Of the many languages of India, Urdu (Hindustani) is the most widely known, especially in Upper India. Both as a written and a spoken language it has a reputation throughout Asia for elegance and expressiveness. Until the time of Muhammad Shah, Indian poetry was written in Persian. But that monarch, who mounted the throne of Delhi in 1719, greatly desired to make Urdu the vogue, and under his patronage and approval, Hatim, one of his ministers, and Wali of the Deccan, wrote Diwans in Urdu. This patronage of poets was continued by his successors, and exists indeed to the present day; and the cultivation of Urdu poetry has always been encouraged at the many Courts of India. Some of the Indian Rulers are themselves poets, and find their duty and pleasure in rewarding with gifts and pensions the literary men whose works they admire. The Court of Hyderabad has for long had a circle of poets: the late Nizam was himself eminent as a writer of verse. The Maharaja-Gaekwar of Baroda is a generous patron of literary men, and the present Rulers of lesser States such as Patiala, Nabha, Tonk, and Rampur, are deeply interested in the cultivation of poetry in their Dominions.
In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries many towns in India had extensive and flourishing literary coteries, and it is from the poets Of that period that this handful of verses is gathered. The Mushaira - a poetical concourse, wherein rival poets meet to try their skill in a tournament of verse - is still an institution in India. Delhi, Agra, Lucknow, Lahore, Cawnpore, Allahabad, Benares, Calcutta, and Hyderabad, have all been, and some still are, nests of singing birds. Of the extent of Urdu literature some idea may be gained from the fact that a History of it written about 1870 gives the names of some three thousand authors, and that Tazkiras or anthologies containing selections from many poets are very numerous.
The poetry is very varied and of great interest. It includes moral verses and counsels, sometimes in intermingled verse and prose; heroic poems telling the old tales of the loves of Khusru and Shirin, of Yusuf and Zuleika, of Majnun and Leila, and the romances of chivalry; elegies on the deaths of Hasan and Hussein, and of various monarchs; devotional poems in praise of Muhammad and the Imams; eulogies of the reigning Ruler or other patron or protector of the poor; satires upon men and institutions, sometimes upon Nature herself, specially upon such phenomena as heat, cold, inundations and pestilence; descriptive verse relating to the seasons and the months, the flowers and the trees. Above all there is a great wealth of love poetry, both secular and mystic, where, in impassioned ghazals or odes, the union of man with God is celebrated under various allegories, as the bee and the lotus, the nightingale and the rose, the moth and the flame.
DAAGH DEHLVI
I
O changing Wheel of Fate, still let there last
Before our eager eyes, still let there burn,
This vision of the world; when we have passed
There shall be no return.
I thought that, leaving thee, rest would be mine,
My lost tranquillity I might regain,
But separation brings no anodyne,
And kills me with its pain.
How can I traffic in Love's busy mart?
Thou hast won from me more than stores of gold;
That I may bargain, give me back the heart
Thy cruel fingers hold.
O heart desirous, in Love's perilous way
Thy journey take and in his paths abide,
And thou mayst find perchance, lest thou should stray,
Awaiting thee, a guide
II
O Weaver of Excuses, what to thee
Are all the promises that thou hast made,
The truth derided, and the faith betrayed,
And all thy perfidy ?
Sometimes thou sayest - Come at eventide:
And when the evening falls, thou sayest - Dawn
Was when I called thee. Even when night is gone
I wait unsatisfied.
When in thy haughty ear they did commend
Me as the faithfullest of all thy train,
Thou saidst - I hold such lovers in disdain,
I scoff at such a friend.
O Mischief-maker, passing-on thy way
So lovely is thy mien, all creatures must
Cry out - It is debarred to things of dust
To walk so winningly.
Why shouldst thou keep from tyranny anew ?
Why shouldst thou not betray another one ?
What matter if he die ? Thou hast but done
What thou wast born to do.
Who cares not for his heart nor for his creed
Is the idolater. His worthless name
Is Dagh. O Fair Ones, look upon his shame!
He is disgraced indeed.
III
Thy love permits not my complaint to rise,
It reaches to my lips, and then it dies.
Now, helpless heart, I cannot aid thee more,
And thus for thee God's pity must implore.
Seest thou not how much disgrace and pain
The scornful world has heaped upon us twain,
On thee for beauty and the sins thereof,
On me for this infirmity of love.
Oft-times she will not speak to me at all,
Or if she deign to speak, the words that fall
Cold from her haughty lips are words of blame:
- I know thee not - I have not heard thy name !
Deep in my memory was graved the trace
Of all I suffered since I saw thy face;
But now, Belovéd, thou hast come to me,
I have erased the record utterly.
With empty hands all mortal men are whirled
Through Death's grim gate into the other world:
This is my pride that it is granted me
To carry with me my desire for thee.
They say when I complain of all I bore
- It is thy kismet, what would'st thou have more ?
My rivals also bear thy tyranny,
Saying - It is her custom and must be !
IV
I met you and the pain of separation was forgot,
And all I should have kept in mind my heart remembered not.
What cruelty and scorn I in your bitter letters knew!
No love was there; O Gracious One, have you forgotten too ?
Strange is the journey that my soul by wanton Love was led,
Two steps were straight and clear, and four forgotten were instead.
There was some blundering o'er my fate at the Great Reckoning;
You have forgot, O Keeper of the Record, many a thing.
You took my heart, but left my life behind: O see you not
What thing you have remembered, and what thing you have forgot ?
To meet Annihilation's sword is the most happy lot
That man can gain, for all the joys of earth has he forgot.
A Muslim on the path of Love beside a Kafir trod,
And one forgot the Kaaba, one the Temple of his God.
Nawab Mirza Khan Daagh Dehlvi (Urdu: نواب مرزا خان داغ دہلوی, 1831 – 1905) was a poet known for his Urdu ghazals. He belonged to the old Delhi school of Urdu poetry.
DAAGH DEHLVI - a court poet of Rampur - went to Hyderabad and became the teacher of the Nizam in poetry (see Asif): lived there in great honour as Poet Laureate, and was given the title of Fasih-ul-Mulk (the eloquence of the nation): his poetry is described as natural and graceful in expression: his proficiency was so great that no poet could stand against him in the Mushaira: he was of extraordinary wit.
He wrote romantic and sensuous poems and ghazals in simple and chaste Urdu, minimising usage of Persian words. He laid great emphasis on the Urdu idiom and its usage. He wrote under the takhallus (Urdu word for nom de plume) Daagh Dehlvi (the meanings of Daagh, an Urdu noun, include stain, grief and taint while Dehlvi means belonging to or from Dehli or Delhi). He belonged to the Delhi school of thought
Daagh was considered one of the best romantic poets of his time by some commentators.
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