DAKHNI LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE-3

By  Sayed Mohamed, Retd. Principal, Urdu College, Hyderabad.

Dakhni Language and Literature comprises of three special research papers (1: THE VALUE OF DAKHNI LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. 2: A SURVEY OF RESERCH WORK DONE ON THE DAKHNI LANGUAGE AND LITERATURE. 3: SUFISM IN DAKHNI LITERATURE)  presented by the author during 1968, under the auspices of University of Mysore.

3: SUFISM IN DAKHNI LITERATURE.

Sufism is that mode of religious life in Islam in which the emphasis is placed, not on the performance of external ritual, but on the purification of one’s inner self in order to attain lasting spiritual bliss.  In other words, it signifies Islamic mysticism. The term is popularized by western writers but the one in common use among the Muslims is ‘Tasawwuf’ while its cognate, Sufi, is used for the mystic.

According to I mam Qushayri, the word Sufi came into vogue a little before the expiry of the second century Hijri.  After the death of the Holy Prophet, ‘Companion’s ( Sahaba) was the title applied to the godly people who had kept compny with him and lived the life of purity.  They reeded to better title for ‘companionship’ of the Prophet was unanimously regarded as the highest and the best honour that was ever enjoyed by a Muslim. Those associated with the ‘companions’ were called in their own times ‘Tabein’(followers) and the ‘followers of the followers’ were those  who sat at the feet of the followers. After the expiry of this period , there was a slackening of religious spirit.  Hearts were turning more towards the pleasure of the world than towards God.  A number of new schools of thought cropped up. Each system was divided into a number of branches. Seeing this state of affairs, those who adored God above all things and were consumed by the fire of His love, separated themselves from the rest of the world, and devoted themselves to the recollection and remembrance of God-the only object of their love. These men were later Sufis.

“Sufism teaches how to purify one’s self, improve one’s morals and build up one’s inner and outer life in order to attain perpetual bliss.  Its subject matter is the purification of the soul and its end or aim is the attainment of eternal felicity and blessedness”.

I mam Qushayri, the author of the great Sufi compendium, ‘Rasa’I’, takes Sufism in the sense if  purity (Safa) i.e.the purity of inner and outer life, and says that ‘purity is something praise-worthy in whichever language it may be expressed and its opposite, impurity (Kadar) is to be eschewed’ . In praise orf Sufism Abu’l Hasan Nuri says: ‘ Sufism is the renunciation of  all selfish leasures’. To Abu Ali  Qazwini, ‘ Sufisim is good manners’ Abu Sahl Sa’luki defines it as abstaining from carpring criticism’. Abu Muhammed al-Juraryi states:’ Sufism is the building up of good habits and the keeping of the heart from all evil desires and passions’. To Muhammed b.al-Qassab, Sufism is good manners which are manifested by a good man in good time before a good people ‘. Muhammad b. Ali has expressed the view that ‘Sufism is goodness of disposition.  He that has a good disposition is a good Sufi’.

It is clear then, that according to these great Sudis , Sufism is nothing but the purification of the sense and the will.  It is the keeping under proper restraint of one’s desires and conforming to the will of God. It is the building up of a solid wall between the pure self and the gog and magog of passions and desires.  It is, in a word, self-discipline the avoidance of what is forbidden and performance of what is ordained by the Law ( Shariyah).

       

Sufism in its esoteric sense is the mystical knowledge of the nearness of God or ‘lim-i-qurb, and only the Muqarrabum, the Sufis, are blessed with this knowledge ! And as junayd has said ‘”Sufism is firmly bound up with the doctrinal faith of the Qur’an and the Traditions”, and that which is rejected by the Qur’an and the Traditions, is nothing but heresy! Thus understood without Sufism, the Islamic Religion would be like a circumference without a centre, Sufism comprises the doctrine and the methods of the ‘Muqarrabun’ . The path which they follow is called ‘Tariqah’ and this term is used by extension to denote a Sufi brotherhood.  The practice of the ‘Tariqah’ and this term is used by extension to denote a Sufi brotherhood.  The practices of the ‘Tariqah’ many of which are of esoteric character, are in addition, but never in opposition to what Shari ah, the Sacred Law, prescribes.

The esoteric method of approach to God-the ‘Tarikha’ as followed by the Sufis – has not however been uniform.  In fact, due to the personal touch given to ti by some prominent figure or other of the brotherhood, several circles or orders going under several names took their rise in due course, some of which eventually transplanted them selves on the soil of India.  The impulse behind the individual touch was prompted either by intuitive call from within, or under the influence of one or other of the different speculative schools of though which had shot up in medieval times among the educated classes in West Asia. Each rode observed its own set of esoteric practices sc much so, by the time Sufism travelled into India from the north-west, the orthodox form of Sufism described above had already developed certain features which bore striking resemblance in theory to the monist pantheism of neo-Platonism, one hand and to Vedantism, on the other, and in esoteric practices, to hose in vogue among Magians, Buddhists, Yogis and Christians. It had also evolved a vies of life styled ‘Wahadat al-Wajud’ or unity of being, finally systematized by Ibn al Arabia, although the more careful among the Sufis, under the inspiration furnished by Ghazzali, tried to give to every aspect of it a Quranic Interpretation, and reconcile it to the Shariyah.

The Sufi movement in India received powerful impetus from the time of Shaykh Ali Bin Al-Hujwiri, who is popularly known in India as Data Ganj Bakshsh.  Hujwir and Jalab are two villages near Ghazna.  As he lived there for sometime after his arrival in India, he is called Hujwiri and Lalabi. Since he settled down in Lahore and died there, he is also known as Lahori. His most famous work is ‘Kashf-al-mahjub’. Which is considered to be the first book of Sufism in Persian.

Hujwiri passed the last period of his life in Lahore where he died in 1063 or 1701 A.D. After his death. His tomb became the Mecca of Millions of people.  Once Khwaja Mu’inud-Din Chisti shut himself in a room by his tomb for forty days and when on the expiry of the period, he was about to take leave, he recited the following couplet:

“Thou art bestower of the treasures of both the worlds, and the manifestation of the Light of God! A perfect guide to the perfect and a guide to the immature!

Sufism is one of the most popular subject on which poets and prose writers have tried their hand in the Dakhni. Since the subject matter was tough and could not be easily understood by the common people, the writers often gave their works the shape of allegory and the outer from was that of a simple and attractive narrative.

Sufism in the Dakhni literature made this language and the literature, a language of the people and a literature for the people. Unlike the literary and romantic literature which was the result of the patronage of kings and nobles, this literature was unfeigned by any courtly touch.  It was produced in the ‘Kankahs’ or the cottages of the hermits.  It was meant not for the intelligent few but for the masses and so necessarily it was simple.  It can be said beyond doubt that it was only due to the efforts of these religious men who wanted to make their teachings common and popular that this language developed.  The fact that they chose this language as a medium of their instruction is a sure proof that this language was the lingua franca then which was understood alike by the people who spoke Gujarati, Marathi, Khadiboli Haryanvi or some or her Bhasha in the north.

The service rendered by these Sufi writers of the Dakhni is so valuable that several research scholars have to work hard in order to gauge the worth, depth and the amount of their service in making the language and in developing the Literature.  This has been done to some extent and in the next lecture I am dealing with that topic.

It would be wrong to understand that these Sufi writers were all religious leaders and like missionaries they wanted to preach the teaching of their religion to the people of other faith.  Their works were meant for those also and mainly for them who believed in the faith but did not understand certain intricate problems of religious philosophy.  They were teachers who had come down to the level of the masses to teach them difficult subjects in simplest possible manner.  It was necessary that the method of teaching and the medium of instruction should be attractive also since everything was voluntary on the part of one and optional on the part of the other. But this can be said that these great writers were highly paid not in the terms of money but in some other coin.  People gave them their love and respect, adored them while they were  alive and worshipped them after their death.

Since these great Sufi writers belonged to different periods and different places, I will endeavor here to classify them according to the place and keep as far as possible the chronological order..

When the Bahamani Kingdoms was established there were a number of Sufis at Daulatabad and at Khuldabad one of them  Ainuddin Gaujul Ibn is asid to have written several books in Persian and also written a few booklets in the Dakhni.  Hakim Shamsullah Qadri has written that three of his booklets were found in the Library of Fort. St.George at Madras, but nobody else has been able to trace them there. Thus setting it apart as a matter unsettled, it is on the basis of the information gathered up to now, an established truth that the first Sufi author of the Deccan is Hzrat Khaja Banda Nawaz of Gu lbarga.

Hazrat Khaja Banda Nawaz was born in 1321 A.D. at Delhi, came to Doulatabad with his father Syed Raju, at the age of seven and after the death of his father Syed Raju went back to Delhi when he was about 15 years old.  There he became a disciple of Hazrat Naseeruddin Chirag of Delhi who took special care to give him spiritual training and education at the age of 36 he succeeded Shah Chirag and remained at Delhi till he was 80 years old.  Then at the request of Feroz Shah Bahmani he came down to Gulbarga and settled down here.  He died at the age of 105 years.  AS long as he lived Gulbarga attracted thousands of people who wanted to meet him and even today centuries after his death Gulbarga is a place of pilgrimage for all sections of people not only of the Deccan but of different parts of India.

The great Khaj was a prolific writer.  He wrote in Arabic and Persian and for the benefit of thousands of his disciples who did not know Arabic and Persian he dictated in the Dakhni.

 His books are 105 in number and some of them are very famous e.g.(1) Mirajul Ashe-queen (2) Tashreeh Kalma-3-Tayyab (3) Khula-sa-uth-Touheed (4) Shikarnama (5) Durrul Asrar.  Two of them Mirajul Asheqeen and Shikarnama have been published. Hw was a great poet also.  His eldest son Syed Akbar Hussaini is also said to have written a number of pamphlets.  His grand son Abdul Hussaini translated into Dakhni Hazrat Abdul Qader Jeelani’s , ‘Nishatul Ishq’ .  A copy of this manuscript was in the library of Tipu Sultan.

Gujarat has also produed a number of Sufis who have writternbooks in the Dakhni foremost among them is Shaik Bahauddin Bajan.  He was born in 1388 A.D. in Gujarat and left for Barhanpur in his later years.  He had travelled much in India and was an authority in music. His writings are found in parts and pieces.  He is famous for his distiches.

Next to Bajan comes Gamdhani . Shah Ali Jiv Gamdhani was a popular leader of his time and the number of his devotees ran into hundred of thousands.  He died in 1565 at the age of 77 and now rests in peace at Ahmedabad. His ‘Diwan’ (anthology of poetic works) contains romantic as well as philosophic poems, and has been published twice.

Wazi Mahmood Daryaee son of Qazi Hameed was another famous Sufi writer of Gujarat.  He dealt with almost all problems of Sufism in hiss poetry.  His disciples while colleting the incidents of his life have also copied down his poetry and have thus preserved his work.

Khoob Mohammed Chishti the famous author of ‘Khoob Tarang’ is another important Sufi writer who sprang from Gujarat.

Among other worth-mentioning writers from Gujarat there were Khan Mohamad Bin Vali Mohamad, Malik Mohammad and Shah Hashim Husain Alvi.  Their verses have been found in parts. It is required that thorough research work should be done and then complete works collected to ascertain the real service rendered by them.