Amir Khusrau Quotes

Farsi Couplet: Agar firdaus bar roo-e zameen ast, Hameen ast-o hameen ast-o hameen ast. English Translation: If there is a paradise on earth, It is this, it is this, it is this

Farsi Couplet: Mun tu shudam tu mun shudi,mun tun shudam tu jaan shudi Taakas na guyad baad azeen, mun deegaram tu deegari English Translation: I have become you, and you me, I am the body, you soul; So that no one can say hereafter, That you are someone, and me someone else.

Khusrau darya prem ka, ulti wa ki dhaar, Jo utra so doob gaya, jo dooba so paar. English Translation. Oh Khusrau, the river of love Runs in strange directions. One who jumps into it drowns, And one who drowns, gets across.

Farsi Couplet: Ba khak darat rau ast maara, Gar surmah bechashm dar neaayad. English Translation: The dust of your doorstep is just the right thing to apply, If Surmah (kohl powder) does not show its beauty in the eye!

He visits my town once a year. He fills my mouth with kisses and nectar. I spend all my money on him. Who, girl, your man? No, a mango.

Farsi Couplet: Naala-e zanjeer-e Majnun arghanoon-e aashiqanast Zauq-e aan andaza-e gosh-e ulul-albaab neest English Translation: The creaking of the chain of Majnun is the orchestra of the lovers, To appreciate its music is quite beyond the ears of the wise.

Chaap Tilak Chhap tilak sab cheeni ray mosay naina milaikay Chhap tilak sab cheeni ray mosay naina milaikay Prem bhatee ka madhva pilaikay Matvali kar leeni ray mosay naina milaikay Gori gori bayyan, hari hari churiyan Bayyan pakar dhar leeni ray mosay naina milaikay Bal bal jaaon mein toray rang rajwa Apni see kar leeni ray mosay naina milaikay Khusrau Nijaam kay bal bal jayyiye Mohay Suhaagan keeni ray mosay naina milaikay Chhap tilak sab cheeni ray mosay naina milaikay Translation You've taken away my looks, my identity, by just a glance. By making me drink the wine of love-potion, You've intoxicated me by just a glance; My fair, delicate wrists with green bangles in them, Have been held tightly by you with just a glance. I give my life to you, Oh my cloth-dyer, You've dyed me in yourself, by just a glance. I give my whole life to you Oh, Nijam, You've made me your bride, by just a glance.

As I had studied the poetry of Rumi, Jami, Nizami, Hafiz and Amir Khusrau, with some difficulty in the original Persian, and with some ease in various English translations, I realised that Nanak had absorbed the ethos of Islamic poetical mysticism, inherited the belief in ecstasy of union of Baba Farid, Nizam-ud-Din Aulia and Kabir. Of

Falsified history nurtures its own mythologies. A breed of writers and intellectuals still persist in trying to portray the Islamic invasion as some kind of great syncretic carnival, where the invaders came and partook of the local sweetmeats, and the conquered had a happy morsel of biryani, while both sat down to work out the Ganga-Jamuni tehzeeb that we so value today. The bathos of this imagined utopia works only on the ignorance of facts or deliberate distortion. The case of Amir Khusrau (1253–1325 CE) is instructive. Many people believe that he was a mystic, a Sufi poet, the spiritual disciple of his contemporary, the great Sufi saint Nizamuddin Auliya; he is regarded as the progenitor of Hindavi, a language that moved away from Persian and dipped liberally into Braj Bhasha, the language of the common masses; he is seen as having enabled Khari Boli, the precursor to the Hindi spoken today; he is also widely known as the ‘father’ of Urdu and the qawwali, and possibly the inventor of the sitar and the tabla; his admirers have given him the title of ‘Tuti-e-Hind’ or the Parrot of India; his love for India has been extolled; and his qawwalis are still very popular across India. But there is another aspect to Amir Khusrau. He was a prominent member of the court of five Sultans who ruled from Delhi, the most important among whom was Allauddin Khilji. In this capacity, he wrote extensively about their conquests and victories and their destruction of the temples of the infidels. In his book, Khaizan ul Futuh, he describes how ‘the kick of Islam’ destroyed the beautiful temple of the dancing Shiva at Chidambaran. When Malik Kafur, Allauddin’s general, attacked the Chidambaran temple—to exactly quote Amir Khusrau’s triumphant language—‘the heads of brahmans and idolators danced from their necks and fell to the ground at their feet, and blood flowed in torrents. The stone idols called Ling Mahadeo, which had been established a long time at the place and on which the women of the infidels rubbed their vaginas for satisfaction, these, up to this time, the kick of Islam had not managed to break. The Musalmans destroyed all the lings and Deo Narain fell down, and other gods who had fixed their seats there raised their feet and jumped so high that at one leap they reached the fort of Lanka.’10 The same tone and language is there in his descriptions of other such desecrations. Amir Khusrau is an interesting case study. Undoubtedly, his creative output shows that he had assimilated some aspects of Hindu civilisation (his mother was a Hindu), especially in the areas of language and music. At the same time, he provides sufficient proof of his approval of the destruction of Hindu temples and his hostility to the faith of the infidels. Unfortunately, those who seek to whitewash history, dwell only on his contribution to the composite ‘secular’ culture of India. This distortion of history through deliberate amnesia is wrong and needs correction, because it is becoming increasingly futile to hide the truth. The correct appraisal would be to appreciate his cultural contributions to the ultimate development of a syncretic culture, while accepting that this did not change his hostility to the Hindu religion, nor did it represent any reduction or mitigation in the continued destruction by Muslim rulers of Hindu religious and cultural artefacts.

It was also the East India Company that helped bring to a close the era of Sanskrit–Persian coexistence that had lasted some 800 years, since the days of Amir Khusrau. Only then, in the early nineteenth century, did the lure of Persian begin to fade, as English slowly replaced it as the language of government, diplomacy and education in the course of dragging India, willingly or not, into the Anglosphere.105

The polyglot poet, composer, courtier and Indian-born intellectual Amir Khusrau (1253–1325) is in many ways the symbol of this confluence of the two opposing cultures. Born to a father from Khurasan and a mother from Delhi, Khusrau is credited with giving Indian Islamic culture a distinctive flavour for the first time, bringing together Indian classical music and Islamic mysticism, or Sufism, together with the invention of the qawwali. He also played a major role in the literary flowering of Hindavi, the root from which both Urdu and Hindi developed. As he put it himself: