CHAPTER FOUR:
T H E W A T E R O F
L I F E
We have had a glimpse of Azad, forced to flee in confusion from Delhi in 1857, snatching up the packet of Zauq'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 Adam 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 Abid Peshavari 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 islah have been blocked for many years. The English language is a magic world of progress and islah. 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 Mir 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 Ghalib? Although Azad has been strongly defended by his biographer Muhammad Sadiq,[5] and by scholars as distinguished as Masud Hasan Rizvi Adib,[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 "Zauq worship" that makes him vulnerable. Certainly Azad had complex uses for an ustad like Zauq. Azad could "save" Zauq 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. Zauq thus could be of the most obvious psychological value to Azad. Moreover, Zauq 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. Abid Peshavari says that Azad invokes Zauq's name 115 times in Water of Life.[8] And when the time finally comes to write about Zauq himself, the hyperbole, the "unbounded Zauq worship," is such that the whole rest of the book seems "merely a preface" to it.[9]
Azad did not merely praise Zauq 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 Bahadur Shah Zafar, for Azad asserted that much of Zafar's poetry had in fact been written by Zauq. According to Azad, Zafar 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 Zauq to finish the rest. "Thousands" of Zauq's poems, Azad said, are in circulation under the name of Zafar [454]; a large part of Zafar's first volume, and all of his later ones, are Zauq'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 Zafar's later ghazals had in fact been written by Ghalib.[12])
Another unhappy result of Azad's Zauq worship was, paradoxically, its damage to Zauq'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 Divan-e Zauq (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 Zauq'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 "Zauq's" ghazals--on the backs of letters and papers dated thirty years after his death.[14] But since Zauq 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 islah 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 Zauq than the real Zauq could ever supply. It has been argued that Zauq was never his ustad at all, and that Azad had to co-opt him into the role after the fact.[16] But even if Zauq was an ustad to him as well as an "uncle," obviously Zauq's actual poetry was not enough for Azad, either in quantity (so that °afar's poetry and Azad's own forgeries had to be pressed into service) or in quality (so that Azad had to perform a modernizing islah on Zauq's work); nor was Zauq'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. Zauq 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 Mir, whom he calls the "crest jewel of poets" [243]. A local navab of Lucknow provided the penniless Mir with a fine house; it had a sitting room overlooking a garden. But the shutters chanced to be closed when Mir 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?" Mir Sahib (sahib) replied, "Oh, is there a garden here?" His friend said, "That's why the Navab brought you here, to divert and refresh you." Mir 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 Shaikh Imam Bakhsh `Nasikh' (1776-1838) in some detail [333-334], and even of Zauq'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 Mirza Muhammad Rafi `Sauda' (1713-1780) and Mirza Fakhir `Makin.' One of Azad's longest anecdotes, it is a kind of melodrama in several acts, complete with poets and kings, ustads and shagirds, islah and professional rivalry.
In those days, there was a man of good family named Ashraf Ali Khan. Using Persian tazkirahs and the volumes of the ustads, he had worked for fifteen years to create an intikhab (selection). And for editing, he took it to Mirza Fakhir Makin, who in those days was the best known of the Persian poets. Mirza Fakhir, after many refusals and protestations and insistences, took the intikhab 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 islah. When Ashraf Ali Khan Sahib learned of this state of affairs, he went and, after much to-ing and fro-ing, took the intikhab away. The manuscript had been disfigured by the islahs, which caused him much grief. He took it in this state to Mirza [Sauda], 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 intikhab, 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 Makin to make a show of modesty and reluctance. But how arrogant of him to perform major islah on the verses of the great masters!
The appeal against one ustad can only be to another. The manuscript is shown to Sauda; he too, mindful of the proprieties, is at first coy about accepting it.
Mirza Sauda 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. Mirza Fakhir Makin knows Persian and is masterfully accomplished in Persian. Whatever he did, he must have done for a reason. If you want islah, then there's Shaikh Ayat Allah `Sana,' the shagird of the late Shaikh Ali `Hazin'; and there's Mirza Bhachchu, with the pen name of `Zarrah,' the shagird of Mir Shams ud-Din `Faqir.' There's Hakim Bu Ali Khan `Hatif' in Bengal. There's Nizam ud-Din `Sani` Bilgrami in Farrukhabad. There's Shah Nur ul-Ain `Vaqif' in Shahjahanabad. This is a task fit for those people."Sauda 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 Makin's presumption, Sauda 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.When Mirza mentioned the names of these renowned Persian scholars, Ashraf Ali Khan said, "Mirza Fakhir wouldn't give them the time of day." In short, because of his insistence Mirza accepted the intikhab. 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, Mirza too was grieved. Appropriately to the circumstances, he wrote the essay Reproof of the Heedless, and he exposed Mirza Fakhir Makin's foolishness and misunderstandings with regard to the principles of literature. Along with this, he cast an eye over Mirza Fakhir's own volume as well, and mentioned its errors; and where it was possible, he gave suitable islah.
In response, Makin sends one of his senior shagirds to assess the situation
and try to conciliate Sauda.
Mirza Fakhir learned of this. He was very much alarmed. And he wanted to wash out these stains with oral messages. Thus he sent Baqa Allah Khan `Baqa' to speak with Mirza [Sauda]. He was Mirza Fakhir's shagird, and a very practiced (mashshaq) and knowledgeable poet. Mirza [Sauda] and he had various full discussions, and certain of Mirza Fakhir'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:Sauda'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. Baqa tries to reply with a "warrant," an authoritative precedent from the work of an accepted ustad. Sauda points out that Bazil'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. Makin's verse, by contrast, violates the tradition while failing to create any special effect.In this company my heart was constricted like a wineglassMirza [Sauda]'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. Baqa, in response, grew wet with the "sweat of shagirdi." And at length he brought in a [Persian] verse by `Bazil' as a warrant (sanad):
The bloom on the wine's face made me blossom out.What pleasure would wine give to me, desolate without you?When Mirza Rafi 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."
Because the wineglass is like a constricted heart without you.
But now the action moves into an entirely new realm. Makin, 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, Mirza Fakhir took another tack. He had many shagirds in Lucknow, especially the Shaikhzadahs, who at one time [before Akbar's conquest] had been the rulers of that very land of Avadh; the vapors of impertinent aggressiveness and arrogance had not left their minds. One day Sauda, 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." Mirza was very skilled at inventing the roses and flowers of poetic mazmuns, and creating the parrots and mynahs of speech, but this was quite a new mazmun! 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 Saadat Ali Khan and his entourage came by that way. Seeing the crowd, he halted; and inquiring about the circumstances, he seated Sauda with him on his elephant and took him away. Asif ud-Daulah was in the ladies' apartments, having a meal. Saadat Ali Khan went and said, "My dear brother, it's an awful thing--while you rule, such a calamity in the city!" Asif ud-Daulah said, "What is it, brother, is everything all right?" He replied, "Mirza Rafi--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 Sauda is abducted at knifepoint; Azad, even while sympathizing with him, has a little gentle fun at his expense: this was quite a new mazmun! But after all, God is watching over him, and he is rescued by the navab's brother.
The navab himself, Asif ud-Daulah, prepares to avenge his "uncle" by throwing the culprits out of the city, but Sauda 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. Asif ud-Daulah challenges Makin: "If you're a champion in the field of poetry, compose a satire right now in Sauda's presence." Makin of course fails to do so. But when Sauda's turn comes, "without the least delay" he recites an extemporaneous Persian quatrain--in which by clever wordplay he conveys the idea that Makin 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 Mirza Fakhir; while whatever Sauda composed against him is on the lips of thousands" [157-160].
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 Zauq, as Zauq told stories about Sauda and his times [141]. The original source for this particular anecdote is apparently a verse account by Sauda, but Azad takes a number of liberties with it, to improve its dramatic effect; the result is riddled with historical inconsistencies and attributes to Sauda 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 ustadi 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]. Zauq taught Azad that ustads can make even unpromising rhymes and meters work [475]; Azad records an anecdote in which, at Zafar's command, Zauq instantly turned a casually spoken phrase, metrical only by chance, into the second line of a shir [463-464]--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 Sauda did, according to the anecdote, when insulting Makin.[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 Mir's self-praise with laughter [207-208]; 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 Ghalib, is in agreement on this point: he attributes to Mir the prophecy, "If this boy [Ghalib] finds a worthy ustad to put him on the right road, he'll become a peerless poet; otherwise, he'll babble nonsense." Hali depicts Ghalib 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 Baqa defended his ustad against Sauda--or in street brawls. Shagirds might in fact claim an amount of attention the ustad found burdensome. Shah Nasir 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 and sit on my head." His exactions, he said, meant that at least they brought their ghazals only every fourth day instead--and that they wrote more carefully, 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, pir to murid. Mirza `Mazhar' Jan-e Janañ 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 islah 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 [Mirza Salamat Ali] `Dabir' was just beginning his practice, his ustad's advice about some word displeased him. Shaikh Nasikh was alive, but he was elderly. Dabir went to him. At that time he was amidst a group of people, sitting on cushioned stools, in formal assembly. Dabir petitioned, "Your Lordship! About this verse I said such-and-such, and my ustad gave such-and-such an islah." He replied, "Your ustad gave the correct islah." Dabir 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." Dabir again petitioned, "Your Lordship, please just look at this book." The Shaikh 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. Dabir fled. Shaikh Nasikh 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 islah, his "correction" and improvement of the shagird's work. We have seen one hostile example of the process of islah, when Sauda criticized Makin's use of the image of the wineglass. Baqa'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 islah in more detail later on.) The prescriptive force of islah 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 Zauq [420]; Ghalib, though not rich, possessed "the lordship of the realm of speech, and the wealth of mazmuns" [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 [409-410]. Mir snubbed the Navab of Avadh by declining to compose on demand [197] and by proudly refusing to accept money or a robe of honor despite great need [209-210]. When Shah Alam himself honored the mystically inclined Khvajah Mir `Dard' (1721-1785) by visiting him, Mir Dard scolded the emperor for sitting among Sufis with his legs disrespectfully stretched out; Shah Alam replied that his feet hurt, to which Mir Dard retorted that in that case he needn't have come at all [178]. When Shah Alam boasted that he could compose ghazals even while using the toilet, Sauda replied, "Your Majesty, that's what they smell like, too" [142]. We have seen that Sauda was known to Asif ud-Daulah, the Navab 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. Zauq was harassed by Zafar, who delighted in thinking up fiendishly ingenious, almost impossible "grounds" (zamin), or meter-rhyme patterns, and commanding Zauq to compose in them [472]. Nasikh, who offended the Navab of Avadh by contemptuously refusing his patronage, was driven out of Lucknow [338]. And above all there is the terrible cautionary tale of Mir Inshaallah Khan `Insha' (1753-1817), whose flippant behavior eventually turned Navab Saadat Ali Khan against him; the Navab kept him in isolation, under a kind of house arrest, until he went mad and finally died in humiliation and squalor [280-285].
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 mazmuns" in order to survive [365]. Shaikh Ghulam Hamadani `Mushafi' (1750-1824) in old age sold his best verses to others for money [350], Mir Mustahsan `Khaliq' supported his family by selling ghazals [365]. Even theft of this verbal capital is possible: Dabir was furious enough to take drastic action when his ustad, Mir `Zamir,' sought to read an elegy of Dabir's in public and claim it as his own [516-517].
But ultimately none of these political or financial vicissitudes matter. 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 Makin loses because "no one even knows" his poetry, while Sauda'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 Mir never
made that remark about the outer and inner gardens--but the anecdote beautifully
captures the classical ghazal poet's attitude. Perhaps Baqa never argued
with Sauda 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.
FOOTNOTES
[1]:Abid Peshavari, Zauq, p. 126.
[2]:The review is reprinted in Hali, Kulliyat-e nasr, vol. 2, pp. 184-194; the quotation is from pp. 190-191.
[3]:Hali, Makatib, p. 18; also pp. 15-19. See also Sadiq, Azad, p. 50; Farrukhi, Azad, vol. 2, pp. 11-12, 27.
[4]:Hali, Kulliyat-e nasr, vol. 2, p. 186.
[5]:Sadiq, Azad, pp. 47-53.
[6]:See Adib, Ab-e hayat ka tanqidi mut?aliah.
[7]:For a thorough inventory of such errors see Qazi Abdul Vadud, Muhammad Husain Azad bahaisiyat-e muhaqqiq; see also Shairani, "Tanqid bar Ab-e hayat," Maqalat, vol. 3, pp. 27-116.
[8]:Abid Peshavari, Zauq, p. 5.
[9]:Farrukhi, Azad, vol. 2, p. 258.
[10]:For a flagrant example see Farrukhi, Azad, vol. 2, pp. 276-278.
[11]:Azad further elaborates his allegations in Divan-e Zauq, p. 112. They are examined and refuted in Parvez, Bahadur Shah °afar, pp. 313-333.
[12]:Hali, Yadgar-e Ghalib, p. 35. According to Hali's account, °afar would sometimes write down "one or two lines" and then send the page to Ghalib, who would complete the ghazal.
[13]:For this kind of modernization there do exist a few parallels: the editing of Mushafi by `Amir' Minai and his ustad Muzaffar Ali `Asir,' and the editing of Nasikh by Ali Ausat `Rashk.'
[14]:For the most decisive evidence see Shairani, "Shams ul-Ulama Maulana Muhammad Husain Azad aur Divan-e Zauq," Maqalat, vol. 3, pp. 257-306; see also Abid Peshavari, Zauq, pp. 130-322; and Farrukhi, Azad, vol. 2, pp. 514-550.
[15]:Farrukhi, Azad, vol. 2, p. 533.
[16]:Abid Peshavari, Zauq, pp. 110-127.
[17]:Farrukhi, Azad, vol. 2, p. 87.
[18]:Shairani, "Tanqid bar Ab-e hayat," Maqalat, vol. 3, pp. 98-108; Farrukhi, Azad, vol. 2, pp. 129-141.
[19]:Faruqi, Shir-e shor angez, vol. 3, p. 89.
[20]:These pen names, since they had meaning, lent themselves elegantly to wordplay. The Indo-Persian poet Nur ul-Ain `Vaqif' (died c.1776) was once asked by a stranger, "Are you acquainted (vaqif) with Vaqif?" His reply: "I am vaqif" (Khatak, Shaikh Muhammad Ali Hazin, p. 114).
[21]:After a lifetime of practice, Amir Khusrau claimed that he could often improvise faster than a scribe could write, and that even before kings he was usually "content to extemporise and to dispense with the services of the pen" (Mirza, Amir Khusrau, p. 167).
[22]:Hali, Yadgar-e Ghalib, p. 109; see also pp. 108-113. This is still the commonly held view of Ghalib's development, although a comparison of the ghazals he composed in his early youth with those of his old age shows that his range was extremely wide--from radical simplicity to opaque complexity--throughout his poetic career.
[23]:Even more grandiose notions of royal gift giving were common in
the tradition. One of Amir Khusrau's patrons boasted that since his father
used to give "gold equal in weight to an elephant" to poets, he himself
ought to give at least "an elephant-load of gold" (Mirza, Amir Khusrau,
p. 125).