Like the Moon Surrounded by Stars: Classic Poetry from South Asia in the Library’s Collections

(The following is a post by Charlotte Giles, South Asian Reference Librarian, Asian Division. This post was originally published in the Library of Congress blog “Bookmarked: Celebrating Contemporary Books and Writers at the Library.”)

South Asia and the Middle East are home to a multitude of poetic traditions in many languages, each with its own world of aesthetics and forms. The Asian Reading Room and African and Middle Eastern Reading Room in the Library of Congress are entry-points into these worlds, with stunning examples of some of the creative geniuses from these parts of the world. These traditions, however, do not exist within a bubble, but rather reach out across space, time, and genre to impact authors and poets across the world.

The Library gathers many examples of these permeable borders of poetry from these regions, one of them being the Urdu masnavi, “Sihr ul-Bayan,” by the Indian poet, Mir Hasan. The word “masnavi (mathnavi)” may sound familiar to those who are otherwise unfamiliar with literature in this part of the world, but have, perhaps, heard of the Persian mystic, scholar, and poet, Jalal-al-din Muhammad Rumi (c. 1207-73 CE/604-72 AH). The Library’s own manuscript of Rumi’s six-volume “Masnavi-e Manawi” (the opening page depicted below) dates back to the 15th century. The Urdu masnavi showcased in this blog post is considerably shorter and differs greatly in form and content. So, how did a Persian poetic form make its way to India? What is a masnavi?

From the 13th to the 19th centuries, Persian was the lingua franca of the Indian subcontinent, leading to the intermingling and sharing with the hundreds of other languages and dialects in South Asia. The Urdu language is deeply embedded in Persian’s rich literary history, and that very much includes the crossover of Persian poetic forms such as the masnavi, the ghazal, ruba’i, and qasidah. To learn more about Persian poetics, particularly the concept of ‘ishq, check out Junior Fellow 2022 Ghazal Ghazi’s StoryMap, “Unraveling ‘Ishq: Love in the Poetry, Miniature Painting, and Calligraphy of the Persianate World.” Each of these poetic types differ in their rhyme, meter, syllable, and theme, among other restrictions, regional differences, and changing preferences across time. The mathnawi (Arabic) or masnavi (Persian) is typically a narrative format of everyday stories, composed of rhyming couplets (AA, BB, CC, DD, etc.) with no restriction on the number of lines. The poetic form (along with its alterations) is present across linguistic literary traditions including Arabic, Persian, Urdu, and Turkish.

Mir Hasan was a significant Urdu poet of the eighteenth-century, along with poets such as Sauda, Mir, and Dard (one of Hasan’s mentors). Born in Delhi (1736/7-1786), he spent the rest of his life in Lucknow, Awadh (present-day Uttar Pradesh). Hasan completed the over 2,000-couplet work in 1795. The Library holds multiple copies of this famous epic poem. Two of these are recently digitized illustrated manuscripts, one from the 19th century and the other from the 20th century.

During Mir Hasan’s time in the mid-18th century, the Urdu masnavi tended to be a longer poem with an emphasis on romantic and fantastical themes. This is not to say that there were no short masnavis about other topics, but this was the general trend at the time. This particular masnavi, “Sihr-ul Bayan,” is but one of eleven (albeit the most famous) which Hasan wrote during his lifetime.

The manuscript depicted above and below was created in India in 1890 and is bound with what appears to be a woven Banarasi silk brocade, and contains illustrations of middling quality and skill. This brocade binding is depicted below. The manuscript was gifted to the Library of Congress by John Davis Batchelder, along with many other rare items, in 1936.

Mir Hasan tells the tale of a beautiful slumbering prince, Benazir, who is stolen away by a besotted fairy, Mahrukh. After some time in her kingdom, seeing his continued unhappiness, she gifts him a magical horse for a few hours of amusement each night in exchange for his promise to never love another. One night, he flies by a garden and glimpses the princess Badr-i Munir, reclining in the moonlight with her handmaids. Here are a few lines from this section, known as the sarapa, or the “head-to-foot” description of the beloved, Badr-i Munir. It is this moment

برس پندرہ ایک کا سن و سال

نہایت حسین اور صاحب جمال

ویے کہنی تکیہ پہ اک ناز سے

سر نہر بیٹھی تھی انداز

خواصیں کھڑی ایدھر اودھر تمام

ستاروں کا جوں ماہ پرازد حام

One of them was fifteen years of age

Extraordinarily handsome and beautiful

One elbow on a pillow, coquettishly

She sat, head gracefully bent

Her female attendants stood all around

Like the moon surrounded by stars

After this first encounter they fall in love. Mahrukh hears of their meetings and throws Benazir into a hole in the desert. Badr dreams of this, and her friend, Najm-al Nisa, goes out in search of him. With the help of the king of jinn, Firoz Shah (who falls in love with Najm), she finds Benazir and returns him to his lover. Also pictured is the moment when Benazir is thrown into the desert hole by other fairy people on behalf of Mahrukh.

The second manuscript of “Sihr ul-Bayan,” created in 1912, is bound in red leather with a partial inscription on the cover. The inside cover bears a stamp from S. J. Tellery and Co. This stamp is depicted below. It reads: “Masnavi Mir Hasan with pictures. Persian book”. This company is known for its trade in art and crafts from India. Tellery both collected antiques as well as commissioned new “art manufactures” from artisans across the subcontinent. A note on the stamp claims this manuscript is an antique. Tellery had a large showroom in Kolkata as well as stores in Delhi, Bombay, Shimla, and New York City. It was even present at the 1893 World’s Fair in Chicago, exhibiting and selling art wares from India. Tellery is just one company of many taking part in the highly lucrative trade in artisanal items from the subcontinent (along with the rest of the British colonies at the time), ranging from illustrated manuscripts such as this, to furniture, silverworks, and fabric. This manuscript is an important item telling us the history of this trade, as well as the significance of Urdu literature beyond the subcontinent.

Also pictured above is an illustration depicting the moment when the fairy, Mahrukh, comes upon the sleeping Benazir. She falls in love with him instantly when she beholds his beauty under the moonlight.

One of the exciting aspects of working with manuscripts is that each item is entirely unique. The imprint of the multiple artisans who worked towards its completion as well as the necessary technology and experimentation to develop the colors and consistencies of the paint, ink, and paper – every page of the manuscript tells a portion of this history of book making in South Asia. Take the pages depicted above and below, with the infamous yellow paint known as “Indian yellow” under UV light in the Library’s Preservation Directorate. This paint is well known not just for the vivid quality of its color, but also for how it is created. A key ingredient in the mixture was the urine from cows that were only fed the leaves of mango trees and water. Even more interesting to see when looking at these illustrations under ultraviolet light is to see where Indian yellow was mixed with other colors to create various shades of green.

The Asian Reading Room and African and Middle Eastern Reading Room frequently work together to assist researchers working with Indo-Persianate and Indo-Islamic materials in languages such as Persian, Urdu, Sindhi, Balochi, and Pashto. While materials such as the masnavis discussed here reside in one reading room or another, the Library is a place where specialists frequently come together and the borders dividing modern nation-states seem to melt away.

Further Reading

• Fārūqī, Shamsurraḥmān. Early Urdu literary culture and history. New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 2001.
• Russell, Ralph and Khurshidul Islam. Three Mughal poets; Mir, Sauda, Mir Hasan. Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1968.
• Ḥasan, Mīr. Siḥrulbayān. Naʼī Dihlī: Anjuman Taraqqī-yi Urdū, Hind, 2000.
• Bruijn, J.T.P. de, Flemming, B. and Rahman, Munibur. “Mat̲h̲nawī.” In Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition, edited by P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel, W.P. Heinrichs. Consulted online on 30 May 2023 <http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/1573-3912_islam_COM_0709>

 

The current post includes edits and information that does not appear in the original post.

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