FRESH WORDS FOR A FRESH WORLD: TĀZA-GŪ'Ī AND THE POETICS OF NEWNESS IN EARLY MODERN INDO-PERSIAN POETRY

Abstract

This article examines a crucial phase of Indo-Persian literary modernity, beginning in the late sixteenth century CE, when poets and other literati across South, Central, and West Asia began articulating an unprecedented break with their cultural past through calls for ‘speaking the fresh’ (tāza-gū'ī). In later, nineteenth- and twentieth-century scholarship, this period of literary ingenuity has been almost universally decried as decadent and unworthy of serious study, an indictment that has, over the years, become specifically and explicitly coded in terms of India's allegedly debilitating effect on Persian language and literature. Thus in scholarly parlance this era is regularly (and pejoratively) referred to as that of the ‘Indian Style’ (sabk-i hindī), despite the fact that the early modern poets themselves never used such metageographical terminology, and despite the tāza-gū'ī movement's incontrovertibly transregional reach and cosmopolitan tenor. To interrogate this conceptual slippage, this article historicizes some key factors in the twentieth-century formulation of the notion of sabk-i hindī, and then contrasts them with evidence from a case study of the celebrated Mughal munshī and litterateur, Chandar Bhān Brahman (d. 1672–3), whose sense of literary possibility and the interconnectedness of the early modern world are clearly at odds with the nationalist frames of later Iranian (and even Indian) thinkers. After using Chandar Bhān's example as a barometer for calling into question much of the modernist discourse about Safavid-Mughal literary and political culture, I offer a brief précis of some suggestive comparative possibilities that could open up if we were to abandon the anachronistic sabk-i hindī model and return our attention to the poetics of ingenuity and ‘freshness’ (tāzagī) that were of central concern to the early modern Indo-Persian literati themselves.

Notes

1 Brahman (1967, 233.3).

2 The most detailed recent assessments of the poetics and logic of tāzagı¯ in English are found in: Losensky (1998), particularly chapter 5, ‘“Death cannot tyrannize the Lords of poetry”: Imitatio and innovation in Safavid-Mughal poetry,’ 193–249; S. R. Faruqi (2004). In Urdu, see for instance S. M. ‘Abdullah's very informative ‘Tāzah-Gū’ī: Ek Adabī Tahrīk' (1977, 114–26). For a more general historical overview of Indian Persian and its place within the wider knowledge system of ‘Ajam, see Alam (2003). Needless to say, I am greatly indebted to the groundbreaking work of all four of these scholars.

3 Faizı¯'s contrast between new and old (nau and kuhan) appears in multiple works throughout his oeuvre. See the passage quoted in Losensky (1998, 195--6 [English] and 355 [Persian]); or a similar passage quoted in Alam and Subrahmanyam (2006, 111). On Faizī generally, see for instance Nu‘mani (2002, 25--64); Desai (1963); Hadi (1978, 79–152).

4 We are not dealing here with the abstract structural, philosophical, socio-religious, or theological notion of ‘Islamic time’ of the sort described, for example, by Massignon (1957, 108–14) or Bowering (1997). We should, however, keep in mind that the latter part of the sixteenth century CE, i.e. the very historical moment that saw the emergence of the poetics of tāzagī, also coincided with the end of the first Islamic millennium. This period thus saw widespread eschatological speculation, messianism, and a belief that a new age of human history had arrived. From AbŪ al-Fazl's visionary ideology to Bādāyūnī's bitter apocalypticism, from the Mahdavi belief in the messiah's impending arrival to Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindīs claim to be the ‘renewer of the second millennium’ (mujaddid-i alf-i sānı¯), intellectuals throughout Mughal India, and the Islamic world generally, were thus engaged in a bold reimagination of the very meaning of human time. One could certainly surmise, then, that this millenarian spirit also played a part in the sense of renewal voiced by the Indo-Persian poets of this period. (The subject of millenarianism in Mughal India, particularly as evidenced in the writings of ‘Abd al-Qādir Bādāyūni, is the subject of an ongoing doctoral dissertation by A. Azfar Moin at the University of Michigan; for an overview, see Moin 2005.)

5 I use the term ‘metageography’ here in the most general sense elaborated by Lewis and Wigen (1997, ix): ‘the set of spatial structures through which people order their knowledge … the often unconscious frameworks that organize studies of history, sociology’, and various other fields that would obviously include literary history.

6 The biographical details given here are culled primarily from Chandar BhĀn's own writings, particularly Chahār Chaman (BhĀn 2003); and Munsha'āt-i Brahman (Brahman 2005).

7 At the time that Chandar BhĀn worked for him, Mīr ‘Abd al-Karīm was the Mughal superintendent of buildings (mīr-i ‘imārat) in Lahore, but he is more widely known for his later work overseeing financing for the construction of the Taj Mahal.

8 There is quite a bit of misunderstanding about Chandar Bhān's retirement. It is often reported, for instance, that he was so distraught over Dārā Shukoh's death that he refused to serve Aurangzeb, and instead retired to Benares where, in the words of Sher Khān Lodī's Mir’āt al-Khayāl (1690 CE), ‘he busied himself with his own [i.e. ‘Hindu’] ways and customs, until … he became ash in the fire-temple of annihilation’. Lodī, in fact, seems to be the original (and unreliable) source for this story, but he is flatly contradicted by Chandar BhĀn's own letters to Aurangzeb, which betray no hint of angst, and show clearly that he retired to Lahore. See for instance Munsha'āt-i Brahman, ms, Azad Library, AMU, ‘Abd al-Salām collection #294/64, ff. 8a--10a.

9 There are many manuscripts of Chandar BhĀn's Dīvān in archives all over the world, and there have also been at least two printed editions, though both are now out of print and quite rare. The first, published as Gulzār-i Bahār, ma‘rūf bih Bazm-i Nazm i Brahman (Delhi: n.d. 1930s?), was compiled by a poetically inclined civil servant named Bhagwant Rai ‘Bahār’ Sunnāmi, according to what he claims was a (now lost) manuscript in Chandar Bhān's own hand that he discovered in a private library in Lahore. The second, which is itself based on Sunnāmi's text, has been edited with a nice English introduction by M. A. H. Farooqui, under the title Ahvāl va Āsār-i Chandra Bhān Brahman va Dīvān-i Pārsı¯ (Ahmedabad: Khalid Shahin Farooqui, 1967). References to the Dīvān below are keyed to Farooqui's edition, and indicate the ghazal number followed by the relevant couplet number. For instance ‘Brahman (1967, 1.1)’ would refer to Farooqui's edition, ghazal #1, complet #1.

10 Kambūh (1972, 336–8, 343–4).

11 Quoted in Shafīq (n.d., 9). Sahbān here refers to Sahbān Wā'il, the celebrated Umayyad poet and orator proverbial for his eloquence.

12 For details on this, and the related problem of Chandar Bhān's retirement, see my ‘The persistence of gossip: Memories of Chandar Bhān and “memorative communication” in the Indo-Persian tazkirah tradition’ (chapter 4 of my doctoral thesis, ‘Secretary-poets in Mughal India and the ethos of Persian’); and ‘Infantilizing Baba Dara: Negative portrayals of Dārā Shukoh in 17th- and 18th-century Indo-Persian literary texts’, presented at the University of Wisconsin-Madison Conference on South Asia, 9 October 2005.

13 Indeed, a rough count indicates that the words tāza and/or sukhan appear either separately or cleverly juxtaposed nearly a hundred times in his Dīvān alone.

14 For further details on the broad trends summarized in this paragraph, see Alam (1998).

15 And thus the conventional wisdom that only kāyasthas and khattris took to Persian might need some refinement. For instance, in one letter Chandar Bhān notes the death of an old teacher, one Jatmal Shūdra:‘… the only living reminder of [him] is now his brother, Nisbat Rai … [among his friends] there is also Gopī Chand Shūdra, who has taken to ta‘līq and shikastah with great relish. In fact, among the community (qaum) of shūdras Bhagavant Rai, Narāyan Dās, and their brothers have all become quite famous for draftsmanship, and this faqīr is their proud disciple.’ Chahār Chaman, ms #3340 (55043/2217), National Museum, New Delhi, fol. 97a--97b.

16 ‘Abd al-Razzāq Fayyāz Lāhiji, quoted in Yarshater (1988, 251n).

17 For details on the fatwá and other particulars of Ghazālī’s life and poetry, many of which come from Badāyūnī's account, see Hadi (1978, 23–78).

18 Tālib īn nashā'-i faizī kih zi hindūstān yāft/sharm bād-ash kih digar yād zi īrān ārad. Quoted in Hadi (1978, 178).

19 This verse is quoted in innumerable books, articles, and collections. Among others, for instance, Qureshi (1996, 1–33); Nu‘mani (2002, 8); Browne (1997, 166). The translation is mine, as are all others unless otherwise noted.

20 A number of very accomplished scholars who have continued to employ the term sabk-i hindī in recent years have done so with a clear sense of appreciative admiration for the ingenuity of early modern poetics rather than the invective hurled by other modern scholars. But, however noble the gesture, trying to shift the semantic valence from ‘sabk-i hindī = bad poetry’ to ‘sabk-i hindī = good poetry’ does nothing to address the underlying flaws of speaking metageographically about poetic styles in the first place. My suggestion, therefore, is that we retire the term altogether.

21 Yarshater (1988, 277). Indeed, Yarshater describes the period as ‘culturally exhausted’ no less than six times in one short article!

22 Perhaps the most concise list of the literary faults generally associated with sabk-i hindī is to be found in a very short article by Muhammad Taqī Bahār, called ‘Sā’ib va Shewah-i ū' [Sa'ib and His Aesthetic] (Bahār 1970–1, 264–5). This list is paraphrased in English (with significant omissions, such as Bahār's somewhat ambivalent remarks on Khān Ārzū) in Thackston (2002, 94); and Thackston's version is in turn quoted by Faruqi (2004, 21). For another overview in English, compare Yarshater (1988, 249–88). Yarshater recoils from the poetry's ‘dazzling structures on precarious foundations’, and, in a common complaint, fixates on the poets' alleged emotional insincerity, casting them as ‘jugglers of images and tropes rather than interpreters of feelings’, whose ‘mental acrobatics’ are at cross purposes with ‘real life experience’. A similarly bleak appraisal of the Indian Style's cultural value is that of Rypka (1968, 295–6), who laments the ‘affected and artificial elements’ and ‘vulgar expressions’ that preclude ‘expression of emotion’, and turn the poems into ‘true labyrinths, riddles that often make the impression of being soluble only with the aid of geomancy and the astrolabe’.

23 For details on Bahār's life and scholarship, see Smith (2006); Ahmadi (2004).

24 These lectures were originally published in the journal Armaghān, and have all been reprinted in Gulban (1351/1972, 43–66).

25 Bahār (1942?). While it's true that, as the title indicates, Bahār was primarily concerned in Sabk-shināsı¯ with the development (tatavvur) of prose stylistics, it is fair to say that his analysis extends into poetry and literary culture generally. Indeed, to see just how seamlessly Bahār's model has been applied specifically to poetry, see, among others, Shamīsā (1374 AH 2001 CE); Shihābī (1316 AH 1938).

26 On these and other mythohistorical elements of Iranian nationalism, see Kashani-Sabet (1999). See also Tavakoli-Targhi (2001, especially 96–104).

27 Quoted as translated in Ahmadi (2004, 144–5).

28 Note too that ‘sabk’ was not a conventional term for denoting literary styles until Bahār's intervention. For a useful overview of some of the more traditional terms (tarz, shewah, and so on), along with their subtle shades of meaning, see Faruqi (2004).

29 Indeed, given North India's two millennia of interactions ‘with the traditions emanating from Old and Middle Persian’, and especially the fact that northern India ‘came in contact with the emergent New Persian culture sometime around the third quarter of the ninth century, when … Persian was still evolving as a language of literary expression in the Islamic East’, Muzaffar Alam has shown convincingly that ‘… northern India became a part of the Perso-Islamic world in precisely the same way as did Transoxania, Ghazna, or Ghur. Just as Bukhara, Tirmiz, Nishapur, Isfarain, Sabzavar, and Herat were important in this cultural landscape, so too Delhi and Lahore acquired a place there and a reputation. In the thirteenth century there was a certain degree of cultural integration with a coherent Perso-Islamic identity (in opposition to the Arab culture) that is identified with the term “‘Ajam”’(Alam 2003, 132–4).

30 Consider, for instance, the explicitly anti-Arab triumphalism of E. G. Browne's remarks on rise of the Safavids (c.1500 CE), which he describes as: ‘an event of the greatest historical importance, not only to Persia herself and her immediate neighbours, but to Europe generally … the restoration of the Persian Empire and the re-creation of the Persian nationality after an eclipse of more than eight centuries and a half … the transition from mediaeval to comparatively modern times. The Arab conquest … [had] reduced Persia to the position of a mere province of the Caliphate … [but] To the Safawī dynasty belongs the credit of making Persia “a nation once again,” self-contained, centripetal, powerful and respected, within borders practically identical in the time of Shāh ‘Abbās the Great (AD 1587–1628) with those of the Sasanian Empire’ (Browne 1997, 3–4).

31 It is absolutely critical to note that the area Bahār is trying to claim here is not Khurasan, the recently subdivided province in the modern nation state of Iran, but a much larger territory sometimes referred to as ‘Greater Khurasan’ (khurāsān-i buzurg), which at one time made up the eastern quadrant of the Sāsānian Empire. This was the last Sāsānian region to be conquered by the Umayyads (647 CE) – a fact not without significance for Bahār's project – but at the peak of Sāsānian influence it is said to have included not just modern Iranian cities like Nishapur, Tus and Mashhad, but also Herat and Balkh in Transoxania, Kabul and Ghazna in Afghanistan, Merv and Sanjan in modern-day Turkmenistan, the Uzbek cities of Samarqand and Bukhara, and even much of modern-day Tajikistan. This grouping of territories was never again entirely under uncontested Persian control, but the ancient Sāsānian precedent, and the widespread use of the Persian language throughout the region, forms the basis of the modern Iranian claim to the cultural production of the entire region. Of course, this claim has not gone uncontested. The Delhi Sultans and the Mughals also claimed much of this region as their own dynastic inheritance, and all along, various other groups (Afghans, Uzbeks, Tajiks, Pashtuns, etc.) have retained cultural memories that suggest claims to some or all of this region and its cultural traditions.

32 Here too, ‘Iraq does not refer to the modern nation-state of that name. In premodern times Persian Iraq (‘irāq-i ‘ajam) – as opposed to the Mesopotamian Iraq of the Arabs – referred to the swathe of territory basically east of the Zagros Mountains, which included a number of major cultural centres like Isfahan, Qazvin and Kashan.

33 Bahār (1351/1972, 45–6). For a less tendentious overview of prose style during the period roughly corresponding to Bahār's sabk-i khurāsānī and sabk-i ‘irāqī, see Zilli (2000). For an analysis of the kind of Arabic aesthetic formalism during this period that Bahār found so unsightly, see Sperl (1989).

34 Of the poets listed in the preceding paragraph, ‘Attār was from Nishapur (Khurasan); Khāqānī was originally from Shirvan (Azerbaijan), but did spend much of his career traveling across Perso-Arabic Iraq before dying in Tabriz; Nizāmī was from Ganja (Azerbaijan); Hāfīz and Sa‘dī were both from Shiraz, though the latter spent much of his life traveling all over the Islamic world; Rūmī was originally from Balkh, though he eventually settled in Anatolia (aka Eastern Rome, and hence his name); and Amīr Khusrau and Hasan were both from Delhi.

35 See for instance the relevant passages in ‘Isāmī (c.1967–1977). Drawing a direct parallel between Firdausī's master text and his own Shāh-nāmah, ‘Isāmī explicitly projects Iltūtmish and his successors as heroic saviours of Perso-Islamic culture, providing a refuge from Mongol mischief. Thus ‘Delhi became the Ka‘ba of the seven continents (haft iqlīm) and the whole region became the home of Islam’ (‘Isāmī, vol. 2, 226–7).

36 Followed, of course, by the modern bāzgasht. This pattern – golden age, fall from grace, redemptive return to glory – could also be seen as a product of Bahār's essential Romanticism. Nearly all the European Romantics had a similarly cyclical understanding of literary historical temporality (on which, see for instance Abrams 1971). Iranian reformers like Bahār, and Indian reformers like Altāf Husain Hālī, for instance, were thus interested not simply in naturalist poetics for their own sake, but also in the larger vision of temporality and redemption that went with them.

37 Faruqi (2004, 20 and 48).

38 Rypka (1968, 295–6).

39 For a discussion of Foucault's concept of ‘heterotopia’ as it relates specifically to Iranian modernism, see Tavakoli-Targhi (2001a, b).

40 Note, however, that even in the late nineteenth century a reformer like Shiblī Nu‘mānī continued to see the entire Indo-Persian tradition as the product of one integrated cultural space, as indicated by the very title of his magnum opus, ‘Poetry of ‘Ajam’ (Shi‘r al-‘Ajam). On Sir Sayyid, Hālī, and Āzād, see for instance Pritchett (1994); Shackle and Majeed (1997); Azad (2001).

41 The broader conceptual implications of the language tree metaphor for modernist temporality are summed up in a well-known passage by Bernard S. Cohn, where he points out that just as the tree could be a model for upward cultural progress, it ‘could also be used to establish regression, decay, and decadence, the movement through time away from some pristine, authentic, original starting point, a golden age in the past’. Proposing a wry alternative model, Cohn wonders why, instead of ‘oaks and maples … the British never seemed to think of using the most typical South Asian tree, the banyan, which grows up, out, and down at the same time’ (see Cohn 1996, 55).

42 See for instance Abidi (1960); al-Rashīd (1996).

43 Mohiuddin (1960, 24).

44 Mohiuddin (1960, 25).

45 Rypka (1968, 296).

46 Ultimately, the argument put forth in this article will have to be accompanied by a deeper historical account, supported by many more examples of the dynamic relationship between Indian Persian as an acknowledged regional linguistic variation – one that was accepted as such in medieval and early modern times – and the type of transregional aesthetic developments that have come to be misrepresented as uniquely Indian qua sabk-i hindī. Unfortunately, there is no space to do that here. But I imagine such an account would have interesting parallels with the dialectic recently laid out by Yigal Bronner and David Shulman for what they are calling regional ‘Sanskrit of the place’, which, despite local inflections, nevertheless consistently ‘[allowed] a poet to transcend his or her parochial context and reach out to a space shaped by a wider, inherited discourse’ (Bronner and Shulman 2006, 1–30).

47 Mohiuddin (1960, 24).

48 At least one Hindi-Urdu ghazal has indeed been attributed to Chandar Bhān, but he himself never mentions it (or any other vernacular compositions), and as far as I can tell it cannot be traced any earlier than Lala Sri Ram's Khumkhānah-i Jāwed (1908, 574–5). Beyond the possibility of it having being preserved in the oral tradition, therefore, we can treat its authenticity with some scepticism.

49 Brahman (1967, 318.2).

50 Brahman (1967, 304.3). The lineage in question being, of course, that of Majnūn the prototypical lover. Note too the clever play on the word silsilah: a ‘chain of transmission’, i.e. a poetic or mystical genealogy; but in poetry also the ‘chains’ made of the beloved's tresses. Thus the genealogical ‘chain’ is being refreshed via the scent of the very ‘chains’ which the beloved uses to trap lovers like Majnūn and drive them to lunacy.

51 See for instance Ramaswamy (2007).

52 Brahman (2003, 87). The reference here to burāq (‘lightning’, but also the name of the mount ‘larger than a donkey but smaller than a mule’ that carried the Prophet Muhammad from Jerusalem to heaven) underscores yet again that Chandar Bhān's repertoire of poetic imagery looked to the classical Perso-Islamic tradition as much as – if not more than – the Indic, and thus further undermines the contention that Hindu participation in the Persianate ecumene necessarily caused some sort of incompetent dilution of the classical.

53 Brahman (2003, 87).

54 See for instance the parade described in Chahār Chaman (Brahman 2003, 53–8), which boasts of attendees from an astonishing array of locales from all over the world – all of whom, he insists, ‘will carry testimonial evidence of the kindness and good name of this eternal empire in every direction and to every far corner of the world’.

55 Brahman (2003, 87).

56 On ta‘allı¯, see Faruqi (2004, 69).

57 As suggested, subtly but definitively, by the pains he takes to translate Indian terminology where necessary. A perfect example is when Chandar Bhān explains that the 12 lakh (1.2 million) rupees required for construction of a major mosque ‘comes to 40,000 ‘Irāqī tumans, or 60 lakh 6 million Transoxanian khānīs’ (Brahman 2003, 87). If one wants to take the use of the term ‘rupee’ as Indianization of the Persian language, one must also acknowledge that such usages obviously did not preclude speaking to an Iraqi, Transoxanian, and even global audience.

58 All the quotes in this paragraph are from Chahār Chaman (Brahman 2003, 92–4). Note his clear differentiation between the earlier and ‘the latest’ poets, as well as his praise for ‘smooth flowing expression’ – an aesthetic posture completely at odds with the characterization of so-called sabk-i hindī poetry as lusting only after ostentatious verbal convolution.

59 Of course, Bahār and others might well argue that this proves nothing other than that Chandar Bhān's entire translocal audience – whether real or imaginary – had already been equally corrupted by India's degradation of Persian. The very fact that they might appreciate the Persian oeuvre of a Hindu in India would, a fortiori, prove it. But this requires us to believe that they could have somehow already gained an appreciation for a style to which, according to Bahār's own model of causality, they could not yet have been exposed, that they had somehow already been ‘dazzled’ and ‘overmastered’ (pace Rypka) by a literary historical force of which poets like Chandar Bhān were themselves the agents. Thus here again, the sabk-i hindī model's circular ingenuity shines through.

60 Specifically, there are no Hindavi words, and the metre is utterly ordinary (hazaj). The ‘poet as parrot’ trope, moreover, has intertextual resonance not just with Amīr Khusrau, but with Hāfiz, Rūmī, ‘Attār, and countless other classical poets, as does the notion of the poet as a sweet-singing ‘sugar-scatterer’ (shakkar-fishān). So even though this verse provides superficial evidence of a growing Indo-Iranian rivalry, its actual language is nothing peculiar to India, or Hindus, or some kind of exclusively Indian literary style.

61 Brahman (2005, 14–5).

62 Richards (1997).

63 For details on both of these figures, and their influence on the early poetics of tāzagī, see ‘Abdullah (1977, 114–26).

64 For details on Ghazālī, see Hadi (1978, 23–78); for details on Nazīrī, Urfī, and Zuhūrī, see for instance al-Ghani (1930).

65 Chandar Bhān, too, saw plenty of travel in his lifetime. We know definitively from Chahār Chaman that apart from his native Lahore he spent time in Delhi, Agra, Udaipur, Balkh, Afghanistan, possibly Benares, and numerous other towns and regions both in his own travels and as part of the imperial retinue.

66 Subrahmanyam (1995).

67 For some recent correctives to this misconception, see for instance Abu-Lughod (1989); Fisher (2004); Ho (2006); Alam and Subrahmanyam (2007).

68 For an exceelent example, see Sunil Sharma, ‘Novelty, tradition, and Mughal politics in Nau ‘T’s Sūz u Gudāz’, in The necklace of the Pleiades: Studies in persian literature presented to Heshmat Moayyed on his 80th birthday, edited by Franklin Lewis and Sunil Sharma. West Lafayette: Purdue University Press, 245–258.

69 Losensky (1998, 210).

70 Consider, for instance, the many Persian and Urdu versions of Nal-Daman, discussed recently by Muzaffar Alam and Sanjay Subrahmanyam (2006, 109–41).

71 Pollock (2001).

72 Busch (2003, 2004).

73 Fleischer (1992, 159–77).

74 E. J. W. Gibb, History of Ottoman Poetry, cited in Browne (vol. 4, 1997, 163).

75 Andrews and Kalpakh (2005).

76 Catana (1999, 18).

77 Interestingly enough, mannerism too is undergoing somewhat of a favorable critical reappraisal of late, thanks no doubt to increased postmodern tolerance and respect for formal ingenuity. In addition to Catana, see for instance Zerner (1972); Mirollo (1984); Hauser (1986); Steadman (1990).

78 Pollock (2007, 383).

79 Brahman (1967, 69.5).