L'édition des textes : étude comparée de quelques textes importants

Research Essays

By editing (tadvin) is meant arranging a text according to its author's intention, or identifying the alterations and corruptions that have entered it, and with the help of verified evidence restoring the text to its original state. At first no dividing line was drawn between criticism and editing, and for that reason textual criticism went on being regarded as a part of criticism proper. Criticism explains and interprets a work of art and also fixes its place in the literature of its time. The aim and purpose of editing is to recover the text the author wrote, or to keep the details of the text in the order the author arranged them.

The wealth of classical literature existed in the form of manuscripts. When the printing press was set up in India, the printing of books became common. These books were prepared with the help of the manuscript copies that existed and were available. Afterwards, as they passed through copy after copy and edition after edition, variant forms began to appear in the texts of these copies. Now, for the soundness of the text, it became utterly necessary to identify these omissions and additions, because the soundness of criticism and research depends on the quality of the text. If the text is doubtful, all the work of criticism and research is useless. Sometimes no copy of a text can be found that was written in the author's own hand and authenticated by him, and so the editor has to resort to conjectural emendation. A basic requirement of editing is that the editor avoid conjectural emendation as far as possible, because such corrections have to be made on the strength of one's own learning. The need for it arises only when the text cannot be corrected by any other means. A conjectural emendation may also run against the author's intention, and so its scope should be limited to the reading of the text.

In no branch of literature do two and two make four; literature is simply the name of a search for possibilities. It is also true that however hard a researcher works, some aspect of the research always remains unsatisfied. The problem is that, for all our efforts, the principles of research and editing are not scientific or universal, and they keep being amended as need requires. Besides, it should be kept in view that the principles of editing depend on the genre of the literature whose text is to be corrected. As the genres of literature go on passing through change and transformation, the principles of editing too will go on being shaped to match. Like the principles of criticism, the principles of editing are not all fixed; rather, the editor's own taste guides him. Some principles are such that once they are settled, following them becomes obligatory. If the principles of editing were made like scientific principles, the work would certainly be easier, but the text would not be definitively edited according to the author's intention.

The practice of editing is very old in the study and history of literature. In the research on Urdu language and literature in the first half of the twentieth century we find the names of Hafiz Mahmood Shirani, editor of Majmua-e-Naghz ("A Choice Collection"); Imtiaz Ali Khan Arshi, editor of the Diwan-e-Ghalib (the Arshi edition); and Rashid Hasan Khan, editor of Bagh-o-Bahar ("The Garden and the Spring"). These important editors of Urdu edited texts of different kinds and tried in their introductions to explain the principles and rules of editing. In the present paper their own work will be examined in the light of their own principles, so that general principles for editing different kinds of texts can be brought out. Each age has its own style among its writers. It has been observed in manuscripts that many writers considered it shameful to describe the circumstances and events of their own lives, even to write their own names on their books, because in their view it was the creation that mattered, and the author was known by his creation. That is why so few biographical details of their own are found in their writings. After 1857, when Western learning and new methods of research took hold in India, the creator too began to matter alongside the creation, because the idea arose that to understand a work one must understand the author's personality; and so research and criticism began to flourish. Maulvi Abdul Haq, by writing introductions to the texts he edited, tried to discover the circumstances and events of the authors' lives, and the editors who came after him followed the same course. Where the circumstances of an author were not known, conjectures about him were gathered together and a biographical sketch was prepared. In this paper we first introduce the tazkira Majmua-e-Naghz and its compiler, Mir Qudratullah Qasim. Hakim Abul Qasim Mir Qudratullah tells us nothing about his family in his tazkira, but Hafiz Mahmood Shirani has tried to discover it with the help of other tazkiras. It will be useful here to give some information about Mir Qudratullah Qasim from the introduction to Majmua-e-Naghz, so that we can see how far these details help in understanding the importance of the tazkira of poets he wrote.

Hakim Abul Qasim Mir Qudratullah's kunya was Abul Qasim, he was known as Mir Qudratullah, and his pen name was Qasim. Most tazkira writers add "Khan" to his name, which is evidence that his forefathers must have held various royal offices. Among his ancestors we find the names of Syed Ismail and Syed Fazil Gujrati. These elders came from the town of Gujrat Shah Daula (Punjab); their house was in the blacksmiths' quarter of Gujrat, and their grave, which is a place of pilgrimage for the people, is there too. Qudratullah Qasim's lineage goes back to Hazrat Imam Raza. His ancestors are said to have been devout and abstinent men. Of one of his elders he tells us only that Ali Khan Husaini was an accomplished shaikh. He is mentioned not only in Majmua-e-Naghz but also in Karamat-e-Piran-e-Pir ("The Miracles of the Saint of Saints", by Qudratullah Qasim). Qasim's ancestral calling was teaching, the dervish life, and the discipleship of a spiritual master. He had a special devotion to Shaikh Abdul Qadir Jilani, and following his father's advice he had the Fatiha recited for the Great Pir on the eleventh of every month. Of his father he tells us only that he was eight years old when his father died. At the age of eleven, Mir Fateh Ali Khan Husaini had him admitted to the madrasa of Maulana Fakhruddin. Maulana Fakhruddin handed him over to Syed Ahmad, who taught in that madrasa. Qudratullah Qasim studied the Mukhtasar al-Ma'ani, the Mutawwal and the Sharh al-Aqa'id al-Nasafi with Maulvi Muhammadi; in medicine he became the pupil of the chief of physicians, Hakim Muhammad Sharif Khan, and in poetry of Hidayatullah Khan Hidayat. The Hakim never took service with anyone. Maulvi Karimuddin writes that he knew medicine, and that this was his livelihood. (1)

The Hakim wrote other works besides Majmua-e-Naghz, but his fame rests on Majmua-e-Naghz. It is a tazkira of Urdu poets written in Persian. The tazkira is a developed form of the bayaz, the poet's notebook. On this Dr Farman Fatehpuri writes:

"The bayaz contained only a selection of verses. When the names and pen names of their authors were added to the selection, it came to be called a tazkira. Moving beyond the bayaz, the tazkira entered a space that was half historical, half critical and half biographical. Under the demands of time and circumstance the colour of literary history, criticism and biography grew ever deeper on the tazkiras." (2)

There was a time when poetry was a regular profession and was learned like one. The masters of the craft in that age became ustads and taught poetry formally. The great masters had very many pupils, and there were frequent contests between poets. Their pupils would copy into their personal notebooks, alongside their own verses, the couplets of their ustad that they liked. Later the poet's name began to be written with the couplet, the purpose being to keep the master's verse distinct from the pupil's. After that the pupils began to copy one another's couplets as well. The dates of mushairas and the like began to be recorded. Along with chronograms, important events too began to be noted down, and so the bayaz turned into the tazkira.

By a tazkira is meant a book in which an opinion is also given on the poets' verse, and their family circumstances and a sample of their poetry are also recorded.

Qudratullah Qasim compiled Majmua-e-Naghz in 1221 AH. Majmua-e-Naghz is a chronogrammatic title: its letters yield the date on which the compilation was completed. Hafiz Mahmood Shirani edited this tazkira in 1933. The manuscript on which Shirani based his text was unpublished and belonged to Muhammad Hussain Azad; after Azad's death it became the property of the central library of the University of the Punjab, Lahore. Shirani found the manuscript in a very decrepit state; its opening leaves, which would have given written proof that it was Qudratullah Qasim's work, had been lost. God had blessed Mahmood Shirani with extraordinary gifts for research, and he proved from internal evidence that the manuscript in question was indeed Qudratullah Qasim's. Later he found another copy in the India Office Library, London, which did not appear to have been written by a learned man, since its text was full of errors. Mahmood Shirani made the Punjab University manuscript his base text and gave the India Office copy a secondary place. During the editing, wherever correction from these copies was no longer possible, he resorted to conjectural emendation, and where sentences contradicted the sense he changed them and explained the change in the notes. Before Majmua-e-Naghz, the following had already appeared: Nikat-ush-Shuara ("Fine Points of the Poets", Mir Taqi Mir), Tazkira-e-Rekhta Goyan ("A Memoir of the Poets of Rekhta", Ali Husaini Gardezi), Makhzan-e-Nikat ("A Treasury of Fine Points", Qiyamuddin Qaim), Chamanistan-e-Shuara ("The Garden of Poets", Lachhmi Narayan Shafiq), Tazkira-e-Shuara-e-Urdu ("A Memoir of Urdu Poets", Mir Hasan), Tazkira-e-Shorish (Ghulam Hussain Shorish), Gulzar-e-Ibrahim ("Ibrahim's Rose Garden", Ali Ibrahim Khan), Tazkira-e-Hindi and Iqd-e-Suraiyya ("The Necklace of the Pleiades", both by Ghulam Hamdani Mushafi), and Gulshan-e-Hind ("The Garden of India") and Tazkira-e-Ishqi (Shaikh Muhammad Wajihuddin Ishqi). Compared with these tazkiras Majmua-e-Naghz is a detailed and voluminous compilation, but it does not surpass Ayar-ush-Shi'r ("The Touchstone of Poetry", Khub Chand Zaka) of 1280 AH or Umda-e-Muntakhaba ("The Choicest Selection", Azam-ud-Daula Surur). Majmua-e-Naghz may tell us nothing about the life of its compiler, but it certainly sheds light on the livelihoods and pursuits of the people of its age and on their literary, political, social and cultural surroundings. In several respects this tazkira is of real importance. It describes the lives of the poets and writers from the reign of Muhammad Shah to the end of the reign of Shah Alam II. The link between the old and the new tazkiras is Ab-e-Hayat ("The Water of Life"), compiled by Maulana Muhammad Hussain Azad. For reasons of his own Azad kept the sources of this work hidden, but the discovery of this tazkira laid his secret bare and brought to light the source of the information in Ab-e-Hayat. In Urdu Shuara ke Tazkire aur Tazkira Nigari ("The Tazkiras of Urdu Poets and the Art of the Tazkira") Dr Farman Fatehpuri writes:

"Through it we find the trail of one of the sources of the famous book of Urdu literature, Ab-e-Hayat. It is clear that Muhammad Hussain Azad drew considerably on Majmua-e-Naghz in compiling Ab-e-Hayat." (3)

In editing Majmua-e-Naghz, Hafiz Mahmood Shirani adopted the following principles:

1. The copy of the text written in the author's own hand was made the basis.
2. The author's spelling was respected, so that the peculiarities of spelling and composition of a learned writer of the last century would remain known, and the particular pronunciation of Urdu words as they were spoken in that age would become clear to the reader.
3. As far as possible the text of Majmua-e-Naghz was made, in its script, a true substitute for its original.
4. The distinction was kept between the "known" and "unknown" ya, and between the Persian and Arabic kaf.
5. Likewise, he added the madda over alif and the hamza of his own accord in many places in the text where they are not written in the original manuscript.

This was a matter of editing the text of an old tazkira of poetry, which has its own requirements, and in which the investigation of historical and biographical facts and of the verses attributed to the poets was fundamental. Now we introduce a work in verse, the Diwan-e-Ghalib (the Arshi edition), where the whole of one's attention must fall on the text and its words. The possibility of error is naturally present in the very material of research. Nothing in it is the last word; somewhere or other some aspect is left unsatisfied. Editing the verse of a poet like Ghalib is very difficult work. The Diwan-e-Ghalib was printed five times in Ghalib's own lifetime, but he was not satisfied with a single edition, because in his view the scribes and publishers had not made a full effort to print the correct text. Of all the copies of this diwan that have so far come to light, according to the research of Imtiaz Ali Khan Arshi not one fulfils the author's intention. So many editions of this diwan have been prepared by now that it is not possible to mention them all here, but it seems necessary to mention a few important ones. In Ghalib's own lifetime his diwan was published by the following presses:

1. Matba Syed-ul-Akhbar, Delhi, October 1841
2. Matba Dar-us-Salam, Delhi, May 1847
3. Matba Ahmadi, Delhi, 1861
4. A corrected edition, Matba Nizami, Kanpur, 1862
5. The edition of Matba Mufid-e-Khalaiq, Agra, 1863 (the special feature of this edition was that for the first time a distinction was made between the "known" ya, the "unknown" ya, the ya with ha, and the mixed ya.)

Ghalib died on 15 February 1869. After that several diwans of his verse were compiled. A few representative ones are these:

1. Diwan-e-Ghalib: the Hamidiya edition, compiled in 1921 by Anwar-ul-Haq, Director of Education, Bhopal.
2. Diwan-e-Ghalib: the Shirani manuscript; Majlis-e-Taraqqi-e-Adab, Lahore, published a photo-offset of it in 1969. According to Imtiaz Ali Khan Arshi it was copied in 1862.
3. Diwan-e-Ghalib: "Kamil" (complete), compiled by Kalidas Gupta and published by Anjuman Taraqqi-e-Urdu Pakistan in 1990.
4. Diwan-e-Ghalib: the Khwaja edition, compiled by Dr Syed Moinur Rahman and published by Al-Waqar Publications, Lahore, in 1998.
5. Diwan-e-Ghalib: the Arshi edition, compiled by Imtiaz Ali Khan Arshi and first published by Majlis-e-Taraqqi-e-Adab, Lahore, in 1957.
6. Diwan-e-Ghalib: a comparative study of the Urdu Arshi edition and the Hamidiya edition, compiled by Dr Zahida Nisar and published in 2007 by the Idara-e-Talif-o-Tarjuma, University of the Punjab.
7. Urdu Kulliyat-e-Ghalib ("Ghalib's Complete Urdu Works"): the Ashraf edition; this collection was published by Sang-e-Meel Publications, Lahore, in 2012.

The Arshi edition is superior to all the editions named above in its chronological arrangement of the poems, its identification of the variant readings of the manuscripts, its commentary and its necessary notes; but Arshi arranged the Diwan-e-Ghalib on a historical basis, and as a result Ghalib's verse has been divided up. Its sections are titled:

Ganjina-e-Ma'ni ("The Treasure-House of Meaning"), Nawa-e-Sarosh ("The Voice of the Angel"), Yadgar-e-Nala ("Memorial of a Lament"), Bad-avard ("Windfall")

1. Ganjina-e-Ma'ni contains the verses that were in the Bhopal and Shirani manuscripts but which Ghalib dropped from the diwan he compiled in 1833. The section takes its name from this couplet:

Take every word, Ghalib, that comes into my verse
to be a spell from the treasure-house of meaning. (4)

2. Nawa-e-Sarosh: this section contains the verse that Ghalib had printed in his lifetime. It is now known as the current Diwan-e-Ghalib. The phrase nawa-e-sarosh is taken from this couplet:

These themes come into my mind from the Unseen;
Ghalib, the scratching of my pen is the voice of the angel. (5)

3. Yadgar-e-Nala: this section contains the verse that was written in the margins or at the end of various manuscripts, or that adorned various newspapers and journals. The term yadgar-e-nala is taken from this couplet:

The heart's lament scattered the leaves of the heart's fragments to the wind;
the "memorial of a lament" was an unbound diwan. (6)

4. Bad-avard: when Imtiaz Ali Khan Arshi had almost completed the work of editing, part of Ghalib's verse was unexpectedly discovered in the form of the Arshi-zada manuscript, and so he named it Bad-avard, "what the wind brought". This verse could not be given a proper place in the diwan because the work was already complete. Rather than discard it, Arshi included it at the end of the diwan and wrote an apology in the introduction.

Under the heading Istidrak ("Addenda") some explanations concerning these matters are recorded, and the inclusion of an index of verses and a general index has added to the value of the work. The hallmark of the Arshi edition is its introduction, which runs to 109 pages and in which the editor sets out everything relating to the text. In the Arshi edition the poetic genres are arranged in this order: preface, qitas, masnavi, qasidas, ghazals, rubais and taqriz (commendation). In all earlier editions the order of genres is: preface, ghazals, qasidas, masnavi, qitas, rubais and taqriz. Arshi has departed from this, which is not only against the general practice of diwans but also does not agree with the new Rampur manuscript (the last authoritative edition of the Diwan-e-Ghalib).

In correcting the text of the Diwan-e-Ghalib, Imtiaz Ali Khan Arshi:

1. Respected Mirza Ghalib's own preferences.
2. Where Ghalib wrote a word in two ways (for example jā'e hai and jāe hai), chose the form that agrees both with present-day speech and with Ghalib's latest writing.
3. Dropped the vao from os and odhar and consistently put a pesh on the alif instead (although in his verse Ghalib wrote us as os and udhar as odhar).
4. Used the hamza or the zer in genitive and adjectival compounds.
5. Used several punctuation marks, but used the comma to excess.
6. Arranged the poetic genres separately and chronologically, and treating the ghazals of each rhyme-letter as a separate section, placed them earlier or later on a chronological basis.
7. Measured Ghalib's revisions against the standard of his final taste in his own verse. Where the revision seemed to make good better, he kept it in the text; otherwise he kept the old words in the text and mentioned the revision in a note.

Here the editing of Bagh-o-Bahar must also be mentioned, so that we can understand how the requirements of editing copies of different kinds of literary texts combine. The requirements and needs of editing a tazkira of poets, a collection of poems and a dastan are different, and the researchers and editors are different too; and so each brings his own manner of research and editing to the work. Besides, the tradition of writing, compiling, editing and arranging books is nothing new in the East. In studying the different texts named above, we shall try to bring out different points of view on certain shared matters (such as spelling and the correction of the wording).

The research done on Mir Amman's life shows that all the information we have about him rests on conjecture and assumption. The fact is that Mir Amman never described the circumstances of his own life in detail anywhere, and neither did his contemporaries or the later tazkira writers, apart from two or four tazkira writers who do mention Mir Amman; but even in their accounts no authoritative reference for the truth of the information is to be found. In his introduction to Bagh-o-Bahar, Rashid Hasan Khan used Bagh-o-Bahar itself, Ganj-e-Khubi ("The Treasury of Virtue") and Fort William College as references for information about Mir Amman, but these sources too tell us little more than Mir Amman's name; beyond that they give no particular information. Among the books in which his personal circumstances are described, the following deserve mention: Gilchrist aur Uska Ahd ("Gilchrist and His Age", Atiq Siddiqui), Gulshan-e-Hamesha Bahar ("The Ever-Blooming Garden", Nasrullah Khan Khweshgi), Tabaqat-ush-Shuara-e-Hind ("The Classes of the Poets of India", Karimuddin Ahmad), Siyar-ul-Musannifin ("The Lives of the Authors", Muhammad Yahya Tanha, edited by Dr Amirullah Shahin), Tazkira-e-Gulshan-e-Hind ("Memoir of the Garden of India", Mirza Ali Lutf), and Gilchrist's The Stranger's Infallible East-India Guide. No doubt, according to Rashid Hasan Khan, the information in these books is doubtful; yet most editors of Bagh-o-Bahar have taken Mir Amman's particulars and the circumstances of his life from them. There is no need here to recount Mir Amman's biographical details and the events of his life, for when the truth of something is plainer than the sun, it is best simply to accept it.

Between 1768 and 1775 Mir Husain Ata Khan Tahsin for the first time clothed the Qissa-e-Chahar Darvesh ("The Tale of the Four Dervishes") in Urdu, under the title Nau Tarz-e-Murassa ("The New Jewelled Style"). This Persian tale was attributed to Amir Khusrau. In 1801 Muhammad Iwaz Muhammad Ghaus and Mir Amman separately retold the tale in Urdu. Mir Amman's version became famous because it was simple and flowing and true to the idiom of Delhi. Mir Amman had compiled the tale under the title Chahar Darvesh, but it won fame as Bagh-o-Bahar. Why did the tale become famous under the name Bagh-o-Bahar? The answer is given from Rashid Hasan Khan's introduction; Mir Amman tells us:

"When by God's grace this book was finished, it came to my mind to give it a name that would itself yield its date. When I reckoned it up, I had begun telling it at the end of the year twelve hundred and fifteen of the Hijra, and for lack of leisure it was completed at the beginning of the year twelve hundred and seventeen. While I was thinking about this my heart said, 'Bagh-o-Bahar' is a good name, for both the name and the date come out of it; and so I gave it that name." (7)

Mir Amman gave the Persian tale Chahar Darvesh as the source of his story, but research has proved that the source of Mir Amman's tale is Nau Tarz-e-Murassa. He had attributed the tale of the Chahar Darvesh to Amir Khusrau and Nizamuddin Auliya; however, Hafiz Mahmood Shirani, with great labour and effort, proved that the tale has no connection with Amir Khusrau or Nizamuddin Auliya, since the style of the Chahar Darvesh does not match Amir Khusrau's manner of expression. Hafiz Mahmood Shirani's research has proved that the tale of the Chahar Darvesh is the work of Muhammad Ali, who told it in Persian under the title Hikayat ("A Tale").

The first edition of Bagh-o-Bahar was published in 1804, and the second, after revision, in 1804. Rashid Hasan Khan made the 1804 printed copy his basis, because in his view this copy is closest to the author's style. Mir Amman revised it at Gilchrist's request. The purpose of the work was to teach Urdu to English employees. Gilchrist asked Mir Amman to take care to mark the vowels on the words, so that the pronunciation of Urdu would be easy. The editors of Bagh-o-Bahar ignored this and went on arranging the text without marking the vowels, and for this reason the text drifted further and further from the original. With this purpose in view, when Rashid Hasan Khan edited it in 1990 he respected the author's intention in the manner of spelling too. There is no need here to detail the copies printed before his. But the copies whose texts he kept in view while editing must be mentioned. They include the Hindee Manual, the copy of 1803 (published by the Hindoostanee Press, Calcutta), Duncan Forbes's copy of 1846, and Maulvi Abdul Haq's copy. Before editing Bagh-o-Bahar, Rashid Hasan Khan had already edited and published Fasana-e-Aja'ib ("The Tale of Wonders"). Bagh-o-Bahar and Fasana-e-Aja'ib are the two most important dastans in Urdu, and so the method of editing both is the same. By editing these dastans and writing their introductions and notes, Rashid Hasan Khan undoubtedly set the highest standards of editing in Urdu. In arranging the text of Bagh-o-Bahar, Rashid Hasan Khan:

1. Respected the author's intention in every respect.
2. Made his basis the copy of the text that Mir Amman corrected last.
3. Gave preference in the text to the author's spelling, except for words whose original spelling might confuse a new (untrained) reader.
4. Kept the various important copies of Bagh-o-Bahar before him.
5. Gave in the notes the necessary details about words that needed explaining in any way.
6. Took account of the changes of gender that words undergo over time, and of the author's particular usage (for instance, Mir Amman makes khil'at, a robe of honour, feminine, whereas the word is generally found as masculine).

A comparison is always made between things that have something in common. In terms of genre, Majmua-e-Naghz, the Diwan-e-Ghalib (the Arshi edition) and Bagh-o-Bahar share neither subject nor literary form. The only thing they have in common is that these texts have been edited, and that their introductions shed light on the principles and method of editing. Their editors drew up principles each in his own way, and some things are common to them. It should be remembered that these three editions are known for their introductions. The basic work of editing is to arrange the text according to the author's intention and to identify the omissions and additions that have entered it. Hafiz Mahmood Shirani included in the text the additions from the India Office copy, and besides these he made additions of his own, which are written in brackets; and some verses that ran against the present age he removed. Plainly, this is not in harmony with the author's intention. Imtiaz Ali Khan Arshi did not consider it necessary, while editing, to abide by the principles he himself had made. The author's spelling too is part of the author's intention, but Arshi did not follow the author's spelling; he gave three kinds of spelling in the edition. Whatever the purpose of this, it has certainly affected the value of the editing. Rashid Hasan Khan is very firm about the principles of editing; in arranging the text of Bagh-o-Bahar he gave the author's intention preference in every respect. The one or two words whose spelling he changed, he changed because that spelling was no longer current, and he explained these words in the notes as well. There is one kind of spelling throughout the text. He added nothing of his own.

Words go on changing their meanings and their shapes with the passage of time. The spelling of some words changes so much that if the author's spelling were printed, the reader of today could not even read it. In such a case the editor is permitted to give the current spelling in the text. What cannot be allowed is that a word be spelled one way in one place and another way somewhere else. But some words are set to different measures (in verse), and it is permissible to write such words in different forms for metrical purposes, because poets themselves do the same. Where changing a word's spelling makes no difference to the metre, changing it is against the principles of editing. Observe the double spelling in the Arshi edition:

What a taste there would be if even stone had salt (maza). (8)
Ghalib, how could my verse not have its taste (maza)? (9)

Writing the word as mazah or maza makes no difference to the metre. Conjectural emendation is permitted in editing in certain cases, but even then caution is necessary. For critical emendation, the correcting of the text according to the editor's judgement, editing has no room at all. While editing the Diwan-e-Ghalib, Arshi went on correcting Ghalib's verse by the measure of taste, which was not only entirely unnecessary but also contrary to the basic principles of editing. The principles of editing do have some flexibility, but they can in no case permit one to overstep the limits. By arranging Ghalib's verse chronologically his ghazals have been divided, and their couplets scattered through different parts of the diwan.

Writing introductions to the classic books of Urdu and arranging for their publication is an achievement of Maulvi Abdul Haq that can in no way be overlooked. He made the particulars and details of the author's life an essential part of the introduction, and the editors who came after him took this to be a requirement of editing and an absolute duty. Rashid Hasan Khan admits in his introduction that everything known about Mir Amman's life rests on conjecture and assumption, yet in spite of this he thought it necessary to set out all the particulars found in the various tazkiras, and this has made the introduction needlessly long. After giving his own opinion he should have named a few important tazkiras, so that anyone who needed to could consult the relevant source. A long introduction is no bad thing, but it is not right to lengthen it, for no reason, with a mere recital of assumptions. The introduction to the Arshi edition is long, but it discusses only matters relating to the text, and it helps one understand the subject. From the comparative study of these different texts, the guiding principles that can be laid down for standard editing in Urdu are these:

1. The copy of the text written, corrected or authenticated by the author himself should be made the basis.
2. The author's system of spelling should be adopted. (If giving the original spelling of a word would confuse a new, untrained reader of the text, the current spelling of that word should be written in the text and explained in the notes.)
3. The various important copies of the particular text being edited should be kept in view (if they exist).
4. The author's last corrected text should be presented.
5. Critical discussions should not be included in the introduction.
6. The gender of words changes over time, and the author also has his own particular usage (for instance, Mir Amman makes khil'at feminine, whereas the word is generally found as masculine). It is therefore the editor's responsibility to be as well acquainted as possible with the author's style, and at the same time to know the language and expression of that age well, and on the strength of that knowledge to fix, as far as possible, the correct forms in that particular text and record the details in the notes for clarification. In the introduction, matters unrelated to the soundness of the text must be avoided.

The text is the basic asset and the foundation on which the handsome edifice of research and editing, criticism and history is raised. The researcher's critical insight, his historical sense, his knowledge of the fundamentals of language and linguistics, and his awareness of the evolution of the system of spelling are what help him arrange a text according to its author's intention.

References

1. Karimuddin, Maulvi: Tarikh-e-Shuara-e-Urdu ("A History of Urdu Poets"), cited in the editor's preface, Hafiz Mahmood Shirani, Majmua-e-Naghz, Delhi: Taraqqi-e-Urdu Board, 1973, p. la (31 in abjad numbering)
2. Farman Fatehpuri: Urdu Shuara ke Tazkire aur Tazkira Nigari, Lahore: Majlis-e-Taraqqi-e-Adab, 1972, p. 11
3. Ibid., p. 239
4. Imtiaz Ali Khan Arshi (ed.): (Introduction) Diwan-e-Ghalib, Lahore: Majlis-e-Taraqqi-e-Adab, 1992, p. 75
5. Ibid., p. 75
6. Ibid., p. 75
7. Rashid Hasan Khan, Introduction: Bagh-o-Bahar, edited by Rashid Hasan Khan, New Delhi: Anjuman Taraqqi-e-Urdu, 1992, p. 44
8. Ghalib, Diwan-e-Ghalib, ed. Imtiaz Ali Khan Arshi, Lahore: Majlis-e-Taraqqi-e-Adab, 1992, p. 212
9. Ibid., p. 247