Main MenuThe subcontinent, bound by the Himalayas and China on the north, Burma on the east, the Arabian Sea, Iran, Afghanistan and Russia on the west and northwest, and by the Indian Ocean on the south, was never one country except under the British from 1857 to 1947, and under Aurungzeb from 1658 to 1707. Within it, as in the continent of Europe, dwelt peoples belonging to different racial groups, speaking different languages, following divergent traditions and practising different religions and cultures.
All pre-British definitions of the country, called originally Hindustan and India since the advent of the Europeans, excluded the territories, which now form Pakistan. Within these separate regions dwelt peoples of different races and cultures at different stages of development.
The first Muslim traders and settlers came to India as early as A.D. 637, and Sindh was conquered by Mohammad Bin Qasim in 711. After the invasion and conquest of north India by Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni between A.D. 1000 and 1026, large numbers of Persian-speaking Muslims settled in the country. Their numbers increased after a systematic conquest of Hindustan by Mohammad Ghori in the twelfth century. Between 1191 and 1199, Delhi, the Indo-Gangetic plain, Bihar, and Bengal were conquered and added to Mohammad Ghori's empire by his Viceroy, Qutbuddin Aibak, later king in his own right (1206/10). The influence of the Muslims increased under the Slave Dynasty (1206-90).
With the Khiljis practically the whole of India (excluding the extreme south) came under Muslim rule, and Persian, the language of the court, spread throughout the country. The general belief that the Mughals (1526-1857) brought about a fusion of Muslim and Hindu cultures is erroneous. If anything, Akbar followed a policy of appeasement. The synthesis between the foreign and local was achieved much earlier, under the Slave and Khilji dynasties, and was more or less complete in the thirteenth century. It was perfected by the Tughlaks in the fourteenth century. The Mughals only extended its scope. But, as will be explained later, this synthesis did not weld the Hindus and Muslims into one nation. In spite of being under the same rule and though living most amicably together, they followed different religions and divergent streams of thought and tradition.
The Muslims ruled with remarkable tolerance and justice, free of religious fanaticism, and socially they came as close to the Hindus as was possible, and as far as the latter's orthodoxy and restrictions of caste, creed and 'untouchability' would allow. No Hindu religious institution, other than that of the inhuman suttee, was disturbed by the Muslims; and, impressed by their behaviour and rationality, thousands of Hindus accepted Islam.
Proselytizing had, in fact, started earlier, in the seventh century. The traders, travelers and voyagers were all filled with missionary zeal; and in the train of, as well as ahead of conquerors, missionaries had come to this country. That is how the people of Kashmir, Sindh, the Punjab and Bengal came to accept Islam in large numbers. Bengal particularly throws much valuable light on this point. It was not conquered by the Muslims until the end of the twelfth century; but by then so many people had embraced Islam that one of the Hindu rulers of the Sen dynasty grew apprehensive of their rise and growth and waged a number of wars, defeating them in the last of these actions. Their numbers did not decrease, however, and when Ghori's armies invaded Bengal and reached Sunar-gaon, the capital, the last ruler of the Sen dynasty, Raja Lakshman Sen, escaped without even preparing for battle.
The culture that now developed in Bengal was entirely different from that of the Hindus. The ports of this country, especially Chittagong, had come under the influence of the Arabs as early as the seventh century A.D., and many of the Arab voyagers and traders had left a permanent imprint on the area. Islam, therefore, took root very easily in this receptive soil, and the resultant culture was greatly influenced by that of Islamic countries.
The word `India', now adopted as the official name for the new Indian dominion by the Congress government, is misleading. If any country it is Pakistan that could be called by this name. The word `India' is derived from 'Sindh', the name by which the Indus river is even now known in Urdu, which changed to 'Hind' in Iran and the Arab countries and to 'Ind' in Greece. The most ancient culture to flourish in this subcontinent about four thousand years ago and which, as archaeology proves, was destroyed by the Aryans about 1500 B.C., had centred round the river Sindh or Indus. It was akin to Sumerian and Elamite cultures. Even as far back in time as this, it was not `Indian' in the modern sense of the word. It had more in common with the contemporary civilization of the valleys of the Nile, Tigris and Euphrates.
The excavations at Mohenjodaro in Sindh and Harappa in West Punjab have laid bare ruins of two of those large and well-planned cities that seethed with activity throughout the Indus Valley. The city at Mohenjodaro had straight and wide streets. Well-burnt bricks were used, and some houses had two or more stories. There were granaries, wells, baths and drains. The courtyards had well-paved floors; there were windows, doors, bathrooms and staircases in the house. The people wore cotton and woolen garments, and ornaments of gold and silver studded with precious stones. At another site, that of Taxilla in the Punjab, marked Greek motifs and influences are visible in the statuary. In fact, the whole of the North West Frontier Province ( NWFP), the region called the Gandhara Valley, is studded with Graeco-Buddhist statuary, of what is known as the Gandhara school.
This is understandable, for during 558-30 B.C. the Indus Valley was invaded by the Persian King Cyrus. The territory around Peshawar, as a result, became tributary to Persia. Darius sent a naval expedition to the Indus and annexed the territory, which now forms Sindh. In the middle of the fourth century B.C. (326-21), Alexander invaded the Indus Valley. He conquered the whole of the area now forming West Punjab and, turning towards Sindh, sailed down the Indus. As a consequence, the Greek influence exhibits itself in what is now Pakistan more than anywhere else in this subcontinent. For, as says the Encyclopaedia Britannica: `As we proceed eastward from the Punjab, the Greek type begins to fade. Purity of outline gives place to lusciousness of form.'
These early Persian and Greek influences returned to this subcontinent, though in a transmuted form, with the advent of Muslims who not only saved the heritage of Greece from oblivion but also made it their own. The best in the past of Iran was also preserved and advanced in the arts and literature of Muslim Persia. The valleys of the Tigris and Euphrates, with which the people of Pakistan had had intercourse as early as four thousand years ago, again began to exercise their influence from the seventh and eighth centuries onward.
This region, thus, has remained different from Hindustan proper in being more Western in its influences and culture from the earliest times. That is why, perhaps, it accepted Islam more readily, the population of Muslims becoming much greater than that of the Hindus in contradistinction to Hindustan; and assumed a cultural homogeneity unknown to the Hindu territories. Under the Hindus the subcontinent never enjoyed uniformity of language, race, culture or religion.
Dravidian peoples, who were the real natives, were pushed southward by the invading Huns and Aryans and were not given any honourable place in society. The Muslims did not believe in the segregation of peoples or racial groups and mixed freely with all, taking from them whatever was valuable, and giving to them all that was dynamic and lasting in their religion.
The coming of Islam had an unprecedented effect on the history and thought of the civilized world and changed the subsequent development of culture in the West as well as the East. The subject nationalities revived, and the ruling powers submitted to the dynamic forces of Islam, which carried with them the tottering empires and gave history a new orientation. The Roman Empire fell, Hellenistic culture was submerged, and both yielded their best fruits to the Muslims. In India, the culture of Aryans changed its direction with the conquest of Aryavartha and accepted the new.
By the ninth and tenth centuries Muslim civilization had spread not only to India but also to Europe and Asia. A new poetry and literature, a new music, a new architecture, a new aesthetic revival and a hitherto unknown socio-policy replaced the tottering feudal cultures of ancient countries.
That practical outlook on life', which all Muslims share, `and which', in the words of Louis Massignon, `covers a wide field, embracing not only racial or only national trends, but also everything that has gone into the melting-pot of history', gives Muslim civilization its distinctiveness and continuity. Culture, as Monsieur Massignon defines it, implies `a certain involution, within that civilization, of a characteristic educational tradition'. This tradition, as we shall see, has been continuous and common throughout the world of Islam.
Because the Arabs were nomads and relied on oral tradition, Islam and Muslim culture spread rapidly in all directions. The shaping forces of Muslim philosophy and science remained primarily centred in Syria, Iraq, Iran, Turkestan, and Spain. The language of knowledge remained Arabic up to the main period of its florescence, namely from about A.D. 800 to 1250.
Consequently, the main classics of Muslim science, philosophy, law, theology and mysticism have remained Arabic. The greatest names in the whole body of Muslim thought and learning belong to this period and to this group: Al-Jahiz, Al-Kindi, Al-Farabi, Ibn-Sing, Al-Ghazzali, Ibn Rushd, Al-Khwarizmi, Al-Farghani, Al-Tussi etc., to mention but a few names at random.
Arabic civilization contains `admixtures of Aramaic, Iranian and Hellenistic elements' (Massignon, p. 135). It extended the scope of Greek science and philosophy and saved it from being lost. Its outstanding characteristic is simplicity in organization, and this distinguishes every Islamic activity and attainment, in contrast to that of other civilizations. The doctrine of the unity of God has imparted to all Muslim activity a unity of purpose and direction. But for Muslim science and philosophy the development of occidental knowledge would not have been continuous with the Greek achievements, and would not have reached its present stage of advancement.
Muslim achievements did not come to an end with the decline of 'Arabic' civilization in the thirteenth century. As Kroeber says: `Persian and Turkish developments establish the vitality of the Mohammadan religion as such, but prove little so far as culture is concerned, because both were national growths.' L. Kroeber (Configurations of Culture Growth) says, 'In literature (and philosophy) this geographic relation does not hold, not only because the start had to come from Arabs, but because Arabic literature stimulated the Persians to develop their own literature as a separate product. It is after their conquest by the Arabs, and after their acceptance of Islam that the Iranians began to make new cultural achievements in Arabic philosophy and science and mysticism, in Arabic literature, even, and then in a national literature of their own in Persian, clearly built at first on Arabic models, but going beyond these to achieve successful epics.'
It is primarily the Arabic, the Persian and the Turki achievements that have gone to the making of Pakistani culture and literature. There were Hindu influences also, but they remained subservient to the others, and manifested themselves only in the superficial aspects, such as the introduction of local imagery in poetry. But the main trends and the genres of verse came from Persia and Arabia. It should not be thought that Pakistani Muslim literature and culture were not carried back to Iran. On the contrary, Amir Khusro (d. 1325), a Muslim poet and historian of this subcontinent, is rated higher than his contemporaries in Persia, as are the Persian poets and writers under Akbar, Urfi (d. 1590-91), Fayzi (d. 1595), and Zuhuri (d. 1616).
Thus, the Muslims coming from all parts of the Muslim world, but mainly from Arabia, Mesopotamia, Turkestan, Iran and Mongolia, were fused into one indistinguishable whole, the catalytic agent being the new environment and cultural atmosphere of India. These are the people of Pakistan, though some have remained in India. In order to understand their culture and achievements we have to consider the civilization and religion.
At the time the Muslims came to the subcontinent feudal tribal cultures, a series of religious or semi-religious systems, generally known under the name of Hinduism, were practised by various racial and linguistic groups of Hindustan.
A part from its pantheistic practices, Hinduism, especially in its Tantric form, exhibits a realistic and unrestrained sexual passion and erotic relationship in its temples. To Islam, as to other theistic religions, both pantheism and rituals based on idol-worship and sex are repugnant. These in themselves were enough to keep the Hindus and Muslims from forming a unified or even a similar cultural pattern. The result was that within the same geographical boundaries two different civilizations flourished independent of each other.
No two societies could be more divergent. In their attitude both towards the universal and the particular, God as well as man, the Hindus and Muslims remained at opposite poles of thought. These divergences of belief were so fundamental that, though the Muslims have been living side by side with Hindus for over a thousand years, their cultures have remained separate. This fact has not been fully realized by America and the West; and it is this that lay at the root of the creation of Pakistan. For though living in one country, the Hindus and Muslims have remained two separate nations.
People from all over the Muslim world, especially Persia, Turkestan and the Middle East, had come to Hindustan as conquerors, soldiers, traders and missionaries. They spoke Persian, Turki and Arabic. These languages mingled with one another and with the various dialects or bhashas of Hindustan, to produce the new rich language known in the beginning as Hindvi, Hindi (i.e., of India or `Indian') and finally by the name of Urdu, a Turkish word meaning 'Lashkar'.' The first poet whose works in this language have at all come down to us was the historian, soldier and saint, Amir Khusro of Delhi (1253-1325). Following the example of two earlier poets, Masud Saad Salman (eleventh century) and Abu Abdullah Alankati, who had written in 'Indian', but whose works have been lost, Chand Kavi, a grandee of the court of Prithviraj (latter half of the twelfth century), had written his long poem Chand Raisa in which many foreign words had been used.
To Amir Khusro, however, goes the credit of being the first Urdu poet. He was a contemporary of Dante Alighieri; and is not only one of the great Persian poets, but was also a renowned musician, scholar, mystic, historian and courtier of Sultan Alauddin Khilji's court. He was injured by the great Sufi Saint of historical his Mentor Hazrat Nizamuddin Qliya of Dehli. He evolved new dances and melodies by combining the Persian and Indian traditions; invented the popular musical instrument, the sittar; and composed the gawwali tune for the expression of mystical sentiments, and bahar and hasant tunes for classical Indian themes.
Further additions and changes to purely `Indian' dances, music and other forms of artistic expression were made by the Muslims in the centuries that followed, reaching the apex of development under the Mughals (1525-1857). The part played by the Turki peoples in this field has so far remained unrecorded. Anyone who has seen the dances of Eastern Turkestan and heard its music will at once realize how great is the similarity between them and their Indian and Pakistani counterparts. The form of dancing practised by the courtesans of the subcontinent seems not only to have been influenced by the Turki dances, but, in fact, to have retained its original movements changing but slightly under the Indian traditions. The melodies of popular Indian music also display the Turki and Persian influences.
The dresses and manners of Muslim women and the zenanas of even twenty-five or thirty years ago were more Persian and Turki than Indian. Anyone attending a wedding of a few decades ago, and even one of an older family of today, will find very little difference between the dresses and atmosphere prevailing in Pakistan and those of Turkestan or Persia of an earlier date. Delhi, being the seat of Muslim empires, displayed this atmosphere in a far greater degree than other cities, although outside the capital, too, Muslim society was essentially the same.
In architecture, the Muslims had evolved about thirteen different styles in this subcontinent which had blended Indian and other Muslim styles. Though some of the noblest examples of this have been left in India, such as Fatehpur Sikri and the Tai Mahal of Agra, the Jama Mosque and Red Fort of Delhi, many fine examples of Muslim architecture and its different styles are found in East Bengal, the Punjab and Sindh and the glorious Mughal gardens of Lahore and Kashmir. Yet though left in India, the monuments and buildings of Agra and Delhi are entirely outside the `Indian' tradition and are an essential heritage and part of Pakistani culture.
In painting, Muslim influences resulted in the Mughal and Rajput schools and they are felt in the Kangra school of Hindu painting. The art of miniature painting is still alive, though not much in demand, today. And M. A. Rahman Chughtai's work is a living embodiment of the Muslim heritage of art. No other painter in the world could have painted like him. The fine work of the Kashmiri artisans and craftsmen in wood, lacquer, paper mach, wool and silk, shows how Islamic influences penetrated deep into the aesthetic values of everyday life; and even articles of daily use exhibit a high artistic standard that could be envied by artists of repute.
The cultural traditions of Pakistan display a fine mixture of the best in Muslim art. Nor is this tradition dead in any way: the tiles of Multan and Sindh, the pottery of Bahawalpur and the Indus Basin, the gold and filigree work of East Bengal and of Western Pakistan, the metal work of West Punjab, the carpets of Balochistan, Kashmir and the North West Frontier Province remind one of the glory of their Persian and Bokhara ancestors; the work of the craftsmen of Kashmir, who deserve to be immortalized as artists, and much more besides, is living testimony to our past cultural heritage and modern tradition.
These traditions of Pakistan are, it should be noted, different from those of the Indian dominion where more Hindu influences prevail, though in the literature, arts, and handicrafts of the Indo-Gangetic plain and the Deccan plateau, Muslim influences are substantial. For cities like Lucknow, Aurangabad, Hyderabad, Ahmadabad, Bidar and Surat were more Muslim than Hindu, being important centres of Muslim culture and seats of Muslim kingdoms, or governors and Nawabs. There is no corner of India where Muslim influences did not penetrate; but in the largely Hindu areas Hindu traditions held greater sway, though tempered and changed by Muslim influence.
It is in our crafts and handicrafts and in our poetry that Pakistan's culture can be studied. In other fields of activity like modern architecture and painting, western influences have made deep inroads and produced a hotch potch that time alone will sift and direct.
In our poetry, however, both national and regional, everyone can see the international basis and essential continuity of Muslim cultural tradition. Multi-lingualism is a heritage of the Muslims of Pakistan, though Muslims of other countries were also often bilingual. In the India of the past, Persian was the language of the court and literature, and Arabic the language of the Quran, the sciences and philosophy. But the language of the people was bhasha or dialect; and from the fourteenth century onward Hindvi, later known as Urdu, had become the lingua franca. The poets and missionaries had both used this language for the communication of ideas; and Muslim ideas were disseminated. Even today people use more than one language in Pakistan.
Iqbal wrote some of his best works in both Urdu and Persian, and he used English for some of his philosophical writings. Other modern writers have used both Urdu and English with equal ease and facility. This multilingual tradition is part of Pakistan's background, and even the villagers use more than one language, their own dialect and Urdu.
The early poets employed both Persian and Urdu separately as well as the two together in alternate lines. One of the finest examples of the latter is the following ghazal by Amir Khusro, written almost a hundred years before the time of Chaucer, though for us in Pakistan it is as near in time as though it were written but yesterday:
Forget not me the sorrowful,
Talk to me with your eyes; dear heart, I cannot bear the parting's grief, Come and take me to your heart.
As tresses long the night of parting, The day of love is short as life.
O friend, if I see not my love,
How shall I spend dark nights of grief?
Two magic eyes with hundred charms have put my poor heart's rest to flight: Now who would care to go and tell Dear love my sad and lonely plight?
As a candle lit, as an atom struck, Banished, alas, from that moon's grace: No sleep in my eyes, no rest in my heart, He sends no news, nor shows his face.
For truth, on the day of love, Khusro, The loved one tricked me and went away, If I could fund hint, I, with lore, Will keep hint in my heart always.
This form became so popular that all poets of the time, who were mostly mystics and religious men, employed it.
This process continued under the subsequent rulers, and Urdu poetry emerged as a definite school in the Deccan during the first decade of the sixteenth century and flourished in the south for two hundred years until the rise of the Delhi school in the first decade of the eighteenth century. Vali of the Deccan (1668-1744) is reputed by popular consent, but erroneously, to be the father of the Delhi school. He was, nevertheless, a poet whose appeal was immediate and he is said to have taken the capital by storm. But Sultan Quli Qutub Shah, the founder of Hyderabad, who was a contemporary of Shakespeare and Ronsard, was in reality the first great Urdu poet who founded a school of his own and whose influence prevailed until the rise of the Delhi poets.
How different Urdu poetry was from the devotional and aesthetic Hindu bhasha poetry can be judged from the study of any of the Urdu poets from Amir Khusro to Mohammad lqbal. The most popular verse forms, too, have been the mathnavi, moral, mystical and general narrative borrowed directly from the Persian ; the qasida, an Arabic and Persian verse-form similar to the ode in English; and the ghazal, a form derived from the Arabic qasida and perfected by the Persians. There are many other forms common to the poetry of all Muslim countries; but these have remained the most popular, especially the last-named whose appeal has not died to this day.
The earlier Urdu poets of the Deccan school and the early Delhi poets had used some Sanskrit and Bhasha metres along with Arabic and Persian ones. But from the early decades of the eighteenth century, the indigenous metres lost their popularity, and Urdu poetry, being more intellectual, remained Persian in its general tone and atmosphere.
To a modern mind much of the Urdu poets' imagery may seem conventional and limited in range, yet in imaginative effect it has been used with depth and intensity. Whereas a good deal of the simple and realistic merges in learned and fantastic images, there is balance and a strange blending of thought and feeling. The poets have harmonized subtleties of perception with the intensity of the realization of inner psychological truth. Their images range from calligraphy to astronomy to the phoenix and salamander, gardening to metaphysics, nothingness to mysticism; and are, at times, apt to become artificial in the hands of poetasters. But the major poets have used them with ingenuity and feeling, expressing the various moods of the lover with deeply realized personal experience and an all-fusing imagination. Sometimes there is frivolity; often the poets cannot be serious in the introspective and thoughtful way. But there is no important poet who has not transcended the restrictions placed upon him by conventions and age-old traditions, and no minor poet who does not display a rare gem embedded in a good deal of superfluity.'
Space does not permit extensive quotations, yet I cannot help including a few short poems in this essay.
1 saw the beauty of my love in a dream;
It was the glory of my Lord, Hidden it seemed.
To die and then become itself the source again
I saw in a bubble's being this strange Phenomenon.
(Vali, 1668-1744.)
I well remember, Sauda, the beauty of
those eyes: Take from me the cup; I reel, I fall, I die.
(Sauda, 1713-80.)
One evening 1 went into the shop of
those who blow the glass, and asked. 'O makers of the cup, have you perchance a
glass the shape of the heart?' They laughed and said.
'Thou wanderest in vain,
O Mir, each cup thou seest, round or oval, every glass
Was once a heart that we have melted on the fire and blown into a cup. That's all thou seest here; there is no glass.'
(Mir Taqi Mir, 1720-1808.)
`What is the life of the rose?' 1 asked
The bud. It listened, but for answer smiled.
(Mir Taqi Mir.)
When there was nothing, there was God, Had nothing been, God would have been;
my being has brought about my fall, had I not been, what would have been?
Though Ghalib died an age ago,
He was always saying of everything: Had it been this, what would it be? Had it been that, what would have been?
(Asadullah Khan Ghalib, 1806-1869.)
The steed of life is galloping fast, who knows where it will stay?
The hand no longer holds the reins, the stirrup's torn away.
(Ghalib.)
There was a bond between you and me, the promise of love's stability,
You may or may not remember.
You had showered grace and loved me well, How all that I remembered still,
You may or may not remember.
Those lovely tales, each time new plaints, that show of temper, those complaint,
You may or may not remember.
At times, if something pleased you not, before complaining you forgot,
You may or may not remember.
There was a day when you and 1 had loved each other dearly,
You may or may not remember.
You had called me faithful, lover true, this same sad Momin, ah, do you Or do you not now remember?
(Momin Khan Momin, 1800-50.)
The Culture of Pakistan
Yet other worlds exist beyond The astral spheres;
For love there are many and many Trials and tears.
Of breath and life these aery voids Are not devoid;
A thousand other caravans Move unespied.
Contented be not with this world of shape and shade,
Many another resting place you'll find instead.
If one abode is left behind, why mourn-what then?
Yet other stages of agony you'll pass again.
You are an eagle and delight in joys of flight;
Other skies expand and stretch before your sight.
So be not caught within the mesh of Night and Day,
For you have other time and space for your display.
The days of my worldly loneliness have disappeared,
For now with other confidantes my secret's shared.
(Mohammad Iqbal, 1873-1938.)
The essentially 'Muslim quality of Pakistani culture and literature is not confined to the middle or educated classes and to Urdu, but is found in a very marked degree in the popular literature of Sindh, Balochistan and the North West Frontier Province. This literature largely consists of narratives in verse which centre round the themes dear to the peoples' hearts. For Pakistan is an agricultural country and from times immemorial the basis of her culture has been agrarian. In this field the Hunzas, living in the mountain valley amidst the vast ranges of the Karakoram, are famous for their sagacity in preserving the soil, for their water system and for their health and freedom from disease. The canal system of the Indus Basin (West Punjab, Sindh, Bahawalpur, etc.) is too wellknown to be emphasized. Pakistan's self-sufficiency in food and her surplus crops of cotton and jute are common knowledge.
The regional literatures, therefore, deal with the joys and sorrows of the people, their hopes and aspirations. Most of the narratives are of popular figures of legend and history. Some times heroes are merchant adventurers who sail from port to port, or they are historical figures, who perform new exploits and, fighting pagans and infidels, convert them to Islam. These narratives are either based on or influenced by the Arabian nights, the Shah Nama and other epics of the Muslim world, though local and other foreign influences are also present. Many of them deal with the early history of Islam woven around popular figures like Harun-Al-Rashid. Other cycles of the narratives deal with local saints and warriors combating Hindu magicians and sorcerers. These narratives are products of the popular imagination enriched by a knowledge of Muslim history.
The favourite stories of West Punjab and Sindh are those that deal, like Laila Majnoon and Shireen and Farhad of Arabia and Iran, with local lovers equally hapless and tragic but equally undying in appeal. The most famous of these are Hir Ranjha, Sassi Punhun and Sohni Mahival. There are many others, and some like Sassi Punhun and Sohni Mahival are common to most regions of Pakistan. They have been written and rewritten like the famous novels of China, by different writers in different ages. The finest and most-loved version of Hir Ranjha, undoubtedly one of the world's great love stories, is by Waris Shah of the Punjab. It depicts intense love in conflict with the forces of reaction. The characters have been delineated with skill, and the poem is interspersed with reflections on life and death and dissertations on religion.
Equally popular are the versions of Sassi Punhun and Sohni Mahival by the great mystic and poet of Sindh, Shah Abdul Latif of Bhit (1689-1752), whose Risalo is the only classic of imaginative literature which Sindhi has produced. His poetry also shows how the cultural and literary basis of all Islamic countries is the same, moulded by the same sources of inspiration. In the case of Shah Abdul Latif, these were mainly Persian, Urdu and Arabic.
As his critic and biographer, H. T. Sorley, says: `By the time of Shah Abdul Latif there were, however, a sufficient number of learned persons imbued with the ideas of Persian and Urdu poetry and beginning to transfer their thoughts into the medium of the vernacular. But when this stage was reached the Persian mould and the Persian treatment of subjects were so strongly established that it was impossible to dispense with them."
The same can be said of Balochi literature, which had also contributed its minor share of influence on Shah Abdul Latif. The Pushto poetry of the North West Frontier Province is no exception to what has been said of the regional or national literature of Pakistan. Nature has not been kind to the people, but their history has been long and continuous. Most invaders have passed through their land from Cyrus in the sixth century B.C. to Ahmad Shah Abdali in the eighteenth century A.D. The Persian influences, however, remain supreme, especially because the Pushto language has been greatly influenced by Persian.
Khushal Khan Khatak (1613-87) is the national poet of Pushto. But there have been many others who are loved for their mysticism, lyrical grace and beauty. The poetry of the North West Frontier Province is distinguishable from the other regional literatures of Pakistan by having a long tradition of ghazal and other forms of verse common to Persian and Urdu. Its atmosphere also is the same as is found in other Muslim poetry.
Your cheeks are like a leaping flame, and your long tresses seem
The smoke that rises from the fire.
Since you have closed on me the doors, Of meeting, my constant tears
Have made new paths into my heart.
The lashes' arrow she has pulled on the bow Of eyebrows: what heart will bleed?
Death within death is the black collyrium in black eyes.
(Khushal Khan Khattak)
When my loved one walks upon the garden path,
bends there the rose its branch to offer its head in sacrifice.
(Abdul Rahman.)
The door of the caravanserai
Of the bud is about to open wide;
The dawn has come,
the caravan Of scents and colours is moving out.
(Kazim Khan Shaida.)
Her cheeks are fire,
which have given her tresses curls.
When the hair is brought near the flame it twists and curls
(Ali Khan.)
Thus, Pakistan's cultural and literary heritage is rich and ancient.
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