Love and Mysticism in the Punjabi Qissas of The
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LOVE AND MYSTICISM IN THE PUNJABI QISSAS OF THE SEVENTEENTH AND EIGHTEENTH CENTURIES JEEVAN SINGH DEOL 1996 THESIS SUBMITTED FOR THE DEGREE OF M.PHIL. OF THE UNIVERSITY OF LONDON SCHOOL OF ORIENTAL AND AFRICAN STUDIES LONDON ProQuest Number: 10731592 All rights reserved INFORMATION TO ALL USERS The quality of this reproduction is dependent upon the quality of the copy submitted. In the unlikely event that the author did not send a com plete manuscript and there are missing pages, these will be noted. Also, if material had to be removed, a note will indicate the deletion. uest ProQuest 10731592 Published by ProQuest LLC(2017). Copyright of the Dissertation is held by the Author. All rights reserved. This work is protected against unauthorized copying under Title 17, United States C ode Microform Edition © ProQuest LLC. ProQuest LLC. 789 East Eisenhower Parkway P.O. Box 1346 Ann Arbor, Ml 48106- 1346 ABSTRACT This thesis examines the tension between mystical ( haqTqT) and romantic (majazT) conceptions of love in the Punjabi qissa tradition before the end of the eighteenth century. All the texts under consideration date from before the third quarter of the eighteenth century and, therefore, both predate and inform the classical qissa tradition of the nineteenth century. The texts narrate three of the most commonly represented love stories in pre twentieth century Punjab, two of them versions of local folk legends and one an episode from the Quran. A total of six texts are considered in the thesis: Hafiz Barkhurdar's Mirza Sahiba, Siddlq Tail's Yusuf Zulatkha, and the versions of HTr by Ahmad, Muqbil and Varis Shah. The thesis begins with a chapter on the qissa tradition which seeks to situate the qissa in the Punjabi literary tradition and to define the classical qissa based on its formal generic features. The body of the thesis argues that most of the early texts under consideration attempt to subvert the transgressive potential of the love stories they narrate: where Ahmad contains the love story of Hir and Ranjha through narrative compression, for example, Muqbil subtly recasts the story as a mystical allegory. The thesis argues that the image of the slaughter of the Imam Husain underlies the structure of the Mirza Sahiban of Hafiz (as well as the versions of his successors) and that the entire poetic of Siddiq Lali's Yusuf Zulaikha figures the narrative universe as an intersection of the mystical with the worldly. Finally, the thesis argues that Varis Shah's HTr recasts the narrative by introducing a certain sexual component at the same time as it downplays the social and religious transgressiveness present in earlier poems. 2 ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS This thesis was funded by the Commonwealth Scholarship Commission in the United Kingdom and the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada. 3 NOTE ON TRANSLITERATION More than for most north Indian languages, the transliteration of Punjabi presents serious problems of cultural choice: even when using Roman script, one must choose whether to transcribe Persian or Gurmukhi spellings. The process is complicated by tire fact that the Gurmukhi spellings themselves often transcribe Persian spellings, raising the problem of how they themselves represent Persianate sounds not easily distinguished in Gurmukhi. For this thesis, I have chosen a mixture of Persian-script and Gurmukhi spellings as a basis for the transcription of pre-modem texts and terms, except in the case of quotations taken directly from sources originally in Gurmukhi. The system followed is essentially that used in the Encyclopedia of Sikhism, except that I have used "sh" to transcribe the sound often represented by "s".11 have made no distinction between the various letters for the sounds represented in transliteration by "h", "t", "z" and "s" since they are not pronounced differently in spoken Punjabi and have dropped the hamzah for the same reason; I have however maintained tire transliterations '"ain", "q", "kh", "khw" and "gh" in their usual values. I have also chosen to deviate with regard to nasalisation of short vowels, which is represented by "n" before a consonant other than a labial and by "m" before a labial. Nasalisation of final vowels and vowels before "v" and "h" is represented by the tilde. Quotations and words from other languages have been transcribed according to tire widely accepted systems for these languages. I have used diacritics and italics for all terms from Punjabi, Hindi, Urdu and Persian on their first appearance in the text; the terms appear in italics but without diacritics on subsequent appearances. Names of languages and religions, ’Harbans Singh, The Encyclopedia of Sikhism, Vol. 1 (Patiala: Punjabi U, 1992): xiii-xv. 4 well-known place names, holy books (like the Quran) and the word "qissa" are never given diacritics; less well-known place names are given diacritics where necessary. Islamic terms commonly used in Punjabi have been transcribed as if they were Punjabi words: hadis, sharT'd and SM'd are used for the words often transcribed as hadith, shari'ah and Sht'ah respectively. Personal names of modern authors are written in the Roman spelling they favour (when known) and with diacritics (on first appearance and in the bibliography) where the author's preferences are not known; pre-modem names are given in full diacritics on first appearance and in the bibliography. Titles of books and articles occur with full diacritics on every appearance. Dates are CE unless specifically marked VS or AH. Full lines from poetic texts are transcribed with "inherent a" where appropriate, but individual words appear in modem Punjabi transcription. 5 CONTENTS Abstract 2 Acknowledgements 3 Note on Transliteration 4 1 The Punjabi Qissa: The Genre and its History 7 2 The Problem of the Early Mirza-Sahiban Qissas: Pilu and 75 the Two Hafizes 3 "People Will Talk": Ahmad Gujjar's Hir 107 4 "Acceptable Poetry": Muqbil's Mystical Qissd HTr Rdnjhd 137 5 The Poetry of Correspondence: Siddiq Lali's Bahr ul-'ishq 179 6 "A Wondrous Story of Spring": Varis ShalTs Htr 206 7 Conclusion 253 Bibliography 257 CHAPTER ONE THE PUNJABI QISSA: THE GENRE AND ITS HISTORY When the Punjabis told the qissa of Hlr and Ranjha last night They ravaged the suffering. (Insha)1 Qissa: 1. Description, story, tale; ...imaginary story, fiction, long story. 2. Quarrel, argument, fight, dispute....2 Arguably the best known literary productions of pre-modem Punjab are its qissa s, particularly the qissa of Hir and Ranjha. There is almost certainly no Punjabi who does not know at least in outline the stories of the major qissas, and many will have heard portions of the famous texts recited. Most literate Punjabis will have read parts of the most major texts, and the cultural currency (even outside literary circles) of the reputations of the qissa-writers held to be the masters of their art is rivalled in Indian and Pakistani Punjab perhaps only by the Sufi lyricists and the Sikh Gurus. Some writers like the mid-eighteenth century poet Varis Shah add to their celebrity status in the Punjabi culture something approaching a pan-Indian reputation (through hearsay if not through actual acquaintance with his works), and many non-Punjabis easily recognise the qissa in general and Varis's poetry in particular as an important part of the Punjabi literary culture. As one might expect from the popularity of the classical qissas, the love stories which they narrate have enjoyed wide currency in the Punjabi culture since at least the very beginnings of written Punjabi literature. The position these stories had assumed in the culture by the sixteenth century is evidenced by references to them in the vars of the Sikh poet Bhal Gurdas and the kafis of the ]Quoted in Piara Singh 'Padam/ "HIr-sahitt," Panjabi Dunia 2:7(Sept. 1951): 27. 2Panjabi has, vol. 1 (third ed.; Patiala: Bhasha Vibhag, 1990): 447. 7 Sufi lyricist Shah Husain.3 So central were (and are) these stories that they came to form "a part of that store of materials available for a system of sideways (or backwards or upwards) looking poetic references" in a number of folk or written genres of literature in the Punjab.4 The popularity of the poetic versions of the stories, in turn, is shown by the fact that texts like Hashim Shah's Sasst Punnu and Qadir Yar's Puran Bhagat were being recited alongside versions of the Hir- Ranjha and Mirza-Sahiba stories by professional bards in the nineteenth century.5 In broad outline, the scope of the qissa expanded over two hundred years from the retelling of well-known love stories to include romances, historical stories, humorous tracts, autobiographies, and virtually every other narrative subject. During the nineteenth century, the qissa began to narrate Punjabi folk tales and Islamic hagiographies as well as high literary romances. Some strands of the qissa derived formal inspiration from the model of the Persian masnavi, while others modelled tiiemselves on Punjabi folk-songs or Hindi prabandha kavyas. At the same time, the almost total numerical predominance of Muslim qissa writers6 that had characterised previous periods was replaced by a situation in which the number of Hindu and Sikh writers came to equal and then to surpass the number of Muslims. In its various forms, then, the Punjabi qissa reflects the many changes and developments that occurred in the Punjab from the seventeenth century onwards. If the language of the Punjabi qissas renders the poetic texts inaccessible to audiences outside Punjab, their subject matter is, however, a fundamental part of 3 Daljinder Singh Johal, "Punjabi Literature (Late 18th-Early 19th Century),"Journal of Regional History 4(1983): 23, 4 Christopher Shackle, "Between Scripture and Romance: The Yusuf-Zulaikha Story in Panjabi," South Asia Research 15:2(Autumn 1995): 161.