FEBRUARY 15 marks death anniversary of Ghalib (1797-1869), one of the great poets of Urdu. But he was as great a prose writer of Urdu, albeit his popularity as a prose writer depends almost entirely on his Urdu letters.

Interestingly, initially Ghalib did not agree to the idea of publishing his letters addressed to his friends, disciples, scholars and admirers. But, later on, he gave in to the pressure from his friends who insisted his letters were pieces of literary prose and must be preserved.

To pay homage to this colossus, let us have a quick look at some important editions of Ghalib’s Urdu letters, published during the last one-and-a-half century.

• Mehr-i-Ghalib (1861-62)

Abdul Ghafoor Suroor and Mumtaz Ali Khan decided to publish a collection of Ghalib’s letters addressed to the former. They did not bother to ask for Ghalib’s permission and named the collection Mehr-i-Ghalib, which was based on a chronogram, or specific letters carrying numerical values that add up to the year in which a particular event took place. But the collection remained unpublished.

• Intikhab-i-Ghalib (1866)

The slim volume was prepared by Ghalib himself as a British officer had desired. It was intended to teach Urdu to the British officers and soldiers and included Ghalib’s 12 letters and 39 verses.

• O’od-i-Hindi (1868)

Poet Ghulam Ghaus Bekhabar had begun collecting Ghalib’s letters in 1861 for publishing them with his permission, as by then Ghalib was convinced that his letters must be published. But it took so long that Ghalib grew impatient and asked Mumtaz Ali Khan to publish it. Khan merged the text of Mehr-i-Ghalib with it and the first edition appeared in October 1868, printed at Meruth’s Mujtabai Press. It was the first-ever published collection of Ghalib’s Urdu letters and the readers took a fancy to it instantaneously.

• Urdu-i-Mu’alla (1869)

The second collection of Ghalib’s letters had 470 of them and was published on March 6, 1869, that is, just 19 days after Ghalib’s death. Countless reprints have appeared since then. Syed Murtaza Hussian Fazil Lakhnavi published an edited version in 1969.

• Makateeb-i-Ghalib (1937)

Imtiaz Ali Khan Arshi Rampuri prepared a critical edition of Ghalib’s 117 letters addressed to the rulers of Rampur State. Annotated and thoroughly researched, the book was first published from Bombay in 1937.

• Adabi Khutoot-i-Ghalib (1939)

Mirza Muhammad Askari collected Ghalib’s selected letters wherein the bard had reflected on some literary issues. Nizami Press, Lucknow, published it in 1939.

• Khutoot-i-Ghalib (1941)

Moulvi Mahesh Prashad was the first scholar to have ever thought of preparing a critical edition that would include each and every letter of Ghalib, whether published or not. A critical edition is the one that uses different sources to prepare a single, authentic text with annotations and explanatory notes. According to experts on textual criticism, critical edition of a text may require collation of different manuscripts and/or printed sources to compile a definitive version of a text. The first part appeared in 1941 from Allahabad, but then Prashad died and the second volume was never published as its manuscript was lost.

• Naadiraat-i-Ghalib (1949)

Meeran Dehlvi had compiled a collection of Ghalib’s 74 unpublished letters. The manuscript was handed down to Afaaq Hussain Afaaq, Meeran Sahib’s maternal grandson. The annotated collection was published from Karachi in 1949 and an appreciable aspect of the work is that it has biographical details of 92 of Ghalib’s disciples. This research work was to help many scholars in the years to come.

• Khutoot-i-Ghalib (1951)

Ghulam Rasool Mehr compiled in 1951 all the letters by Ghalib, excluding the ones published in Makateeb-i-Ghalib and ‘Naadiraat-e-Ghalib’. It was reprinted in 1969 by Punjab University, Lahore.

• Ghalib Ke Khutoot (1984-2000)

Khaleeq Anjum edited the entire body of Ghalib’s Urdu letters in five volumes, a monumental task carried out on the principles of textual criticism. The fifth one enlists the letters in chronological order while the first four volumes present letters arranged according to the addressees. These volumes were published by Delhi’s Ghalib institute in 1984, 1985, 1987, 1993 and 2000. As mentioned by Khaleeq Anjum, the earliest Urdu letter from Ghalib -- discovered so far -- was written in 1847 and was addressed to Hargopal Tafta.

Khaleeq Anjum’s work is the most comprehensive collection of Ghalib’s letters and most authentic as well, since it is compiled in accordance with a German technique used in textual criticism. These volumes were also published by Anjuman Taraqqi-i-Urdu, Karachi.

Ghalib’s literary genius always found a new and creative way of saying something, be it ghazal or prose. His letters showed a new way of writing letters in Urdu and also paved the way for modern Urdu prose. Direct, brief, witty and full of historical and biographical details, Ghalib’s Urdu letters taught us how to write chaste, elegant and flowing Urdu prose.

drraufparekh@yahoo.com

Published in Dawn, February 15th, 2021