Preface

Preface

Do not let the good name of those who are gone be lost, [TN: Persian]
so that your own good name may endure.

As the late Ghalib said, "Man is a whole Resurrection Day of thoughts." But for thoughts to rise up in tumult there must be some prompting from outside. The mind is a treasure-house of thought, yet to open that treasure-house one needs the key of some outward cause. Since childhood I have loved to read and hear about the lives of the Urdu poets, but nothing ever prompted me to think of gathering their lives in one place, so that these thoughts might take shape in words and become a pleasing, living, moving picture.

When a thing is meant to happen, the means arise of their own accord. See how chance works: among some very old papers I found a hand-painted portrait of Hakim Momin Khan Momin of Delhi. No sooner had I found the picture than the thought came to me: you too should set up a *mushaira* (poetry gathering), like the assembly of poets in the late Muhammad Husain Azad's *Nairang-e-Khayal*, but instead of criticising these men's poetry, simply show them as living, moving pictures. Little by little the thought ripened, and as it ripened it set before my eyes the outline of a mushaira. But I could not see how to bring poets of different periods together in one place. That knot was untied by this couplet of the late Amirullah Taslim:

In old age there is more fire than in youth:
the lamp of dawn flares up just as it goes out.

The moment I remembered this couplet, the last age of the poets of Delhi passed before my eyes, and it settled in my heart that, rather than all the poets of Urdu, I should draw a picture of Delhi's last age. It is the rule that a sick man rallies before he dies. For Urdu poetry, the reign of Bahadur Shah the Second was Delhi's last rally. The kingship was a kingship in name only, and the stipend His Majesty received hardly met even the expenses of the Fort. In the Deccan and in Oudh, on the other hand, a Ganges of wealth was flowing. Even so, the shining sands of the Jamuna kept their spell over the people of Delhi, and in that "ruined land" there gathered a company, not of poets alone but of masters of every art, whose equal would be hard to find, let alone in India, in any other country.

Times do not stay of one colour. Even before 1857 many of those masters had departed for the land of non-being, and those few who were left were scattered by the storm of the Mutiny. Each settled wherever he found some support. Delhi was laid waste, and Hyderabad and Rampur were peopled. Most of the gentlefolk left their homes in such a way that they were never again to see the face of Delhi. Those who remain sit ready to depart. Many have gone, many are going, and a time is coming when there will not be anyone left even to tell where the late Momin's house stood, just as, apart from me, perhaps no one now knows where his grave is.

Seeing these lamps of dawn guttering out, the thought came to me, and the late Momin's portrait too prompted it, that I should light from them at least one lamp for Urdu, in whose light the generations to come might see the faces (however dim) of those benefactors of the Urdu language, so that when they read their poetry at least a faint image of their looks might pass before the readers' eyes. People of literary taste know and understand that if, while reading someone's poetry, one keeps in mind his face and figure, his gestures and movements, the quality of his voice, his ways of sitting and rising, the cast of his temperament and, above all, his dress and bearing, then the poetry produces a particular effect and the pleasure of reading is doubled; whereas reading a book without knowing anything of its author is no more moving than listening to a gramophone record. That is why nowadays, in the civilised countries, no book by any author is published without an account of his life at the beginning and a view of the circumstances in which the work was set down in writing. These were the thoughts that moved me to write these few pages. In this album you will see many pictures that these masters drew with their own hands; you will find many portraits made by other painters; some likenesses have been put into words from photographs or hand-painted pictures. Most of them, though, are faces I have made myself by asking old people. But in every case I have given more weight to contrary testimony than to confirming testimony: that is, if I learned even one thing that went against an incident, I left that incident out altogether.

Had so many descriptions of persons been gathered in one place, the essay would surely have turned into an army register of recruits' features and lost all its charm. But on one side the late Azad's *Nairang-e-Khayal* put the idea of a mushaira into my heart, and on the other the fourth part of the late Karimuddin's book *Tabaqat-ush-Shu'ara-e-Hind* (The Ranks of the Poets of India) gave me news of a mushaira held in Rajab 1261 of the Hijra [TN: July 1845]. That was enough: I put the two together and produced an essay. As for the colouring, I complete that myself; but I take no responsibility for good or bad. As a historian I could have written of the events of 1261 as if I had seen them all with my own eyes, and, keeping in view the verse:

Like the grass I have sprung up again and again; [TN: Persian, a couplet attributed to Rumi]
seven hundred and seventy bodies have I seen,

I could have become the "Mirza Sahib" of that age too. But my heart would not allow me to tie the bridal garland of Karimuddin's success on my own head, and to pick out and throw away, like a fly from the milk, the man who took a very large part in that mushaira, at whose house the mushaira was held, and who was its very soul. It is true that his gathering was a small one, and I have widened it so much that I have brought almost all the great poets of that time to sit in it. Whether I have succeeded in this or not, my honoured readers can judge. If I have, how fortunate I am! My labour has borne fruit. If not, then at least give me credit for this much: "Mirza Sahib hit on a good idea but could not carry it through; what he could not do, we shall now show." Perhaps in this way some master of the pen may prepare a portrait of "those who sleep in the dust" worthy to adorn the assembly of Urdu letters.

Very well: I now present myself in the guise of Maulvi Karimuddin Sahib. But let me say this much: since I am offering all my labour to Karimuddin Sahib, whatever good or bad you have to say about this essay, do not say it to me; say it to the Maulvi Sahib, and say it to your heart's content. I shall be happy, and my God will be happy. Farewell.

Mirza Farhatullah Baig