Abstract
When young Inshā burst on to the Delhi literary scene, senior poet Mīr Ḥasan included him in his soon-to-be-famous biographical diction-ary. Praising Inshā’s charm and intelligence, Ḥasan noted that the poet had a new style and was initiating new modes.2
‘Ishq sach ho to na mā‘shūq ho kyoṅkar ‘āshiq
Jis pe ham gh ash haiṅ ajī woh bhī hai ham par ‘āshiq
If love is true, why should the beloved not be a lover?
Look, the one I adore is also in love with me1
—Inshā
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Notes
Khalil-ur Rahman Da‘udi, ed., Kulliyat-i Insha (Lahore: Lahore Majlis-i Taraqqi-yi Adab, 1969), 203: 198. Hereafter cited as KtI.
Mir Hasan, Tazkirah-yi Shu ‘arae Urdu (Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh Urdu Akadimi, 1985), 27.
See Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, “Conventions of Love, Love of Conventions: Urdu Love Poetry in the Eighteenth Century,” Annual of Urdu Studies 14 (1999): 3–32,
and Frances W. Pritchett, Nets of Awareness: Urdu Poetry and its Critics (Karachi: Oxford University Press, 1995).
Mir Insha Allah Khan Insha, Daryā-ĕ Lat̤āfat, translated into Urdu by Pandit Brijmohan Dattatreya “Kaifi” (Delhi: Anjuman Taraqqi Urdu, 1988), 290–91. Hereafter cited as D-eL.
Sabir Ali Khan, Sa‘adat Yar Khan Rangin (Karachi: Anjuman Taraqqi-yi Urdu, 1956), 95. Hereafter cited as SYKR.
Annemarie Schimmel, As Through a Veil: Mystical Poetry in Islam (New York: Columbia University Press, 1982), 29–30.
Mohammad Husain Āzād, Ab-i Hayat (Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh Urdu Akadmi, 1998), 299.
In the mid-1990s, Pritchett and Hanaway challenged Russell’s assertion that the Urdu ghazal mirrors social conditions and real-life relationships; they asserted that the ghazal is a game based on rules that remain largely unchanged. See Pritchett, Nets of Awareness; Ralph Russell, “The Urdu Ghazal: A Rejoinder to Frances W. Pritchett and William L. Hanaway,” Annual of Urdu Studies 10 (1995): 96–112; and Pritchett, “On Ralph Russell’s Reading of the Classical Ghazal,” Annual of Urdu Studies 11 (1996), http://www.urdustudies.com/Issue11/index.html.
Iqtida Hasan, ed., Kulliyat-i Jur’at (Napoli, Italy: Istituto Universitario Orientale, 1970), I, 69: 119.
Mirza Muhammad ‘Askari, ed., Kalam-i Insha (Allahabad: Hindustani Akadmi, 1952), has dokhā and explains it as rebuking (hereafter cited as KI); KtI has do kahā, which means to call someone worthless. KtI has woh bolī; KI has bole.
Faruq Argali, Rekhti (New Delhi: Farid Book Depot, 2006), 201. Hereafter cited as R.
Nurul Hasan Hashimi, Dilli ka Dabistan-i Sha‘iri (Lucknow: Uttar Pradesh Urdu Akadmi, 1992), 299.
Sa‘adat Yar Khan Rangin, Majalis-i Rangin, ed. Sayyid ‘Ali Haidar (Patna: Idara Tahqiqat-e Arabi-o Farsi, 1990), 14–15.
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© 2012 Ruth Vanita
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Vanita, R. (2012). Playfully Speaking. In: Gender, Sex, and the City. Literatures and Cultures of the Islamic World. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/9781137016560_6
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