陈情、序言与成书缘由

The Petition of Mir Amman of Delhi

Which was presented before the gentlemen who direct the College.

May God preserve the gentlemen of exalted rank, the patrons of men of good birth. This exile, on hearing the order of the proclamation, made the Tale of the Four Darvesh into a Garden and Spring, Bagh-o-Bahar, in the language of the Urdu-e-Mualla, with a thousand pains. By the grace of God it has flourished, since all the gentlemen have walked in it. Now I am hopeful that its fruit may come to me too, so that the bud of my heart may open like a flower. As the sage Firdausi has said in the Shahnama:

Great toil I bore in these thirty years;
I gave Persia new life through this Persian tongue.

So, by adorning the language of Urdu,
I have made Bengal into Hindustan.

My lord, you are a judge of merit; there is no need to plead. O God, may the star of his fortune keep shining.

Preface

Glory be to God! What a Maker He is, who from a single handful of dust has made so many shapes and figures of clay. Though of two colours, one fair and one dark, He has given them all the same nose, ears, hands and feet. And on top of that He has made each form distinct, of its own hue, so that the bearing of one does not match the build of another. Among crores of created beings, pick out whom you will, and you can tell him. The sky is one bubble on His ocean of unity, and the earth a sugar-drop of water; yet the wonder is that the sea beats with a thousand waves and cannot bend a hair of it. He whose power and might are such, in His praise the tongue of man is as good as dumb. What is there to say? It is better that, where one cannot draw breath, one should stay silent.

From the Throne down to the floor of earth, all this is His array;
If I wished to write His praise, what possibility is there?

When the Prophet himself has said, "I have not known Thee,"
Then whoever lays claim to it after him is a great fool.

Night and day these sun and moon go round, gazing at His workmanship,
Yet before the face of the One each eye is an eye of wonder.

He who has no second and no equal, and never shall have one,
To such a Unique One alone is godhead in every way fitting.

But this much I know: that He is Creator and Provider;
In every way His kindness and His bounty are upon me.

And blessings upon His Friend, for whose sake He created earth and heaven and gave the rank of prophethood.

The pure body of Mustafa is a light of God;
That is why, as is well known, that stature cast no shadow.

Where have I the heart to speak his praise?
Yet this too is the rule and custom of those who speak in verse.

And blessing and peace upon his family, who are the Twelve Imams.

The praise of God and the praise of Ahmad being brought here to an end,
I now begin the work that is my intent.

O God, for the sake of the family of Thy Prophet,
Make this speech of mine welcome to the taste of high and low.

The Reason for Writing the Book

The occasion of this composition is this. In the year twelve hundred and fifteen of the Hijra, and eighteen hundred and one of the Christian era, answering to twelve hundred and seven of the Fasli year, in the time of the noblest of nobles, the Marquis Wellesley, Governor-General, Lord Mornington (in whose praise reason is bewildered and understanding lost; all the qualities a ruler needs God has gathered in his person; in short it was the good fortune of this country that such a governor came, by the blessing of whose feet a whole world found rest; no one dares to use force on another; the lion and the goat drink at one ford, and all the poor and humble bless him and live), the study of learning spread. Gentlemen of high standing wished to learn the language of Urdu, so as to converse with the people of Hindustan and carry out the business of the country with full understanding. For this reason many books were composed that same year, by order.

To the gentlemen who are learned and who speak the language of Hindustan, I submit that this tale of the Four Darvesh was first told by Amir Khusrau of Delhi on this occasion: Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya, the Giver of Gold (who was his spiritual guide, and whose shrine is in Delhi, three kos from the Fort, outside the Red Gate, beyond the Matiya Gate, near the Red Bungalow) fell ill. Then, to cheer his master's heart, Amir Khusrau would tell this story and would wait upon him in his sickness. God gave him health in a few days. Then, on the day of the bath of recovery, he gave this blessing: that whoever hears this tale will, by God's grace, keep in good health. From that time the tale became current in Persian.

Now the lord of bounty, the man of generosity, the patron of the well-born, John Gilchrist Sahib (may his fortune ever increase, as long as the Ganges and the Jumna flow) was pleased to say: translate this tale into the plain speech of Hindustan, which the people of the Urdu, Hindu and Muslim, women and men, boys and girls, high and low, use among themselves in their talk. In obedience to his order I began at once to write in that very idiom, as a man talks.

First this sinner, Mir Amman of Delhi, gives his own account. My forefathers, from the reign of the Emperor Humayun, served in the stirrup of every emperor, generation after generation, with devotion; and they too, with the eye of patronage, showed all the appreciation that was due. They rewarded us with jagirs and ranks and the gift of offices, made us rich and prosperous, and with their blessed tongue called us hereditary servants of the house and officers of old standing, so that this title was entered in the imperial register. When such a house (by which all our houses were kept alive) came to the pass it did, the rest is plain; what is seen needs no telling. Then Suraj Mal the Jat seized the jagir, and Ahmad Shah Durrani sacked the house and home. Having suffered such ruin, I was driven from that city (which is my home and my birthplace, where my navel-cord is buried); and that ship, whose captain was the emperor, was wrecked. I began to sink in the sea of helplessness. To a drowning man a straw is enough. For some years I drew breath in the city of Azimabad. Some things went right, some wrong; at last my feet were uprooted there too, and fortune did not favour me. Leaving wife and children, I boarded a boat alone and, driven by the need for bread and water, reached the noblest of cities, Calcutta. For a while I was without work. By chance Nawab Dilawar Jang sent for me and appointed me tutor to his younger brother, Mir Muhammad Kazim Khan. I stayed there nearly two years, but saw no way of making a living. Then, through Munshi Mir Bahadur Ali, I gained access to the presence of John Gilchrist Sahib Bahadur (may his fortune endure). Well, with the help of my stars I have laid hold of the skirt of such a generous man, and it may be that better days will come. If not, it is still a blessing that I eat a morsel, stretch out my legs and sleep, and ten people in my house, small and great, are fed and pray for that patron. May God accept it.

The truth about the language of Urdu I have heard from my elders in this way. The city of Delhi, in the reckoning of the Hindus, has stood through the four ages. Their rajas and their people lived there from of old and spoke their own tongue. For a thousand years the rule of the Muslims has lasted. Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni came; then the Ghoris and the Lodhis were kings. Through this coming and going the languages of Hindu and Muslim were somewhat mingled. At last Amir Timur (in whose house the name of the sovereignty continues to this day) took Hindustan. With his coming and staying, the bazaar of the army entered the city, and so the city's bazaar came to be called the Urdu. Then the Emperor Humayun, harried by the Pathans, went abroad. At last he came back from there and chastised the Pathans who remained. No troublemaker was left to raise strife and disorder.

When the Emperor Akbar sat on the throne, people from the countries on every side, hearing of the generosity and the patronage of that peerless house, came and gathered at his court. But the speech and the tongue of each was different. From their being together, the language of the Urdu was settled for their dealings among themselves, their buying and selling, their question and answer. When Hazrat Shah Jahan, Lord of the Conjunction, had the Blessed Fort and the Jama Masjid and the city wall built, and had jewels set in the Peacock Throne, and had a tent like a heart-stealing cloud raised on poles and stretched with ropes, and Nawab Ali Mardan Khan brought the canal, then the emperor in his joy held a festival and made the city his capital. From that time it was famous as Shahjahanabad (though Delhi is separate; that is called the old city and this the new), and to its bazaar he gave the title of Urdu-e-Mualla, the Exalted Camp.

From the time of Amir Timur to the reign of Muhammad Shah, indeed to the days of Ahmad Shah and Alamgir the Second, the sovereignty passed on uniformly from generation to generation. In the end the language of Urdu, being polished and polished, became so polished that the speech of no other city can compete with it; but it needs a fair-minded judge to decide. So now, after a long while, God has raised up a man of such wisdom and discernment as John Gilchrist Sahib, who by his knowledge and insight, and by search and labour, has composed books of its rules. By this means the language of Hindustan has come into use in many countries and has gained new lustre. Otherwise, no one thinks ill of his own turban, his own speech or his own gait. Ask a rustic, and he will find fault with the townsman and think himself the best of all. Well, the wise know for themselves.

When Ahmad Shah Abdali came from Kabul and had the city plundered, Shah Alam was away in the east. No heir or master of the kingdom remained; the city was left without a head. It is a small thing: the splendour of the city came from the fortune of the throne. All at once ruin fell. The gentry of the place, scattered this way and that, went wherever their horns would fit. In whatever country they arrived, the company of the people there put a difference into their speech. And there are many who went to Delhi for some reason and stayed five or ten years; how far can they speak it? Somewhere or other they are bound to slip. But the man who bore every calamity and stayed on as a pebble of Delhi, and whose family passed five or ten generations in that city, and who has long frequented the courts of the nobles, the fairs and gatherings, the urs festivals and the processions, the sights and shows, and the wandering of the lanes of that city, and who after leaving it has kept watch over his tongue: his speech is certainly correct. This humble one, too, has come this far, seeing the sights and shows of every city.