his fall tended to drag the classical poetry down with him. Azad later expressed surprise that even the Urdu language itself had survived the debacle: “Urdu emerged from Delhi—and its lamp ought to have been extinguished with the kingship of Delhi” (61). But survival meant living through a time of devastation and disaster. So many poems in various genres lamented the ruin of the city that a number of them were ultimately gathered into a melancholy anthology, The Sigh of Delhi (1863).^[70]

The loss, and the mourning, were painful enough. But the vengeful English often went out of their way, in those first months and years, to rub in the humiliation, to show their contempt for the whole culture that had presumed to give them such a horrible moral and practical shock as the “Mutiny” had been. In the immediate aftermath of 1857 many Englishmen wished “to raze Delhi to the ground, or at least to destroy the Jama Masjid,” and the “most bitter and widespread hostility was reserved for the Muslim community.”^[71] Many Muslims grieved for the rest of their lives: their ancient, much-cherished culture seemed to have been hopelessly discredited, even in their own eyes, by its ignominious collapse.

The British, “at the climax of their power,” confronted a Muslim community that was “at its lowest ebb”; even a Westernizer like Sir Sayyid Aḥmad Ḳhān feared that the Muslims could never again prosper or “receive esteem,” and considered emigrating to Egypt.^[72] “I could not even bear to contemplate the miserable state of my people,” he wrote. “For some time I wrestled with my grief and, believe me, it made an old man of me.” In any case, he planned to leave Delhi after his retirement from government service, for “everyone knew,” as Hali put it, that “he did not want to be constantly reminded of the awful conditions in which the Muslims of Delhi were living after the Mutiny.”^[73] Another survivor of this period, Maulvī Żakā’ullāh, showed a more typical reaction: he refused, even years later, to talk about his memories of what he had seen and experienced. To him “the shock of those last Mutiny days” had been “beyond all bearing,” so that he succumbed for a time to “a melancholy that bordered on blank despair.”^[74]

Decades later, Nażīr Aḥmad’s markedly pro-British son Bashīr ud-Dīn Aḥmad wrote of the period, “Delhi was very much suppressed, and so beaten down that—God forbid! There are still some people alive who saw the Rebellion; when I hear from them about its devastation and sufferings, my blood runs cold.” The Rebellion had “shaken the foundation of Delhi, and so destroyed it that even today it hasn’t been able to flourish.”^[75] As Sadiq put it very simply, “the whole system went down with a crash after the Mutiny.”^[76]

Notes

3. Reconstruction

The process of reconstruction had to start with basic, pragmatic concerns: finding a job, finding a way to live in the new world. In the years immediately following the Rebellion, Azad and Hali had to cut their coats according to their cloth. And since India was now to belong directly to the queen-empress, it was more and more clear that the only cloth available would be imported fabric. Quixotically aristocratic attitudes like that of Ġhālib, who rejected a job because he was not formally escorted to the interview, were no longer sustainable. It was less and less possible even to please the British in classic courtly ways, with odes to Queen Victoria and ghazals in praise of the commissioner; the British had started to de-Mughalize themselves.^[1]

Nor was there any real guidance from the older generation. Hali had grown up fatherless; Azad’s father had been executed by the British. Moreover, Azad and Hali had both lost their much-admired ustads, the mentors who were empowered to shape and guide their literary lives. This was an irretrievable loss, for it was clear that such ustads would never be seen again. “The molds in which they were shaped have been altered, and the breezes that nourished them have changed direction,” Hali later wrote of Ġhālib and his circle.^[2] “So there is now no hope at all of another such master of poetry being born in India,” Azad later wrote of Żauq, “for he was the nightingale of a garden that has been destroyed” (420).

Still, Azad and Hali had their lives to live. We have seen that Azad, after wandering for several years, ended up in Lahore in 1864, at the age of thirty-four, with a minor clerical job in the Department of Public Instruction—a job he had worked hard to get. As it happened, Lahore’s new Government College was also founded in 1864, with the remarkable Dr. G. W. Leitner as principal. Azad had been supplementing his office salary by tutoring Englishmen in Urdu; in 1864-65 he tutored Dr. Leitner, who formed an excellent opinion of him. Dr. Leitner, a scholar of Arabic, Persian, and Urdu, worked all his life to promote the development of Western learning in Indian languages. He was somewhat autocratic by temperament, but a most effective popularizer and shaper of opinion.^[3]

In 1865 Dr. Leitner founded what is commonly known as the Anju-man-e Panjāb, the “Punjab Society”—an organization “of which he became Secretary and, indeed, dictator.”^[4] Its objects were “the revival of ancient oriental learning, the advancement of popular knowledge through vernaculars, the discussion of social, literary, scientific, and political questions of interest, and the association of the learned and influential classes with the officers of the government.” Over time, the Anjuman succeeded in such projects as arranging public lectures, setting up a free library and reading room, compiling educational texts and translations in Indian languages, and establishing Lahore’s famous Oriental College. The Anjuman was actively supported by leading British officials, including the commissioner, the deputy commissioner, officers of the Department of Public Instruction, and even the lieutenant governor himself; it inspired the formation of similar societies in Delhi, Rawalpindi, Amritsar, Hissar, and elsewhere. The Anjuman was considered a great success: soon people in many cities began to manifest “a growing interest in vernacular literature impregnated with the spirit of the West.”^[5]

The Anjuman made Azad’s career. He threw himself energetically into its activities from the first. Most of its thirty-five original members were directly employed by the government; in fact, as Farruḳhī makes clear, “the whole Anjuman was called into being by Government fiat.” Azad himself, as a pillar of the Anjuman, was almost more royalist than the queen. In the first essay he ever read before the group, in February 1865, he thanked God for the government’s educational program and fully endorsed its paternalism: “If the parents don’t take care of their children, who else will?” In his second essay he argued that people ought to help themselves by their own efforts, and in his third essay he discussed measures for increasing trade.^[6] Azad’s Anjuman activities so solidly established him that he was sent by the government on a special information-gathering tour of Central Asia in 1865, and on a mission to Calcutta in 1866. His part in the Rebellion had left him under a cloud; but now that cloud had been entirely dispelled.^[7]

In 1866 Azad became a regularly paid lecturer on behalf of the Anjuman; in 1867 he became its secretary. He continued to work hard for the society. The minutes he kept show that among the subjects discussed at meetings were programs for the relief of the poor, the limitation of polygamy (to cases of the wife’s illness or barrenness), the suppression of foul language among women, the reduction of marriage expenses, and the improvement of the postal service. The papers Azad read before Anjuman meetings were well received; out of a total of 142 papers the Anjuman eventually published, twenty-two were Azad’s.^[8] Azad was so much in favor now that in early 1867 he was invited to a party given by the lieutenant governor and presented with a “trinket” in token of his services.^[9] From March through December 1867 Azad produced no fewer than thirty-six lectures and essays, on all manner of cultural and social topics; he also edited the Anjuman’s journal. Gradually his lecture and essay topics came to be drawn more and more from the realm of literature.^[10] He also wrote another school textbook, the extremely successful Stories of India (Qiṣaṣ ul-hind).^[11]

In 1869 Azad was appointed assistant professor of Arabic at Government College, on Dr. Leitner’s recommendation; with this the best period of his life began. But it was never a bed of roses. In 1870 he started to edit a newspaper for the Anjuman, but the paper was soon accused of being English-influenced to an unacceptable degree, and in 1871 Dr. Leitner ordered it handed over to someone else. The files of the Anjuman were also taken from Azad, and it was clear that Dr. Leitner no longer looked upon him with complete favor. Still, Azad was able to enjoy his teaching and get on with his literary work.^[12] His students remembered him fondly: his lectures about Persian and Urdu poetry were fascinating, and he often treated the boys to iced lemonade after class. He became a well-known school character: he wore a long loose robe (chuġhah), with one sleeve “kept out of use and slung at his back,” and is said to have been followed around the campus by a riding pony that he never rode. Azad not only won loud applause in the school’s mushairahs but sometimes held small Urdu mushairahs in his own classes as well.^[13] His life in Lahore was now settled and productive.

Then in 1870 Hali too arrived in Lahore. He had been looking for a job, and had just found one with the Punjab Government Book Depot. His new job involved going over books that had been translated from English into Urdu, editing them and checking them for mistakes. “I stayed in Lahore and did this work for almost four years,” Hali later wrote. “From it I acquired a general feeling for English literature, and somehow or other my admiration for Eastern—and above all Persian—literature began gradually to diminish.”^[14]

Azad and Hali met for the first time in Lahore. It might have been social contacts that brought them together, or perhaps it was the Anjuman and its activities. Sharing as they did a deep, nostalgic love for the old lost Delhi, and seeing eye-to-eye on many literary questions, they became friends; and their friendship endured through the years.

On May 9, 1874, Azad delivered to the Anjuman his famous lecture on the reform of Urdu poetry. The audience included a number of Englishmen of high official rank (director of public instruction, high court judge, secretary of the Punjab government, colonel, commissioner, deputy commissioner). The text of Azad’s speech was printed the next day in a local newspaper, and there is no doubt about the boldness of his message: he called for a new Urdu poetry and a new poetics, both based on English models. The traditional adornments of poetry have now fallen into desuetude, he argued. “New kinds of jewelry and robes of honor, suited to the conditions of the present day, are shut up in the storage-trunks of English—which are lying right here beside us, but we don’t realize it.”^[15]

In the course of his speech he accused classical Urdu poetry of ignoring the Indic side of its heritage, the colloquial language of Braj Bhasha with its simplicity and expressive vigor, in favor of the charms of Persian: Urdu poets had “reproduced in Urdu a photograph (foṭogrāf) of all the meters, and interesting and colorful ideas, and types of literary composition, found in Persian.” This had indeed given Urdu not only sophistication and polish but also “the power of expressing, through metaphors and similes, extremely subtle and refined thoughts.” However, it had also led to the growth of dark, obscure tangles of poetic verbiage, in which meaning had been reduced to a kind of firefly: “now it lights up, now it vanishes.”^[16] Moreover, the verses in this rich language were devoted to an extremely narrow, limited circle of traditional maẓmūns (themes), mostly those of love: “some to the joy of union, many to longings, even more to bewailing separation; to wine, to the cupbearer, the spring, the autumn, complaints against the heavens, and flattery of the powerful”—all “absolutely imaginary” topics. Urdu poetry languished in captivity within this “limited circle” of related themes, and must be helped to break free.^[17]

At the heart of Azad’s talk was an emotional plea for a radically new vision of the nature and goals of poetry:

Oh gardeners of the Garden of Eloquence! Eloquence is not something that flies along on the wings of exaggeration and high-flying fancy, or races off on the wings of rhyme, or climbs to the heavens by the force of verbal ingenuity, or sinks beneath a dense layer of metaphors. The meaning of eloquence is that happiness or sorrow, attraction or repulsion, fear or anger toward something—in short, whatever feeling is in our heart—should as we express it arouse in the listeners’ hearts the same effect, the same emotion, the same fervor, as would be created by seeing the thing itself.^[18]

The touchstone of poetry was thus to be its power to express and communicate natural feelings—feelings, reactions to the world, which are first present in the poet’s heart, and are then passed on to the listeners as well. Verbal adornments in poetry were to be treated like salt in food: they should be used in small, judiciously planned quantities.

Azad made it clear that he did not underestimate the difficulty of this task, or the seductive power of the old poetry. But he warned that if the effort was not made, the old poetry would decay into hopeless obsolescence, and Urdu would end up with no poetry at all. He then explained candidly, “Although some of my countrymen and myself have long been aware of these matters, the reason I speak about them now is that I see that lately our government, and its officers whose hearts have taken responsibility for our education, have turned their attention in this direction.”^[19]

Azad’s speech was followed by the remarks of Colonel W. R. M. Holroyd, the director of public instruction. Speaking in English, Colonel Holroyd began, “This meeting has been called to discover means for the development of Urdu poetry which is in a state of decadence today.” Quoting the lieutenant governor, Colonel Holroyd emphasized the usefulness of poetry as a teaching tool and deplored the dearth of poetry suitable for the classroom. To fill this need, he suggested that verses from Mīr, Żauq, Ġhālib, and others should be compiled, “aiming at moral instruction, and presenting a natural picture of our feelings and thoughts.”^[20]

At the end of his speech Colonel Holroyd proposed that the Anjuman should start a new mushairah series, but that instead of setting the traditional formal pattern line (miṣra‘-e t̤araḥ) to which all the poetry should conform, the Anjuman should “propose a certain subject on which the poets should write.” He had high ambitions for this scheme: “Should this proposal succeed, the year 1874 would be a landmark in the history of India, and people would remember the poets through whose efforts poetry rose out of decadence and reached the height of perfection.” He concluded, “I propose that we should hold monthly meetings, and that for the next month the poets should write in praise of the rainy season.”^[21] This meeting turned out to be the most memorable and controversial in the Anjuman’s whole history.

Azad was immediately attacked by a number of his contemporaries for his proposed new poetics. He was accused of writing a language that was “outwardly Urdu and inwardly English, such as the present rulers want to create.” His rejection of the traditional repertoire of poetic adornments and figures of speech was “as if some beautiful woman were stripped of her jewelry and clothing, and made to stand absolutely naked.” After all, “without metaphors and similes, there’s no pleasure in poetry!” And far from being restricted to themes of love, “Urdu poetry has incorporated every kind and every sort of maẓmūn, so excellently and subtly that if a hundred societies are formed, and make such futile efforts for a hundred years, and give out a hundred thousand rupees as a reward, they still won’t be able to improve on it!” In short, Azad was exhorted to honor Żauq and Ġhālib and to stop trying to “ruin Urdu poetry by remaking it in the English style.”^[22] He also, however, received a certain amount of support.^[23]

As for Hali, he seems to have welcomed the new mushairah series.^[24] A quarter of a century later, he diplomatically divided the credit for the initiative: “Under the auspices of Colonel Holroyd, director of public instruction, Punjab, Maulvī Muḥammad Ḥusain Azad fulfilled his longstanding desire—that is to say, in 1874 the foundation was laid for a mushairah absolutely new of its kind in India.” Hali noted that he himself had shared in the mushairah series by writing four maṡnavīs (narrative or reflective poems)—on “The Rainy Season,” “Hope,” “Patriotism,” and “Justice.”^[25] He spelled out the goal of the project: “that Asian poetry, which has become entirely the domain of love and exaggeration, might be broadened as much as possible, and that its foundation might be laid on realities and events.”^[26] And he specifically urged the organization of more such “new-style mushairahs.”^[27]

The Anjuman’s new mushairahs proceeded exactly along the lines laid down by Colonel Holroyd. After the first one praised “The Rainy Season,” the second addressed itself to “Winter.” This second mushairah went so well that the official journal of the Anjuman predicted full success in “removing from Urdu poetry licentious subjects and obscene images, and replacing them by scenes descriptive of things in this world.” After the third mushairah, on “Hope,” a sarcastic newspaper article sneered that “the poets of the Punjab and of Delhi have well understood the intention of the director of public instruction”—which was that they should “abandon the mention of wine and song” in order to “describe the phenomena of nature.”^[28]

Then followed “Patriotism,” “Peace,” “Justice,” “Compassion,” “Contentment,” and “Civilization.” By this time, a great many poets were attending, some from far away; still others who were unable to attend sent their poems to be read. But many of the poems were full of the “worn-out maẓmūns” that Azad wished to drive out of circulation. At the fourth mushairah, people were said to have listened “all ears” to Hali’s poem on “Patriotism,” while when Azad’s turn came his delivery was praised but his poem found to be in need of iṣlāḤ, “correction.” At the fifth mushairah a modernist newspaper correspondent complained that Hali was still using the old maẓmūns: he “again mentioned wine and drunkenness, the nightingale and the rose, and destroyed the hopes one had conceived for his talent.” By the sixth mushairah it was reported that “Hali’s poem was, as usual, the high point,” and he was praised as “the only glory of these gatherings.” Strict generic standards were maintained: some poets who had inappropriately brought odes or satires (Ḥajv) were forbidden to recite them. Colonel Holroyd was very pleased with the mushairahs.^[29] And he was not the only one: at some point Hali wrote a brief but extravagant Persian poem, “Verse-sequence in Praise of the Kindness and Generosity of the Honorable Colonel Holroyd.”^[30]

But the mushairahs became the center of much controversy. It was announced that poets who distinguished themselves would be awarded not merely prizes but monthly stipends as well, and this raised the stakes considerably. A newspaper called Panjābī Aḳhbār began a kind of vendetta against Azad, making a series of charges: that he was an incompetent poet and no real shagird of Żauq’s, but only a kind of young “nephew”; that he was arrogant and put on superior airs; that he presided over the mushairahs in a biased way; that he quarreled with senior poets, who he feared would eclipse him; that he used his influence unfairly, to manipulate the prize giving in favor of junior poets; that he made the mushairahs “theresort of youngsters, green-grocers, and confectioners,” among whomhe could easily shine.^[31] Azad’s own poems were repeatedly subjected to the most exacting kind of iṣlāḤ and were invariably found by hostile critics to be wanting. One criticism was especially ironic: Azad, who reproached Urdu poetry for excessive borrowing of imagery from Persian, was accused of depicting, in his own long maṡnavī on “Winter,” entirely foreign and fantastic scenes. “Has there ever been such cold in our country, that the rivers froze into ice, and people began crossing them without boats?” Azad’s reindeer, sleighs, and perpetual snows came in for marked disapproval.^[32]

Azad felt the attacks keenly, especially since it happened that no shagird or admirer came forward at the time to respond on his behalf. However, he behaved with dignity in this difficult situation. He has been accused by ‘Abd ul-Ḥaq of being jealous of Hali’s greater popularity as a poet. Whether or not this was the case, he apparently did think that the venomous newspaper articles, although they appeared anonymously, were composed by a shagird of Hali’s. Azad seems to have felt that if Hali didn’t encourage the newspaper attacks, neither did he do anything to discourage them. For a time there was a coolness between the two. But, as Farruḳhī points out, it could not have been of major importance, for ten years later they were still exchanging warm and friendly letters.^[33]

One person who did encourage and support Azad was Sir Sayyid Aḥmad Ḳhān. He advised Azad to ignore the critics and recommended a strong and simple literary creed: “Bring your work even closer to nature (nechar). The extent to which a work comes close to nature is the extent to which it gives pleasure.” Sir Sayyid took the same line in an article in his own journal Tahżīb ul-Aḳhlāq (The cultivation of morality) in 1875: he praised Hali, invoked Milton and Shakespeare, and called for a “natural poetry” (necharal po’iṭrī).^[34] Another journal under his influence lamented the dearth in Urdu of poetry “with a feeling for nature” and maintained that the date of the first “mushairah for natural poetry” marked “the beginning of the improvement of Urdu.” It urged Urdu poets to “turn at last toward natural subjects and seek inspiration from the ideas of Milton and Shakespeare”—to write not just about “love and imagination,” but about “real events” and “visible objects.”^[35]

It seems that there were nine mushairahs altogether, ending in March 1875. Why did they end? Certainly the mushairah series generated a damaging competition for money and prestige; personal conflicts and rivalries were responsible for many of the attacks on Azad’s leadership. Sadiq argues that the mushairah series ended because it could not please its audience: “The academic verse it produced failed to touch the heart of the generation to which it was addressed.”^[36] According to Dr. Leitner, the “collapse” came because the series aggravated its participants: the “poets did not want to be told by any one that they had, hitherto, debased their genius by celebrating love”; they refused to accept “dictation in poetic inspiration.”^[37] Taking a longer view, Farruḳhī maintains that the mushairah series ended not because it failed, but because it succeeded. The officers of the Department of Public Instruction “came to feel that it had fulfilled its purpose”: the new literary movement had now been well launched and was gradually spreading by itself.^[38] The Anjuman’s own journal indeed proclaimed success: the mushairahs “will leave permanent traces” on the young; thus “the moral purpose which the founders of the mushairah had in view above all else will be attained.”^[39]

And what of the real, inner relationship of Azad and Hali to all this? Sadiq takes a cynical view: far from being “a spontaneous growth” based on real cultural needs, the new poetry was “an exotic tended and watered by official patronage.” Government patronage was the crucial factor, and government employees could not afford to disregard it. “The fact is that both Azad and Hali wrote to order at this stage.”^[40] Farruḳhī takes a more generous view: though all the government really wanted was some new textbooks for use in the schools, Azad himself saw his chance and “took advantage of this movement” for his own purposes, seeking to “turn the face of Urdu poetry in a new direction,” widen its range, and free it from its narrow circle of concerns. Azad had in fact expressed some such wish as early as 1867.^[41] As we have seen, Ṣāliḥah ‘ābid Ḥusain makes similar claims for Hali.

The psychological truth of the situation is surely impossible to disentangle. People tend to adjust their behavior to suit the strong concerns of powerful patrons: it would not be surprising, under the circumstances, if Azad or Hali had indeed in some fashion “written to order.” But people also tend to identify with the institutions that shape their lives: Azad and Hali would have been unusual if they had been entirely unaffected by the milieu of the Department of Public Instruction, especially when Colonel Holroyd’s views were couched in a rhetoric of solicitous concern for Urdu and its “decadent” condition.

In fact, both Azad and Hali were deeply ambivalent about the loss of the old poetry and its projected replacement with the new. Hali, even as he participated in the new mushairah series, also recited at another Lahore mushairah during the same year an elegy that mourned the irretrievable loss of the old world of Delhi: “Oh friend, don’t speak of Delhi as it used to be,/I cannot possibly bear to hear this story.” Hali identified the loss of the poets of the pre-1857 generation in Delhi with the loss of poetry itself: “Poetry is already dead, now it will never live again, friends,/Don’t torment your heart by remembering and remembering it.”^[42] Azad’s own inner turmoil was even more poignant. As Farruḳhī puts it all too accurately, “He struggled his whole life long to adopt a Western way of thinking; he advocated the development of new concepts and new principles; but mentally he lived in the past.”^[43]

The new mushairahs ended after less than a year, but the conflicts they precipitated lived on—and gathered strength. Both Azad and Hali spent much of the rest of their lives with literary storms swirling around them. They never entirely stopped trying to reconstruct the endangered mansion of Urdu poetry. Which of the old timbers should be reinforced and refinished, and which ones were hopelessly rotten and had to be removed? After the restoration, what new kind of structural integrity could be achieved? If it was not quite necessary to destroy the mansion in order to save it, it was certainly necessary to pull down parts of it in order to shore up the rest. The cause was urgent, and it absorbed the fullest energies of these two powerful minds.

Azad stayed on in Lahore for the rest of his life. For years he taught at Government College, and wrote books. Most conspicuously, he wrote school textbooks; they gained him a great popular reputation, and Stories of India was a perennial favorite. By the early 1880s he had written twenty-three textbooks in all, of which eighteen were published in his lifetime. Most were in Urdu, with a few devoted to Persian or Arabic language and literature. Azad’s prose style, in his textbooks as elsewhere, won him lasting fame. “In addition to being the greatest prose stylist of Urdu, Azad is our most important educational writer as well.”^[44]

From about 1875 to 1877 Azad worked on The Wonder-World of Thought (Nairang-e ḳhiyāl, 1880), a set of thirteen allegorical essays, mostly by Samuel Johnson (seven) and Joseph Addison (four), that he translated—or rather transcreated—into Urdu.^[45] These selections were introduced by two prefatory essays, in which Azad further developed the basic themes of his “new poetry” lecture of 1874. He continued to urge radically Westernizing approaches to poetic problems: “Just as English arts and sciences are improving our clothing, houses, conditions, thoughts, and knowledge, in the same way English literature too goes on giving iṣlāḤ to our literature.” He concluded with an exhortation to writers of Urdu: they must create such a powerful and living language that the Indians will think the age of Mīr has come again, and “the English will say, ‘Shakespeare’s soul has emerged in India.’ ”^[46] Hali wrote a review in which he strongly praised The Wonder-World of Thought; he spoke of Azad as writing a new and useful kind of book, seeking to “express the poetic thought of a broad, learned, refined, and regulated language like English, by means of a limited and unregulated and imperfect and unlearned language like Urdu.”^[47]

Also in 1880 Azad published his masterpiece, Water of Life (āb-e Ḥayāt). It was a magnificent achievement, recognized widely and immediately as the definitive history of Urdu poetry. Hali wrote a long and glowingly favorable review.^[48]Water of Life at once became, and has remained, the single most influential sourcebook for both anecdotes and historical theories about Urdu poetry. The first edition sold out quickly. Azad published a much revised and expanded second edition in 1883; Hali was one of the friends and correspondents who helped him gather new material for it. Both The Wonder-World of Thought and Water of Life were incorporated into the official Punjab University examination curriculum. Sadiq calls Water of Life “one of the most brilliant reconstructions of the past that we possess.”^[49] If Azad had done nothing else except write this book, he would still be one of the most important figures in Urdu literature.

Azad’s life had always had rocky patches, and it became even rockier toward the end. In 1875 one of his sons died, and 1876 another son died as well. Azad’s relationship with Dr. Leitner deteriorated further: Dr. Leitner, with whom he had had an unsatisfactory collaboration on a book, now found him “as inaccurate as he is occasionally brilliant,” given to “intrigue,” and definitely “unworthy of trust.”^[50] In 1877 a beloved aunt who ran his household died. In 1883 Government College was placed under the jurisdiction of Punjab University; with his exuberant gift for metaphor, Azad envisioned the university as a frightful witch eating the college alive. He was anxious about his job, but then in 1884 he was finally confirmed as a professor of Urdu in the university. At about this period his house caught fire. And—the worst blow of all—his beloved and talented daughter Amat us-Sakīnah suddenly died. As the grieving father wrote, “She was in truth more precious than seven sons, when I was writing she was my right hand; her death has shattered my heart.” Azad was so affected by this blow that for a time he lost his mental balance.^[51]

Obtaining leave from his teaching position, he planned a trip to Iran, his family’s ancestral home, to gather books for his library. His nine-month tour in 1885-86 included visits to a number of cities in Iran, then a return through Afghanistan. The trip was generally successful, and Azad lectured and wrote about his travel experiences. In 1887 he began working to create the “Azad Library.” He obtained a small grant of government land for it and managed to pay for the library building himself. The library, and the rare books with which he endowed it, were much praised; Azad was soon awarded the honorific title “Sun among the Learned” (Shams ul-‘ulamā).^[52] Azad also finished work on two books about the Persian language, literature, and culture, for which he had been collecting material for many years. Of these, On Iranian Poets (Suḳhandān-e fārs) was much the more important. It was completed in 1887, but was not published until 1907—fully twenty years later.^[53]

The reason for this hiatus was the tragedy of Azad’s later life: the attacks of insanity that began increasingly to afflict him. His madness came on gradually, but he was legally certified in 1890 and was retired on a pension. For the last two decades of his life, intervals of complete lucidity alternated with abrupt descents into madness. Farruḳhī suggests several causes: his too-intense work on editing the ghazals of Żauq; his grief over his daughter’s death; and his sufferings during 1857. Moreover, he had had “fifteen or sixteen” children, but except for one surviving son, āĠhā Ibrāhīm, he saw them all die “before his eyes” at early ages. His madness took pathetic forms. Sometimes he used a planchet to summon the spirits of Mīr and other Urdu poets. Sometimes, suffering terribly from insomnia, he paced the floor all night, reciting verses, calling on the great ustads, hearing their voices, replying to their words. In one fit of madness he even set out on foot for Delhi.^[54]

At another time, he managed somehow to reach Aligarh, where he appeared without warning at the house of the amazed Sir Sayyid Aḥmad Ḳhān. He told his host that Abu’l-Faẓl and other spirits had been speaking to him—dictating a book, which he was taking down in their own words. This book, The Court of Akbar (Darbār-e akbarī), grew into a massively long and extravagant paean to Akbar for his religious tolerance and other qualities. It was colorful, vivid, anecdotal, idealizing, repetitive, full of long authorial asides—and so seductively written that it won immediate popularity and remains a favorite today. Azad worked on it at intervals for twelve years, and it was finally published in 1898. All accounts agree that Azad’s madness was fitful: for five minutes, ten minutes, half an hour, he would be entirely his normal self, then suddenly an attack would overcome him. But remarkably enough, he not only continued to write, creating a series of bizarre and fascinating books, but produced some works that were actually published. Over the years, though, the lucid intervals grew fewer, and the madness worse.^[55] Azad died in Lahore in 1910, at the age of eighty. Hali enshrined the date of his death in a chronogram: “Urdu literature has ended.”^[56]

While Azad lived and died in Lahore, Hali never did feel at home there; he missed Delhi, and seized the first possible chance to go back. This chance came in 1875, when he was offered the post of head Arabic teacher in the Delhi Anglo-Arabic College. Hali taught in this school for the next twelve years. His growing admiration for Sir Sayyid, combined with the influence of the Lahore mushairah series, made him dissatisfied with the state of Indo-Muslim poetry and culture in general. This discontent gave rise to his most famous poem, usually known as the Musaddas-e Ḥālī (1879). In 456 six-line stanzas (musaddas) the poem, which Hali called “Madd ojazr-e Islām” (The high tide and low tide of Islam), deplored the “present decline and lowness of the Muslims’ condition.”^[57] The Musaddas was published first in Sir Sayyid’s reformist journal Tahżīb ul-Aḳhlāq, and then—since it became a tremendous popular success—over and over again in pamphlet form. Azad is said to have snidely compared the didactic verse of the Musaddas to the bland, boring flavor of roasted chick-peas: it was, he reportedly said, neither sweet nor spicy.^[58]

Hali next wrote a book that looked backwards: it was The Life of Sa‘dī (Ḥayāt-e Sa‘dī, 1884-86), an admiring biographical and literary study of the great thirteenth-century Persian poet. At about the same time, he endured a heavy personal grief: his beloved older brother fell sick, came to Delhi for treatment, and died after a protracted illness. In 1887 Hali received a notable reward for his literary achievements: he was granted a pension for life by Sir āsmān Jāh, chief minister of the state of Hydera-bad. The arrangement was mediated by Sir Sayyid, who asked Hali how much the pension should be; with characteristic simplicity, Hali named exactly the amount of his salary as a teacher. Hali then retired from the Anglo-Arabic College and returned to Panipat, where he lived for the rest of his life.^[59] But he did travel a bit, especially to Aligarh, where he served as a kind of poet laureate for Sir Sayyid’s controversial Muhammedan Anglo-Oriental (M. A. O.) College: he composed and recited suitable poems to mark important events in the life of the college.^[60]

Hali’s poems gradually grew so numerous that it was time for them to be collected and published in a volume. This volume reflected the duality of his poetic history and sensibility. It contained unabashedly traditional poems: many ghazals (including the one containing his elegiac lament for Delhi), some quatrains (rubā‘ī), odes, and chronograms. But it also included a number of poems that, while they observed the rules of traditional forms like the verse-sequence and the tarkīb band, were nevertheless very much in a new style: passionately hortatory and didactic, seeking to inspire action in the real world. While some of these poems were moralistic in a general way—urging, for example, courtesy, dignified behavior, kindness to servants, cleanliness, financial prudence, better treatment of women—others were more partisan and contentious. Hali defended Sir Sayyid by name against charges of irreligious behavior; he went on the attack against Sir Sayyid’s enemies; he paid tribute to the M. A. O. College; he composed long versified addresses for meetings of the Muhammadan Educational Conference. He also called for poetic renewal (“The Decline of the Poetry of Delhi”) and took a surprisingly strong nationalist line (“The Freedom of England and the Slavery of India”).^[61]

By way of a preface to this volume, Hali wrote a long essay known as the Introduction (Muqaddamah) (1893), setting forth his own views on poetry. This essay became a small book in itself, and is by far the most influential work of Urdu literary criticism ever written. It will be discussed at length in the final part of the present study.

During his later life, Hali lived more and more in retirement. By 1896 he had prepared a small separate house, where he could live and work apart from his family and visitors. There he completed his other greatest literary achievement, A Memoir of Ġhālib (Yādgār-e Ġhālib, 1897); it contained anecdotes, selected verses, and a lucid, unpretentious, deeply affectionate portrait of Ġhālib as a person. Today, this elegant and nostalgic memoir is perhaps even more popular than the Introduction.^[62]

Hali had long had a close, mutually admiring friendship with Sir Sayyid Aḥmad Ḳhān. When Sir Sayyid died in 1898, Hali lost the man who was the ustad of his mature years, the most vigorous and unfailing supporter of his all-too-controversial literary work. In his last major work, An Immortal Life (Ḥayāt-e jāved, 1901), Hali paid tribute to his close friend and mentor. To his disappointment, this biography never found much favor with the public; its thousand-page length and hero-worshiping tone were perhaps largely responsible.

In 1904 Hali was officially awarded the title of “Shams ul-‘ulamā”—the same title that had been bestowed on Azad. He continued to write much occasional verse and many essays along reformist lines. One of his favorite causes was the education of women. His didactic novel Conversations among Women (Majālis un-nisā, 1904-5), originally written during his days in Lahore, earned a government prize of four hundred rupees arranged by Colonel Holroyd and was widely used in girls’ schools; his poem “In Praise of the Silent” (“Chup kī dād,” 1906) paid homage to women’s unsung virtues.^[63] Like Azad, he always managed to make time to write school textbooks; the range and extent of his literary output is remarkable.^[64] And he too, like Azad, founded a library—using money he collected from the citizens of Panipat in memory of Queen Victoria when she died in 1901.^[65] For the occasion, he composed two elegies in her honor.^[66] Hali died in 1914.

Azad and Hali were denied by history the chance to feel about Urdu poetry the way the great classical ustads had felt. They were unable to feel the supreme confidence shown by Ġhālib when writing to Bahādur Shāh—a confidence that impatiently assumed both his individual mastery, and the self-evident, unchallengeable excellence of the literary tradition within which he worked. Azad and Hali were of the generation hardest hit by the deep slash of 1857. Their lives were almost cut in half by its force. They had grown up in the old world, which they had deeply loved. They were forced to witness its terrible death throes; and then they had to live most of their lives in the new world.

They not only saw their culture being torn apart in the outer world, but felt it collapsing within their hearts. Both of them devoted their best energies to shoring up a framework within which the past could survive—and on which the future could build. This sense of mission gave a compelling sincerity and urgency to their arguments. Moreover, both were immensely talented: they managed to give their words an impetus that remains powerful even a century later. To a surprising extent, Urdu poetry is still imagined and described in the very terms they used; the house still stands as they reconstructed it.

Notes

4. The Water of Life

We have had a glimpse of Azad, forced to flee in confusion from Delhi in 1857, snatching up the packet of Żauq’s ghazals and tucking it under his arm. This vivid image, like so many others, was created for us by Azad himself in his masterpiece, Water of Life. Azad made his feelings at the time vivid as well: “Hazrat ādam left Heaven; Delhi is a heaven too. I’m his descendant—why shouldn’t I leave Delhi?” (450). The bitterness and poignancy of his words linger in the memory. Azad’s magic with words has proved so potent that even the hostile critic ‘ābid Peshāvarī has called Water of Life “the most often reprinted, and most widely read, Urdu book of the past century.”^[1]

Water of Life reconstructed the “lost heaven” of the old Delhi culture, to keep its memory alive into the future. In the introduction, Azad explained his reasons for writing. The passage is so important that it deserves to be quoted at length.

Moreover, those with new-style educations, whose minds are illumined by light from English lanterns, complain that our tazkirahs describe neither a poet’s biography, nor his temperament and character; nor do they reveal the merits of his work, its strong and weak points, or its relationship to that of his contemporaries; in fact, they even go so far as to omit the dates of his birth and death. Although this complaint is not without foundation, the truth is that information of this kind is generally available in families, through accomplished family members and their circles. It’s partly that such people have been disheartened at the change in the times and have given up on literature, and partly that knowledge and its forms of communication take new directions with every day’s experience. In Arabic and Persian, this progress and iṣlāḤ have been blocked for many years. The English language is a magic world of progress and iṣlāḤ. But in the beginning, people of [good] family thought it undesirable for their children to study it. And the style of our old literature was such that it never occurred to people to write about such things in books. They felt all these minor points to be the small change of conversation, suitable tidbits to be told when groups of friends were gathered together, so they weren’t aware of the new ways and their advantages. And how could they know that the page of history would be turned—the old families destroyed, their offspring so ignorant that they would no longer know even their own family traditions. And if anyone would tell them something of these matters, they’d demand proof! In short, these thoughts made it incumbent upon me to collect all that I knew about the elders or had found mentioned in various tazkirahs, and write it down in one place. (3-4)

The complexity of Azad’s own situation is manifest: he stands apart from the tazkirah tradition, for he perceives its flaws; he stands apart from the older generation, for he knows they are wrong to reject printed books and English, both full of promise for the future; yet he also stands apart from the “ignorant” younger generation, who are so Westernized that they demand written “proof” of what they should have learned in childhood from their elders.

But it is not really anyone’s fault; the root of the problem is the unexpected, unimaginable cataclysm of 1857. Thus the note of melancholy, of resignation. The page of history has been turned, “the old families destroyed”; the elders are “disheartened” and have “given up,” the traditional channels of oral transmission lie in ruins. (When Hali reviewed Water of Life—in the Aligarh Institute Gazette in 1881—he too devoted more than a page of his comments to the sufferings of the old elite: “reading about them, the heart grows full.”)^[2] Since Azad belonged to the only generation that could look both backwards and forwards, he sought to pour the old wine of anecdote and oral tradition into the new bottle of printed form, before the chance was lost forever. This was not just a public service, but a personal imperative. Despite—or because of?—his commitment to innovation and Westernization for the future, Azad himself held on with a death grip to the world of the past.

Water of Life has been incomparably influential; but amidst a great outpouring of praise there has been, right from the start, a steady undercurrent of criticism. Hali consoled Azad for such attacks, reminding him that anyone who writes a book exposes himself to criticism, and urging him to stand firm and ignore it completely: “Useful works cannot be abandoned through fear of nitpickers; if there are two nitpickers, there are a thousand appreciators.” As the two friends corresponded, Hali helped Azad gather and check new material for the second edition.^[3] In his review, Hali strongly defended his friend: Azad wrote “in the greatest detail” about the poets’ lives, provided illuminating anecdotes, and “did not use a poetic exaggeration that cannot be proved.”^[4] Hali’s words of support emphasize a conspicuous fact about the reception of Water of Life: while people indeed picked—often accurately—at dozens of small nits, not a single contemporary came forward to challenge the whole achievement, to deny the plausibility of the work as a cultural vision. The early readers of Water of Life included hundreds of authoritative eyewitnesses who had lived much of their lives in the world that Azad was depicting; it should be noted that not one of these opinionated, articulate critics questioned Azad’s basic vision of that world.

Most of the criticism centered on Azad’s prejudiced use (or abuse) of sources for facts, dates, and particular anecdotes. Was Mīr really as much of a curmudgeon as Azad represents him to be? From which tazkirahs did Azad derive his information? How trustworthy were his oral sources? What kind of liberties did he take with them? Why did he omit Momin from the first edition, and why did he insert him with such lame excuses into the second? Why was he so cool toward Ġhālib? Although Azad has been strongly defended by his biographer Muhammad Sadiq,^[5] and by scholars as distinguished as Mas‘ūd Ḥasan Riẓvī Adīb,^[6] critics have successfully poked innumerable small—and sometimes quite large—holes in the factual fabric of his narrative.^[7]

Above all, however, it is Azad’s “Żauq worship” that makes him vulnerable. Certainly Azad had complex uses for an ustad like Żauq. Azad could “save” Żauq from the wreck of the old world by rescuing and promoting his poetry; he could save this “uncle,” his father’s close friend, as he could not save his father. Żauq thus could be of the most obvious psychological value to Azad. Moreover, Żauq could be an excellent primary source: anecdotes could be directly attributed to him, and Azad could bolster his own authority by claiming privileged access to such a well-placed and revered ustad. ‘ābid Peshāvarī says that Azad invokes Żauq’s name 115 times in Water of Life.^[8] And when the time finally comes to write about Żauq himself, the hyperbole, the “unbounded Żauq worship,” is such that the whole rest of the book seems “merely a preface” to it.^[9]

Azad did not merely praise Żauq in the most extravagant terms, but also distorted the facts to add to his glory.^[10] One unhappy result of this distortion was a notable injustice done to Bahādur ShāhZ̤afar, for Azad asserted that much of Z̤afar’s poetry had in fact been written by Żauq. According to Azad, Z̤afar would write the first line of a verse and give it to the royal ustad to complete, or he would compose a few verses and leave it to Żauq to finish the rest. “Thousands” of Żauq’s poems, Azad said, are in circulation under the name ofZ̤afar (454); a large part ofZ̤afar’s first volume, and all of his later ones, are Żauq’s creations (472). These allegations have been examined at length, and disproved.^[11] (In an interesting counterpoint, Hali suggested—though he did not actually claim—that a number of Z̤afar’s later ghazals had in fact been written by Ġhālib.)^[12]

Another unhappy result of Azad’s Żauq worship was, paradoxically, its damage to Żauq’s own reputation. For it led Azad to commit a kind of bizarre forgery unique in the annals of Urdu literature, when he finally published his much-edited Dīvān-e Żauq (1888). While it is a permissible part of the teaching process for ustads to radically alter, or even entirely compose, ghazals that are then recited under the names of their shagirds, it would be an almost unheard-of piece of insolence for a shagird to compose ghazals and attribute them to his ustad. Yet this is what Azad did. While editing the bundle of Żauq’s ghazal manuscripts that he had rescued from Delhi, he not only tampered with the texts, seeking to “improve” them and modernize their language,^[13] but even composed whole new ghazals himself, which he added to the volume. Along with much circumstantial evidence, conclusive proof has been found: marked-up first drafts of some of “Żauq’s” ghazals—on the backs of letters and papers dated thirty years after his death.^[14] But since Żauq was a much better poet than Azad, the effect of Azad’s tampering was ironic: “It’s a strange kind of ustad worship, that the shagird performs iṣlāḤ on the ustad’s fine poetry and weakens it before he presents it to the world!”^[15]

Why did Azad do it? Surely because he needed more from Żauq than the real Żauq could ever supply. It has been argued that Żauq was never his ustad at all, and that Azad had to co-opt him into the role after the fact.^[16] But even if Żauq was an ustad to him as well as an “uncle,” obviously Żauq’s actual poetry was not enough for Azad, either in quantity (so that Z̤afar’s poetry and Azad’s own forgeries had to be pressed into service) or in quality (so that Azad had to perform a modernizing iṣlāḤ on Żauq’s work); nor was Żauq’s actual biography enough (so that hyperbole had to be added, and facts constantly distorted, to augment his glory). Azad needed a lifeline back to the lost “heaven” of old Delhi—a lifeline magically strong, a lifeline tough and elastic enough to bear all the weight he needed to put on it. Żauq had to be more than a mere human being: he had to be this lifeline.

In Water of Life Azad’s nostalgic need for such a lifeline shows itself again and again. People of earlier times were lucky, he says, not to live to see this age (207). Doorkeepers were more cultured in those days than nobles are today (225). Friendships were deeper in those days than anyone in the present “enlightened age” can understand (327). People really cherished their few books in those days, unlike people today who merely browse on books ignorantly “like goats who have entered a garden” (296). Although he himself wants “a thousand times over” to be attracted to the new culture, it can’t make any impression on his heart (297). The world of the “New Light people” is darkness to him; he wanders in it as a stranger in a foreign country: it is a world in which mushairahs have been replaced by “committees” (328). Again and again Azad mourns for his lost Delhi: “Oh my Delhi, everything about you was unique in the world!” (133). He ends his great work with a long, moving tribute to the old world, and finally addresses his elders collectively as a kind of venerable ustad: “As time goes on, we keep lighting our lamps from yours. And however far we go forward, we move in your light alone. Only offer me your blessed foot, so I may touch my eyes to it. Place your hand on my head in blessing, and accept my gift” (528).

It was said of Azad that in his hands prose turned to poetry—and poetry turned to prose. There is not a lot to say about Azad the poet, except that his real gifts lie elsewhere. When it comes to Azad the prose writer, however, it is impossible to overstate the case: almost every important Urdu literary figure of the past century is on record as deeply admiring Azad’s prose. But Azad himself preferred to use his prose in the service of poetry. In his view, poets are the supreme language-makers: whatever “power of expression,” whatever “verbal inventiveness,” whatever richness of imagery Urdu possesses, all “came from its poets” (27). Poetry is “such an addiction that its relish makes all other pleasures pleasureless” (118). Poetry is, in short, “water of life to the spirit.”^[17]

In Water of Life Azad tells an archetypal anecdote about Mīr, whom he calls the “crest jewel of poets” (243). A local nawab of Lucknow provided the penniless Mīr with a fine house; it had a sitting room overlooking a garden. But the shutters chanced to be closed when Mīr moved in, and he never opened them. “Some years” passed.

One day a friend came and said, “There’s a garden out here, why don’t you sit with the shutters open?” Mīr Sahib replied, “Oh, is there a garden here?” His friend said, “That’s why the nawab brought you here, to divert and refresh you.” Mīr Sahib’s old crumpled drafts of his ghazals were lying nearby. Gesturing toward them, he said, “I’m so absorbed in thinking about this garden, I’m not even aware of that one.” (210)

The anecdote exemplifies one of Azad’s favorite themes: that poets lived in a special, compelling world of their own. Kings had power over the outer world—but poets had power over the world of imagination.

In anecdote after anecdote, in the life of poet after poet, Water of Life explores the relationships between these two kinds of power. If Azad’s masterpiece is full of encounters between poets and kings, it is even fuller of encounters between poets and poets, for these are the means by which ustads develop, test, and display their special powers. Azad takes no interest in family relationships, in women or children, and makes only the briefest and most cautious references to religious experience and to inner life generally. Poets have only the kinds of personal traits that make them suitably picturesque and ustad-like: we are told of people’s appearance and attire, of their hobbies and eccentricities, of the eating habits of Shaiḳh Imām Baḳhsh “Nāsiḳh” (1776-1838) in some detail (333-34), and even of Żauq’s calling out to Azad while in “the necessary place” (471). Azad’s anecdotes depict lives in which the great central value is poetry—poetry as a consuming art that demands not only talent and training but also a lifetime of skilled practice.

Water of Life is a mine of these anecdotes. As a point of entry, one example from the early days of the tradition commends itself: the anecdote about Mirzā Muḥammad Rafī‘ “Saudā” (1713-1780) and Mirzā Fāḳhir “Makīn.” One of Azad’s longest anecdotes, it is a kind of melodrama in several acts, complete with poets and kings, ustads and shagirds, iṣlāḤ and professional rivalry.

In those days, there was a man of good family named Ashraf ‘Alī Ḳhān. Using Persian tazkirahs and the volumes of the ustads, he had worked for fifteen years to create an intiḳhāb (selection). And for editing, he took it to Mirzā Fāḳhir Makīn, who in those days was the best known of the Persian poets. Mirzā Fāḳhir, after many refusals and protestations and insistences, took the intiḳhāb and began to examine it. But here and there he thought the ustads’ verses meaningless and struck them out; here and there he wounded them with the sword of iṣlāḤ. When Ashraf ‘Alī Ḳhān Sahib learned of this state of affairs, he went and, after much to-ing and fro-ing, took the intiḳhāb away. The manuscript had been disfigured by the iṣlāḤs, which caused him much grief. He took it in this state to Mirzā [Saudā], told him the whole story, and asked for justice. And he also said, “Please edit it yourself.”

A classic beginning: poetry is a pursuit for “men of good family”; it is to be found most abundantly (during this early period especially) in Persian sources; it is a lifetime pursuit, and one may well spend “fifteen years” gathering individual verses from here and there into an intiḳhāb, a selection of carefully chosen verses that displays one’s own taste and critical judgment. It would be sensible to show the manuscript then to a noted Persian poet, in case minor errors had crept in. It is traditional good breeding for Makīn to make a show of modesty and reluctance. But how arrogant of him to perform major iṣlāḤ on the verses of the great masters!

The appeal against one ustad can only be to another. The manuscript is shown to Saudā; he too, mindful of the proprieties, is at first coy about accepting it.

Mirzā Saudā said, “I’m not a practicing Persian poet. I simply string together a few words of Urdu, and God knows how they’ve managed to receive the robe of honor of acceptance in people’s hearts. Mirzā Fāḳhir Makīn knows Persian and is masterfully accomplished in Persian. Whatever he did, he must have done for a reason. If you want iṣlāḤ, then there’s Shaiḳh āyat Allāh ‘Ṡanā,’ the shagird of the late Shaiḳh ‘Alī ‘Ḥazīn’; and there’s Mirzā Bhachchū, with the pen name of ‘Zarrah,’ the shagird of Mīr Shams ud-Dīn ‘Faqīr.’ There’s Ḥakīm Bū ‘Alī Ḳhān ‘Hātif’ in Bengal. There’s Niz̤ām ud-Dīn ‘Ṣāni‘’ Bilgrāmī in Farrukhabad. There’s Shāh Nūr ul-‘Ain ‘Vāqif’ in Shahjahanabad. This is a task fit for those people.”

When Mirzā mentioned the names of these renowned Persian scholars, Ashraf ‘Alī Ḳhān said, “Mirzā Fāḳhir wouldn’t give them the time of day.” In short, because of his insistence Mirzā accepted the intiḳhāb. When he looked at it, he found that the verses of accomplished poets, poets who have been taken as established masters from ancient times to today—those very verses all lay wounded and writhing. Seeing this state of affairs, Mirzā too was grieved. Appropriately to the circumstances, he wrote the essay Reproof of the Heedless, and he exposed Mirzā Fāḳhir Makīn’s foolishness and misunderstandings with regard to the principles of literature. Along with this, he cast an eye over Mirzā Fāḳhir’s own volume as well, and mentioned its errors; and where it was possible, he gave suitable iṣlāḤ.

Saudā duly mentions a number of well-known contemporary Persian poets and scholars, establishing their credentials in some cases by naming their ustads as well. But he is finally prevailed upon to look at the manuscript. Irritated by Makīn’s presumption, Saudā then attacks him in an essay—one no doubt designed, in this pre-print culture, to be circulated among a small but influential group of connoisseurs.

In response, Makīn sends one of his senior shagirds to assess the situation and try to conciliate Saudā.

Mirzā Fāḳhir learned of this. He was very much alarmed. And he wanted to wash out these stains with oral messages. Thus he sent Baqā Allāh Ḳhān “Baqā” to speak with Mirzā [Saudā]. He was Mirzā Fāḳhir’s shagird, and a very practiced (mashshāq) and knowledgeable poet. Mirzā [Saudā] and he had various full discussions, and certain of Mirzā Fāḳhir’s verses, the objections to which had reached him in the form of rumors, also came under disputation. Thus one of his [Persian] verses was:

In this company my heart was constricted like a wineglass
The bloom on the wine’s face made me blossom out.

Mirzā [Saudā]’s objection was that it was inappropriate to speak of a wineglass as having a constricted heart. Master poets had always used for the wineglass the simile of a blooming flower, or that of laughter, because a wineglass must necessarily be open. Baqā, in response, grew wet with the “sweat of shāgirdī.” And at length he brought in a [Persian] verse by “Bāżil” as a warrant (sanad):

What pleasure would wine give to me, desolate without you?
Because the wineglass is like a constricted heart without you.

When Mirzā Rafī‘ heard this, he laughed heartily and said, “Tell your ustad that if he’s going to keep examining the verses of ustads, he should also try to understand them! For this verse supports my objection: although the wineglass is proverbial for laughter and bloomingness, and the wineglass is part of the equipment of pleasure, even it has the attributes of a sad heart.”

Saudā’s objection is based on traditionally accepted networks of imagery: the wineglass may be compared, by virtue of its wide, rounded bowl, to a blooming flower or to an open, laughing mouth. In Persian and Urdu, it is sad hearts that become constricted, not happy hearts or wineglasses. Baqā tries to reply with a “warrant,” an authoritative precedent from the work of an accepted ustad. Saudā points out that Bāżil’s verse is deliberately taking advantage of the normal imagery by reversing it for poetic emphasis: I am so desolate without you that even the wineglass itself—which is (by definition) always open and happy—seems to me to be constricted and sad. Makīn’s verse, by contrast, violates the tradition while failing to create any special effect.

But now the action moves into an entirely new realm. Makīn, having been bested in the literary arena, tries to shift the battle into different territory, through a macabre blend of violence and intimidation.

In short, when this scheme didn’t succeed, Mirzā Fāḳhir took another tack. He had many shagirds in Lucknow, especially the Shaiḳhzādahs, who at one time [before Akbar’s conquest] had been therulers of that very land of Avadh; the vapors of impertinent aggressiveness and arrogance had not left their minds. One day Saudā, all unaware, was sitting at home, and they forcibly invaded his house and surrounded him. They placed a knife against his stomach and said, “Take along everything you’ve written and come before our ustad, so things can be resolved.” Mirzā was very skilled at inventing the roses and flowers of poetic maẓmūns, and creating the parrots and mynahs of speech, but this was quite a new maẓmūn! He was completely at a loss. The poor man gave his folder of poems to a servant, and himself climbed into the palanquin and went with them. That Satanic crew were all around him, he was in the middle. When they reached the Chauk, they wanted to dishonor him there. After some argument, they again began to harangue him. But who can dishonor him to whom God has given honor? By chance Sa‘ādat ‘Alī Ḳhān and his entourage came by that way. Seeing the crowd, he halted; and inquiring about the circumstances, he seated Saudā with him on his elephant and took him away. āṣif ud-Daulah was in the ladies’ apartments, having a meal. Sa‘ādat ‘Alī Ḳhān went and said, “My dear brother, it’s an awful thing—while you rule, such a calamity in the city!” āṣif ud-Daulah said, “What is it, brother, is everything all right?” He replied, “Mirzā Rafī‘—whom Father used to call ‘Brother’ and ‘Kind and generous friend’ when he wrote letters to him, whom Father used to beg to come, but who never came—is here today, and in such a state that if I hadn’t arrived, the ruffians of the city would have dishonored the poor man.” Then he told him the whole matter.

Poor Saudā is abducted at knifepoint; Azad, even while sympathizing with him, has a little gentle fun at his expense: this was quite a new maẓmūn! But after all, God is watching over him, and he is rescued by the nawab’s brother.

The nawab himself, āṣif ud-Daulah, prepares to avenge his “uncle” by throwing the culprits out of the city, but Saudā dissuades him: “Your Excellency, our wars by their very nature settle themselves in the domain of the pen.” The final act of the drama, a return to the literary arena, then takes place before the whole court. āṣif ud-Daulah challenges Makīn: “If you’re a champion in the field of poetry, compose a satire right now in Saudā’s presence.” Makīn of course fails to do so. But when Saudā’s turn comes, “without the least delay” he recites an extemporaneous Persian quatrain—in which by clever wordplay he conveys the idea that Makīn is an ass with his mouth full of excrement and expresses the hope that God will strike him dead. After that the dispute cools down, and the two poets merely continue to “abuse each other from a distance in satires.” But it is very clear who has won: “The entertaining part is that no one even knows the satires of Mirzā Fāḳhir; while whatever Saudā composed against him is on the lips of thousands” (157-60).

How did Azad know all this in such detail? According to his own account, he used to stroll through the streets of old Delhi with Żauq, as Żauq told stories about Saudā and his times (141). The original source for this particular anecdote is apparently a verse account by Saudā, but Azad takes a number of liberties with it, to improve its dramatic effect; the result is riddled with historical inconsistencies and attributes to Saudā a quatrain that certainly antedates him.^[18] But the anecdote evokes, in its assumptions, a whole cultural world.

The anecdote records a clash not merely between two poets but between two ustads. By no means every poet was considered to be an ustad. No detailed discussion, no concise definition, of the concept of ustādī is provided in Water of Life—or anywhere else, as far as I know. It seems to be a South Asian tradition, with no counterpart among poets in Arabia or Iran; it may well have originated in the latter part of the seventeenth century.^[19] Azad himself noted, as we have seen, that “the style of our old literature was such that it never occurred to people to write about such things in books.” What was the need? Everybody already knew, by a kind of cultural osmosis: basic poetic knowledge was “available in families, through accomplished family members and their circles” (4). Although Azad, foreseeing “ignorant” future generations, aimed to put the old oral culture on paper, he was so much a product of this culture himself that it never occurred to him to define its most basic terms. Still, he has given us rich enough anecdotal data so that we can perform a kind of triangulation.

An ustad was known above all by his pen name, which he either chose for himself or received from his own ustad, and by the name of his city.^[20] He was also identified by his literary ancestry: he was often described as a shagird of so-and-so. Although he was not usually identified through his literary progeny (ustad of so-and-so), an ustad without shagirds was almost a contradiction in terms. Secondarily, an ustad was identified through the names of his immediate male forebears, usually on the father’s side of the family. Names were very important: Azad said only half jokingly that a man’s name was a fine indicator of the worth of his elders who had chosen it (225).

Age, too, played a part in an ustad’s reputation; in general, senior ustads of many years’ standing outranked junior ones who had just begun their careers. A senior ustad had a larger body of poetry in circulation and had built up over time a larger group of devoted shagirds. Above all, a senior ustad had had time to become more “practiced” in poetry than a junior one; the term kuhnah mashq, “long-practiced,” was also used. As Azad always recognized, “practice (mashq) is very powerful” (344). Żauq taught Azad that ustads can make even unpromising rhymes and meters work (475); Azad records an anecdote in which, at Z̤afar’s command, Żauq instantly turned a casually spoken phrase, metrical only by chance, into the second line of a shi‘r (463-64)—a feat we will consider at more length later on. Veteran ustads become so practiced that they can compose extemporaneous verse perfectly suited to any occasion—as Saudā did, according to the anecdote, when insulting Makīn.^[21]Water of Life offers numerous examples of such fluent improvisation. Ustads come up with verses for every situation: to tease a delinquent shagird (117); to humiliate a court jester (119); to deflate even Mīr’s self-praise with laughter (207-8); to deplore a delayed pension payment (226); to hasten the bestowal of winter clothing (234); to ridicule a mis-tied turban (273); to lament a pension cut when a rival ustad appears at court (302); to appreciate the beauty of a sleeping boy (352); and so on.

An ustad is necessary to a young poet, says Azad, the way a rider with a whip is necessary to a spirited horse: only such a rider can guide the horse, cause him to perform at his best, and keep him from running wild and ultimately being “spoiled” (248). The ustad must “pull in the promising colt, and guide him with the reins of theory” (342). Hali too, when discussing Ġhālib, is in agreement on this point: he attributes to Mīr the prophecy, “If this boy [Ġhālib] finds a worthy ustad to put him on the right road, he’ll become a peerless poet; otherwise, he’ll babble nonsense.” Hali depicts Ġhālib as running wild in his youth with obscure, convoluted poetry “just as very bright boys often [do] in the beginning”—and then as gradually brought to heel by the influence of senior friends, so that he comes to write more disciplined and intelligible verses.^[22]

When an ustad is approached by an aspiring young poet, he may either accept or refuse him as a shagird. If the ustad does accept the shagird, he owes him his best care and attention, and generally does not take money for his services. As we have seen, shagirds were expected to show the most zealous, partisan loyalty toward their ustad, whether in mushairahs, in literary disputes—like that in which Baqā defended his ustad against Saudā—or in street brawls. Shagirds might in fact claim an amount of attention the ustad found burdensome. Shāh Naṣīr was asked why he made a habit, although he was well-off, of exacting small gifts from his shagirds. He explained that his shagirds gave him no peace: “Every day they write down their fiddle-faddle and nonsense on pieces of paper, and come andsit on my head.” His exactions, he said, meant that at least they brought their ghazals only every fourth day instead—and that they wrote morecarefully, and valued his comments more, since they had paid a small price for them (396). However, an ustad might also, on occasion, delightedly reward a shagird’s performance with a valuable gift (353).

This intimate ustad-shagird relationship is the basis of everything else; in the case of mystically inclined poets, it could even blur into the relationship of religious teacher to disciple, pīr to murīd. Mirzā “Maz̤har” Jān-e Jānāñ is said to have recited a verse to a would-be shagird and told him, “Consider it to be tabarruk (a tangible sign of spiritual favor) and iṣlāḤ both” (137). As in other intimate relationships, however, tensions and rivalries were often apparent. Azad noted that although master-apprentice relationships existed in many fields of learning, “when I’ve seen shagirds grapple with their ustads, it has usually been in this art alone” (112).

The ustad has a special personal authority that entirely transcends that of the printed word, as one of Azad’s most entertaining anecdotes makes clear.

When [Mirzā Salāmat ‘Alī] “Dabīr” was just beginning his practice, his ustad’s advice about some word displeased him. Shaiḳh Nāsiḳh was alive, but he was elderly. Dabīr went to him. At that time he was amidst a group of people, sitting on cushioned stools, in formal assembly. Dabīr petitioned, “Your Lordship! About this verse I said such-and-such, and my ustad gave such-and-such an iṣlāḤ.” He replied, “Your ustad gave the correct iṣlāḤ.” Dabīr then said, “Your Lordship, it is written in such-and-such a way in books.” He said, “No. What your ustad has said is the proper thing.” Dabīr again petitioned, “Your Lordship, please just look at this book.” The Shaiḳh Sahib grew irritated and said, “Aré, what do you know about books! In my presence you invoke books! I’ve looked at so many books, I’ve become a book myself!” He was so angry that he picked up a cane that lay before him, and rose. Dabīr fled. Shaiḳh Nāsiḳh was so excited that he pursued him as far as the door. (516)

The veteran ustad, the interpreter of the tradition who over time has “become a book” himself, is the pillar on which the world of poetry rests.

The ustad’s unique and precious gift to the shagird is his iṣlāḤ, his “correction” and improvement of the shagird’s work. We have seen one hostile example of the process of iṣlāḤ, when Saudā criticized Makīn’s use of the image of the wineglass. Baqā’s defense of his ustad rested on the establishing of a warrant, a verse from a recognized master containing the disputed usage. (We will consider the process of iṣlāḤ in more detail later on.) The prescriptive force of iṣlāḤ means that an ustad has almost royal powers: a shagird who visits his ustad can be said to have “presented himself humbly in the service of his king of speech” (353). A poet has a “lordly temperament”; he is happier finding the one right word than the worldly king is with conquering a realm (65-66). The coins of the “realm of poets” were struck in the name of Żauq (420); Ġhālib, though not rich, possessed “the lordship of the realm of speech, and the wealth of maẓmūns” (482). Kings may in fact treat poets royally: a whole village can be earned by an ode (442). On one occasion, a raja impulsively presented Momin with an elephant—a particularly royal gift—from his own stables; Momin later sold it (409).^[23]

Poets can also show their royal rank by treating kings with varying degrees of disrespect. Momin refused a lavish pension from the raja of Kapurthala when he discovered that the same amount was being paid to a mere “singer” as well (409-10). Mīr snubbed the nawab of Avadh by declining to compose on demand (197) and by proudly refusing to accept money or a robe of honor despite great need (209-10). When Shāh ‘ālam himself honored the mystically inclined Ḳhvājah Mīr “Dard” (1721-1785) by visiting him, Mīr Dard scolded the emperor for sitting among Ṣūfīs with his legs disrespectfully stretched out; Shāh ‘ālam replied that his feet hurt, to which Mīr Dard retorted that in that case he needn’t have come at all (178). When Shāh ‘ālam boasted that he could compose ghazals even while using the toilet, Saudā replied, “Your Majesty, that’s what they smell like, too” (142). We have seen that Saudā was known to āṣif ud-Daulah, the nawab of Avadh, as the man “whom Father used to call ‘Brother’ ” and “whom Father used to beg to come, but who never came.”

Yet Water of Life recognizes that kings are well capable of getting their own back. Żauq was harassed by Z̤afar, who delighted in thinking up fiendishly ingenious, almost impossible “grounds” (zamīn), or meter-rhyme patterns, and commanding Żauq to compose in them (472). Nāsiḳh, who offended the nawab of Avadh by contemptuously refusing his patronage, was driven out of Lucknow (338). And, above all, there is the terrible cautionary tale of Mīr Inshā’allāh Ḳhān “Inshā” (1753-1817), whose flippant behavior eventually turned Nawab Sa‘ādat ‘Alī Ḳhān against him; the nawab kept him in isolation, under a kind of house arrest, until he went mad and finally died in humiliation and squalor (280-85).

When patronage proves unreliable, poets are thrown back on the open market: they must make direct use of their “coins of speech” and “capital of maẓmūns” in order to survive (365). Shaiḳh Ġhulām Hamadānī “MuṣḤafī” (1750-1824) in old age sold his best verses to others for money (350); Mīr Mustaḥsan “Ḳhalīq” supported his family by selling ghazals (365). Even theft of this verbal capital is possible: Dabīr was furious enough to take drastic action when his ustad, Mīr “Ẓamīr,” sought to read an elegy of Dabīr’s in public and claim it as his own (516-17).

But ultimately none of these political or financial vicissitudes matters. The only thing that really matters, the only thing that determines the real victor in every contest, is the sheer quality and enduring fame of the poetry: in the last analysis Makīn loses because “no one even knows” his poetry, while Saudā’s verses are “on the lips of thousands.” Poets are ustads, they are kings, they are court poets, they are temperamental artists, they are unworldly mystics, they are capitalists—but above all they are masters of their craft. Thanks to both a natural aptitude and a lifetime of technical training and practice, they can perform admired verbal feats that no ordinary person can even dream of achieving. They can, however, teach their art to others, so that the chain of transmission through the generations becomes a kind of poetic silsilah (lineage). The unbroken silsilah is a source of intense pride, permitting the poetic tradition to grow and develop in each generation without losing touch with its roots.

The aftermath of 1857 fatally damaged almost all the lineages. As time passed, wounds turned to scars, and the old world became steadily more opaque to the new. Water of Life is built up from fragments of the old lost world, painstakingly reordered and rearranged in Azad’s mind and heart. No one could argue that all Azad’s anecdotes are historically accurate; we know that many of them are distorted, manipulated, or simply apocryphal. But if the parts are flawed, the whole vision is nevertheless persuasive—and, in its essentials, true to the world it seeks to depict. Perhaps Mīr never made that remark about the outer and inner gardens—but the anecdote beautifully captures the classical ghazal poet’s attitude. Perhaps Baqā never argued with Saudā about wineglasses—but the view of poetic imagery that underlies the argument is one they would undoubtedly have held. Azad’s anecdotes, taken all together, give us an invaluable glimpse of the old world of poetic theory and practice. Azad shows us the classical ustad in his glory—lord of the world of speech, ruler of the imagination.

Notes