Hoshruba Read online

  Qamar took up the Hoshruba project where Jah had left off. After making a few self-important remarks about how he would have been the best choice to write the four earlier volumes as well, he got down to work. But just as he was getting started, and with great fanfare, a piece of news arrived that completely marred his happiness.

  Apparently Jah’s work on Hoshruba was close to his heart. He was not willing to give up without a fight. In the December of 1889, the same year Hoshruba was taken away from him, he played his hand by founding his own press and privately publishing the first part of the fifth volume of Hoshruba, with the promise of more – a lot more – to follow.

  Qamar and the Naval Kishore Press sat up. They decided they were up to the challenge. That Qamar was extremely prolific also helped. Naval Kishore Press brought out the first part of the fifth volume in just a few months in 1891, followed shortly with the second part. The competition with Jah seems to have been the main reason for the haste: it is the only volume of Hoshruba that was published in two parts.

  After publishing the first part of the fifth volume, Jah fell silent. Perhaps he was ill. He had mentioned a long period of illness in the third volume. Only one copy of this privately published, slim volume survived and was discovered recently by Urdu researcher Rifaqat Ali Shahid. Throughout the first four volumes, Jah had acknowledged the contribution of other storytellers. But it is in this privately published fifth volume that he methodically lists the three sources he had borrowed from. Its first four pages, in which he may have explained his reasons for leaving the Naval Kishore Press, are missing.

  Qamar himself is uncharacteristically tight-lipped about the incident. In the notice printed in the fifth volume of Hoshruba, he cursorily mentions that “some chance events” ended Jah’s association with the publisher.

  Only fragmentary information is available about the professional relationship between Jah and Qamar. In his first published work, Tilism-e Fasahat, Jah acknowledges Ahmed Husain Qamar as his instructor. However, Urdu scholar Shamsur Rahman Faruqi has suggested that the uncharacteristic exaggeration and hyperbole he uses on the occasion suggests that Jah paid the compliment sarcastically. This theory is quite plausible because in a later edition, those words of hyperbole were removed. Qamar himself never made any claims to be Jah’s teacher and we can be sure that had it been otherwise, Qamar would have proclaimed the fact daily from the roof of Naval Kishore Press while he lived, and had it engraved on his tombstone.

  Qamar’s head may not have been as large as the false god Laqa’s, but it was as full of vanity. He loved himself with a powerful love that sometimes forced him to claim credit for deeds he had not done. He often experienced small episodes of jealousy during the writing of Hoshruba. In some weak moments, he declared himself to be the “original author” of Hoshruba. But then Qamar would have other weak moments in which, while deriding Mir Ahmed Ali or Jah, or calling their integrity into question, he would make statements that totally contradicted his earlier claim. All this abuse was hurled within the narrative itself, of course. The old mutineer in Qamar had not died. All his subversive talents were now channelled into the dastan genre.

  Qamar also liked to make guest appearances in the narrative in the middle of scenes to give the characters a chance to praise him and his many talents. From magic slave girls to Laqa’s devil designate, to the Emperor of Sorcerer Afrasiyab, everyone takes a turn praising Qamar’s first-rate poetical mind, his skill in composing Persian verses, and his ability to decode knotty Arabic prose. Unlike Jah, who always acknowledged the least contribution to the narrative by his seniors and contemporaries, Qamar never credited anyone besides himself. But despite all these personality quirks and the licenses he took with the narrative, Qamar was as profoundly gifted as a storyteller as was Jah, although their talents lay in different areas.

  Jah died between December, 1890, and October, 1893. According to Faruqi’s research, he died at a relatively young age. The Hoshruba project was completed around the same time. The publication of the sixth volume in 1892 was quickly followed by the seventh and last volume in 1893.

  Tilism-e Hoshruba became a bestseller. Between 1883 and 1930, eight editions were published from Lucknow alone. The tale acquired an iconic status in Urdu literature as the ultimate fantasy tale, and the word “Hoshruba” itself became proverbial for fantastic literature.

  Faizi continued to be credited as its original author. His ghost must still be smiling from ear to ear. To have written the tale of Hoshruba with an unmoving finger would be a neat trick, even for a spirit. But the happiest ghost must be Mir Ahmed Ali’s, his smile the broadest of all. Not only was his creation of Hoshruba accepted as a part of the Amir Hamza cycle, but it also became its defining, single most important tale, surpassing all others. No storyteller could ask for greater glory.

  The Hoshruba tale later found other champions as well. A year before the world threw itself into the madness of the First World War, the Rampur storyteller Mirza Alimuddin (1854–1927) launched his personal campaign to write the Hoshruba tale. He campaigned longer, harder and more gloriously. From 1913–1919 he produced twelve volumes and two secondary legends associated with the Hoshruba tale.

  Then there was Mir Baqir Ali (1850?–1928), the last renowned storyteller of India in the twentieth century. He was born into a family of royal storytellers at a time when Hoshruba was at the peak of its popularity. But in the 1920s, when he was in his last years, Mir Baqir Ali was unable to find an audience for his art. He privately published some stories for children to make a living, but failed. In the end, he gave up and made a living selling betel leaves. He breathed his last a year after Mirza Alimuddin’s death. A sample of Mir Baqir Ali’s storytelling method and glimpses of his last days were preserved in a literary sketch in Dilli Ki Chand Ajib Hastiyan by Ashraf Subuhi Dehlvi.

  The Hoshruba history would be incomplete without the mention of the Pakistani painter Ustad Allah Bakhsh (1895–1978), who captured the magic and dense storytelling of Hoshruba in his glorious painting Tilism-e Hoshruba. This painting hangs in the Lahore Museum.

  Without Jah and Qamar – two of Urdu’s greatest prose writers – the hoax created by Mir Ahmed Ali and storytellers in his generation may not have received such wide acclaim. This tale, with its imaginative scope, poetic delicacy, ornate presentation, and metaphor-rich language, became the pride of Urdu literature because of these men. They will always be remembered as two of Urdu’s greatest benefactors. Their ghosts, finally free of their professional rivalries, together might even be constructing a tilism of their own – on a much larger scale than Hoshruba. And we can be sure that Qamar’s part of the tilism will be completed long before Jah ever reaches the halfway mark.

  But these are not the only ghosts. Others have also made their presence known. In 2005, an Indian historian, Mahmood Farooqui, began studying the cultural history of the dastans and became interested in dastan narration. Farooqui and Himanshu Tyagi collaborated to start dastan narration from Hoshruba. Later, Danish Husain joined Farooqui as his partner. Their performances were held in both India and Pakistan and attracted a large following. Then, one day in 2006, the Indian historian Shahid Amin, told Farooqui of two short, crackling audio recordings of someone’s voice, which he had recently discovered in the British Library. They belonged to the last famous dastan narrator, Mir Baqir Ali. These three-minute recordings were made in Delhi in 1920 as a part of the Linguistic Survey of India records. One recording was a rendering of the tale of the Prodigal Son, which all native speakers had to record for that project. Mir Baqir Ali was unable to finish the tale because his narration exceeded the short duration of the 78-rpm disk and had to be ended abruptly. The other recording was a short dastan of a foolish young nobleman who wishes to visit his in-laws and encounters countless obstacles on the way.

  Mir Baqir Ali’s ghost has resurfaced eight decades after his death, to say thank-you to someone who had renewed his tradition.

  What if all the storytellers are also
still with us “in spirit”? And what if one day this battalion of ghosts feels nostalgic, and enters a bookshop to check the latest edition of Hoshruba but doesn’t find it on the shelves? Who will have the heart to tell them that because of our neglect and disregard of Indo-Islamic literature, the rich language of Hoshruba has become inaccessible, that our own indifference has now become the tall mountain, reaching into the skies beyond which this tale lies, out of reach for all but a few?

  That situation must be avoided at all cost.

  And this is why the army of readers is gathered here; why I beat the kettledrums.

  Hear then that this translation of Tilism-e Hoshruba, the first in any language, is a secret passage through this mountain. You may now bypass the dark terrain of craggy metaphors where puzzles grow, and easily slip to the other side to engage this tale.

  And once you are done, you must remember to take on the mountain of indifference. It would be a shame to disappoint all the kindly ghosts in the bookshop who brought you this most excellent tale.

  – M.A.F. (December 5, 2008)

  TRANSLATOR’S NOTE

  Musharraf Ali farooqi

  Tilism-e Hoshruba was published in Urdu in eight large volumes totalling over eight thousand pages. If each of these volumes had been translated as a separate book, each English volume would have come to 1500 pages or more. I decided to divide each of the eight volumes into three, making twenty-four volumes in English.

  This being the first book in a long series, I made several editorial choices that will be followed throughout the series. Some of these choices were imperative, others voluntary. I outline them here so that the reader is aware of them.

  When Hoshruba was first published in 1883, it was already known to its readers and audiences through oral narration. The original Urdu text was meant both for reading and for use as an aid to storytellers. Muhammad Husain Jah had organized the tale with these considerations in mind. It is not surprising that a mere 26-line preface was deemed sufficient to detail the background of a tale spread over eight thousand, closely-written pages (See Original Preface to Tilism-e Hoshruba by Muhammad Husain Jah). After this briefest of introductions, Muhammad Husain Jah launched into the story and kept refreshing the reader’s memory as needed with bits of information they already had.

  One of my challenges was in presenting the text to a modern reader – for whom it is a first introduction to Hoshruba – without compromising the integrity of the original. I have attempted to meet the challenge by including two brief introductory chapters, titled “The Beginning of the History: Of Amir Hamza the Lord of the Auspicious Planetary Conjunction and the False God Laqa”, and “Of the Tilism called Hoshruba and the Master of the Tilism, Emperor Afrasiyab”. They provide the necessary background for a modern reader to fully enjoy the tale. Those who wish to read more about the history of the Amir Hamza legend may read The Adventures of Amir Hamza.

  Like all classical Urdu texts, the entire Tilism-e Hoshruba text is unpunctuated. While this offers a translator greater flexibility in structuring a phrase, it also creates some difficulties in isolating individual sentences and presenting them in a flowing, continuous narrative. It is likely that two translators working from the same source text will come up with two very different phrasal structures. My translation is just one interpretation of the original.

  There are no text breaks in the original except where a new chapter is marked. I have made subchapters with the names of characters who figure prominently in a particular passage to provide an easy reference to different characters in the narrative, and to allow visual relief to the reader of this voluminous work.

  Poetry is an integral part of the dastan genre. The Urdu original of Tilism-e Hoshruba has several verse passages that are employed for a variety of uses: to describe events in verse; to present the sarapa (figure and beauty) of male or female characters; in letters and messages; as dialogue; as war cries; and as sayings. All these uses have a direct relevance to the events of the tale. Such poetry is retained in the translation, but while the Urdu original is in metric verse, mine is a free verse translation.

  Poetry is also employed for other uses: as chehra (ornate preamble to the narrative); prefatory verses that are in the praise of wine and cupbearers and belong to the genre called saqi-nama (ode to the cupbearer); verses that randomly occur in the middle of a narrative but are not a bridge between the narrative that precedes or follows; and verses that are added to a prose description of natural scenery or a battlefield scene to reiterate its details. While such verses embellish the narrative, they do not contribute to the events of the story. Moreover, all this poetry can only truly be enjoyed in the original. Therefore, verses of this description were not included in this translation. Translating all of that would easily have added a year to the total translation project. I walked away from this labour with a degree of guilt but with the hope that this translation will ultimately generate interest in the Urdu text in which this poetry can be enjoyed in all its glory.

  I worked from the unabridged lithographed text of the Tilism-e Hoshruba (Seventh edition) published in September, 1924, by the Naval Kishore Press, Lucknow, India. A facsimile edition was printed in 1984 by Sang-e Meel Publications, Lahore. I also consulted the unabridged lithographed text of the eighth edition, published by the Naval Kishore Press in September, 1930. It was printed in facsimile by the Khuda Bakhsh Library, Patna, India, in 1988.

  Finally, I must confess to the possible shortcomings of this translation. No scholarly, annotated version of the original Tilism-e Hoshruba text has been published in Urdu, which is sometimes an impediment to its accurate reading and translation. At times, I may have misread the author’s intent or wrongly translated a word or phrase. I willingly take responsibility for all such inadvertent errors and will, upon discovery, correct them in subsequent editions.

  A list titled “Magical and Marvellous Devices and Beings” which will be of immediate interest to the reader follows. The index of characters and the numerous legendary kings, warriors, sorcerers, historical figures, deities and mythical beings mentioned in the tale is provided at the end in the “List of Characters, Historic Figures, Deities, and Mythical Beings”.

  MAGICAL AND MARVELLOUS

  DEVICES AND BEINGS

  DEMON: Also called a dev. A gigantic being with horns and a tail, which also has a taste for fine clothes, jewelery and lavish palaces.

  DOPPELGANGER: An invisible being associated with every human being. Its existence is independent of its human counterpart’s and unconstrained by considerations of time and space. When a doppelganger enters a corpse a dead person can revive and narrate the circumstances of his death.

  FAIRY: Also called a peri (female fairy) or perizad (male fairy). Winged male or female creatures that live on Mount Qaf.

  GIANT: A legendary, manlike being of huge stature. The false god Laqa is a giant.

  JINN: Creatures made of fire and invisible to the human eye. According to popular belief, jinns and fairies are the children of Jan, a being who once inhabited Earth and was banished for disobedience to the Supreme Being.

  LIGHTNING-BOLT: One of seven sorceresses who exist in the form of lightning in a crimson cloud and strike as lightning bolts. They also appear in human form as beautiful, golden-skinned women.

  MAGIC BIRD: A bird made of magic by sorcerers to act as their eyes and ears and spy on enemy camps.

  MAGIC CLAW: A claw or hand made by magic that carries messages, objects or people. Sometimes magic slaves turn into magic claws to perform these functions.

  MAGIC DOUBLE: A magical projection of Emperor Afrasiyab, which replaced him when he was away or when he had to disappear during imminent danger.

  MAGIC EFFIGY: A magical being made by a sorcerer or sorceress that assumes human shape and can work the magic spells assigned to it by its master or mistress.

  MAGIC FAIRY: Not to be confused with “Fairy” above. A magic fairy is made by a sorcerer by magic. Magic fairies can be either ma
le or female.

  MAGIC SPIRIT: The spirit of a dead person, commanded by a sorcerer’s spells. A magic spirit is set free at the death of the sorcerer who commands it. Unless captured by another sorcerer by reciting the capturing spells at the time of its master’s dying, a magic spirit is released into the cosmos and becomes harmless.

  MAGIC SLAVE: They are both male and female. Magic slaves and magic slave girls are magical beings that can fly in the air and travel under the earth. They can change into magic claws and carry away people and objects. Magic slaves are also employed by sorcerers to fight in the battlefield, and to guard sorcerers against dangers. They can be made of paper, lentil-flour, clay, wax, brass, or steel. They are made by the occult art of nairanj by which a sorcerer manipulates the properties of matter to create mechanisms.

  MAGIC MIRROR: A magical mirror that projected Emperor Afrasiyab’s presence into his court during his absence.

  MAGIC TROOPER: A horseback warrior created by magic who fights at a sorcerer’s command. It is impossible to kill magic troopers with weapons.

  SORCERER: Someone who has a commanding knowledge of the occult powers of astral bodies, alchemy and magic, and can combine them to create a tilism or make spells.

  TRICKSTER: Male or female warriors known for their cunning, quickness and mastery of disguise.