Introduction
Munīr Lāhorī (1610–44) was a prominent munshi (scribe) at the court of Shāh Jahān (r. 1628–58), born into an elite local family of courtiers who had served the Mughal court since the reign of Akbar (1556–1605). Although he is relatively obscure today, he was well known during his lifetime for his contributions to Persian literature, epistolography, lexicography, and literary criticism, composed in an ornate prose style (nathr-i fannī) that built upon the poetry he analyzedFootnote 1. Munīr's works are evidence of the emergence of a new literary tradition and how it was regarded by contemporary local Persian litterateurs in Mughal India; in addition, they shed light on social divisions between Iranian émigrés and Indian-born elites, and on class tensions between the elite literati and the general public. His critical method is best observed in his commentary on the qasidas (panegyric poetry) of the eminent Iranian émigré Mughal poet, ʿUrfī Shīrāzī (1556–90).
In this article, I use Munīr's Kārnāma, which highlights his cultural and literary critiques of tāza-gū'ī (speaking anew), as a reference for analyzing his commentaries on the qasidas of ʿUrfī. Munīr was critical of the Iranian poet's extensive use of complex verbal metaphors, personification, boasting, formalism, and strange metaphors, which he viewed as falling outside the norms of the literary tradition. For him, ʿUrfī was symbolic of a wider emerging literary and cultural movement that promoted popular literary tastes over elite ones, and emphasized poets of Iranian origin, while simultaneously detracting from the role of Indian poets in the development of the Persian literary tradition. His works became the center of debate during the eighteenth century, as evident by the intense focus they received from the famous philologist Sirāj al-Dīn ʿAlī Khān Ārzū (1687/8–1756). In his articulation of literary and philological issues that emerged during the early modern period concurrent with the tāza-gū'ī literary movement, also known as sabk-i hindī (Indian style), Munīr became a model for the later philological and analytical approaches that examined the emergence and evolution of words, idioms, and phrases over the history of the Persian language. This paper argues that Munīr's critical works provide a unique insight into the literary and social dynamics of early modern Mughal India. By examining Munīr's critiques, we can better understand the tensions between Iranian émigré and Indian-born elites, the popularization of Persian poetry among non-elites, and broader cultural shifts within the Persianate world.
Terminologies
Prose, criticism, and exegesis were long neglected fields in the study of Persian literature because of the elevated status of poetryFootnote 2. However, recent scholarship has begun to examine more critically the role of literary criticism in the history of the Persian language. Naturally, this raises the issue of terminology, due to a contrast between the Western European and Islamicate understandings of what it means to be literate. The conception of literary criticism and exegesis in the West is historically textual, whereas in the Islamicate context it is literary whether textual or oral; therefore the emphasis falls on speech (kalām and sukhan) in both oral and written formsFootnote 3. On a certain level, oral tradition continued alongside written traditions in the same space, as demonstrated by the poetry recited at salons (majlis), royal courts, and local communal spaces. However, for lack of better terminology, literary criticism and exegesis are the closest terms that exist in English for the terms that early modern Persian literati would have known. Literary criticism, as defined in this paper, was known to Munīr and his contemporaries as sukhan-sanjī (speech weighing), the act of examining the value of speech; a sukhan-sanj (speech weigher) would be able to hear a poem and tell if it was of good quality or not. Sukhan-sanjī posited distinct types of speech, particularly between sukhan (elevated speech) and qāl (ordinary speech)Footnote 4. As a genre of writing, it often appeared in the tadhkira (bibliographic anthology literature) traditionFootnote 5. Exegesis and commentary, as defined in this paper, would have been known to Munīr and his contemporaries as sharḥ, which roughly translates as interpretation or explanationFootnote 6. Rather than being the work of an individual author, the commentary tradition was a shared tradition, and does not share the same characteristics of an individual creating an elaborate independent discourse on a text. For example, Nawal Kishor editions of the qasidas of ʿUrfī include sections from Munīr's commentary alongside commentary from other authors, allowing readers to engage with multiple interpretations. Although it is difficult to trace the connection between early forms of the commentarial tradition and later lithographs, it is a topic of great interest and deserves further studyFootnote 7.
A review of the sources
The primary sources I use in this study are an edited edition of Munīr's Kārnāma and a manuscript of his Sharḥ-i qaṣāʾid-i ʿUrfī (commentary on the qasidas of ʿUrfī). The Kārnāma is a work of literary criticism, whereas the Sharḥ is a work of exegesis. The edition of the Kārnāma relies on a single manuscript, but the editor has compared it with various manuscripts of Sirāj al-Dīn ʿAlī Khān Ārzū's critical response to Munīr, the Sirāj-i Munīr (the Bright Lamp), published by the Iran Pakistan Institute of Persian Studies in 1977. The edition of the Kārnāma suffers from many issues of punctuation, word choice, and fragmentation. The Sharḥ has yet to be edited and published, and only exists in manuscript form. The main text used in this study was a manuscript preserved at Aligarh Muslim University. The name of the copyist was Niẓām al-Dīn, son of Qāḍī Muḥammad Nāṣir, and the date he provided places the work sometime between 1722 and 1723. He stated clearly that this was the work of Mullā MunīrFootnote 8. The Bodleian archive at Oxford has a second manuscript of the Sharḥ, and a third manuscript is housed at the Ganj Bakhsh Library, PakistanFootnote 9. There is one manuscript with loose attribution to Munīr at Punjab University, but after I compared it with the Aligarh manuscript and the Kārnāma, it is apparent that this copy is the commentary of another author on ʿUrfī's qasidas.
Munīr's commentary on ʿUrfī's qasidas was one of the last works he started during his lifetime; he died before its completion. According to munshi Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ Kanbūh (d. 1675), there was a majlis (poetic gathering) where difficult poetry from Khāqānī (d. 1199), Anwarī (d. 1189), and ʿUrfī was brought forward to be explained and commented uponFootnote 10. At this gathering no one except Munīr could interpret and explain the poems, and at the end of the gathering those present pressured him into writing a commentary on ʿUrfī's qasidas for the benefit of other peopleFootnote 11. Kanbūh further noted that he received this commentary in the month of Ramadan 1665, about twenty-one years after Munīr's death, from one of his servants or studentsFootnote 12.
To appreciate Munīr's commentary on ʿUrfī's qasidas, one must read them through the critical lens that he offers in his Kārnāma. The Kārnāma was a concise attempt by Munīr to critique the social and literary problems that he saw with the preferential treatment that Iranian émigrés received in the Mughal court and the popularization of Persian poetry. In it, he presents himself as part of a neglected guard of Persian literati protecting the “land of speech” (zamīn-i sukhan) from the demise of meaning. He portrays the growing prevalence of stylistic innovation that decentered traditional meanings and tropes as a threat to the literary tradition's survival.
The Kārnāma consists of eight parts. The first section begins with a short ḥamd (praise) after which the critic sets up a scene of himself in a majlis. He describes himself sitting in the corner and listening, enthralled by the verses he hears. But he is suddenly distressed and finds himself startled when the conversation and recitations become unpleasant:
They all finished criticizing the foregone masters of speech, and in their place, they praised the master of the present-day stylists. They took to criticizing the leaders of the caravan of meaning and they took to praising those who had remained behind the point of true knowledge of speechFootnote 13.
The affront he takes toward their preference for newer poets highlights Munīr's sense of a poetic literary tradition that needs to be respected. It also demonstrates his displeasure at the emerging trend of literary popularization and the authors to whom it afforded status. He then transitions into the second part of the Kārnāma, where he outlines the approach that his treatise (risāla) will take. The next four parts offer a critique of four recent poets: ʿUrfī, Ṭālib Āmulī (d. 1626–27), Zulālī Khwānsārī (d. 1607–28), and Ẓuhūrī Turshīzī (1537–1616)Footnote 14. The seventh part of the Kārnāma is a lament. In it he claims that all four of these poets are from Iran, and they commit a hundred wrongs against the Persian language. The Indian poet on the other hand, like the Indian sword, makes the essence of speech and poetry clear and does not seek praiseFootnote 15. He goes on to say that they are only given preferential treatment because of their lineageFootnote 16. In his view, they have brought innovation to speech, and he believes if their poems were weighed (judged) they would be found to be weightless (worthless)Footnote 17. He concludes his lament by deploring youth and the age he lives in, barred from paying respect to the great past masters of speech. He adds that because of his Indian heritage, he is unable to make the essence of himself become apparent. The Kārnāma concludes in the eighth and final part with an appeal to those who have read his work to see that Indians are capable litterateurs, as worthy of respect as their Iranian counterparts, if not more. He then goes on to list four masters of speech from the land of India—Masʿūd Saʿd Salmān (1046–1121/22), Abū al-Faraj Rūnī (d. 1122), Amīr Khusraw (1253–1325), and Abū al-Fayḍ Fayḍī (d. 1595)—as exemplary masters of the Indian traditionFootnote 18.
Style, genre, criticism, and exegesis in a regional context
Before going further, it is worth looking at the context in which Munīr wrote, as it will clarify the issues referenced above. Although the networks of interaction between Central–South Asian, Safavid, Ottoman, and Mughal courts did not fit the model of the modern nation–state, there was nevertheless a perception of regional distinctionFootnote 19. Persian literati and elites from close-knit regional courts interacted with the wider Persianate world and writers in geographically distant landsFootnote 20. These individuals viewed themselves as part of the scholastic community (ahl-i qalam). Due to his command of literary Persian and his origins in the former capital of the Ghaznavid dynasty (977–1186), an early center of New Persian patronage, Munīr considered himself a member of the community of Persian speakers (fārsī-gūyān)Footnote 21. However, he also had a sense of himself and his local literary community as distinct. South Asia was a place of unique literary and cultural developments, and is much more central to the history of the Persian language and its literature than has been previously thought. Amir Khusraw (1253–1325) and Ḥasan Dihlavī (1253–1338) were among the most influential classical poets during the early modern period. Sayyid Farīd Akram and Sunil Sharma argue that South Asia during the time of Mughal emperor Shah Jahan (r. 1628–1658) flourished in terms of literature and scienceFootnote 22. Iranian émigré Mughal poet Ṭālib Āmulī (d. 1627) claimed that Hindustan was the land of speech (sukhan) endowed with wealth:
Come to India, see the station of speech and generosity
Here is the source of speech and the mine of generosityFootnote 23.
As this line demonstrates, many Iranian poets imagined the subcontinent as a place of material as well as intellectual wealth, a land of prosperity for aspiring scholars and poets. Subsequently, even though the tāza-gūʾī movement was transregional, it also was deeply associated with the Mughal court and its Indian milieu.
As Sunil Sharma has noted, one aspect of Persian literary development during the early modern period that has often gone uncommented upon is the evolution and proliferation of mathnawī (narrative poetry), qasida, and prose (nathr), alongside the more famous ghazalFootnote 24. He highlights that scholarly trends seem to ignore the local context, in which regional differences again play a role. The ghazal evolved uniquely in South Asia to become a popular literary form rather than an elite one, as it was in Safavid Iran and the Ottoman Empire, and so may not have held as elevated a positionFootnote 25. In contrast, Sunil Sharma and Christopher Shackle highlight that the qasida, which as a genre extolled the virtues of the patron, cemented the poet's relationship to the ruler, and was therefore necessary for success at courtFootnote 26. Poets used it almost like a résumé, to demonstrate their literary skill to current and potential patrons. Even though ʿUrfī regarded himself as a ghazal writer, he took up the qasida to maintain his financial status and his relationship to his patrons, of which he had many; it is not surprising that his qasidas were numerically superior to his ghazalsFootnote 27. Munīr steadfastly devoted himself to the critical observation of the qasida; in his Kārnāma, he mostly critiqued ʿUrfī's qasidas and not his ghazals, as the qasidas were exemplary of rhetorical mastery. The fact that his companions and colleagues pressured him to write a commentary on ʿUrfī's qasidas demonstrates that interest in this genre extended to his contemporaries.
Prose is another genre of this period that lacks critical attention. One of the most significant sources of early modern prose is readily available in the form of inshāʾ (letters of a literary nature) written by munshis. Yet, the last significant work on epistle writing and prose in early modern Persian literature was Momin Mohiuddin's The Chancellery and Persian Epistolography under the Mughals, from Bábur to Sháh Jahán in 1971, which is now out of printFootnote 28. The obscurity of his work is a metaphor for the treatment of Mughal literary prose by scholars of Persian. The innovative literary development of munshi ornate prose literature remains peripheral to poetry. Yet, prose had a unique historical and literary development in India because of the well-documented role of munshis in Mughal societyFootnote 29. It was a form that defined the early modern Persianate world but remains underexplored, and Munīr was one of its master practitioners.
The sukhan-sanj of Lahore as illuminator of speech
Munīr valued and esteemed prose, and his style shares many commonalities with his contemporaries, including Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ Kanbūh and Muḥammad Jalāl al-Dīn Ṭabāṭabāʾī. Accounts from his youth portray him as a precocious youngster—like the classical master poets before him—who read the poetry of Sanāʾī (1080–1131/41) and Anwarī (1126–89). Already in his youth he achieved a high level of proficiency in poetry recitationFootnote 30. Shīr ʿAlī Khān Lūdī in the Tadhkīra mirʾāt al-khayāl (1691) wrote, “When he began to think about poetry, he wanted to give himself the pen name sukhan-sanj, but in the end he found the name Munīr pleasant.”Footnote 31 Munīr fashioned himself as a word-weigher, or a literary critic, who focused on correct or incorrect usage of idioms, tropes, style, and meaning.
As a base for the Mughal elite, who used it as a political and military center, Lahore was a major site of literary productionFootnote 32. Although Munīr died at a relatively young age, the poet-critic had an expansive and exhaustive literary outputFootnote 33. During the peak of his career, Munīr was a part of a collective of four prominent munshis from Lahore that included Chandarbhan Brahman and the Kanbūh brothersFootnote 34. Modeling himself after the famous Abū al-Faḍl (1551–1602), the emperor Akbar's chief scribe (mīr munshī), he spent his life attempting to emulate his predecessor's ornate prose writing and styleFootnote 35. Part of this veneration was because Munīr's father, ʿAbd al-Jalīl ibn Ḥāfiẓ Abū Isḥāq Lāhorī, a famous Akbar-era calligrapher and poet, lent his calligraphy skills to the Akbarnāma chronicle project that was penned by Abū al-FaḍlFootnote 36. The influence that the munshi class had on Munīr's upbringing and education is evident in his comprehensive training on Persian literature, in all its forms, from a young age. In addition to being an exemplary prose writer, Munīr was also a skillful poet who wrote extensively in the genre of waṣf (description) in mathnawī form, which Momin Mohiuddin compared in quality to that of Nizami Ganjavi (1141–1209)Footnote 37.
Munīr has received attention among scholars of Persian in Iran and South Asia as a significant early modern criticFootnote 38. In Akram's view, his critical commentary on ʿUrfī represents a new movement within the exegetical tradition, and laid the framework for later literary critics, such as Ārzū, for developing a larger critical and philological movementFootnote 39. His contemporaries certainly saw his work as fundamental for all Persian literati. Muḥammad Ṣāliḥ Kanbūh writes in the dībācha (preface) to Munīr's Sharḥ-i qaṣāʾid-i ʿUrfī,
This newly made charming garden is pleasant and well composed, lacking nothing and needing no proof; and its every part is the universal book in colorful explanation itself. It is for a hundred eloquent speakers the book of medicine and the faithful manual of the fresh wordsmiths of proseFootnote 40.
This demonstrates that many among Munīr's contemporaries saw him as an influential figure whose work should be fundamental knowledge for any literate person, especially those who sought to write in prose.
During his lifetime and even after his death, Munīr became a towering figure for his literary production and became known as a model for munshis. Yet, despite his grandeur and skill, he claims to have spent the majority of his life impoverishedFootnote 41. Even if he was materially poor, the high social status his family had achieved at the Mughal court afforded him great social capitalFootnote 42. In his inshāʾ, he often writes that he was hard pressed with poverty, and that despite being materially destitute he had the land of speech (zamīn-i sukhan) to cultivate his spiritual contentmentFootnote 43. However, the nature of his poverty is unclear; it is possible that he used poverty as a trope to demonstrate his piety or, as he suggested, the influx of Iranian émigré poets led to the diminishment of his ability to find gainful employmentFootnote 44. This could have contributed to his ambivalent relationship with the tāza-gūʾī movement.
In many ways, Munīr was fond of tāza-gūʾī. This is evident in his style, which utilized complex wordplay, new stylistics, and metaphors. In the Hamīsha bahār, Kishan Chand Ikhlāṣ (d. 1754) wrote, “Munīr was the lover of metaphor (istiʿāra-dūst) and his poetry is famous for freshness (tāzagī).”Footnote 45 But despite his immersion in and advocacy for tāza-gūʾī, Munīr viewed it as a sort of aberration. The language that he employed regarding his repentance from tāza-gūʾī and his return to the true traditions of the grand masters of Persian poetry conveys religious notions of purity. In the dībācha to Munīr's Kullīyāt, Muḥammad Jalāl al-Dīn Ṭabāṭabāʾī writes, “After a conversation with Mīrzā Khalīl Allāh, he [Munīr] would forbid me from the use of unfounded metaphors and he would restrain me from unrefined ideas (khayālāt-i khāmī).”Footnote 46 He discusses how this awakening occurred as Munīr sat in seclusion studying with the master Mīrzā Khalīl Allāh. During this meeting (physical or metaphysical), Munīr appears to have had a change of heart and a self-realization about the nature of Persian literature, an event recounted to a lesser extent toward the end of the Kārnāma as wellFootnote 47. The figure Mīrzā Khalīl Allāh is obscure today but had a profound influence over Munīr. It was under the former's influence that the latter decided to turn away from aspects of tāza-gūʾī. Munīr's form of traditionalism should not be confused with the traditionalist revivalist movement of the bāzgasht (literary revival) movement of twentieth-century Iran, but should instead be understood in the South Asian and Ghaznavid context that he highlights at the end of his Kārnāma, in which he praises figures of the Ghaznavid, Ghurrid, Delhi Sultanate, and Mughal courts as exemplary of the tradition he upholds.
In this context of repentance and return, Munīr's critique would find its target in the prominent literary figure ʿUrfī. ʿUrfī loomed large on the Mughal literary scene as one of the earliest tāza-gūs, alongside Bābā Fighānī (d. 1519)Footnote 48. Traveling to the subcontinent in 1584 at around the age of thirty, ʿUrfī initially took up patronage at Ahmadnagar in the Deccan, but eventually made his way to Akbar's court and served there until his death of dysentery in Lahore in 1591. He was one of the most influential poets at Akbar's court, and many statesmen, nobles, and other poets regarded him highly. It is likely that he interacted with Munīr's father. ʿUrfī was known for using contradictory imagery, boastfulness (fakhr), and crude imagery, and had a disregard for standards and norms not only in poetry but also at courtFootnote 49. Given this history, Munīr's disdain for ʿUrfī could have had personal or political dimensions, but it is likely that he viewed him as a major figure of the tāza-gūʾī movement and symbolic of its issues.
The land of speech: Analysis of the Sharḥ-i qaṣāʾid-i ʿUrfī and Kārnāma
In his seminal work Naqd-i adabī dar sabk-i hindī, Maḥmūd Futūḥī Rūdmuʿjanī provides a critical analysis of exegesis, criticism, lexicography, and literature from South Asia while bringing them into contemporary discourse on the evolution of the Persian language. Futūḥī highlights technical aspects of Munīr's Kārnāma and outlines its criticisms in contemporary terminologyFootnote 50. Such a method is useful, but it is restrictive of Munīr's literary philosophy because our contemporary literary framework does not capture the full meaning of early modern terminology. Nonetheless, Futūḥī has laid out a useful road map to help the contemporary reader navigate difficult aspects of Munīr's criticism.
Futūḥī begins by highlighting that Munīr did not agree with formalism (ṣūrat-girāyī) in poetry, which meant that form (ṣūrat) should not take precedence over meaning (maʿnī), and traditional idioms, metaphors, and tropes should maintain their original understandings. Second, Munīr did not agree with personification (tashkhīṣ). The example Futūḥī provides to illustrate this point is as follows:
Your essence is equilibrium and your justice is of Sulaymān's temperament
Your intellect is the brain and the universal jewel that is the skeleton of knowledgeFootnote 51.
Munīr disagreed with the personification of knowledge in this line, that is, ʿUrfī's application of a skeleton (i.e., foundation) to knowledge. Due to this contention, he says that this idiom is bī-maghz (brainless, unfounded) and does not have a precedent within the tradition. Munīr wrote, “those who choose wisely and are aware of the foundation of speech know that the skeleton of knowledge (ustukhwān-i ʿilm) is a metaphor without precedent.”Footnote 52 As Futūḥī notes, there are four additional points of style, including two types of metaphors (istiʿāra), that Munīr did not find suitable: boastfulness (tafākhur) in poetry; using constructions that went against poetic norms; the use of strange metaphors (istiʿāra-hā-yi gharīb) that were intentionally unconventional; and the use of verbal metaphors (istiʿāra-hā-yi fiʿlī) and expressions.
Munīr also took issue with the types of imagery that a poet used and whether those images were normatively appropriate. ʿUrfī was not the only poet of the time to use such imagery, but he was one of the most prominentFootnote 53. As an example, Munīr cited the following line by ʿUrfī:
When the witness of chastity seeks my company
He will find the daughter of the vine's menstrual blood boiling from my lipsFootnote 54.
The verse, in terms of verbal and metaphorical construction, is not complex or obscure. Munīr understood that the menstrual blood of the daughter of the vine referred to wine and its consumption in the presence of someone who was religiously piousFootnote 55. His criticism lay in the ritually impure nature of this poem, which defied norms of literary taste. He wrote in his commentary,
This line, which assaults the mind of pride, was written in self-debasement for the sake of shattering honor, and here it is infelicitous. The summary of the meaning is as follows: For the sake of impure lust, I have made my lips the kisser of the goblet and I sullied the ascetic garment with the dregs of wine, and if the witness of purity loses his good honor by talking to me then it is properFootnote 56.
In the Kārnāma he wrote, “It is clear that writing filthy poetry in such a colorful way is spilling the blood of justice.”Footnote 57 The justice he refers to is the upkeep of the literary etiquette of Persian poetry and its norms. As a result, ʿUrfī's explicit depiction of the ritually impure act of menstruation is a violation of those norms and etiquette rather than a violation of semantics and metaphor.
Another type of construction that Munīr took issue with was the creation of new metaphors and idioms using semantically related imagery in place of images from long-established idioms. Not only did metaphors need to be semantically correct in terms of meaning, but their meaning must rely upon established imagery. One word that carried the same meaning as another word could not simply function in its place because of the fixed nature of an idiom. The line of the poem is as follows:
Your order brought it (pleasant weather) to Kashmir
Because it brings fertility from one land to anotherFootnote 58.
The issue here was the usage of the word for land (khāk), which also means dirt or earth. ʿUrfī has used this word instead of another synonym for land (zamīn) to play with the traditional trope gul-i zamīn (lit., “flower of the earth”), which was a fixed idiom meaning fertile landFootnote 59. Gul-i khāk, however, was not a fixed idiom, and ʿUrfī has created it because of the semantic relationship that existed between khāk and zamīn. Munīr in his commentary wrote, “Using the flower of the earth (gul-i khāk) to mean fertile land (gul-i zamīn) has no familiar color or fragrance in discussion among the adorners of speech.”Footnote 60 He objected to the exchange of a semantically related word in place of another because it was unestablished in the literary tradition. For Munīr, the fixed nature of the idiom should not be decentered. In the Kārnāma, he wrote,
The example is that in place of zāgh-i kamān (the three corners of the bow, literally “the crow of the bow”) they say kalāgh-i kamān (the crow of the bow) and for the position of the khāna-yi zīn (saddle seat, but literally “the house of the saddle”) they write kulba-yi zīn (shack of a saddle) [in its stead]Footnote 61.
Here he demonstrates his conceptualization of the fixed idiomatic nature of the Persian language. In the case of zāgh and kalāgh, both words mean “crow” independently, but when zāgh is combined with kamān it takes on a fixed and established meaning, and another synonym cannot be exchanged with zāgh and still convey the idiomatic expression. For Munīr, ʿUrfī's violation of these established norms regarding idioms not only was an affront to the literary tradition, but threatened to destroy its capacity to express true meaning.
Munīr feared that meaning would be lost through such modes of literary production. In his view, if literary meanings remained unprotected from the creation of new meanings through unestablished idioms and tropes, then meaning itself would become elastic, and all that would remain would be forms and images, and a sullying of the purity of Persian literature. These concerns also reflected his social views; he and his colleagues were the guardians of the Persian literary tradition and understood how to use it appropriately. He tended to favor elites and their forms of knowledge over those whom he saw as the unintelligent masses. This is made evident in the ways that he distinguished the people of sukhan and qāl. It is clear that he loathed not only the loss of meaning but also the democratization of the literary market and the inclusion of those he considered unworthy to participate in the literary tradition. This becomes evident in the way that he feared the displacement of the traditional literary canon and the “uninvited ones” (i.e., the émigrés) who would bring its downfallFootnote 62. In place of literary meaning would emerge the parabolic imaginings of those unfamiliar with the traditional canon and its role in Persian literary production. If all idioms and metaphors lost their associated meanings, then one could infer any meaning or understanding from a line of poetry that one liked, regardless of any literary norms or conventions that would have otherwise prevented unfounded meanings and interpretations. The following couplet by ʿUrfī attracted Munīr's greatest wrath:
Accepting generosity (iqbāl-i karam) bites the ambitious (arbāb-i himam)
Ambition (himmat) does not withstand the lance of someone who says yes (ārī u naʿam).Footnote 63
In his commentary, Munīr wrote, “Therefore while he [ʿUrfī] bit hearts and lanced souls, he used fanciful metaphors in the matter of meaning. With the idea of speaking anew (tāza-gū'ī) he cut open the raw veins of speech.”Footnote 64 For Munīr, ʿUrfī's metaphors were devoid of meaning, and not only were the images in the poem not beautiful or intelligently done but they were offensive to speech. In other words, ʿUrfī used speaking anew to butcher meaning. The critic also suggested that ʿUrfī's actions were not simply his own doing but that “he writes the meaning of the verse in accordance with the taste of people of the time.”Footnote 65 For Munīr, verses that did not adhere to true meaning were emblematic of what people desired from poetry: images and forms filled by the musings of the masses. This also suggests that he did not agree with the inclusion of popular poetic and aesthetic tastes in high literature. He understood these as elite forms of knowledge that were only accessible through elite knowledge systems, that is, the elite training that he and his colleagues received. He commented on the poem,
It is not hidden to the perceptive ones that the intention of the poet is that people who are fed at the table of ambition do not give into generosity. The gifts of the generous-minded ones cause the dulling of character because saying yes brings the bearers of generous gifts, which then becomes the cause of the person's tormentFootnote 66.
As before, the line itself was not a complex or difficult verse; the meaning was straightforward and clear. However, was his criticism related to his perception of ʿUrfī as a popular poet? Did he take offense at ʿUrfī's attack on wealth and status as a type of weakness? It is difficult to determine from this line alone, but Munīr took offense at ʿUrfī's popularization of poetry and did not find the meaning of this line to be aesthetically pleasing because of the inherent break with the established literary tradition and disregard for correct usage to create meaning. His criticisms were not grounded in the ornamentation or difficulty of the poem, but rather the rhetorical notion of correctness and meaningFootnote 67.
Munīr in the Kārnāma ended his criticism of ʿUrfī with scathing remarks about what the loss of true meaning would mean for poetry. He viewed ʿUrfī's influence as destructive to tradition and meaning. Composing “meaningless” verses that rendered forms devoid of clear and precise meaning meant that everyone could become poets and connoisseurs of speech without any training or knowledge of the literary canon. Munīr wrote:
One day I was in the solitary precincts of speech in discourse with one of the masters of friendship who is known throughout the land by the name of Khalīl Allāh, who is the founder of the holy sanctuary of speech. Suddenly a dear uninvited guest came in and asked me the meaning of this aforementioned line that is the eyebrow of the beloved of meaning. I told him that this charming verse can be called an eyebrow, in the sense that it has no meaningFootnote 68. He was not well disposed toward my speech, which caused his eyebrow to arch because his forehead had no sign of insight. He saw in the fragrant harmony of my breath that I saw fault in that erroneous one, and the hair stood up on his skin. He frowned and endeavored to show the legitimacy of this line and he made flee the antelope of rational thinking. He said that Himam is the name of a village and a dog was in that village who had the name Iqbāl-i Karam and he would bite the people of that village. Himmat is the name of the leader of that village who was affected by blood-poisoning, and there were two brothers in that village who had a complete skill in the craft of bleeding a vein. One was called Ārī and the other Naʿam. This verse informs us about the calamity that is a dog bite, the lives of people in this village, the reason behind the illness of the head of the village, and the dexterity of the bleedersFootnote 69.
In this passage Munīr made his distain for the democratization of Persian literary knowledge clear, as well as his belief that to be a skillful poet one also must understand the literary tradition deeply. The way that the uninvited guest (uninitiated to the Persian literary tradition) draws wild abstractions about the meaning of the poetry without any knowledge of the literary tradition was symbolic of the literary world Munīr inhabited. For him this was the way that he saw the proliferation of popular poetry; the poets and litterateurs did not judge it, rather the masses judged it. Although this criticism does not offer any philological points to comment upon, it was his most scathing critique of developments in Persian literature during his lifetime. For Munīr, the loss of meaning coincided with the rapid growth of a market of poetry that favored the most colorful poets who used imagery in obscure ways to attract attention. He had elitist notions of the Persian language. In his view, only those trained in the tradition of the literary canon could understand and appreciate elevated speech, and the people of sukhan and the land of speech should remain separated from the people of ordinary speech (qāl). He viewed the incursion of those unfamiliar with the literary tradition and their perception of popular poetry as problematic for the tradition, because one who was unaware of established meanings, idioms, etiquette, and literary norms could extrapolate whatever they wanted from a poem without any thought to the inherent meaning of the line.
A boastful archetype of fresh speech and the mirror of munīr
Munīr's views of tāza-gūʾī have been discussed at length; it would be good now to see how later critics took up his methods. A century after Munīr's death, Sirāj al-Dīn ʿAlī Khān Ārzū, a literary critic, poet, and theoretician of language, emerged as the strongest critic of Munīr. Ārzū, who wrote widely on lexicography and criticism, was one of the successors to the literary movement that Munīr and his contemporaries had established. The list of his scholarship is extensive, and includes works on rhetoric, such as the Mawhibat-i ʿuẓmā and the ʿAṭīya-yi kubrā, literary criticism, and lexicography. Ārzū respected Munīr and wrote in his Majmaʿ al-nafāʾis, “Master Abū al-Barakāt Munīr Lāhūrī is a superior master poet and wise speaker.”Footnote 70 Despite this reverence, Ārzū was critical of Munīr's stances on tāza-gūʾī and criticized him for overlooking the role of innovation in the history of Persian literatureFootnote 71. For Ārzū, Persian was not a static language, and literary innovation was not a desecration of the traditionFootnote 72. Ārzū wrote a strong response to Munīr's Kārnāma in his own treatise (risāla) called the Sirāj-i Munīr, which outlines his criticisms of Munīr's critiques. Arthur Dudney provides insightful elaboration on Ārzū's stance toward Munīr; Dudney demonstrates how the commentarial and critical tradition were hermeneutical in nature, and scholars relied on increasing each other's knowledge through the continuation of the isnād (chain of narration or knowledge) tradition in literary discourseFootnote 73. One can disagree with another and still respect them and learn from their ideas. It is a form of respect to critique another's work. As the Aristotelian tradition holds, friends should correct each other, and the Greek tradition played a significant role in Islamic intellectual lifeFootnote 74. Although they were not contemporaries, Munīr had a great influence over early modern literary criticism and philology, warranting a response from someone capable of “correcting” him and increasing shared knowledge. This work was undertaken by Ārzū as a response to Munīr's criticisms of ʿUrfī, but it also outlined issues that he took with Munīr's criticisms of other poetsFootnote 75. The Persian language, unlike Arabic and Sanskrit, is a relatively uninflected vernacular language that relies on idioms, metaphors, and tropes to build meaningFootnote 76. This became a point of contention for Ārzū in his criticisms of Munīr during the age of high Persian lexicalizationFootnote 77.
Conclusion
Munīr's literary criticism represented a decisive moment in the history of Persian literature and tāza-gūʾī. Before him no one had noted the influence of the popularization of Persian poetry on its literary development. In his attempt to critique philological and stylistic developments, he highlighted the emergence of a new trend in Persian literature that focused on expanding poetry to a mass audience and incorporating that audience's literary notions of taste. It is the synthesis of elite and colloquial language, literature, and culture that stands out in this context, because of the heightened popularization of Persian poetry during the early modern period. The Sharḥ-i qaṣāʾid-i ʿUrfī broke new ground in the commentary tradition: whereas other commentaries simply attempted to explain poetry and its meaning, this work highlighted some of the broader stylistic and philological issues at stake in its production. Munīr's reliance on analyzing words, idioms, and meanings through historical interpretations and precedents regarding their usage stands out for its attempt to historicize language, and provided the foundations for later philologists and lexicographers to formulate a literary criticism grounded in philological norms. Although ornate prose apparently did not survive long after Munīr's death as a method for critical and analytical writing, his methodology and approach to texts provided a crucial framework for later critics.
The Kārnāma highlights the critical points that Munīr wanted to make about the literary society he inhabited. He wanted to provide not only a literary critique, but also a social critique. Persian language and literature were rapidly evolving during his lifetime; through his work, he put forward criticisms of these changes as a reflection of the evolution of larger Persianate society. He saw an emerging tendency in courtly society to favor those Persian literati who were of Iranian descent, which highlights a social tension that existed between Iranian émigrés and Indian-born Persian literatiFootnote 78. He held elitist views on language and on who was entitled to engage in elevated discourses, although he was perhaps more troubled by what he saw as the inclusion of the commoner's aesthetic taste in literary discourse than he was by the presence of Iranian émigrés of high social status. This article elucidates Munīr's intellectual evolution; he began as an adherent of the tāza-gū'ī movement who admired the Iranian émigré poets, but at some point he had a revelation or awakening that caused him to reconsider his previously conceived notions about poetry and stylistic choice. This resulted in his emergence as a proponent of “traditionalist” notions of Persian literature. Furthermore, he may have reconciled these two schools of thought at some point, resulting in the development of a style that, although fresh and innovative, kept in mind the norms and etiquette of the literary tradition and its canon. Munīr's literary criticism and his exegetical works stand out for their critical and philological analysis of Persian literature. His methodology greatly influenced the later emergence and evolution of philological and lexicographical projects during the eighteenth century.
Acknowledgements
I would like to thank Thibaut d'Hubert for spending many hours with me working through these primary sources—I am eternally grateful. I also would like to thank Franklin Lewis (may he rest in peace), Muzaffar Alam, and John Woods for their mentorship and guidance throughout the writing process. I also am grateful to Cameron Cross for their dedication as an editor and for a ceaseless amount of insight and guidance.
Disclosures
The author declares that there are no competing interests.
Financial Support
This research received no specific grant funding from any funding agency, commercial or nonprofit.
Thomas Bijan Parsa is currently a PhD student at Northwestern in the History Department. His research interests include Persian literature, Early Modern and Medieval history of Iran, Central and South Asia, and the history of Iranian languages.
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