THE REDISCOVERED ART OF DASTAN-GOI
"Crack audiences engaged by ancient understood stories"By SHAHNAZ AIJAZUDDINIS
On a soft autumn dusk in New Delhi clearly, in the back zone of the IIC, I was top to an characteristic and dramatic performance. It was an understood reading in the average style of Dastan-goi or Kissa Khwani - that inimitable art of story-telling, re-energized that allure dusk by two groovy young performers, Mahmood Farooqui and Himanshu Tiyagi. Sometimes in competition, every so often in unison, they recited the dramatic authenticate in a demeanor that thought their put off absorbed for roundabouts two hours. They were well-mannered identically in whitish kurta nightie with muslin caps, in brave difference to the night-black stage drop. The two performers sat in the fore-stage, close to the put off, on a simple masnad with bolsters, and used only the effortless props of a few not much paintings to bring into being an old world spread.
The passages they had specific for unfolding that dusk came from the epic dastan- Tilism-e-Hoshruba - which in its time was I believe was the synonymous of the fresh fantasy Member of the aristocracy of the Earrings. I had read the Tilism-i-Hoshruba downright times in the function of I was an bendy ten-year old. I knew each idiom and every dialogue in the authenticate roundabouts by general feeling. Its understood unfolding thought me spellbound, for this was in fact the first time that I had heard the dastan being recited, as it was calculated to be at the same time as it was first popularised.
Being taken aback me was how a fresh put off in Delhi, innumerable of whom were trial the authenticate for the first time, seemed to be the same as engaged. I noticed from their reactions that they were far-reaching the underhanded Amr Ayyar as he looted and pillaged the fabled metropolitan area of Napursan. They relished his inestimable incident with Afrasiab Jadoo (the king of wizards). They regular the distressing imagery of the two lovers - Afrasiab's niece Tasveer and Prince Badi uz Zaman - who like average lovers were finished by the launch of love at first sight.
The Tilism-e-Hoshruba, like every exalted epic, is a long intrigue. In its initial form, it consists of seven volumes and constitutes only one of the daftars or records of the Dastan of the renowned star Amir Hamza which itself runs into forty-six daftars. The knowledge of dastan-goi goes back to medieval Iran. Stage, dastan-gohs or narrators, romantic by the Shahnama (the story of kings tranquilize in couplet by the extreme novelist Firdausi), recited tales a number of camp fires, in bronzed houses or equal palaces. They laugh at of undaunted princes who with the help of tricksters called Ayyars fought corrupt kings; encountered and beaten demons, magicians and jinns and of road they courted beautiful princesses, charm enchantresses or the female parizads.
The Dastan-e-Amir Hamza is obviously the life of Hazrat Hamza bin Abd ul Muttalib, the caring uncle of the Heavenly Minister Mohammad. Hamza had the atrocity of being the strongest man of the people of Banu Hashim and rigorously cautious his nephew against his enemies from the people of Quraish. He followed the Heavenly Minister behindhand he migrated to Medina from Mecca. Hamza was killed in the Struggle against of Uhud by a slave who had been promised his liberty by Rear, the wife of the heavy-duty Quraish overlord of Mecca, Abu Sufiyan. The romance of Hamza may squeeze originated from the story of another Hamza - Hamza bin Abdullah, a Persian insurrectionist nauseating to Khalifa Haroon-ur-Rashid. His the same as garish exploits and adventures were the source of innumerable stories that can squeeze been grafted onto the Arab Hamza, that's why creating a super-hero who for being the uncle of the Heavenly Minister was more secured.
Not funnily enough, the tales of the Hamza leave all over the Islamic world - from Anatolia to Indonesia and were translated and narrated in innumerable local languages. They so engaged the Mughal King Akbar that he recited them himself in Persian and furthermore commissioned his atelier of artists and calligraphers to reveal the popular authenticate on an chaos important. The only remaining tome consisted of over a 1000 illustrations.
By the eighteenth century, dastan narrators had become an necessary amusement in bench and palaces of India where the piazza language was Persian, for the dastans had been autonomously tranquilize in Persian. The present Urdu texts of the Hamza Nama are the legacy of the legendary Munshi Seafaring Kishore who in the late nineteenth century commissioned and published compilations of the Hamza title starting with the localised Tilism-e-Hoshruba
My first incident with Tilism-e-Hoshruba was in Sialkot at the age of ten at the same time as my close relative bought a photocopy of its seven volumes, edited by the Urdu bard Raees Ahmed Jafri. The buffalo hide of that fat level was eventful from a large talent of the Tilism carry out by the legendary Pakistani artist, Ustad Allah Bakhsh. It ought to squeeze been that talent - a pieced together of fairies, demons, ogres, dancing girls and princes - that jammed my attention. I focused to fail to notice the florid Persianised Urdu that began each episode and went now into the intrigue that was simpler to bit. A variety of go innovative, however, I began to spot the introductions that were fascinating advertisements for the subsequent action. Who can carry on such weird captions as: "The Cupbearers of the Wine of Buzz Recitation" or the Imbibers of the Wine of Manifestation from the Schooner of Essay give an account the intrigue this way."
I jump face-to-face fascinated by passages like: "Sharara's ambassador flew to the Flood of Blood and standing on its banks cried out, "O Ruler of Wizards! I squeeze been sent by Sharara Jadoo and intend an put off with you!" It was assumed that so heavy-duty a wizard was Afrasiab that if someone called out to him from any direct of his inestimable sophistication, he would gather the call. He hectic furthermore the magic Facsimile of Samri, which bare every secret to him. An army made up of terracotta and shiny puppets carried out his directions. They can break anybody he vital with a disappointment, like that of a devote or panja."
For the near three months of my pre-teens, I breathed and lived in vogue the pages of the Tilism. I followed Amir Hamza Sahib-qiran (Member of the aristocracy of the To your advantage Conjunction) as he followed Zamurrad Shah Bakhtri (a Persian king who claimed spirit), to the mountains of Kohistan. I went in the footsteps of Hamza's grandson Asad Sherdil as he invaded the Tilism and came corner to corner a zone whose trellised whitish gateway was open "like the military hardware of the valued." I was overawed with the powers of Hamza as he breathed the Beyond measure Award on the stiff of his slain son that turned out to be made of lentil flour. I was riveted with the antics of his acquaintance and joker Amr who can delicate any lid and outmanoeuvre the upper limit heavy-duty wizards with the help of Galeem,(the swathe of invisibility) and Zambeel, (the pouch that inherent a tighten up world); charm offerings that had been bestowed on him by the prophets.
That dusk at the IIC brought the magic of the Tilism back to life. Panel the concern of the two fresh Dastan Gohs made me realize how to a great extent our present society has been feeble by relying on study tradition and fables of cultures supplementary than our own into films or compacted into CDs. The tighten up the unexplained of these dastans was that the put off was an active portion of the intrigue. By imagining the events being narrated from the stage each enthusiast of the put off was in effect picturising the action individually in his or her own mind. That night for me, as I squeeze been translating the Tilism into English at home in Lahore, the metropolitan area of Delhi - the City of Djinns - became the metropolitan area of Agate and Ayyars, and the IIC zone changed into the Estate of Talk about. By SHAHNAZ AIJAZUDDIN
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