Page:Encyclopædia Britannica, Ninth Edition, v. 11.djvu/884

Rh 844 HINDUSTANI ^LITERATURE. exception of a fragment by Jaideo (the _author of the Sanskrit Gltd-Govinda), preserved in the Adi-Granth, the ollest specimen of Hindi which we possess : but it is im possible to suppose that he was the first to attempt poetical composition in that language. The metrical perfection of his verse alone shows that he must have had many prede cessors ; and rude and rough though his utterance is, it abounds in poetic conventionalisms which must have been the common stock of many singers of his class. The story is told in sixty-nine books, of which same are interludes and digressions, but most are occupied with the exploits of the herj arid his warriors. Considering the early date of the poem, and the opportunities of knowing the truth which the author (if ho was really Prithwlraj s bard) possessed, it is remarkable how much legend and fiction is mixed up with history in the chronicle. The repeated conflicts between the raja and Sultan Shihabuddln of Ghor, in which the latter always, except in the last great battle, comes off the worst, and is released on payment of a ransom, seem to be entirely unhistoric, our authorities knowing only one encounter (that of Tirauri near Thanesar, fought in 1191) in which the sultan was de feated, and there even he escaped uncaptured to Lahore. The Mughals (Book xv.) are brought on the stage more than thirty years before they actually set foot in India (1222), and are related to have been vanquished by the redoubtable Prithwlraj. These and other points make it questionable whether we have here, at least in its entirety, a genuine contemporary work ; but we may concede, as indeed we are justified in doing by the language of the poem, that it is one of our earliest documents in Hindi. It is very difficult for us now to form a just estimate of Chand s poem : the language, essentially transitional in character, abounds in strange forms which have long since died out of the vernacular speech ; few if any Hindus, even the most learned, are able to interpret him ; and his meaning must be sought by investigating the pro cesses by which Sanskrit and Prakrit words have been transfigured in their progress into Hindi. But upon the whole he may be said to exhibit both the merits and defects of ballad-chroniclers in general. There is much that is lively and spirited in his descriptions of fight or council ; and the characters of the Rajput warriors who surround his. hero are not unfrequently sketched in their own words with skill and animation. The sound, however, too often predominates over the sense, and we find abundantly exemplified in his poem the wearisome iteration, uninveri- tive sameness of machinery, and tedious unfolding of familiar themes and images which distinguish nearly the whole of Indian narrative poetry. His value, for us at least, is linguistic rather than literary. The other class of composition which is characteristic of the period of Old Hindi, the literature of the Bhayats, both possesses more intrinsic interest and has exercised a more important influence on subsequent literary endeavour. The heroic chronicles, with perhaps the single exception of a famous saga relating the history of Padmavati, wife of Ratan Sen Raja of Chltor, who in 1303 at the taking of that fortress by Sultan Ala- ud-dln burnt herself and (so says the tale) 13,000 other women rather than fall into the hands of the conqueror, which has been several times handled by poets outside the pale of Rajput traditions, and especially in a still highly esteemed work by JaisI under Sher Shah (1540), had only a local currency, and contributed but little to the further ance of literature outside the limits of Rajputana. The Vaishnava reformers, on the other hand, exercised the most powerful influence both upon the national speech and upon the themes chosen for poetic treatment. Nearly the whole of subsequent Hindi literature is impressed with one or other form of Vaishnava doctrine ; a very large proportion of the poets whose works are still current among the people were Vaishnava saints or lhagats ; and to their initiative is due the almost exclusive use as a poetic dialect of that form of archaic Hindi known as Braj-bhakha. Vaishnavisrn was essentially a reaction against Brahmnnical influence arid the chains of caste, a claim for the rights of humanity against the monopoly which the &quot; twice-born &quot; asserted of learning, of worship, of righteousness. As Siva was the peculiar deity of the Brahmans, so was Vishnu of the people; and while the literature of the Saivas and Saktas is almost entirely in Sanskrit, and exercised little or no influence on the popular mind, that of the Vaishnavas is mainly in Hindi, and in itself constitutes the great bulk of whiit has been written in that language. The Vaishnava doctrine is commonly carried back to Ramanuja, whose appearance is placed by Wilson about the middle of the 12th century. He was a native of Southern India, and had few immediate followers in the north. In the latter region the new opinions were spread by Ramanand, whom the Bhaktama!a makes the fourth head of the sect, and other authorities the fifth ; both Wilson and Trumpp place him about 1 400 of our era. Nothing in Hindi by Ramanuja has come down to us ; of Ramauand we have one short poem in the Granth (Introduction, p. cxxiv.). Between Ramanuja and Ramanand (though not in the line of teachers descending direct from the former) we may place Jaideo (about 1250) and Namcleo (about 1300), of the first of whom we have a fragment in the Granth, and of the second six pieces have been similarly preserved. Jaideo was a Brahman, and well acquainted with Sanskrit ; but Namdeo (or Nama) was a chhifjl or calico-printer, a very despised class, and was perhaps the first to proclaim among the followers of the new doctrine the essential unity of mankind as worshippers of Hari. Kablr comes next, and is incomparably the greatest, in the order of Vaishnava teachers. He was a weaver by caste, and in all probability originally a Musalman. He is counted among the twelve disciples of Ramanand ; but he seems himself to trace his spiritual paternity rather to Jaideo and Nama. 1 He dwelt first at Benares and afterwards at Magahar, in the present district of Gorakhpur, during the reign of Sikandar Shah LodI (1488-1517), and was probably dead before the end of the 15th century. Nanak, the first Guru of the Sikhs, whose Granth is little more than a paraphrase of Kablr s writings, was born in 14G9 and died in 1538; and from the relation between the two it seems necessary to suppose that Kablr was several years the senior. The works attributed to Kablr are very numerous ; they are preserved complete at the headquarters of the sect, the Kablr chaura at Benares, and many portions of them have been separately printed and lithographed in India. The best known are those entitled the /Sdkhis,Sabds, and Rekhtas, which have a wide popularity even among those who are not professed disciples of the saint. Several of the compositions enumerated under the name of Kablr are, however, not by him, but by his disciples : as the lesser Bljak, by Bhago-Das, the Sukh-Nidhdn, by Srut-Gopal, &amp;lt;fec. ; it was the custom (as also that of Kablr s religious heirs, the Sikh Gurus) for the successors in the guruship to speak in the name of him whose successors they were. The doctrine of Kablr 2 1 This may be concluded from a short poem in the Granth (p. 469), where Kablr says (verses 4, 5): &quot; Let each one seek this Mind, O brother: when the body falls away, where shall the Mind be absorbed? By the favour of the Guru Jaideo and Nama through the love of Faith attained to knowledge of Him.&quot; (The Mind is the indwelling Rama, divince particula aurce.) 2 A tolerably full account will be found in H. H. Wilson s Essay on the Religious Sects of the Hindus ( Works, vol. i. pp. 68 sqq.); Dr Trumpp s Essay on the Religion of the Sikhs (Granth, Introd., pp. xcvii. sqq. ) may also be consulted.