Winged Messengers, Feathered Beauties and Beaks of Divine Wisdom

The Role of Birds in Hindi-Urdu Allegorical Love Stories

Authors

  • Thomas Dähnhardt University of Venice Author

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.1558/rosa.v7i1-3.180

Keywords:

animal, birds, Indian literature, Islam, love stories, medieval religion and nature, Sufism, wisdom

Abstract

This article intends to investigate the role played by different kinds of birds in the narrative scheme of the mediaeval love romance (premakhyan or mathnawi), a literary genre used by Indian Sufi poets aimed at conveying an esoteric message through the allegorical language of war and love. Although the principal actors of these poems are human, the functional role played by different animals such as birds (e.g. parrot, peacock, red-finch etc.) appears both as symbolically illustrative and intrinsically didactic. Works such as the Padmavat of Malik Muhammad Jayasi and the Madhumalati of Sayyid Manjhan Rajgiri are credited with successfully charging the adopted imagery and figurative language of their native Indian environment with the sophisticated teachings of Islamic esotericism (Sufism). The role of birds emerging from these works will be illustrated by and compared against their description in the literary productions of the Deccan where the mathnawi, an important literary genre imported from Persia, featured as one of the predominant expressions of early Urdu literature. The aim of the investigation is to show how through the channel of animal characters, the cross-cultural symbiosis operated in the Indo-Islamic environment appears through the language of symbolism that demonstrates the potential of unification inherent in the realm of imagination.

Author Biography

  • Thomas Dähnhardt, University of Venice

    Thomas Dähnhardt was educated in modern Indian languages (Hindi and Urdu) at Ca’ Foscari University of Venice (Italy) and received his Ph.D. from the Department for Religious Studies at SOAS (University of London) in 1999 for a comparative study on the doctrines and methods taught by a Hindu offspring of the Naqshbandi Sufi order in nineteenth and early twentieth century Northern India. After working as a Research Fellow at the Oxford Centre for Islamic Studies (OXCIS) he is currently teaching Hindi and Urdu literature in the Department of Asian and North African Studies at the University of Venice (Italy). His chief areas of interest include the Indo-Islamic culture and the different phenomena of cross-cultural identity resulting from the numerous points of contact between Islam and Hinduism, especially in the field of Sufism, bhakti and devotional literature. He is the author of Change and Continuity in Indian Sufism: A Naqshbandi-Mujaddidi Branch in the Hindu Environment (New Delhi: DK Publishing, 2002) and of several articles and book chapters on South Asian Sufism and Islamic literature (in Hindi and Urdu).

References

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Published

2013-10-08

Issue

Section

Fourth Tantra: Devotion, Wisdom, Awe

How to Cite

Dähnhardt, T. (2013). Winged Messengers, Feathered Beauties and Beaks of Divine Wisdom: The Role of Birds in Hindi-Urdu Allegorical Love Stories. Religions of South Asia, 7(1-3), 180-194. https://doi.org/10.1558/rosa.v7i1-3.180