IN 1916, an All India Music Conference was held in Baroda. Attended by grandees and renowned musicologists such as Atiya Fyzee and Vishnu Narayan Bhatkhande, the historic conference invited Urdu’s acclaimed writer and scholar Maulana Abdul Haleem Sharar to deliver the keynote address. Sharar’s address, titled ‘Hindustan ki mausiqi’ (the music of India), was an erudite piece on music and its intricacies, especially the music of the subcontinent.
The address, first published in March 1913 issue of Dilgudaaz, an Urdu literary magazine launched by Sharar from Lucknow in 1887, was published as a booklet in 1916. Now Sharar’s hundred-year-old keynote address has been edited and annotated by Muhammad Ather Masood and published by Oxford University Press, Pakistan. As mentioned by Masood in his preface, Sharar had already penned an article on Indian music and re-wrote the piece to suit the conference, describing the beginning of the music in the world and giving invaluable information on Egyptian, Greek, Roman, Arabic, Iranian and Indian music. The address is a fine reminiscent of Sharar’s profound knowledge and his elegant prose. Though Sharar named his piece ‘Hindustani’ or ‘Indian’ music, writes Masood, Sharar did not mean the present-day India and the information given applied to the entire music of the subcontinent.
Sharar emphasises the sophisticated and refined nature of music but laments that the vagaries of time have wiped out from the face of the earth the ancient works on old Indian music and no written word is found on what the ancient music of India was like, though it is known that Aryans had developed their music to the perfection and it was part of their worship. Citing some interesting events concerning some renowned Arab and Iranian musicians, he enlists the 12 ragas and their further divisions. He then goes on to describe how the early Muslim rulers of India appreciated and patronized music, especially after taking a cue from the Sufis of the Chishtiya order, who favoured ‘sama’ ‘ or ‘qawwali’ with certain preconditions.
According to Sharar, the Muslim musicians and singers took the Indian music to new heights, so much so that the Hindu singers and musicians were far and few between in the late-Mughal era. But the decline began in the era of Muhammad Shah, the ruler of Delhi, when, as put by Sharar, Lucknow Wallas displayed a lack of aesthetic sense and began popularizing ‘tappa’ and ‘thumri’, replacing much finer ‘hori’ and ‘dhrupad’. Sharar suggested some steps to save the Indian music from going bad to worse and much emphasized adopting a system to visually represent the aurally perceived music through written symbols known as musical notation.
This writer is not much versed with the music terminology and benefitted much from the endnotes that Masood has compiled. These endnotes explain certain musical terms as well as many historical personalities and places referred to in the original text. A brief life sketch of Sharar is also appended. But what is missing is the numbers in the text corresponding to the footnotes. The footnotes too are not numbered, leaving the reader to guess if the note on a particular term is given in the end or not. The endnotes are not in alphabetical order either. Aside from that, the book is a must-read for anyone interested in music. Some anecdotes narrating the lives of musicologists and the rulers fond of music make an interesting reading.
Abdul Haleem Sharar (1860-1926) was a novelist, journalist and essayist of Urdu. Known for his historical Urdu novels and his several literary magazines, Sharar was one of the earliest proponents of the idea of a separate Muslim country in the subcontinent: in 1890, he suggested that India should be partitioned into Hindu and Muslim provinces (I.H. Qureshi (Ed.), ‘A short history of Pakistan’, vol IV, p.212).
The book definitely fills a gap, but some Pakistani publishers unintentionally discourage the readers by selling a 70-page book printed on newsprint for Rs210, and that too with a soft binding!
Published in Dawn, June 13th, 2017
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