fKM ,1 . ,; , 13 ASIA jjwiiiiw'iaw'it«llll«»U''ViWlmillltllS>^A'>lcllH^'.V .vj,n p^l xri ^n^^ CORNELL UNIVERSITY LIBRARY i^ ^ Cornell University Library PK 2031.G84 The modern vernacular of Hindustan. 3 1924 023 098 589 VViA 3 ^f^t-o;^ Templa qnam dilecta. 1^. or. STemplE. Cornell University Library The original of this book is in the Cornell University Library. There are no known copyright restrictions in the United States on the use of the text. http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924023098589 THE MODEM TEMACULAE ; LITEEATUEE Plate I. Journal, As. Soc, Beng., Vol. LVII, Extra-Number, 1888. Frontispiece. ' T / I k^^^^^ \ \ \ Lichtdruck von E. JafK & A. Albert, Wien. KAMA'S CHILDHOOD. THE MODEEN YEEMCULAE LITEEATURE HINDUSTAN. By GEORGE A, GEIERSON, b.a., b c.s. per ben Pic^tcr toitl vevste^en, p;uss in Piclifers Janbc ge:^en. [PWniei OS a Special Number of the Journal of the Asiatic SocietrJ of Bengal, Part I, for 1888.2 CALCUTTA: Published by the Asiatic Society, 57, Park Street. 188ff. ^'7 ^.=2 /3 / f f i^ ^ — CONTENTS. Page. Preface vii Inteoductiom— (a) The sources from which the information contained in this work is derived xiii (h) Principles of arrangement of the contents . x^ (c) A brief account of the vernacular litej'ature of Hindustan zvi {d) Description of the plates xxiii' Chaptee I—The Bardic Period [700—1300 A.D.] 1 II—The Religious Revival of the Fifteenth Century ... 7 Addenda 13 III—The Eomantic Poetry of Malik Muhammad [1540 A.D.] . 16 Addenda IS IV—The Krisna-cult of Braj [1600—1600] 19 Addenda 31 • V—The Mughal Court . .34 VI—Tul'si Das 42 Addenda I—The text of Tul'si Das 51 „ II—Other versions of the Bama legend . 57 VII—The ArsPoetica [1580—1692 A.D.] 58 VIII—Other successors of Tul'si Das [1600—1700 A.D.]— Part I - Religious Poets 67 „ II—Other Poets 70 Addenda 80 IX—The Eighteenth Century- Introductory Note 85 Part I—£«ligious Poets . .... 86 „ II— Other Poets 87 Addenda . ^ . ... 100 X—Hindustan under the Company [1800—1857] Introductory Note 107 Part I—Bunderkhand and Baghel'khand . .109 Addenda US Part II—Banaras 117 Addenda . 126 Part III—Audh 127 Addenda . 130 Part IV—Miscellaneous 133 Addenda 143 IV CONTENDS. Page. Chapteb XI—Hindustan under the Queen [1857—1887] . .145 Note on the Hindi and the Biharl Drama .... 154 Addenda 166 „ XII—Miscellaneous 160 Indices. — ILLUSTRATI0N3. Plate I EIma's childhood Frontispiece. „ II Facsimilb (ebducbd) op ten pages of the BIjIfub BlulTAN To face p- 47 „ III Facsiuile (ebducbd) of thebe pages op the Banabas MS. of the BauXyan . To face p. 51 „ IV Photogeaph op a deed of aebiteation in the handweiting of Tul'si Das 51 PREFACE. In the year 1886 it was my privilege to read, at the International Congress of Orientalists at Vienna, a paper on the Mediaeval Vernacular Literature of Hindustan with special reference to Tul'sl Das. The preparation of this necessitated the arrangement of the notes on the entire vernacular literature of Northern India, which I had collected through a long series of years, although the essay itself dealt with only a portion of the literature which existed hefore the 17th century. Encouraged by the attention with which this paper was received, I have endeavoured to give in the present work a more complete view of the vernacular literature of Hindustan from the earliest times to the present day. It does not pretend to be more than a list of all the vernacular writers whose names I have been able to collect, nine hundred and fifty-two in number, of whom only some seventy have been previously noticed by Garcin de Tassy in his Histoire de la Uteratttre hindome et Mndoustanie. It will be observed that I deal only with modern vernacular literature. I therefore giv6 no particulars concerning authors of purely Sanskrit works, and exclude from consideration books written in Prakrit, even when the term it may have been a vernacular, as not connoted by modern. Nor do I record the names of Indian writers and in Arabic or Persian, or in the. exotic literary Urdu, VIU PREFACE. I have been the more willing to exclude these last from our present consideration as they have been already exhaustively dealt with by Garcin de Tassy. I may add that by Hindustan I mean Eaj'putana and the valleys of the Jamuna and of the Ganges as far east as the river Kos!, and that I do not include under that term either the PaSjab or Lower Bangal. The vernacular languages dealt with may roughly be considered as three in number, Mar'war!, Hindi, and BiharT, each with its various dialects and sub-dialects. One omission must be mentioned with regret. I have refrained from including the large number of anonymous folk-epics and of folk-songs (such as Icafris, jafsars, and the like) current throughout Northern India. These can only be collected on the spot from the mouths of the people, and, so far as I am aware, that has only been systematically done in the province of Bihar. I have therefore, after some hesitation, determined to exclude all mention of them from the work, as any attempt to describe them as a whole could only have been incomplete and misleading. The introduction will explain the principle of arrange- ment adopted in this work. Many of the entries are mere names of authors and nothing more, which I have included to make the book as complete as possible. When any infor- mation was available, I have entered it against the author's name referred to ; and in some cases I have, I believe, been able to present information which has not hitherto been placed at the disposal of European scholars. As examples of this, I would refer the reader to the a-rticles on Sur Das (No. 37) and on Tul'sl Das (No. 128). I do not pretend to have read all or even a considerable portion of the large PREFACE. IX body of literature catalogued in these pages, but I have seen and studied specimens of the works of nearly all the nine hundred and fifty-two authors whose names are mentioned. Nor do I pretend to have understood all I have studied ; for many of the specimens are so difficult tha,t it is hopeless to attempt their interpretation without the aid of a commentary, either oral or documentary. For this reason I do not venture to call this book a formal History of Literature. The subject is too vast, and the present state of our knowledge is too limited to allow such a task to be attempted. I therefore only offer it as a collection of materials which will form a foundation upon which others more fortunate than I am, and with more time at their disposal than a Bengal District Collector, may build. Regarding the spelling of vernacular words, I have adhered to the system followed by Dr. Hoernle and myself in our Comparative Dictionary of the Bihari Language, to which the reader is referred for particulars. It may be briefly stated as spelling every word rigidly as it is pro- nounced. I have only deviated from this rule in the case of the names of a few living gentlemen, natives of India. On the principle that every one has a right to spell his own name as he likes, I have spelt their names as they sign themselves when writing in the English character. The chief difficulty experienced has been in the division of groups of words forming proper names. It has been found by no means an easy task to secure uniformity without leading to results which were too strange and too variant from actual use to be adopted. Present custom in this respect, though con- venient, has no system, and the adoption of any system PEEFACE. must consequently lead to a certain amount of confusion. in the same I have endeavoured to divide the same name I regret that way whenever it occurred in the book, but occur amongst the four thousand and odd names which there have been some lapsus calami. Apologies for dealing with the Neo-Indian vernaculars are not now so necessary as they would have been twenty years ago. At first, oriental scholars devoted themselves to Sanskrit alone, and then, under the guidance of Burnouf, attacked Pall. In later years the classical Prakrits have attracted students, and thus the age of the object of our re- searches has become more and more modem in its character. I now ask my readers to take again one step over the very short gap which separates the latest Prakrit from the earliest Gaudian literature. Hemachandra flourished about 1150 A.D.,^ and Chand Bar'dai, the first of the Gaudian poets of whom we have at present any certain remains, died in 1193. It is possible, however, that some oriental students may still cliog to the old love for Sanskrit, and these I mtist ask to test the rich ore found in the following pages, which contain the names of several vernacular commentaries on difficult Sanskrit books,* and of numerous technical works on such subjects as Grammar,- Prosody, Vocabiilary,* Com- position, and the like. The student of inscriptions will also find a productive mine in the literature of Hindustan, owing to the custom which vernacular poets had of dating their works and of naming their patrons. Besides this the muse ' He died 1172 A.D. ' For instance, Guman Ji (No. 349) wrote a commentary of great reputation on the Nmsadha.