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Copyright by Nathan Lee Marsh Tabor 2014 The Dissertation Committee for Nathan Lee Marsh Tabor Certifes that this is the approved version of the following dissertation: A Market for Speech Poetry Recitation in Late Mughal India, 1690-1810 Committee: Syed Akbar Hyder, Supervisor Kathryn Hansen Kamran Asdar Ali Gail Minault Katherine Butler Schofeld A Market for Speech Poetry Recitation in Late Mughal India, 1690-1810 by Nathan Lee Marsh Tabor, B.A.; M.Music. Dissertation Presented to the Faculty of the Graduate School of The University of Texas at Austin in Partial Fulfllment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy The University of Texas at Austin December 2014 Acknowledgments Dissertations owe their existence to a community of people who support their authors and the awkward acknowledgments section does little to give enough credit where it’s due. Nonetheless, I tip my hat to the myriad people who helped me. Fieldwork was a long process with strange turns. Fellow tea-drinkers and gossips in Muzafarnagar were witty, sagacious, hospitable, and challenging companions who helped me to chart this project albeit indirectly. Though my mufassal phase only gets a nod in the present work, Muzafarnagar-folks’ insights and values informed my understanding of Urdu literature’s early history and taught me what to look for while wading through compendiums. Now the next project will be better prepared to tell their complicated and intriguing stories. Had it not been for Syed Akbar Hyder, my advisor and guide, there would be no “speech market.” He knew me, my strengths, hopefully overlooked my shortcomings, and put me on a path perfectly hewn for my interests. I owe him a debt I can only repay through trying to use his insight and knowhow to give this topic the attention that it deserves. His roadmap will keep me true in anything I do in the future. $iv The dissertation committee with Kathryn Hansen, Gail Minault, Katherine Butler Schofeld, and Kamran Asdar Ali has been a welcome collective voice with contrasting interests and approaches that I hope to refect in the writing below. Their presence and understanding attests to the importance of literary sociability in all academic endeavors. For three years in India Asghar Wajahat Sahib was a trustworthy and jocular advisor while I was afliated with Jamia Millia Islamia. He introduced me to Musawwir Rahman who took me to Muzafarnagar for the frst time for a musha'irah he was reciting in. I hope to get another chance to spend more time with them in the Delhi Press Club, in some qasbah-town awāmī, or at a musha'irah in the near future. Also, C.M. Naim, Frances Pritchett, and Sunil Sharma deserve words of thanks for helping me with questions on particular texts and time periods. Francesca Orsini kindly gave me draft copies of essays by Stefano Pellò, Allison Busch, and Sunil Sharma appearing in an upcoming edited volume based on her 2009 “Tellings, Not Texts” conference that were crucial to the text and tellings below. In this line, were it not for Sheba Iftakhar I would not have known about Dihlī kī Ākhrī Shamaʿ so early on. She lit the candle. When I returned from Lucknow in 2013, Timsal Masud showed up in Austin $v and it was good to have a buddy to bond with over Texas-things like BBQ and country music. Lord willing, there will be more of that that kind of carousing in Chicago. As for my family, this project would never have been accomplished without their unfinching support both emotionally and materially. Their help, understanding, and legitimate questions at diferent stages kept me grounded when things were hard and home was far away. It is a curious time to obtain an advanced degree at moment when universities are cutting faculty and services even after having built themselves up on an immoral amount of student debt that would have been unimaginable a generation ago. Lastly, I thank my very own beloved, in the most lyrical and material of senses. Alisa Perkins is my wife, my partner, and my interlocutor who dashed around India with me for nearly three years, taught me new things, and continues to make me laugh all the time. We hope to get a cat soon and maybe a dog when we settle down— someday. Austin, TX and Kalamazoo, MI December 2014 $vi A Market for Speech Poetry Recitation in Late Mughal India, 1690-1810 Nathan Lee Marsh Tabor, Ph.D. The University of Texas at Austin, 2014 Supervisor: Syed Akbar Hyder This project focuses on 18th-century Persian and Urdu language mushāʿirahs or poetry gatherings patronized by Mughal India’s urban elite and depicted in period compendiums or tazkirahs. Besides preserving poetry, the compendiums chronicle the social, aesthetic, and sensual aspects of 18th-century public and private gatherings from a stance that prizes the delight of lyric verse. The 1740s in particular mark a watershed decade for poetry exchange and criticism as they bridged several generations of India-based poets who were advancing the tāzah or “fresh” goals of contemporary Persian writing and who were also recasting Persophone civility according to vernacular sensibilities in a social setting that was arguably the heart of Safavid and Mughal literary production. This dissertation examines how poets, $vii listeners, and patrons enacted a material form of literary sociability that informed the circulation of people and verse over the 1700s. Analyzing this pre-colonial context allows for a more critical understanding of aesthetic and ethical drives in South Asian literary practices, providing a more grounded and critical understanding of lyricism as a cultural practice. By foregrounding the socio-aesthetic implications of recitation as a discursive practice, the present study understands the musha'irah as a unique site of literary subjectivity. Hence, the disciplinary boundaries between history, literary criticism, and ethnography are blurred to show that lyricism was not abstracted in 1700s poets’ gatherings. Instead, it formed a highly instantiated social script that allowed for the playfulness of Persian-based aesthetics to parallel the levity of Mughal-era sociability found in period salons or majālis. The Mughal literary sphere in the 1700s was governed by expectations of honesty, humor, exaggeration, enchantment, and originality, qualities that were not bounded by one language or textual medium. Historiographically, the compendiums from the 1700s attest to musha'irah verse being self-referential, intertextual, and multilingual whereby the conventions of Persian- based aesthetics had a charismatic social life. $viii Table of Contents Introduction 1 0.1 Historiography of Socio-Literary Institutions and Pre-Modernity 15 0.2 Project Outline 49 Chapter 1 54 Welcoming Sa(ib: Imagined Recitations in late 1600s Tazkirahs 1.1 A Fantastic Model 58 1.2 Gatherings in Absentia 66 Sher 'Ali Khan Lodi 71 Walih’s Women 79 1.3 Deferred Gatherings in Early 1700s Delhi 87 Nasir 'Ali and Sa(ib 91 1.4 Unending Arguments 102 The Competition of the Munsh) and the Mulla 108 Conclusion 121 Chapter 2 127 Slapping Wali: Measured Friendships and Generous Rivalries 2.1 The Intimate and Contentious Nature of Plagiarism 129 2.2 Rhetorical Vigilantes and Promiscuous Poetics 133 Hazin and Arzu 136 Mir and Yaqin 145 Shafq on Inadvertent Plagiarism 158 2.3 Putting Persian in a Chest 173 Hatim’s Son of a D)w*n 175 The Diary 180 2.4 Urdu Musha'irahs in Delhi’s late 1700s 184 Ghulam Hamdani Mus'haf’s Three Tazkirahs 199 Conclusion 222 Chapter 3 224 Pestering Hazin: Comportment and Manners in the Musha'irah 3.1 Decorum to be Upheld and Violated 229 Sitting and Standing 232 $ix Unruly Tongues 238 3.2 Verse over Personality 249 Keeping up with the Kashmiris 258 Arzu and the Enjoyment of Discord 266 3.3 Chemical Sociability 274 Opium and Hashish 275 Tobacco 279 Cofee 283 Alcohol 298 Conclusion 303 Chapter 4 305 Gulshan’s Embrace: Music and the Voice in the Musha'irah 4.1 Historiography of Sung Verse 313 Links Between the Musha'irah and Devotional Listening 320 Voice and the Seduction of Psalms 330 4.2 Eaters of Melody 338 The Primordial Feast 351 4.3 Professional Beloveds and Song 362 Devotion to Erotic Voices 372 4.4 Afairs in the Musha'irah 385 Qizilbash Khan Ummid 388 Available Singers 396 Conclusion 405 Chapter 5 408 At the Grave of Bedil: A 1700s Musha'irah’s Post-mortem Analysis 5.1 Prophets’ Histories and Mischievous Recitation, c. 1710 420 Revelation in the Musha'irah 434 5.2 Mapping Material Literary Histories 437 A Recitational Public Space 440 Bedil’s 'Urs, c. 1739 446 A Map of Dead Lovers’ Graves 455 5.3 Imitation and Debate 470 At the Feet or Grave of the Master, c. 1730 471 Verse as Public History 483 $x 5.4 A Vernacular Turn 490 The Disappearance of a John Doe, c. 1760 491 Sauda and one of Doggerel’s Pimps 494 Conclusion 506 Conclusion 516 Chapter Overview 519 Contribution 528 Appendices 540 Appendix A: Dehkhuda’s Defnitions of the Musha'irah 540 Appendix B: A Gathering at the Wazir Khan Mosque in Lahore 541 Appendix C: Mulla Shaida’s Critique of Qudsi 544 Appendix D: Munir Lahori’s Critique of Shaida’s Critique of Qudsi 545 Appendix E: Walih and Hakim’s Exercise 546 Appendix F: Farrukh Siyar’s Chronograms 548 Appendix G: The Two Rangins 550 Appendix H: Shafq’s Description of Inadvertent Plagiarism 551 Appendix I: Moti’s Ghazal as Recorded by Mus'haf 553 Appendix K: The Iranian Accent 554 Appendix L: Hatim on Cofee 555 Appendix M: Bedil’s Song 558 Appendix N: Noted Verses Sung by Qaww*ls 559 Appendix O: Waqif’s Poems Written in Separation from his Boyfriend 561 Appendix P: from Nizami’s Treasury of Secrets 562 Appendix Q: Ummid Runs into Mir at the Rasul Numa 'Urs 563 Appendix R: Babri Rindi’s Ghazal 564 Appendix T: Nudrat’s Lampoon of Sauda 567 Appendix U: Sauda’s First Lampoon of Nudrat in a Quintain 568 Appendix V: Sauda’s Second Lampoon of Nudrat in a Quintain 570 Appendix W: Sauda’s Lampoon of Nudrat’s Daughter in a Sestet 571 Bibliography 572 $xi Prefatory Notes Conventions All years are reckoned to the Gregorian calendar unless otherwise noted.