An Urdu lampoon

Insha', Mir Insha'allah Khan Dihlavi. Lampoon of Gyan Chand Sahukar.

€ 18,000.00

A unique survival from the flowering of Urdu poetry: an illustrated manuscript of a bawdy lampoon by the famous Urdu polyglot poet Insha' (ca. 1752-1817 CE). The poem follows the old, wealthy, and lecherous Gyan Chand Sahukar, who is fooled by his opportunistic servant Khairat and the beautiful courtesan Bhangi Amir Baksh. Captioned portraits of all three together form the illustrated frontispiece: Largest, a seated Gyand Chand Sahukar reclines against a bolster in his garden, while a smaller Khairat leans in to listen, and below Bhangi Amir Baksh appears recumbent in a sedan chair with its curtains thrown open.

Told in the lively verse for which Insha' was so famous, the story recounts how the wealthy man commissions his servant to procure a courtesan. However, upon the courtesan's arrival, she finds her client seized by sudden incapacity. When he finally steels himself to pounce, she slaps him, and he cries out and flees into another room. His servant swiftly agrees to "persuade" the courtesan to leave in exchange for twice the fee agreed, and evidently everyone goes home happy, while the fooled Gyan Chand Sahukar congratulates himself on his clever scheme to rid himself of a troublesome tryst.

Mir Insha'allah Khan Dihlavi, best known by his pen name of Insha', was the son of a successful Delhi physician, and a favourite in the court of Shah 'Alam. He was prolific in Persian and Urdu, foundational for the formation of modern Urdu poetry and prose, and scurrilous and combative in equal measure. Insha' had an acute ear for vernacular and a sincere interest in different spoken registers. All three protagonists are given dialogue in appropriate registers, while the narrative is written in a formal poetic register, creating, in a brief poem, a dense soundscape. This manuscript was produced decades into the explosion of popular Urdu lithographic print culture and was in its original form effectively a pamphlet in luridly painted covers. Whether it represents a little-known genre of popular Urdu manuscript or is simply a one-off produced for the private pleasure of the copyist is as yet unclear.