He is the son of Shaikh Jalāl, Wāṣil, who was the deputy of Shaikh Muḥammad Ghan,* and took great delight in the ecstatic songs and dances of darvīshes. Jamīlī, though he has very little of the ecstatic piety of his father, is yet not without a love of learning and poetic taste, although he has written some ridiculous * verses.
The following verses are extracted from his works:—
“Whenever I think on the rose of thy face,
Like the broken-hearted nightingale I utter lamentations.
If the joy of union with thee has never been my lot,
I can, at least, indulge my heart with grief for the want of
thee.”“Since her ringlets have led me into love's madness,
My distracted heart is bound in the bonds of that mad-
ness.”
He has written an ode in praise of Qāsim ‘Alī Khān, the corn-
“To connect thee with the race of Khāns (nobles)
Is most revolting and most unfit.”
This couplet also is attributed to him, but God knows whether correctly or not:—
“The mouse of my heart, which I nourished with blood
drawn from my liver,
Has been suddenly seized by the cat of love,
Pierced by her teeth, and carried off.”*
His elder brother, Shaikh Faẓīl, was a wonderful Arabic scholar, and has written some fine poetry in Arabic. The following is the opening couplet of an ode which he wrote in answer to an ode by Mu‘īn-ud-dīn anarānī:—
O beautiful of face, my face, from days of old, has declined,
My soul has descended to the pit and tears have followed
like running water.
One day he recited this couplet, and as both he and his respected brother have very sallow complexions I said, “In this opening couplet you have evidently addressed your younger brother.” This quip was very well received. The opening couplet of the original ode, which was answered, is:—
“O thou of easy circumstances, sure thou hast thrown my
affairs into confusion,
Thou hast disturbed my heart by thine absence and it is
in a decline owing to its palpitation.”*
And Shaikh Faẓīl has written on Faīẓī's commentary* an 215 essay in Arabic, in prose and verse, which furnishes sufficient proof of his great learning. At the present time both brothers have set out from Lāhor for their native place. If, in the course of following the object which they have in view, which is a review of all the Imāms of India, they do not slay one another utterly, it will be a wonder.