, and the present Rulers of lesser States such as Patiala, Nabha,
Tonk, and Rampur, are deeply interested in the cultivation of poetry
in their Dominions.

In the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries many towns in India had
extensive and flourishing literary coteries, and it is from the poets
of that period that this handful of verses is gathered. The Mushaira--a
poetical concourse, wherein rival poets meet to try their skill in
a tournament of verse--is still an institution in India. Delhi, Agra,
Lucknow, Lahore, Cawnpore, Allahabad, Benares, Calcutta, and
Hyderabad, have all been, and some still are, nests of singing birds.
Of the extent of Urdu literature some idea may be gained from the fact
that a History of it written about 1870 gives the names of some three
thousand authors, and that Tazkiras or anthologies containing
selections from many poets are very numerous.

The poetry is very varied and of great interest. It includes moral
verses and counsels, sometimes in intermingled verse and prose; heroic
poems telling the old tales of the loves of Khusru and Shirin, of Yusuf
and Zuleika, of Majnun and Leila, and the romances of chivalry; elegies
on the deaths of Hasan and Hussein, and of various monarchs; devotional
poems in praise of Muhammad and the Imams; eulogies of the reigning
Ruler or other patron or protector of the poor; satires upon men and
institutions, sometimes upon Nature herself, specially upon such
phenomena as heat, cold, inundations and pestilence; descriptive verse
relating to the seasons and the months, the flowers and the trees.
Above all there is a great wealth of love poetry, both secular and
mystic, where, in impassioned ghazals or odes, the union of man with
God is celebrated under various allegories, as the bee and the lotus,
the nightingale and the rose, the moth and the flame.

Most of the poets represented in this book write as Sufis, or Muslim
mystics, and scoff at the unenlightened orthodox. For them God is in
all and through all, to be worshipped equally in the Kaaba and in the
Temple of the Idols, or too great to be adored adequately through the
ritual of any creed. He is symbolized as the beautiful and cruel Beloved,
difficult to find, withdrawn behind the veil, inspiring and demanding
all worship and devotion. The Lover is the Madman, derided by the
unsympathetic crowd, but happy in his ecstatic despair. He drinks the
wine of love and is filled with a divine intoxication. For him th