the literature of islam || sufi poetry in the folk tradition of indo-pakistan

The University of Notre Dame

Sufi Poetry in the Folk Tradition of Indo-PakistanAuthor(s): Ali S. AsaniSource: Religion & Literature, Vol. 20, No. 1, The Literature of Islam (Spring, 1988), pp. 81-94Published by: The University of Notre DameStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/40059368 .

Accessed: 25/06/2014 09:40

Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of the Terms & Conditions of Use, available at .http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp

.JSTOR is a not-for-profit service that helps scholars, researchers, and students discover, use, and build upon a wide range ofcontent in a trusted digital archive. We use information technology and tools to increase productivity and facilitate new formsof scholarship. For more information about JSTOR, please contact [email protected].

.

The University of Notre Dame is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve and extend access to Religion&Literature.

http://www.jstor.org

This content downloaded from 185.44.77.146 on Wed, 25 Jun 2014 09:40:04 AMAll use subject to JSTOR Terms and Conditions

http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=notredame

http://www.jstor.org/stable/40059368?origin=JSTOR-pdf

http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp


SUFI POETRY IN THE FOLK TRADITION OF INDO-PAKISTAN

Ali S. Asani

Sometimes He is Rama or Sita;1 Sometimes He appears as Laksmana.2 Sometimes He is Nimrud or Abraham; Several are the guises He adopts. (62-63)

In this daring manner does the mystic poet Sachal Sarmast (1739-1826) describe in Sindhi, the language of the Sind province in southern Pakistan, the immanence of God. Sachal Sarmast, whose last name means "the intoxicated one," represents an aspect of mystical Islam in South Asia which we may, on the basis of its appeal and pop- ularity among the rural, illiterate masses, characterize variously as the folk, low or little tradition. Contrasting, or perhaps some would say complementing, this rustic tradition is the more sophisticated, intellectual facet of Islamic civilization that developed in urban areas under the cultural influence of the immigrant Muslim elite of Persian or Cen- tral Asian origin.

Most studies of Indian Islam, while focusing on the elitist facet, have treated the folk tradition marginally - a treatment that is rather surprising considering the tradition's impact on a substantial propor- tion of the Muslim population, not to mention, as we shall see pres- ently, its seminal role in propagating Islamic ideas within this population.3 This situation exists mainly because, as the verse above illus- trates, folk Islam had a tendency to incorporate, sometimes in strange ways, elements drawn from the local Indian environment. For example, poets in the folk tradition in medieval Bengal ventured to describe Hindu deities as prophets and represented the Prophet of Islam as a

R&L 20.1 (Spring 1988)

81



82 Religion & Literature

Hindu avatara (incarnation),4 while some of their Shiite contemporaries in Gujarat and Sind equated the Prophet with the Hindu deity Brahma, the Prophet's daughter Fatimah with the Hindu goddess Saraswati, and 'Ali, the Prophet's son-in-law and first Shiite Imam, with the tenth avatara of the deity Visnu.5 Since such indigenous elements, in the view of some scholars, contradicted "the fundamentalist view of the beliefs and practices which Muslims must adhere to" (Ahmad 45), they could not be treated as part and parcel of Islam. We should not, therefore, be too astonished when a prominent scholar of Indian Islam dismisses the folk tradition as "a mosaic of demotic superstitions and syncretistic beliefs"6 whose only function is to "add color to the bizarre pageantry of India."7 Even the British administrators of India in the nineteenth and early twentieth centuries could not refrain from observing that "the Musulman religion is an exotic one in India and consequently does not contain a great number of pure Moslems."8

The ashraf, the religious and intellectual elite of the Muslim community, too, regarded the folk tradition with suspicion and disdain. Conscious of the community's minority status in a predominantly Hindu milieu, they were anxious to prevent their religion from being absorbed and overwhelmed by "an environment which could only be described as an anathema to their cherished ideal of monotheism" (Friedmann 79). Their desire to maintain the "pristine" purity of Islam led them to disparage everything Indian - from Indian languages which they considered unworthy of recording Islamic religious literature to even the native Indian Muslims whom they contemptuously called ajlqf, "mean," "ignoble," "wretches."9 To preserve and protect Islam from encroach- ment by "idolatrous" Indian customs and beliefs, they cultivated a strong "extra- territorial cultured ethos," an outlook which Annemarie Schimmel has called "Mecca-oriented" for its appeal to the Islamic heartlands for determining cultural and religious norms and mores ("Reflections" 19). We can discern this "extra-territorial cultural ethos" in the works of many of the subcontinent's influential Muslim saints, scholars and theologians beginning with the early fourteenth century saint Makhdum-i Jahaniyan Jahangasht (d. 1385), who prohibited his followers from using Indian names to refer to God (Schimmel, "Reflec- tions" 18), to the twentieth-century poet-philosopher Muhammad Iqbal (d. 1938) who, in his Urdu work Bang-i dara, sees himself as a bell in the caravan of the Prophet calling the Muslim community to return to its true homeland in Mecca.

However much the Mecca-oriented elite may have repudiated the Indian cultural milieu, the Islamic tradition did eventually have to



ALI S. ASANI 83

reconcile itself to the local languages, mores and traditions. It was only by expressing its message in terms and concepts familiar and accessi- ble to the native population that Islam was able to firmly establish itself on the Indian soil, acquiring a following that constitutes the largest concentration of Muslims in the world. The role of the Sufis, or Islamic mystics, in this process of reconciliation and adaptation has been univer- sally acknowledged.10 Although the popular conception of the Sufis as "missionaries of Islam" who overnight converted substantial popula- tions has been questioned recently,11 still the overwhelming evidence indicates that the Sufis, and not the shari'ah-bound theologians and religious-lawyers, were responsible for initially spreading the message of Islam, in particular mystical Islam. Most Sufis were more suited in temperament to assimilating Islam to the Indian environment by virtue of their esoteric interpretation of Islam and its focus on developing a personal relationship between each human and the Creator.

We can best appreciate the form and manner in which the Sufis per- formed this instrumental role through the literature they produced. The most significant characteristic of this literature was its orientation to the lower, uneducated classes of society. This bias required the Sufis to use the various Indie vernaculars. Their audience understood neither Arabic nor Persian, the languages of Muslim sacred and liturgical literature. Therefore, as early as the thirteenth century, Sufis began composing poetry in the vernaculars which they initially incorporated in the ritual of the sama\ "listening and dancing to mystical music." However, in opting for the vernaculars, the early Sufis encountered and had to tolerate the deep-seated prejudice of the Muslim intellectual elite to anything Indian. As a consequence, most Sufis, at least until approximately 1600, began their compositions with an apology and justification for the use of a "profane" medium for "sublime" religious matters. One composer in Bengali, in fact, expressed his appre- hension "about incurring the wrath of the Lord" for having rendered "Islamic matters into Bengali" (Roy 68). Most Sufis would have agreed, however, with Pir-i Roshan, a sixteenth century religious leader, who declared on this issue:

God speaks in every language, be it Arabic, Persian, Hindi or Afghani. He speaks in the language which the human heart can understand. (Basauni 322)

By the late seventeenth and early eighteenth century it had not only become acceptable to write in the vernacular, but we can witness across the subcontinent, from Punjab to Bengal, a veritable exuberance of vernacular folk-poetry, a significant portion of it written by Sufis. In-




deed, the pioneering role the Sufis played in the development of the Indie languages is comparable to that of medieval European mystics, monks and nuns in the literary history of modern European languages (Schimmel, As Through a Veil 137). 12

While the Sufis may have found an appropriate medium to communicate their ideas, their task involved much more than simply translating classical Arabic or Persian religious texts into an Indian dialect. As Asim Roy points out in his study of the Islamic tradition in Bengal, "if the medium was to be intelligible to the people, its idioms and symbols should be no less so" (80). For this purpose, the Sufis turned to the pre-existing indigenous folk-poetic tradition, a tradition that was mainly oral, meant to be recited or sung in a musical mode. Although it was recorded in writing only rarely (and that only at a very late stage), its simple rhyme forms made it easy to memorize. It was also a tradition that was oriented to the world of women, who though illiterate, were and still are the most important keepers of folksongs, proverbs and customs. Consequently, in addition to using indigenous Indian verse forms such as the doka, caupai, kafi, wai, barahmasa, chautisa, siharfi,13 the poetry drew on forms of folk songs sung by women as they engaged in their household duties. Within these songs, the poets inserted the essentials of Islam in their simplest form. To illustrate this process, we cite a very common type of composition prevalent in the Deccan (Southern India), the chakki-nama, sung by women while grind- ing grain at the chakki, grindstone. Drawing parallels and metaphors between the various parts of the grindstone at which the woman was working, the poet explains in a simple language the precepts of Islam:

The chakkVs handle resembles [the letter] alif, which means Allah, And the axle is Muhammad, and is fixed there. In this way the truth-seeker sees the relationship: Ya bism Allah, hu hu Allah.

Grind the flour and make stuffed puri [fried bread]; Put in it heavenly fruits and sugar. The seven qualities of God must be taken in the body, As the seven ingredients fill the puri, oh sister. Ya bism Allah, hu hu Allah. (Eaton, Sufis 163)

Interwoven in this attempt to show the basic link between God, the prophet Muhammad and the reciter herself, is the use of the dhikr, the highly regulated meditational exercises involving the rhythmical repeti- tion, "remembrance," of one or more religious phrases such as the ninety-nine beautiful names of God. Dhikr was frequently an impor-



ALI S. ASANI 85

tant theme in Sufi folk songs originating in regions where spinning was a major activity among women, for the spinning of yarn could easily be compared to the humming sound which constant dhikr produces:

As you take the cotton, you should do dhikr-i jali As you separate the cotton, you should do dhikr-i qalbi And as you spool the thread, you should do dhikr-i 'aini The threads of breath should be counted one by one, O sister.

(Eaton, Sufis 164)

In fact, Sufi folk-poetry from the cotton growing areas along the Indus valley is so permeated with technical terms from the world of spinning and weaving that in her pioneering study of Punjabi Sufi poetry, Lajwanti Rama Krishna included short definitions of these terms to guide the uninitiated (xxvi-xxix).

Shah 'Abdul Latif (d. 1752), the greatest poet of Sind, extends even further the parallel drawn between the spinning woman and the soul occupied with the recollection of God. In a chapter he entitles kapa'iti after the old folk tunes used during the spinning process, he cleverly extends the Quranic imagery of God as the purchaser of the soul (Sura 9:111)- just as the thread has to be finely spun to fetch a good price from the buyer, so the human heart has to be refined and prepared with utmost care before the merchant-God can purchase it (Schimmel, Pain and Grace 160; Sorley 255):

Wondrous devotion spinners have, who tremble, spin and spin;

For earning good, in the spinning- yard at sun-rise they begin -

Such soul beauty the connoisseurs [God]14 even for themselves would win.

Yarn spun by spinners so genuine, without weighing they buy. (Kazi 170)

The high frequency with which vocabulary, similes and technical terms associated with cottage industries and household chores occur in this poetry lead one to agree with Richard Eaton's conclusion about the role of rural women in Indian folk Islam. Women, many of them non- Muslim, attracted by the Sufi saints and their poetry, became the main transmitters of Islamic/Sufi ideas in rural households. Through this "rather insidious medium," he suggests, the slow and gradual process of acculturation and identification with Islam began ("Sufi Folk Liter- ature" 125-26).

The role of women is manifest in an even more significant manner.




In consonance with the literary conventions of Indian folk literature, the soul was always represented as a virahini, a loving and longing woman, usually a young bride or bride-to-be, who awaits her Husband- God or who is involved in a long and arduous quest for Him. In this symbolism, reminiscent of the Radha-Krisna motif in Hindu devotional poetry, and quite unusual by the standards of Islamic literature in the Middle East,15 it is not difficult to discern the influences of songs sung by the peasant woman in periods of separation - when she leaves her parental home for her in-laws' home or when she anxiously awaits at sunset the return of her husband from the field, or his fishing trip, or from the nearby village where he went to sell his produce.

Yet the most dramatic use of the woman-soul symbol occurs in the mystical interpretation of pre-Islamic romances and legends. The use of popular Indian romances by Sufis as vehicles of expressing the mystical experience can be dated as early as 1379 when the Hindi poet Maulana Daud wrote his mystical allegory, Candayan, initiating a tradition of rather erudite and literary mystic-romantic epics that was to last for several centuries. At the folk level, Muslim poets in Bengal adopted the Radha-Krisna romance from Vaisnava poetry and fur- nished it with "Sufic" meaning (Roy 187-206). 16 Identifying himself with the female Radha, the poet could express the core of all Sufi thought, the yearning of the human soul for God:

Oh Krishna, show compassion to me. Don't ever withdraw your affection That black moon has become a stranger, And I am sinking in the ocean of love.

Saiyid Sultan says, Save my life by revealing yourself. (Abdul Mannan and Seely 2)

It is the mystic poets writing in Punjabi and Sindhi, however, who refined the technique of reading mystical meaning into local romances such as Hir-Ranjha, Sassui-Punhun, Sohni-Mewar. The heroine in these stories always searches for her lost beloved until she either finds him or dies of thirst and heat in the mountains or drowns in the In- dus. She becomes the parable of the seeking soul on the mystical path who, separated from the Divine Beloved, has to undergo great tribula- tion and a painful purification process in her quest:

My body burns. With roasting fire I am consumed but make my quest Parched am I with Beloved's thirst Yet drinking, find in drink no rest



ALI S. ASANI 87

Nay! did I drain the ocean wide, T would grant in not one sip a zest. (Sorley 255)

It is truly amazing to see how the folk-poets, especially the Sindhi Shah Abdul Latif, have ingeniously endowed these heroines with in- terpretations that are so much in keeping with Quranic verses such as "Verily from God we are and to Him we return" (Sura 2:151) or aHe [God] loves them and they love Him" (Sura 5:59) or Quranic concepts such as the primordial covenant between each soul and God (Sura 7:171). Similarly, fundamental Sufi ideas concerning the transformation of the nafs, the lower-self, are most effectively presented: the heroine Sassui, whose beloved Punhun was kidnapped while she slept peacefully, represents the soul in the khwab-i ghqflat, "the sleep of negligence," ensnared in the material world and oblivious of the Lord; Marui, the village damsel who, pining for her parental home, spurns the wealth and status offered her by her suitor 'Umar, represents the soul ever yearning for the divine homeland in which it originated; the foolish queen Lila who, for the sake of a fabulous necklace, "sold" her husband to her maid for a night, represents the nqfs-i ammara, "the com- manding lower-self," (Sura 12:53) attracted to the material world and which needs to be purified and transformed into the nqfs-i mutma'inna, "the soul at peace" (Sura 89:27) before it can be accepted by the Lord (Pain and Grace 155-58).

In the skillful hands of the folk-poets, the heroine becomes so sublime that her physical and external quest for the Beloved is transformed into a spiritual and internal one. According to the Sufi saying "safar dar watan" the real journey must take place through the wastes of one's homeland - the soul. It is there where, after following the Prophet's precept of dying to oneself, one can find the Beloved who, according to Qur'an Sura 50:16, is closer to man than the jugular vein (Pain and Grace, 241-42). Thus, Shah Abdul Latif's Sassui sings:

As I turned inwards and conversed with my soul, There was no mountain to surpass and no Punhu [Punhun] to care for; I myself became Punhu [Punhun] . . . Only while Sasui [Sassui] did I experience grief.

(Jotwani, Shah Abdul Latif 136)

Similarly, his Punjabi contemporary Bullhe Shah (d. 1754) has the heroine Hir exclaim:

Repeating Ranjha Ranjha I myself have become Ranjha. Call me (now) Dhidho Ranjha, none should call me Hir.

(Rama Krishna 63)




By drawing extensively on metaphors and symbols connected with the experience of women, especially their experience of love, the Sufis could convey their idea of the soul's relationship to God in a manner which even the most illiterate segments of society could understand. In addition, they also had at their disposal the whole repertoire of in- herited forms derived from the range of activities common in rural life - ploughing, sowing, hunting, milking, planting, and so on. In coastal regions, the worlds of fishing and seafaring were a particularly favoured source of inspiration. Lalan, the famous Baul poet of Bengal, explains the role of the Prophet by comparing him to a pilot steering the boat of the faithful to salvation:

You are a companion of God's, Helmsman to the far shore of truth. Without you, the world on the shore We shall not see again. And who but for you could govern In this way, Oh instrument of faith. Lalan says, no other such lamp will ever burn so. (Mannan and Seely 4)

Many poets also turned to the world of nature and the countryside that surrounded them for symbols - from the swan which has a keen discriminating taste for only pure pearls17 to the papiha bird which con- stantly cries out (in Hindi!) piu kahan piu kahan, "where is the beloved, where is the beloved,"18 to the bumble bee which in Indian lore is famed for its attraction to the lotus flower. This flower itself symbol- ized the preservation of purity in the midst of an uncongenial, dirty environment:

The root of Lotus flower fair in deepest waters grows -

High soars the bumble-bee, but fate their innermost wishes knows.

Through love, fulfillment it bestows, and makes the lovers meet. (Kazi 175)

The possibilities were endless as long as the poet was able to effectively blend his message into the image, retain its simplicity, and not weigh it down with burdensome theoretical speculations.

In fact, this poetry strongly condemned bookish learning and bar- ren intellectualism as means of approaching the Divine Beloved. As in Sufi poetry in the classical languages, the main targets of this attack were the 'ulama, the learned theologians and religious jurists who claimed to have the exclusive right to interpret God's word as embodied in the Qur'an. All the knowledge and scholarship in the world was useless



ALI S. ASANI 89

in comparison to the experience of he who has "seen" the Beloved. The rustic peasant must surely be reassured that he, too, his poverty and illiteracy notwithstanding, could enjoy the privilege of a loving relationship with God when he heard poets such as Qazi Qadan recite:

I have not read at all Kanz, Quduri, Kqfiya;19 I met the Beloved at a place so different! (3)

As many poets put it, one need not learn to read or write more than the first letter of the Arabic alphabet, the alif, with which begins the name Allah:

Those who have found the Lord alif, they do not read again the Qur'an; O He. They respire the breath of love and their veils have been lifted; O He. Hell and heaven their slaves become their faults they have forsaken; O He.20

Far more instrumental than formal learning in nurturing a person's relationship to God was the instruction and guidance of the appropriate mystic guide, pir. The pir, as someone who had already traversed the path to God, was well aware of the trials and tribulations awaiting the seeker. He had a special relationship to God, that of wait, "friend," and as a representative of the Prophet he could help the soul in the process of purification. Various images, again drawn from aspects of daily life, were used to illustrate this role. He was compared to a dhobi, a washerman, who, in the subcontinent, beats his laundry with a stick to thrash out the dirt, or to a dyer who cleans off the spots of impurity from the soul before dipping it in a vat that contains, to use a Quranic expression, the sibghat Allah, "the coloring of Allah" (Sura 2:132; Pain and Grace 180). Although the methods used by the guide may seem to be harsh, not to have one could be a disaster. As a Bengali poet puts it:

When one who did not accept a spiritual teacher dies, Azrail (the angel of death) will take him And will force him to drink cups of urine; A filthy cap will be placed on his head, And he will wander about in this. The angels will beat him with iron clubs, And drive him to hell. (Mannan, "Heritage" 13)

Often the poets were fond of introducing into their verses the names of prominent Sufi saints as exemplars of "the perfect man," the man who has attained perfection in the mystical quest, the insan-i kamil in Sufi terminology. The most popular role model was Mansur al-Hallaj,




the Sufi who was cruelly executed in Baghdad in 922 for proclaiming Ana'l Haqq, "I am the Reality." The gruesome fate of this saint has won him eternal fame in almost all Islamic folk literature.21 Al-Hallaj becomes the most significant symbol of the true lover of God who proved his maturity by giving up his life at the gallows, the bridal bed where he was finally united with the Beloved with whom he so ardently identified.22

Naturally, to the 'ulama, the guardians of Islamic orthodoxy as embodied in the shari'ah (divine law), the exaggerated importance accorded to the intermediary role of Sufi saints was objectionable on theological grounds. According to them, no human could be elevated to the lofty ranks often ascribed to the Sufi mystical guide. Yet, from their point of view, the most objectionable aspect of folk-poetry was the strong presence of the wahdat al-wujud "unity of existence" theory associated with the Arabo-Hispanic mystic Ibn 'Arabi (d. 1240). This system of mystical speculation, whose fundamentals are summed up in the for- mula, "Everything is He," greatly influenced the expression of much ecstatic mystical poetry in the Islamic world, especially after 1300.23 Thus, while the conservatives thought the theory dangerous because it blurred the distinction between creation and the Creator, mystic poets under its influence wrote pantheistic-sounding verses claiming the fundamental unity of all outward forms of creation. To cite one example, the spirit of which is echoed throughout folk-poetry in the subcontinent and elsewhere:

From One, many to being came; "many" but Oneness is;

Don't get confounded, Reality is "One," this truth don't miss.

A thousand doors and windows too, the palace has . . . but see, Wherever I might go or be, the Master confronts me there. (Kazi 32)

Not surprisingly, within the context of the Indian subcontinent, this philosophy, which is strongly reminiscent of the advaita, "non-dualistic," philosophical system in Hinduism, has led several scholars to detect the preponderance of "Vedantic Hindu" influences in the works of the Sufi folk poets.24

While the extent of Hindu influence on Sufi poetry is arguable, what remains beyond question is the strong regard the composers of this poetry show toward the Prophet of Islam, an attachment that is the



ALI S. ASANI 91

hallmark of Islamic identity. The Punjabi poet Sultan Bahu, who has been considered by some as a prime example of a Sufi influenced by Hindu vedanta, says in this regard:

This heart is burning with separation; it neither dies nor lives. O He, the true path is the path of Muhammad, along which God is found, O He. (Rama Krishna 38)

Love for the Prophet, as Constance Padwick has emphasized, is the strongest binding force in the Muslim tradition, for it is an emotion in which all levels of society, from the peasantry to the intelligentsia, can share (145). Just as the poets of the classical languages Arabic and Persian composed grandiose and erudite poems, the folk poets, too, wrote plain but moving pieces to spark Prophetic love in the hearts of their audience, whether they spoke Sindhi, Punjabi, Hindi, Gujarati, Bengali, Malayalam or Tamil. The Prophet is the loyal friend, the most trustworthy companion, the intercessor on the Day of Judgement, the pilot who guides the boat of human existence. In short, any metaphor that reveals the Prophet's love and protection for his people could be and was used.25 Perhaps the most beautiful image frequently associated with the Prophet in the folk tradition is the cloud of mercy which brings the rain of mercy to a parched and thirsty earth - a clever reference to the Quranic epithet for the Prophet, "a mercy for the worlds" (Sura 21:107).

It is but natural that love for the Prophet, "God's Beloved," should be secondary to love of God Himself. That love, as we have already seen, forms in the Sufi world-view the foundation of humankind's, in fact creation's, relationship with the Divine. It is not always easy to love, as the heroines of the folk tales poignantly testify, for love, especially love of God, involves suffering, purification and transformation of the self before one can enjoy again the embrace of the Beloved. In. the ultimate analysis, this was the core of the message which the Sufi folk-poets wished to communicate to the peoples of the subcontinent. It was a message unhindered by the lofty speculation and abstraction often found in "high" Sufi literature and inspired by their experience and distinctive interpretation of islam, "submission to the will of God." Transgressing the barriers erected by immutable religious doctrines and laws, it had a universal appeal: to this day, Hindus and Sikhs re- main as ardent as their Muslim compatriots in their admiration and enjoyment of Sufi folk poetry.

Harvard University




NOTES

1 . Rama is the incarnation of the Hindu deity Visnu and Sita, the daughter of the Earthgoddess and wife of Rama.

2. Laksmana is the half-brother of Rama and partial incarnation of Visnu. 3. For a discussion on this subject, see Imtiaz Ahmad, "The Islamic Tradition." 4. For this development, see Roy, Mannan, Dobhasi Literature, and Haq. 5. See Azim Nanji and Gulshan Khakee. 6. Aziz Ahmad, An Intellectual History, 44. 7. Aziz Ahmad, Studies in Islamic Culture, 163-64. 8. Govt. of India, Census of India, 1901, (Baroda) 18.1: 152. 9. Freidmann and Schimmel, "Reflections," analyze the attitudes expressed by Indo-

Muslim thinkers towards the Indian environment. For the ashraf-ajlqf dichotomy, see Imtiaz Ahmad, "The ashraf-ajlqf Dichotomy," 268-78; Roy 58-83; and Eaton, Sufis 42-43, 90-91.

10. To cite only a few examples: H. K. Sherwani; Yusuf Husain Khan; K. A. Nizami; Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions 344-402; Eaton, "Sufi Folk Literature" and Sufis; and S.A.A. Rizvi.

11. See, for example, Bruce Lawrence, "Early Indo-Muslim Saints and Conver- sion," Islam in Asia, 109-45, and Eaton, "Sufi Folk Literature."

12. The role of the Sufis in the literary history of Hindustani, the lingua franca of the subcontinent's northern provinces, and Urdu, the national language of Pakistan, is described in Maulvi 'Abd ul Haq, Urdu ki ibtidai nashv o numa men sufiya-i kiram ka kam (Alligarh: Anjuman-i taraqqi-i urdu, hind, 1968).

13. The doha, a popular verse-form in the subcontinent's Indo-Aryan languages, is a couplet, the two verses of which rhyme, each verse consisting of 24 matras or syllables distributed according to a prescribed pattern; the caupai is a kind of verse consisting of four padas or short lines, usually of 16 matras each; the kafi and wai are Sindhi verse forms in which one basic verse announces the rhyme and tune and is then repeated after each verse; the barahmasa is the "twelve month" poem in which the poet expresses his feelings toward a beloved in each month; in the chautisa each verse begins with a letter from the Indian alphabet, while in the siharfi a letter from the Perso- Arabic alphabet is used at the beginning of each verse.

14. In Sindhi poetry God is often referred to in the third person plural, e.g. , "they," "them."

15. In classical Sufi literature outside the sub-continent, the woman was usually a negative symbol equated either with the world which tries to seduce man or the nafs, lower soul, who by its ruses tries to ensnare the pure spirit and trap it in worldly life. However, the classical tradition was also aware of the positive aspects of woman- hood as illustrated by the Quranic accounts of Zulaykha, Potiphar's wife and Maryam or Mary, the mother of Jesus. Zulaykha became for the Sufis a symbol of the soul enraptured in love for the Beloved, while Mary represented the spirit that receives divine inspiration. See Schimmel, Mystical Dimensions, Appendix 2: "The Feminine Element in Sufism."

16. Bengali Sufi poets were so skillful in integrating the Radha-Krisna motif into their work that scholars are undecided whether their poetry should be considered Vaisnava and therefore Hindu or Sufi and therefore Muslim! For the Hindu interpretation, see E. C. Dimock. The Muslim case is presented in Haq 48-51.

17. Qazi Qadan (d. 1551), the first major poet in Sindhi, composed 5 couplets



ALI S. ASANI 93

utilizing this symbol. See Qazi Qadanjo kalam, verses 12-16. For an English translation (with some printing errors) see Jotwani, "Sindhi Sufi Poet" 51. Shah Abdul Latif devoted the chapter Kara'il of his work the Risalo to the same symbol. For selections in translation, see Kazi 175-78.

18. See Schimmel, As Through A Veil 144-45. 19. Kanz al- ummal by 'Ali al-Muttaqi al-Hindi (d. 1565) is a widely used collec-

tion of Prophetic traditions; Quduri (d. 1037) is the author of a handbook of Hanafi law, while the Kafiya is Ibn Malik's (d. 1274) Arabic poem on Arabic grammar.

20. Translated from the Punjabi text of Majmu'a Sultan Baku as quoted by Rama Krishna 32.

21. Louis Massignon, the French orientalist, has devoted the second part of his four- volume work on al-Hallaj to a discussion of the flowering of the Hallajian myth in various Islamic lands. See Le Passion de Husayn Ibn Mansur Hallaj: martyr mystique de V Islam . . . and English translation with biographical foreword by Herbert Mason, The Passion of al-Hallaj, Mystic and Martyr of Islam. Other Sufis who feature prominently in this poetry include: 'Abdu'l-Qadir Gilani (d. 1166), the founder of the Qadiriyya order and Sarmad (d. 1661), a Persian Jew who converted to Islam, fell in love with a Hindu boy, and who was finally executed for his "intoxicated" Sufi ideas.

22. For al-Hallaj as symbol, see A. Schimmel, "The Martyr-Mystic Hallaj in Sindhi Folk-Poetry."

23. Much has been written about Ibn 'Arabi's life and works. Information about his "school" of mysticism is available in any standard study of Sufism. A good survey of his various interpreters is the two-part article by Jim Morris in the Journal of the American Oriental Society, 106 (1986).

24. The studies by Rama Krishna and Jotwani represent two examples of this trend of interpretation. S. R. Sharda, Sufi Thought, is a third.

25. For a detailed account of the Prophet Muhammad in popular Muslim piety and poetry, see Schimmel, And Muhammad is His Messenger.

WORKS CITED

Abdul Mannan, Qazi. "Heritage of Bangladesh: Sufi Movement and Sufi Literature in the Medieval Period." Learning Resources in Bengal Studies. Mimeographed. New York: Learning Resources in International Studies, 1974.

The Emergence and Development ofDobhasi Literature in Bengali. Dacca: Dept. of Bengali and Sanskrit, Univ. of Dacca, 1966.

Abdul Mannan, Qazi and Seely, Clinton. "Lyric Poetry." Learning Resources in Bengali Studies. Mimeographed. New York: Learning Resources in International Studies, 1974.

Ahmad, Aziz. An Intellectual History of Islam in India. Edinburgh: Edinburgh UP, 1969. Studies in Islamic Culture in the Indian Environment. London: Oxford UP, 1964. Ahmad, Imtiaz. "The ashraf-ajlaf Dichotomy in Muslim Social Structure in India."

Indian Economic and Social History Review 3 (1966): 68-78. "The Islamic Tradition in India." Islam and theModrniAee 12.1 (1981): 44-62. Bausani, Alessandro. Storia delta litteratura del Pakistan. Milan: Nuova Accademia Edi-

trice. 1958. Dimock, E. C. "Muslim Vaisnava Poets of Bengal." In Bengal Regional Identity. Ed.

D. Kopf. Michigan, 1969.




Eaton, Richard. "Sufi Folk Literature and the Expansion of Islam." History of Religions 14.2 (1974-75): 115-27.

. Sufis of Bijapur 1300-1700. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1978. Friedmann, Yohanan. "Islamic Thought in Relation to the Indian Context." Purusartha

9(1986): 79-91.

Haq, Muhammad Enamul. Muslim Bengali Literature. Karachi: Pakistan Publications, 1957.

Jotwani, Motilal. Shah Abdul Latif: His Life and Work. Delhi: University of Delhi, 1975. "Sindhi Sufi Poet Qazi Qadan." Panjab University Journal of Medieval Indian

Literature 5 (1981): 41-70. Kazi, Elsa. Risalo of Shah Abdul Latif Selections. Hyderabad/Sind: Sindhi Adabi Board,

1965. Khakee, Gulshan. "The Dasa Avatara of the Satpanthi Ismailis and the Imam Shahis of

Indo-Pakistan." Harvard University Ph.D. Dissertation, 1972. Khan, Yusuf Husain. "Sufism in India." Islamic Culture 30 (1956). Lawrence, Bruce. "Early Indo-Muslim Saints and Conversion." In Islam in Asia. Ed.

Y. Friedmann. 2 vols. Jerusalem: Magnes, 1984. Mason, Herbert, trans. The Passion of al-Hallaj, Mystic and Martyr of Islam. Bollingen

Series 98. Princeton: Princeton UP, 1982. Translation of Massignon, below.

Massignon, Louis. Le Passion de Husayn Ibn Mansur Hallaj: Martyr Mystique de I' Islam. Paris: Gallimard, 1975.

Nanji, Azim. The Nizari Ismaili Tradition in the Indo- Pakistan Subcontinent. Delmar, NY: Caravan Books, 1978.

Nizami, K.A. Studies in Medieval Indian History and Culture. Allahabad: Kitab Mahal, 1967.

Padwick, Constance E. Muslim Devotions. 1961. London: S.P.C.K., 1969. Qadan, Qazi. Qazi Qadan jo Kalam. Ed. Hiro J. Thakur. Delhi: Puja Publications,

1978. Rama Krishna, Lajwanti. Panjabi Sufi Poets A. D. 1460-1900. 1938. Karachi: Indus

Publications, 1977. Rizvi, S.A.A. A History ofSufism in India. 2 vols. Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1978. Roy, Asim. The Islamic Syncretistic Tradition in Bengal. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton UP,

1983. Sarmast, Sachal. Risalo. Ed. O. A. Ansari. Karachi: Sindhi Adabi Board, 1958. Schimmel, Annemarie. And Muhammad is His Messenger: The Veneration of the Prophet

in Islamic Piety. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1985. As Through A Veil: Mystical Poetry in Islam. New York: Columbia UP, 1982. Mystical Dimensions of Islam. Chapel Hill: U of North Carolina P, 1975. Pain and Grace: A Study of Two Mystical Writers of Eighteenth-Century Muslim India.

Leiden: E. J. Brill, 1976. "Reflections on Popular Muslim Poetry." Contributions to Asian Studies 17 (1982):

17-26. "The Martyr-Mystic Hallaj in Sindhi Folk-Poetry." Numen 9 (1962). Sharda, S.R. Sufi Thought. Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1974. Sherwani, "Cultural Synthesis in Medieval India." Journal of Indian History 41 (1963). Sorley, H. T. Shah Abdul Latif of Bhit: His Poetry, Life and Times. 1940. Lahore, Karachi,

and Dacca: Oxford UP, 1966.



the literature of islam || sufi poetry in the folk tradition of indo-pakistan

Documents