Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/887

LITERATURE.] HINDUSTANI 847 of the cult of the infant, Krishna may be judged by the enormous number of Hindu proper names which end in Led, meaning "child," all of which embody some reference to this deity in his youthful form. In Bengal especially the sect is extremely numerous, having there arisen out of the teaching of Chaitauya, who is said to have married a daughter of Vallabhacharya, and is believed by his followers to have been himself an incarnation of Krishna. Such, in the briefest outline, is the character of Hindi literature during the period when it grew and flourished through its own original forces. Founded by a popular impulse in many respects similar to that which gave rise to Buddhism nearly 2000 years before, and cultivated chiefly (though by no means exclusively) by authors not belonging to the Brahmanical order, it was the legitimate descendant in spirit, as Hindi is the legitimate descendant in speech, of the Prakrit literature which preceded it. Entirely in verse, it adopted and elaborated the Prakrit metrical forms, and carried them to a pitch of perfection which is too often overlooked by those who concern themselves rather with the substance than with the form of the works they study. The language of these, compositions strikes us often as rude, abrupt, and ambiguous ; undoubtedly in its earlier speci mens it is wanting in clearness and definiteness of gram matical form ; but the shackles of metre are frequently the explanation of uncouth forms of speech, and the necessity of filling out a metrical scheme led in too many cases to irregularities and amplifications which had perhaps no representatives in the uncompelled utterances of the verna cular tongue. Interesting when regarded in the mass, its attractions in detail are few. As in all Oriental literature, repetition and shallowness of idea overcome it, and render an extensive course of reading intolerable to a European. Conventional images, platitudes exhausted to the utmost degree of tenuity, barren philosophical and theological themes which in their wideness entirely overlook the study of detail, such are, with few exceptions, its leading features ; and one who has read two or three books has in truth made himself master of the whole secret of original Hindi literature. 3. The origines of Urdu as a literary language are extremely obscure. The popular account refers its rise to the time of Tlmur (1398). Some authors even claim for it a higher antiquity, asserting that a dlwan, or collection of poems, was composed in Reklitah by Mas ud, son of Sa d, in the last half of the llth and beginning of the 12th century, and that Sa di of Shlraz and bis friend Amir Khusrau of Dehli likewise made verses in that dialect before the end of the 13th century. This, however, is very questionable; and the better opinion appears to be that these ancient compositions, if they existed at all, were written in Hindi according to the metrical forms of that language, rather than in what is properly called Urdu. That Muhammadans composed in Hindi, and used that language as their vernacular, is certain ; and in many passages of KabTr, which are never theless pure Hindi compositions, Persian words are used almost as freely as in the modern dialect. Much of the confusion which besets the subject is due to the want of a clear definition of what Urdu, as opposed to Hindi, really is. Urdu, as a literary language, differs from Hindi rather in its form than in its substance. The really vital point of difference, that in which Hindi and Urdu are incommensur able, is the prosody. Hardly one of the metres taken over by Urdu poets from Persian agrees with those used in Hindi ; in the latter language, it is the rule to give the short a inherent in every consonant or group of consonants its full value in scansion, except occasionally at the metrical pause : in Urdu this is never done, the only somewhat analogous rule providing for the enunciation of a short a (the mm-fathali) after a nexus of consonants which would otherwise be pronounced without it; the great majority of Hindi metres are counted by the number of syllabic instants or mdtras (the value in time of a short syllable) : in Urdu the metres follow a special order of longs and shorts. The question, then, is not "When did Persian first become intermixed with Hindi in the literary speech ? for this process began with the first entry of Muslim conquerors into India, and continued for centuries before a line of Urdu was composed ; nor, When was the Persian character first employed to write Hindi 1 for the written form is but a subordinate matter. We must ask When was the first verse composed in Hindi, whether with or without foreign admixture, according to the forms of Persian prosody and not in those of the indigenous metrical system 1 Then, and not till then, did Urdu come into being. If, then, it is really the case that poems were so composed as early as the llth or the 13th century, the origin of Urdu literature must be carried back to that period. But Hindi itself was at that date, and for many decades later (as we see from Chand and our other earliest specimens of the language), in an unsettled and transition stage. Neither in its case- inflexions nor in its verbal forms did it resemble the language which we know as Urdu. It abounded in short vowels and hiatuses, which could not accommodate them selves either to the Persian character (without the free use of vowel-signs and hamzah, which were seldom employed) or to Persian prosody ; and its syntactical order was loose and unsettled* Urdu, as we know it, is the Hindi of the end of the 16th century enriched from Persian, not the Hindi of Chand and the early Bhagats. The whole of Urdu poetry follows Persian models of composition ; its themes are those which had already been worked (some might say, worked out) by writers in that language ; and neither in form nor substance do we find the faintest flavour of originality from its commencement to the present day. The paucity of themes and want of originality in Urdu verse has led to a most elaborate development of the system of rhetoric. Where the substance of what a poet has to say is identical with that which has been said by hundreds, nay thousands, of poets before him, it is of the highest importance that the way of saying it shall if possible be peculiar to himself. Rhetoric, accordingly, rather than poetic feeling, is the distinguishing feature of composition in Urdu. Pleasing hyperbole, ingenious comparison, antithesis, alli teration, carefully arranged gradation of noun and epithet, are the means employed to obtain variety ; and few of the most eloquent passages of Urdu verse admit of translation into any other language without losing that which in the original makes their whole charm. Even in the masnams, or narrative poems, the story is usually quite a subordinate matter ; it has in most cases been handled time after time, and is familiar to the reader in its minutest detail. Even when the names chosen for the actors are new, the intrigue is old, and the mode in which it is unfolded is the only thing which distinguishes one poem from another. The descriptions thus, confined within a narrow circle of incident and epithet, repeat each other with a monotony which to a European is inexpressibly fatiguing, but which in the East is deemed rather a merit than a defect. Differences of school, which are made much of by native critics, are to us hardly perceptible ; they consist in the use of one or other range of metaphor and comparison, classed, according as they repeat the well-worn poetical stock- in-trade of the Persians or seek a slightly fresher and more Indian field of sentiment, as the old or the new style of composition. These being the nature and features of Urdu poetry,

it will be manifest that such an account of -it as can