Hasan Shah. The Nautch Girl. Translated by Q Sterling Publishers, 1992. pp. 104. Rs.45.0 The Nautch Girl is an English translation of Nas of a Persian original by Sayyid Muhammad Rangin, written in 1205 A.H.l1790 A.D. (Has tragic love affair between the author and Khanam jan, which we infer from other s (Ahmad 1977). Sayyid Muhammad Hasan Shah was born in Bareli district in North India. He traces Naqshbandi Sufi Sayyid Amir Kulal of Cen grandfather, Sayyid Meerak Shah, came to In Hasan Shah was seven when his father died, an Husain Shah and Qasim Shah, were raised by t Muhammad Nawaz. Mir Muhammad Nawaz was a i.e., medicine, but at the time was in the service o the text as "Ming Sahib" as his munsht and perhaps also Urdu. (Hyder suggests that "M "Manning".) According to Hasan Shah, thi Coote's sister's son and himself a "member co Muhammad Nawaz withdrew himself from Hasan Shah appointed as a sort of major-domo must have been in his late teens at the time ( the date suggested by Rahmani). The printed the beginning of the events, which cover a pe though the year when they were written dow (1790 A.D.). (Hasan Shah also gives a chrono of his beloved, but it is definitely incorrect quently, it is not possible to tell the exact lap and the manuscript.) The events are as follows. Hasan Shah, whi of Mr. "Ming", meets Khanam jan, who is t of Kashmiri courtesans in the employment o The two are immediately attracted to each o Kanpur, Hasan Shah manages to get Mr. "M Now the lovers can meet more easily; they ev or so, Mr. "Ming" must also leave Kanpu Hasan Shah to disband his household and cle and Khanam jan make plans: she must leave w they take to go down the Ganges, while Has faster boat and wait for a chance to take her aw
Hyder. New Delhi: he Urdu translation 111, entitled Afsana-e, J It describes a, courtesan named autobiographical H. (1770-71 A.D.) f back to the great nd reports that his IA.H. (1713 A.D.). s younger brothers, al grandfather, Mir er of Greco-Arabic man referred to in im in Persian and be a corruption of.hib" was General at Kanpur. When s" service he had :hold. Hasan Shah teen, according to incorrect date for eighteen months, iven as 1205 A.H 'erse for the death 1ed form. Consethe events the establishment lember of a party!ish army officer. hat officer leaves 1ge their services. etly. After a year iment; he orders mts. Hasan Shah mions in the boat )llow in another, 1 Shah is delayed by the demands of his job, and never manages to catc returns to Kanpur, broken-hearted, while Khanam Jan remedy, falls sick and is brought to Lucknow (not far fro ment. Her family sends for Hasan Shah's grandfather, treated her in the past. Again a delay occurs, and Mir Na reach Lucknow only after Khanam Jan has already ex The narrative, explicitly described by the author as a with the help of exchanges of letters, descriptions of dr about evening entertainments where Persian ghazals - - are sung by Khanam Jan and others. There is no rea overall veracity of the account, though some doubts Shah's statement that he was fifteen, and Khanam Jan they met and began their highly intense and literar correspondence, and that their wise-beyond-words go-be was then a mere child. Obviously the narration is by who is keen to tell a story and is not bothered by a few tradictions if they help to keep the story moving. Hasa another prose narrative, but he did write poetry in P Urdu, he used Zabt as his It is a charming tale, and very moving. The Urdu tra done in response to demands by the translator's frien reading his copy of the original Persian. But tastes were time, as is evident by the fact that Saijad Husain left ou and a section about love-making that he considered too felt it necessary to make frequent, sometimes nasty, com attitude and actions in footnotes. (Regrettably, only som included by Hyder.) Indeed, Hasan Shah is a somew gonist; he is quick to feel jealous and is often rather chu tion with him is mitigated only by bearing in mind th enough to show himself as he was. It is Khanam Jan initiates things and also finds ways to resolve problems wh her restricted world, she is bold and lively and capable and action. Besides the charm and pathos of the main story, one the book tells about the life of the English officers and the late eighteenth century. These were the "Nabobs several ways was not terribly different from that of their I parts (Spear 1963). Persian poetry and Indian music, fights, the pleasures of hookah and spicy foods, even a p clothes at home set these men apart in the history of the "Ming" is a bachelor who likes to keep an Indian cou He knows Persian and enjoys Persian poetry, and when standing any verse he doesn't hesitate to ask Hasan - --- --
pleasure, can't quite keep track of his expenses an moneylenders, but he is also decent enough not to forc whom he had first chosen for his service and of who The mutuality of acceptance between him and his I notable. But "Ming" is the master and Hasan Shah delays that he unwittingly causes turn out to be fata The manuscript that Sajjad Husain used has disa Hyder's statement) the Persian text is extant. Iqtid another, later manuscript (dated 1249 A.H.l1848 private collection in Patna (Khan 1965). On comp Urdu translation was very close to the Persian ori Husain has retained most of the ghazals and eve Persian. Thus the printed text of Nashtar gives us original as well as a taste of its Persian prose; and importance lies. The original story by Hasan Sha claims, the first "novel" in Persian, written in an "ef with the additional significance that it was not writ any English novel. To that extent, Hasan Shah is Khan mentions a couple of other stories (qiha) hav as he himself notes, they come a bit later. To my person narration and the degree of verisimilitude in it is the fact of its being a sustained prose narrative o lends credence to the claim of its being the first "nov into account Persian and Urdu masnavls we may realistic narratives, but in verse. More importantly, development; there is no evidence that Hasan Sh English language or literature. Iranian and Western scholars of Persian language shown interest in the vast body of Persian literatur - to their own loss. Beginning with the eleventh c the middle of the nineteenth (and to Iqbal in the tw has been a major language of intellectual and liter continent. Further, it was in Indian cities like Cal that Persian literati had their first sustained encoun the first Persian language newspapers were publishe place about the form of a new, modern Persian la Beside the Foreword, Ms Hyder has provided no an Afterword, and a set of explanatory notes at th useful to unnecessary. In the absence of space for de should be noted: the Urdu translation Nashtar wa Husain, Anjum, of Kasmando, not by Munshi Saj founder-editor of the famous weekly Avadh Panch either.)
rt depend on local elf on KhanamJ an, '. C emams quite IOn d. I.,naJord orno. al IS so and the oor Khanam Jan. but (contrary to n Khan reports on.) which is in a he found that the n addition, Sajjad of the letters in I f the flavor of the I h. ; were Its greater well be, as Hyder / realistic manner", er the influence of inal. Iqtidar Alam lilar qualities but, nore than its first ction of its milieu, lerable length that tersian. Ifwe take to point to other ltirely indigenous. ny knowledge of ature have rarely ed in South Asia nd continuing to :entury), Persian lsion in the su b- mbay and Delhi the West, where ere debates took the translation, lese range from najor correction Munshi Saijad of Kakori, the lever serialized Ms Hyder is one of Urdu's finest novelists. Her novel she has received India's most prestigous literary award, t In several of her works she has done astonishing things voices with a precision of tone. Her novels are permeated details that reflect a life-long interest in an amazing rang much to be regretted, therefore, that she has not been eq preparing this translation. That she drastically abridged the able in order to make the English version more acceptable The events are all still there. But the translation is onl cise, even incorrect. In her Foreword she cla been strictly faithful to the text and [has] not anywhere mo narrative or the dialogue." In actuality, her English is f mixture of informal, formal, slang, colloquial and literal. suffice: The musicians came in and began to tune their instruments. I said to myself: everybody has turned up except Khanum Jan. Tha "Perhaps the Birthday girl has no interest in tuneful activities," I ut "Oh no, Sir' Our Khanum Jan has not had much formal training but of us all," said Gulbadan promptly. "In that case, I am surprised that she 'is not here." Mirzai was taken aback by my remark. She asked Gulbadan about h "We were enjoying the hullabaloo of the Jumpen being fed, when Seot J an said she had a headache and would like to be excused..." (p. I, for one, found it jarring to come across "Birthday G vities", and "hullabaloo ofthe lumpen being fed" in such cl so in the translation of an elegant Urdu text almost two Notes 1. The Nautch Girl has been issued in the United States under Girl (New Directions, 1993). 2. Prof. Mohamad Tavakoli-Targhi of Illinois State University in a pioneering study of these developments. References Ahmad, Musharraf (1977) Shah Husain Haqiqat aur Unka Kha Haqiqat and His Family"). Karachi: Idara-e Adabiyat-e Un
Hasan Shah, Sayyid Muhammad (1963) Nashtar Rahmani. Lahore: Majlis-e Taraqqi-e Adab. ( edition.) Khan, Iqtidar Alam (1965) "Urdu Men Navil-Nigar ("The Beginning of Novel-writing in Urdu (Lahore) 103 : 250-60. Spear, Percival (1963) The Nabobs. Revised edition.