The following preface by Ghalib, translated and introduced here by Pasha M. Khan, is a rare example of his Urdu prose that was meant for publication. It introduces the Ḥadāiq-i anz̤ār (1866) by Khwaja Badruddin Khan Aman (d. 1879) is described by Ghalib as his nephew—more specifically, his brother’s son (bhatījā). However, he was not a blood relation of Ghalib’s but rather the son of a horse groom formerly employed by Ghalib’s father on a salary of five rupees a month.
The book that Ghalib introduced is Aman’s Urdu translation of Mir Taqi Khayal’s Bostān-i Khayāl (Garden of imagination, or Khaya’s garden), an eighteenth-century Persian romance written to rival the famous romance of Amir Hamza. Like many such romances, the Bostān-i Khayāl is populated by marvelous characters and represents a world in which sorcery is not uncommon. Ghalib draws a comparison between it and the archetypal Persian high romance, the Shāhnāma, or Book of Kings—this is the work to which he alludes by way of his mention of the great Shāhnāma hero Rustam, son of Zal, who is aided by his avian foster parent the simurgh in his battle against his enemy Isfandyar.
Shamsur Rahman Faruqi points out the uncertain value of public praise coming from Ghalib when its object is a relative or friend. There can be little doubt, however, that Ghalib was a great fan of a variety of romances. He had read some version of the Bostān-i Khayāl previously but expressed particular fondness for the story of Amir Hamza. His hints that the Bostān-i Khayāl is the better of the two romances should perhaps be seen in light of Khayal’s account of his composing the work to refute a storyteller who claimed that the tale of Hamza could not be rivaled. Ghalib’s comparison reinforces the legitimacy of Khayal’s challenge to this claim, which is in a sense the raison d’être of Khayal’s romance. For more on Ghalib’s value judgments on romances, see Pasha M. Khan, “Marvellous Histories: Reading the Shāhnāmah in India,” Indian Economic and Social History Review 49, no. 4 (2012): 529–33.
God be glorified! What matchless beauty has Speech, that comely beloved! To witness him is to increase the eye’s light. To imagine him is to set ablaze a gathering of thoughts. In the eyes of those who deal in spiritual meaning, his literal aspect is the mirror of the cheek of beauty. With regard to his meaning, reshaped by the device called qalb [“anagram,” also “heart”], he is an anagram for speech [kalām]—that is, he is perfection [kamāl]. If the Real had created the rationally speaking soul in the form of a human being, what could we say in that case—how would it be? Even without wine, we would grow drunk with the sight of this heart-enchanting plaything, and if they were to see this sense-stealing body, the people of spiritual meaning would become form-worshippers all at once, in a single pen stroke. He has a separate style in poetry; he has another way in prose. He has a separate melody in Persian, he has a different harmony in Urdu.
You may see in biographies and histories what happened hundreds of years before you. You may listen, in stories and romances, to what no one has ever seen or heard. Though the wakeful brains of intellectual men will incline by temperament toward histories, nevertheless in their hearts they will admit to the tastefulness and delightfulness of romances and tales.
And aren’t impossible things narrated in histories? You are unjust, it isn’t so! Sam has his son thrown upon a mountain, the simurgh comes and carries the boy off to its nest, rears him and turns him into a warrior, teaches him the ways of warring and wounding. Then, when he despairs of Rustam’s fight with Isfandyar, Zal calls out that name without a named, and the simurgh comes directly, like a homing pigeon, upon hearing the sound of the whistle, and with a daub of its droppings, or some other medicine, it heals Rustam’s wound; and, giving him a double-shafted arrow, it takes its leave. Rustam slays a raging elephant (at the age of ten), and when he grows into a young man—evil eye, avaunt!—he slaughters the White Demon and buries him in the ground.
Pharaoh’s claim to godhood is famous, and it is related similarly of Shaddad and Nimrod in the histories. If the people of fine temperament decide that this strong-handed young man, Hamza the Demon Killer, is like Rustam and insist that that one is Zumurrud Shah, the erring one, the one who claims godhood like Nimrod, let us say that they have made a mare’s nest—but they’ve made it well. They’ve drawn from those historical accounts, but they’ve drawn from them well. What results is not all sermons and preaching, but a collection of friendly trifles. It’s not a biography or report but a false tale.
Romance crafting is among the verbal arts. In truth, it’s a good art for amusing the heart. Look at Amar’s tricks, look at Hamza’s exploits on the battlefield! The compiler of these narrations [about Hamza] is some Iranian wordsmith, but that Mir Taqi of Muhammad Shah’s time, who was the boon companion of Mu’tamanauddaula Is’haq Khan, has lifted up the Garden of Iram and set it down in India, so to speak. He has shown us a unique spectacle in the Garden of Imagination. Among these romances there is a volume called the Muʿizznāma. Bravo for its courtly assemblies, its battles, sorcery, t̤ilisms [enchanted worlds created by magical arts]. and the heat of the tumult of its beauty and love! If he were to hear of its t̤ilism conquests, Amir Hamza would be in such a state that he would go hunting for his own Lordship of the Auspicious Conjunction and would find neither hide nor hair of it. If he were to see the quality of Abulhasan’s tricks, Amar would be so astonished that his cumin-seed eyes would pop wide open.
As it happens, my brother’s son of twofold felicity, Khwaja Badruddin Khan, alias Khwaja Aman, is a youth of sweet expression, quick-witted, and in the attainment of perfection in every art, a hard striver and an undergoer of hardship. When he turned his attention to the sitar, he played it so well that he had Miyan Tansen dancing at his fingertips. When his temperament inclined toward painting pictures, he created such a picture that when they saw it, Mani and Bihzad were astonished. This child of fortune decided to make an Urdu translation of the Persian prose Muʿizznāma. He brought from Persian into Urdu Muizzuddin Firoz-Bakht’s country conquests, Abulhasan Jauhar’s displays of magic, the wonders and astonishments of Hakim Qustas, the colorful coquetries of Queen Naubahar, Jamshed the Self-Worshipper’s feats of strength, the shameless deeds of Topsy-Turvy Zar the Inauspicious, the fights of the Muslims and the misbelievers, the goodness of the Muslims and the evilness of the misbelievers. Consider it thus: within the dominion wherein runs the royal writ of Urdu, he has made a heart-gladdening palace, or an altogether soul-increasing interior garden. He has abandoned floridity, all in such a way that you might say that he has given a garnish of writing to speech.
After he had finished writing, he communicated his longing that the sky-oppressed Ghalib should write a preface. Though I pleaded helplessness and begged to be excused, the unjust one would not hear a word and would not accept any excuse at all. Now what was the cure for his insistence? How far would this relentlessness go? He was after all my nephew—and a dear nephew at that—and so I was helpless, and there was nothing left to do but to scribble something. Following such a preface, I saw no way of proceeding except to go straight to the world of spirits and procure a verse from Nizami. So I am writing out this verse, bright as Sirius, by way of a conclusion—I’m fed up, now I will take a breath!
Thank goodness this epistle arrived at its destination—
That too before my life could arrive at its termination!
Grace comes from God, and He is the Best of Companions.
