MAULANA DAUD AND HIS CANDAYAN Maulana Daud’s Candayan is the first Sufi text in Hindi which was composed in A.H.781 (1379A.D.). Candayan has been referred to by Shaikh Quddus Gangohi (1456-1537 A.D.)1 and the famous historian Al Badauni2 and in the Gazetteers of Awadh3 and Raibareli district of Uttar Pradesh. However real study of Candayan started when Paramesvari Lal 1 Quddus Gangohi: Qutub al-’Alam ‘Abd al Quddus b. Isma’il b.Safi al-Din Hanafi Gangohi was the disciple, brother- in- Law and Khalifah of Shaikh ‘Arif b. Ahmad Abd al Haqq (Rudaulwi) “but got besides an investiture from almost all the Khanwadas or Sufic branches. He spent thirty years in Rudauli, migrated thence in A.H. 896-1491, early in the reign of Sultan Sikandar Lodi (A.H. 894-923/ A.D. 1489-1517) at the suggestion of his disciple ‘Umar Khan Kasi one of the ‘Amirs, to”Shahabad“ near Delhi. where he remained another thirty five years. In 932/1525_26, when Babur defeated and killed Sul- tan Ibrahim b. Sikandar Lodi and sacked Shahabad, ‘Abd al-Quddus moved to Gangoh. where after fourteen years he died in 944/1537 or 945/ 1537 at the age of eighty four. For details see C.A. Storey, Persian Literature, Luzac and company, LTD. London,1972, vol- ume 1 part 2 pp 967-68. See also Simon Digby, Abd al-Quddus Gangohi (1456- 1537A.D.): The personality and attitudes of a medival Indian Sufi, in Medieval India (a miscellany), Department of History,Aligarh Muslim University, Aligarh, 1975, vol.∞∞3. Shaikh Abd-l Quddus Gangoi used to compose poems in Hindi by the name of Alakhdas. A collection of his poems has been published by Shailesh Zaidi and Athar Abbas Rizvi. Alakhbani, Bharat Prakashan Mandir, Aligarh, 1971. The transliteration system in these above notes is different from the one I have followed in the main article. 2 Mulla Abdul Qadir Badauni was the son of Shaikh Muluk Shah and was born in A.H. 947 1540 A.D. at Toda or Toda Bhim near Jaipur. Soon after his birth, he was taken to Basawar in Bharatpur. At the age of twelve his father took him to Sambhal for educa- tion. Again he returned to Basawar and went to Agra for studies. In A.H. 969 (1562 A.D.) his father died and then he moved to Badayun. In A.H. 981 (1574 A.D.) he joined the court of Akbar, the great Mughal king. In the court he was entrusted with the work of translating some Sanskrit texts which he did not enjoy. He was in opposition with famous scholars of his age Fazl and Faizi who were his class fellows for some time. His orthodox view about Shariat and Islam in general was not consonant with Akbar’s policy. He died in A.H 1024 (1615-16 A.D.) His history, Muntakhabut Tawarikh, also called Tarikh-i- Badauni is a history of Muslim rulers in India. His anti Akbar attitude is very clear in this history. He criticises saints like Shaikh Muhammad Ghaus Gwaliyari (Shattari) too who was liberal in his approach. 3 The town Dalmau prospered during the reign of Atamash of Delhi about 600 Hijri. At that time one Makhdum Badruddin, a companion of the king, resided there. Thence- forward the town did well till the time of Firoz Shah Tughluq, who founded a school for the instruction of the people in Moslem lore Its usefulness can be gathered from the perusal of a book “Chandrani” in Bhakha, edited by Mulla Daud of Dalmau in 619 A.H. (1255)* Gazetteer of the Province of Oudh, Lucknow, 1877, p. 355. (*This date is not correct. Mulla (Maulana) Daud was an original poet who used the oral epic Loriki or Canaini for the composition of Candayan in 1379. Maulana Daud was not the editor. Author) 130 S.M. PANDEY (P.L.) Gupta published his book Maulana Daud Dalmai k®t Candayan in 19644. Later Mata Prasad (M.P.) Gupta in 1967 published another text, called Candayan, (Daud Viracit Pratham Sufi Premakhyan)5. P.L. Gupta had discovered a new manuscript from the Ryland Museum Manchester, in which three hundred and twenty folios are in tact. The manuscript is illustrated with miniature paintings and three hundred and twenty three verses are preserved. In his edition M. P. Gupta utilised the Bikaner man- uscript, not available to P.L. Gupta, in which ‘four hundred and thirty nine verses are incorporated. M.P. Gupta’s text is more complete than that of P. L. Gupta since the initial parts of the work, in which praise to God, praise to Muhammad and his four friends and the date of composi- tion of the text and the contemporary king and his Vazir,are all men- tioned. These eighteen important verses of the beginning in their com- plete form are found in the Bikaner manuscript which is in the Devanagari script and was written in Vikram Samvat 1673 (1616A.D.). Mata Prasad Gupta’s edition is much better but many textual errors as well as the mistakes of the interpretations in modern Hindi commentary are found in this edition also. Although Candayan needs reediting, M.P. Gupta’s edition is the most useful edition available to us until now. Recently a text in Urdu has been published by Muhammad Ansarullah6 but this is not a critical edition at all. Ansarullah has merely produced a text on the basis of P. L Gupta’s and M. P. Gupta’s editions. However, his introduction is useful in that he has given information on the contri- butions of Urdu scholars to the studies of Candayan, whereas Hindi scholars have generally ignored their contributions. Jamil Jalvi has pulished another text in Pakistan but I have not been able to obtain a copy as yet. In recent years our knowledge of Candayan has much improved but more work about its content and form, such as the Sufi elements in the text and the language, still needs to be done. 1. Candayan in Medieval Period Candayan has been referred to in the Makhtubat-i-Quddusi by Hazrat Quddus Gangohi (1456-1537 A.D) who was a famous saint of the Sabari 4 Maulana Daud Dalmai krt Candayan, ed. P.L. Gupta, Hindi granth Ratnakar, Bom- bay, 1964. 5 Maulana Daud, Candayan, ed. M.P. Gupta, Pramanik Prakashan, Agra, 1967. 6 Maulana Daud, Candayan, ed. Muhammad Ansarullah, Idarah Tahqiqat, Urdu, Patna, 1996. MAULANA DAUD AND HIS CANDAYAN 131 Chishti sect of Sufis who was born probably in A.H. 860 (1456 A.D.) in Rudauli in the Barabanki district of Uttar Pradesh near Lakhnau( Luc- know)7. He died in A.H. 944 (1537 A.D.) in Gangoh in the Saharanpur disrtrict of U.P. It is mentioned in his letters that Shaikh Abdul Quddus Gangohi lectured on Candayan with the same intensity as when he lec- tured on the works of Ibnul Arabi, Fakhruddin Iraqi and Shaikh Sa’di8. Shaikh Quddus, in a letter to Shaikh Jalal Thaneshwari, on the Wahdat ul Wuzud, quoted a doha from the Candayan to prove that although lovers sought to meet their beloved they were always thwarted. The doha is immediately followed from a verse from the Quran in which Moses urged God to reveal Himself but his request was rejected on the grounds that it was impossible for Moses to see his creator9. In another letter to Shaikhh Muhammad about the spiritual ambitions of holy men, Abdul Quddus argued using a doha from Candayan for emphasis that only the spiritually adventurous were the really men10. In his youth Abdul Quddus embarked upon a Persian translation of the Candayan of Maulana Daud. A considerable portion of the transla- tion had already been made but the manuscript was destroyed in the bat- tle between Bahlul Lod i (1450-1488A.D.) and Husain Shah Sharqi (1458-1505 A.D.)11. However, a few lines of Candayan are preserved in Quddus Gangohi’s Lataif: birikh ãca pharu laga akasa hath ca®hai kai nahâasa kahu jogit ko báh pasarai rati divasa rakhahi rakhavara nainahu dekhai jai so mara These lines appear as 2,3,4, in the verse fifty seven in Mata Prasad Gupta edition. The Persian translation of the text that Quddus includes in Lataif is: 7 For details see footnote 1. 8 ATHAR ABBAS RIZVI, A history of Sufism in India, Munshi Ram and Manohar Lal, New Delhi, 1978, p. 365. 9 Ibid 365. 10 binu kariya mori ∂olai nava ∞∞nigun kariya, gara kant naava Candayan M.P. Gupta op. cit. verse 53/3 The meaning of the verse is different from the meaning quoted by Atahar Abbas Rizvi. The actual meaning of the text is “Without. the boatman my body (heart) is shaking. The boatman is without the rope (nigun) . The cruel lover can not come.” 11 Simon DIGBY, op. cit. p. 55 (footnote 1). 132 S.M. PANDEY shajar-i buland ast thamar dar suma qatt’-i ummid ast bar an dast-i- ma zahra ki ra dast- farazi kunad shakh-i falak dast-i ki bazi kunad roz u shab gashta nigahban -i base kushta shavad chun ki ba binad kase12 “A lofty tree whose fruit is up in the sky there is no hope of reaching it with the hand. O Yogi, tell me who has the power to stretch up his arm to pass on to touch the branches of the tree? Day and night there are many guards and he who with his eyes looks up will be killed.” In these verses Canda’s body has been compared to a tree; her breasts are fruit, her arms are branches of that tree; her long hair is the serpents who can kill any non- lovers.