Muslim Attitude and Contribution to Music in India

by Aziz Ahmad, Toronto

Music is perhaps the only art in which something like a synthesis

between the Muslim and Hindu artistic traditions was achieved; though
not without a series of tensions.

The Muslim orthodox attitude to music was less hberal in India than

elsewhere in Där al-Isläm ; and in fact, the permissibihty or otherwise of

listening to music was the chief arena of conflict between the «ulamä.'

and the 9Üfis under Iletmish and Ghiyäth al-din Tughluq. The ^üfi

attitude was cautious in the begmning, but within Iknits it encouraged

the Indian Muslim spiritual proclivity to music. Al-Hujwiri regarded

listening to music permissible for the mystics, but under very rigid
conditions; it was not to be listened to without deep spiritual urge, only
after long intervals, and only in the presence of one's spiritual preceptor.
Of the four ?üfT orders popular in India, the Chishtis alone sought
ecstatic inspiration in music. The Suhrawardis were generally indifferent
to it, and recommended instead the recitation of the Qur'än ; the Qädiria

were opposed to music generally, and to music with mstruments (samä*

bi-l-mazämir) in particular. The Naqshbandi attitude to music was even
more hostile.

Khwäja Mu'in al-din Chishti, the founder of the Chishti order in India

and his successor Bakhtiyär Käki, both listened to music as a spiritual

stimulants In Delhi this §üfi practice came to be firmly established

durmg the reign of Iletmish, partly because of his devotion to Bakhtiyär

Käki, and partly because of the encouragement of this practice by the
qädis of Delhi, Hamid al-din Nägori and the historian Mmhäj al-Siräj
Jüzjäni.*
In the assemblies of Nizäm al-din Awliyä ghazcds of Amir Khusrau

were sung along with other pieces of music, and as some of them were
recited agam at the court of 'Alä' al-din Khalji,' music tended to be¬
come an oblique cultural hnk between the 9üfi hospice and the court.
According to Nizäm al-din, artistic composition whether in prose or
verse gives spiritual pleasure, but more so in verse than in prose, and
even more if the verse is sung.* Music can be of three kinds ; one that

1 Sabäh al-din 'Abd al-Rahmän, Bazm-i Süfiya, A'zamgarh 1949, 48, 77.
• Amir Hasan Sijzi, Fawä'id al- fu'äd, Delhi 1865, 133; 'Isämi, Futüh al-
salätin, ed.'s. M. Usha, Madras 1848, 117—20.
!> Jamäli, Siyar al-'Arifirt. India Office Persian Ms. 1313, ff. 147a^b.
« Sijzi, 38.
 Muslim Attitude and Contribution to Music in India 87

makes one laugh, the second that makes one weep, and the third that

robs one of one's senses and consciousness.* What really counts is the
spiritual depth of the süfi and not the accompaniment or otherwise of
musical instruments.* Listening to music is permissible only in love of
God ; and though the verse sung may relate to temporal love, its inter¬

pretation and understanding by the ßüfi has to be in terms of love divine.'

The components of a musical assembly are the musicians, the music,

the listener and the musical instruments; for music to be permissible

the musicians should be adult men and not women or handsome youth,
the verses set to music should not be profane or vulgar, the listener's
heart should be full of the love of God, and as for the musical instruments
their use should be avoided.* Music, in short, is meritorious if conducive

to the love divine but sinful if it arouses sensuous passions.

In the wake of other political tensions Ghiyäth al-din Tughluq called

a congress of 253 'ulamä' to discuss the question of the permissibihty
in terms of religious law of the güfi use of music. Hanafi 'ulamä' like

Qädi Jaläl al-din and the Shaikhzäda of Jäm opposed music, but Nizäm
al-din Awliyä who appeared in the Congress as a defendent bases his

argument in fa vom* of music on a hadith the authenticity of which was

disputed ; but however on the evidence of the rationalist 'Alam al-din
Multäni, who had returned after extensive travels in Där al-Isläm, to
the effect that musical assemblies were a common practice in ^lüfi hos¬

pices all over the world, Ghiyäth al-din Tughluq decided to make an
exception in the case of 9üfis, but prohibited other sects like the qalandars
or the Haidarls to listen to it as in their case quest for sensuous pleasure

was suspected.' In his last years Nizäm al-din himself moved much
closer to the orthodox view and is recorded to have remarked that

whatever is prohibited in shar^ cannot be permissible, but on the question

of music jurists are divided; the Shäfi'ites permit it with instruments
but not the Hanafites.^' Therefore whatever decision a sultän takes at a

particular time has to be regarded as legal, though ecstatic dance cannot

be allowed.

The Chishti tradition, however, continued to regard music as an

indispensable aid to ecstasy. It relied on the Persian verse as the verbal

content of musical composition, but in provinces it soon borrowed or

adopted mixed Persian and Hindi wording. Thus, in the 15th century
one finds Bahä' al-din Bamavi composing Persian or hybrid musical
tunes like the khayäl or qawl or the taränä on the one hand, and on the

» Ibid. 94.
• Ibid. 55; Amir Khusrau ( T ), Afdal al-fawä'id, Delhi 1886, 127.
» Sijzi, 56. » Ibid. 137.
» S. M. Ikram, Äb-i Kawthar, Lahore 1952, 273—4. i» Sijzi, 125—6.
88 Aziz Ahmad

other purely Indian tunes or musical forms like the jakrl or the chutkula.^^
In these borrowings the purely monistic or ethical tradition of Hindu
musical verse was accepted, but Hindu religious and devotional music
was exclusively rejected as polytheistic. About this time 'Gesüdaräz'

favoured the composition of Indian melodies inspiring ecstasy 'according

to the requirement of the art'^* and went to the extent of justifying the
ecstatic dance of the ^üfis^* generaUy discouraged in Indian Süfism.
The influence of Ibn al-'Arabi which shaped the structural and intel¬
lectual course of Indian Süfism during the 14th and 15th centuries, was
not too favourable to music, possibly because of the Christian ascetic

trends which Ibn al-'Arabi had assimilated in his outlook. He preferred

the recitation of the Qur'än, and after that of mystical verses, but was

opposed to listening to sensuous music, to musical instruments, ecstatic

dance, applause or artificially inspired ecstasy.^* In fact in so far as the

eüfi practice of listening to music is concerned, it has been suggested

that it was the Indian Süfism which accepted it eclecticahy, and then
passed it on to other Muslim lands.** The ^üfi ecstatic dancing under the
infiuence of music, might have been originally a practice of Shämänist
origin** which, uiüike the practice of Mevleviyya and other orders in
Turkey, was generally disapproved by the Indian ^üfis. The tradition
of ecstatic dancing attributed to the Suhrawardite Bahä' al-din Zaka¬

riyyä Multäni" as well as later accounts crediting him with the invention
of certain musical modes and tunes like the muUäni^^ may be regarded as
apocryphal in view of the Suhrawardi discouragement of music.

The attitude of the Naqshbandi order to music, as exemplified by

Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi, was distrustful. The ecstasy which other

orders sought through music, the Naqshbandis claimed to achieve

permanently and personally without any sensuous stimulation.*' Music,
they considered as a means of spiritual inspiration, only for those out¬
side their order whose ecstatic experience was unstable.'"'

Convivial parties in the courts of the weaker and more licentious

among the Delhi Sultäns were largely an independent growth, which

»* Mahmüd Sheräni, Punjab men Urdu, Lahore 1928, 176—8.

" Muhammad al-Husaini ('Gesüdaräz'), Jawämi^ al-kalim, B. M. Or. 252,
ff. 98a—b. " Ibid. f. 99a.
" Miguel Asin Paleicios, El Islam Cristianizado, Madrid 1931, 187.
»» Ibid. 187—8, 326—32, 189.
" J. K. Birge, The Bektashi Order of Dervish^, Hartford 1937, 213.
" Sijzi. 77.
1» Faqir-Ullah, Räg Durpan, I. O. Persian Ms. 1937 (Eth6 2017), f. I2a;
Mirzä Muhammad, Tuhfat al-Hind, B. M. Add. 16, 868, f. 228b.
" Shaikh Ahmad Sirhindi, Maktübät, Lucknow 1877, 1, 235.
»» Ibid. I, 367—70.
 Muslim Attitude and Contribution to Music in India 89

seems to have begun with the patronage of Mu'izz al-din Kaiqubäd.

The tradition continued in the court of Jaläl al-din Khalji where Amir

Khusrau's ghazals were sung by beautiful girls like Fatüha and Nu^rat
Khätün.** Gopäl, a musician of Deccan was employed in the court of
'Alä* al-din Khalji,^^ where the spiritual side of musical taste was to
some extent moulded on the süfi standards. Amir Khusrau was the link

between the hospice and the court, and his compositions were equally
popular in both milieus.
Khusrau had a thorough knowledge of the technicalities of Persian
music and mentions musical terms familiarly in his works.''* His know¬

ledge of Indian music is also reflected in his use of its terminology.**

It is likely that he tried to weld the two musical systems together, but
in the absence of sufficient reliable evidence it is difficult to determine
his exact contribution.**

In estimating Amir Khusrau's exact contribution to the synthesis

and development of Indo-Muslim music in India, one has to fall back

on much later tradition. He is credited with havhig invented a number
of new melodies such as muhayyar, ayman, 'ushshäq, mutväfiq, ziläf,
farghänä, sarparda, firüdast and khayäl.^ It can be safely assumed that
at least the ghazal and the qawl (sung in süfi assemblies) were first intro¬
duced by Khusrau.*' Tradition credits Amir Khusrau with the invention
of the sitär, originally a three-stringed instrument, but Wahid Mirzä in
his scholarly study of Khusrau confesses that he was unable to trace
any reference to it in his writings, or the writings of his contemporaries
and immediate successors,** and suggests that the sitär may have evolved
from the Indian vina about Khusrau's time; but this instrument is

mentioned in Turkish and extra-Indian Persian literature much earlier ;

it may have been evolved in Caucasia and not in India, and one cannot
rule out the possibility that the names of European musical instruments
'guitar' and 'zither' are cognates of sitär.^ The contemporary musicians
mentioned by Khusrau were almost all Muslims, and most of the musical
instruments mentioned have Persian names.*"

The court patronage of music at a refined and cultured level continued

under Muhammad bin Tughluq.** In the reign of the puritan Pirüz

•* Diyä' al-din Barani, Tärikh-i Firüz Shähl, Bibl. Ind., Calcutta 1862,
199—200. " Mirzä Muhammad, f. 192a.
"Amir Khusrau, Qirän al-Sa'dayn, Lucknow 1885, 163 et seq.; idem,
I'jäz-i Khusrawl, Lucknow 1876, 180 et seq. Ibid. 288 et seq.
*' Wahid Mirzä, Life and Works öf Amir Khusrau, Calcutta 1935, 238.
*• Mirzä Muhammad, ff. 227a—228a. " Wahid Mirzä, 239.
» Ibid. loc. cit. Ibid. 239—40.

8. N. Haidar Razvi, ,Music in Muslim India', Islamic Culture, xv (1941),

331—40. '* Quatremöre, Notices de Manuscrits, XII, 185.
90 Aziz Ahmad

Tughluq, the patronage of one of his noblemen Ibrähim Hasan Abürija

inspired in 1375 Ohunyat al-munyät, a Persian treatise describing Indian
musical instruments, Indian dancing and the code of conduct to be
observed in the musical assemblies by the musical profession.'*
More Central Asian elements such as the naubat were introduced into

India during the invasion of Timür.** A collection of Indian melodies was

compiled during the reign of Sikandar Lodi and named after him.**

Participation in the growth of Indo-Muslim music was even more pro¬

nounced in the case of regional Muslim rulers during the 15th and 16th
centuries. Sultän Husain Sharqi of Jaunpur is credited to have invented

seventeen Indian rags (musical tunes) of which twelve were shyäm,

four todi and one asöwart,** genres which are almost purely Indian with
very Uttle of the Persian heritage. Another regional Muslim ruler,

Muzaffar II (1511—26) of Gujarat was also a composer of such purely

Indian musical varieties as suramba, dhyä, chhand and dohra.^ Bak-

shava, a musician of the court of Bahädur Shäh of Gujarat (1526—37)

is credited with the authorship of a very large number of Indian dhurpad
melodies.*'

The Alfi movement in its Mahdavi phase was opposed to music,**

but it does not seem to have imposed any effective check on Muslim

participation in Indian music which reached its phase of intensity under

the patronage of Akbar. At this stage Indo-Muslim music became
syncretic as well as synthetic. The most renowned musician of Akbar's

age, Tän Sen, was a Gaur Brahmin reputedly converted to Islam, and |f{
the disciple of the eclectic Shattäri saint Shaikh Muhammad Ghauth
of Gwalior as well as of the Hindu poet Haridäs,*' and a friend of another

famous Hindu poet Sürdäs.*" Subhän Khän, one of the musicians of |fi
Akbar's court is reported to have sung devotional songs {qawwälis) at
the tomb of the Prophet in Medina.**
In 1666, commissioned by Räjä Män Singh, Faqir-Ulläh compiled his
famous Häg Durpan, partly a translation from Sanskrit, one of the
most authoritative works on Indian music in Persian. It deals with

Ohunyat al-munyät, I. O. Persian Ms. 1863 (Eth6 2008), ff. 46b—54a,

54b — 86a, 87a — 92a. Haidar Razvi, 336.
" Yüsuf Husain, Medieval Indian Culture, London 1959, 96.
" Mirzä Muhammad, ff. 228a—b.
^* Sikandar bin Muhammad .Manjhü', Mir'ät-i Sikandari, Engl. tr. by
Faridi, Dharampur n. d., 130.
" I. O. Persian Ms. 1808 (Ethö 2015). ^ Haidar Razvl, 333.
'» Mirzä Muhammad, f. 193a; G. A. Grierson, T/ie Vemacular Literatur»
of Hindustan, Calcutta 1889, 29.
*" Abu'l Fadl 'Allämi, Ä'in-i Akbari, Engl. tr. H. Blochmann, Calcutta
1927, 1, 403, 612. ** Mirzä Muhammad, f. 193a.
 Muslim Attitude and Contribution to Music in India 91

various Indian melodies according to the seasons or hours of the day

and night svdted to each,** and with the principles of the composition
of times. Among his contemporary musicians Faqir-Ulläh mentions

fifty, the majority of whom were Muslims.** So were the majority of

famous musicians attached to the court of Jahangir.** Patronage of
music and dancing continued in the court of Shäh Jahän,** and Mirzä
Raushan Damir translated Pärijätaka, a famous Sanskrit work on music

into Persian.** Though Aiuangzeb excluded musicians from his court,*'

scholarly work on music continued during his reign, and a treatise on

music Shams al-aswät was compiled in 1698.**

In the Deccan Ibrähim 'ÄdU Shäh II was a great patron of music

as weU as a gifted musician and the author of a collection of melodies
Nauras** some of which relate to Hindu mythology, others are in praise
of 'Gesüdaräz', and yet others are personal or lovesongs. His knowledge
of the technicaUties of music was not perfect; but his work was trans¬

lated into Persian by his order and bears the introduction of the great
Persian writer of his court Zuhüri. The melodies are Indian, though in
the songs Persian vocabulary is freely employed. Ibrähim 'ÄdU Shäh II
is also reported to have founded a special locality, Nauraspflr, for the
musicians in his capital. In the Deccan the tradition of the patronage
of music survived into the times of Tipü Sultän under whom Hasan

'Ah 'Izzat compiled in 1785 his Mufarrih al-qulüb, an interpretative

work on music which deals with Indian and Persian musical instruments

and is interspersed with Persian and Urdu (Rikhta) verses.*' Poetry and
music were sometimes mixed in the Rikhta, composed specially to be

sung, during the 18th century.** Similarly Persian verse was set to
music along with the Hindi dohräs and sung together.** In Bengäh a
similar process is seen at work in the Räga Mäla which describes various
modes of Indian music mentioning the presiding Hindu deity of each, but

often illustratmg its theme from the poems of the Mushm poet 'Aläol.**

" Faqir-Uüäh, ff. 3b—16b.

*' Ibid. ff. 41b—49a.
" Mu'tamad Khän, Iqbäl Näma-i Jahängiri, Calcutta 1865, 308.
" Chandra Bhän Brahmin, Chahär Chaman, B.M. Add. 16, 863, ff. 30a—b.
«• Mirzä Raushan Damir, Pärijätaka, I. O. Pers. Ms 808 (Eth(5 2009).
" Säqi Musta'id Khän, Mä'athir-i 'Älamgiri, Calcutta 1947, 52.
" I. O. Pers. Ms. 1746 (Ethö 2022).
" Ibrähim 'Ädil Shäh, Kitäb N auras, ed. Nazh- Ahmad, Lucknow 1955.
Hasan 'Ali 'Izzat, Mufarrih al-qulüb, I. O. Pers. Ms. 2809 (Ethö 2024).
" I. O. Pers. Ms. 1906 (Ethö 2019); and I. O. Pers. Ms. 3377 (Ethö 2020).
" Kanz al-müsiqi, I. O. Pers. Ms. No. 2365 (Ethö 2021).
D. C. Sen, History of Bengali Language and Literature, 799.
92 Aziz Ahmad, Muslim Attitude and Contribution to Music in India

Similarly the Bengali Tola Näma (1840) contains works of Hindu as

weU as Muslim composers.**
Studying the growth of music, in which the Hindu and Muslim cul¬
tures came closer together than in any other art, one is nevertheless
faced with the situation of the submergence of Muslim elements into
the Hindu. The process of the interfusion of Indian rägs and Persian

maqämM which began in Khusrau's day** came to be regarded as hybrid¬

ization** in the middle of the 19th century by Wäjid 'AU Shäh of

Avadh, a great connoisseur and patron of music, as graduaUy the

classical tradition of Hindu music gained the final ascendancy. The
situation of the synthesised Indian music came to be as recently de¬
scribed as an art "with a base which is Hindu and with decorations and

fringes which are the result of a synthesis."*'

" Ibid. 800. " Mirzä Muhammad, f. 230b.

*• Wäjid 'Ali Shäh, Sawt-i Mubärak, Lucknow 1853, 42 et seq.
" Rajendra Prasad, India Divided, Bombay 1946, 62.
 Yast X, 126 an incomplete stanza?

Von Heinbich v. Stietencbon, Neckargemünd

The translation of stanza 126 of the Mihr YaSt presents some difficulties
because its second part which deals with Razistä Cistä is grammatically
and metrically in disorder. It therefore has received comments from
various scholars. The latest translation was given by Ilya Gebshevitch*
in whose extensive notes on all doubtful words the earlier attempts at
interpretation have been discussed.
Besides the corrupt state of grammar there is probably another defect
in stanza (st.) 126 which, to my knowledge, has never been noticed by
any Avestan scholar: a part of the stanza seems to be missing altogether.
This assumption is probable, though not evident, from the Mihr YaSt
itself; and it becomes more than probable if the additional information
is taken into account which Indian texts have preserved about the
Iranian Mithra.

St. 126 is to be compared with st. 100. Both passages give an account
of the companions who travel with Mithra on his journey "along the
whole width of the earth" (st. 95).* The difference is, in the first place,
one of time and direction, as st. 126 forms part of the description of

Mithra's day-time journey from east to west, while for the period after
sunset,* when Mithra and his companions have turned round and travel
from the west towards east* during night, a separate description is given
which includes st. 100.

The two stanzas are printed here below with Gebshbvitch's trans¬
lation.
126 100

daSindm he arede daSinam he upa ard&am

vazaite rahivö raziStö vazaite yö varjhuS sraoSö aSyö

sjmiiStö upa . raodiStö vairya . stäram he upa aradam

äat he hävöya araSe vazaite raSnuS bdrdzö yö amavd

* I. Gershevitch, The Avestan Hymn to Mithra, Cambridge 1959.

* yö zam. fraM aiwyäiti. For a detailed itinerary see Gershevitch, op.
cit. p. 39. ' pasöa hü fräSmö. däitlm, st. 95.
* Mithra comes from the ^razo^ii-continent (st. 67). This region was
situated in the west according to H. W. Bailey, Indagatio Indo-Iranica,
Transactions of the Philological Society 1960, p. 75 sq. Gershevitch, in
his translation of st. 67, takes Arazahl as the eastern continent, foUowbig
W. B. Hennino, Sogdica, p. 28 sq. But st. 67 should not be separated from
the following stanzas up to st. Ill, no doubt describing — with several
interruptions — Mithra's journey from west to east.