He comes from a village called Kokūwāl* in the Panjāb. ²⁴⁹ His father belongs to the Mājīs,* a large and well-known tribe, and he used to say that his mother was a Sayyid by race. Al­though he is not of noble blood he has a disposition sufficiently noble, and leads a well-regulated life. He studied under his father, Maulānā Yaḥyā, who wrote an ode with this opening couplet:—

“From the rain of Thy favour, O merciful Providence,
There remain, from each drop, in the heart of the wise a
hundred rivers of precious secrets.”

Shīrī had great facility in writing verse, and once boasted that he had composed thirty odes in one night, but God knows whether this was true or not. One day he was reading in an assembly a fragment from his dīvān, which contained this hemistich,

“I have thrown four volumes of verse into the river Cināb.”

The late Maulānā Ilāhdād of Amroha* at once said, “What if you had thrown this spill* of paper after them?”

Shīrī possessed, to some extent, unworldliness, sympathy, and the ascetic spirit, and has written verses in this vein, for example,

“I am lord of the table of poverty, and never
Will my spirit allow me to beg from my friend.
To borrow from Hindūs at four hundred per cent
Is better than receiving gifts from these Musalmāns.”

No poet among his contemporaries has written better pessi­mistic poetry* than he has. This is a specimen of such verses:—

“O, ye dead, rejoice that ye are at rest,
For pleasure has departed from our midst!
O, ye who are to follow us, read the fātiḥa*
To offer thanks that you were not living in our time!”

In the composition of elaborate odes and epigrams he certainly excelled all the poets of his time, and silenced them by making such felicity of diction as they possessed seem as naught beside ²⁵⁰ his own. The following fragment justly |describes his abilities in this line.

“If thou ask me of the poetry of Shīrī
I would say, if justice is to be done,

That not all the verses that poets write pass as current
coin
Just as nobody's wine is all clear.
Shīrī, praise not the base,
For praise befits the noble.*
Shīrī's ghazals and manavīs are mere rubbish,
And this is intended neither for praise nor for blame,
But the fame of his odes and epigrams
Has reached the uttermost parts of the earth.”*

The few verses quoted below are the production of his brilliant wit:—

“My heart is so enamoured of the beauty of Salmā*
That it wanders abroad with her heart in search of
consolation.
The remembrance of another by that heart in which thou
dwellest
Is equivalent to the worship of ‘Uzzā* in the Ka‘bah.*
The beloved has so entirely surrounded herself with an
array of coquetry,
That even desire found no way of access to her in that
dense crowd.”

“Bid the caravan move faster, that Egypt
May no longer send back to us the cries of Zulaikhā*
grieving for our absence.”

“I have bound my letter to thee with a white thread to
signify
That in my separation from thee no blood remains in the
veins of my soul.”

“Deprived of thy face my existence is a sea of pain and
grief,
My ribs are the waves of that sea.”

“She comes to slay me, with the sword of cruelty in her
hand.
Whatever men relate of injustice is committed by that
cruel one.

251 “In the abundance of its hopefulness the heart believes that
a messenger comes from Shīrīn
To the unfortunate Farhād* even though it be Parvīz
himself that comes.”

“Wherefore, O tear, dost thou traverse my eye
When I bid farewell to my dear?
Where wert thou then, that thou now obscurest my sight?
O Zephyr, my beloved has entirely filled the mould of my
desire,
I am thy devoted servant, but thou wanderest overmuch in
her street.”

The following few couplets are from an ode of question and answer* by him:—

“I said, ‘O heart, what is the cause of this change in the
condition of the world?’
My heart replied, ‘Silence, the brain of heaven is thrown
into confusion.’

I said, ‘From the well of hope the water of desire is not to
be had.’
It replied ‘The well-rope of hope was not sufficiently long.’*
I said, ‘If there is any rest anywhere, tell me where it may
be found?
It replied, ‘In sleep, they say, the sleep of death.’
I said, ‘Can anyone spend his life in joy?’
It said ‘This is mere speech, which never comes to pass.’
I said ‘Why is the brow of the beloved one furrowed with
a frown?’
It said, ‘It is ill to contend with one ill-disposed.’
I said, ‘The mirror of wisdom is covered with rust.’
It said, ‘Where is the burnisher, generosity, that it may
once more receive a polish?’
I said, ‘The eloquent are the ornament of the assembly.’ ²⁵²
It said, ‘Thou canst not say these things to the wealthy.’
I said, ‘Alas for these men, who are far from the truth!’
It said, ‘Let justice be done on this deceitful race, which
follows injustice.’
I said, ‘I have a detailed complaint to make against my
fate.’
It said, ‘To the King thou must relate it succinctly.’
I said, ‘To Akbar, who resembles Jamshīd in glory and
Sulaimān in wisdom?’
It said, ‘Yes, the King of high destiny who in dignity
resembles the sun.’
I said, ‘That personality which is second only to the
prophet in honour?’
It said, ‘Yes to that creature of God who surpasses all in
beneficence.’
I said, ‘By race and descent the crown and the throne are
justly his.’
It said, ‘His favour and liberality are the protection of his
kingdom and his people.’

The following two couplets are from an ode which he wrote on the utility of the elephant:—

“How sweetly pass those nights in which, praying inces-
santly for the safety of the King's elephant,
I read the chapter ‘night’* by the margin of the river
Biyāh;
On the fair ones of Kūkūwāl with the gait of an elephant*
and the eyes of gazelles
I think every moment, and heave sighs from my bosom.”

The following is the opening couplet of an ode in which he enumerates six things as being necessary.

“O thou who holdest the world in the grasp of thy wisdom
by the force of thy sword and thy arrow,
Crowned monarch of the throne and of fate,
Who conquerest the world by means of thy elephants and
thy horses,
Thy crown and thy throne, thy sword and thy arrow are
the sun, the moon, the lightning, and the meteor,
A hundred writers* would be unable to reckon the number
of thy elephants and horses.”

As his dīvān is exceedingly well known I refrain from quoting any more of his verses.

At the time when he was employed on the translation of the Mahābhārata* he said, “These prolix fables resemble the dreams of a man in a fever.”

Mullā Shīrī's death occurred in the hilly country of the Yūsufzais, in the year H. 994 (A.D. 1586) as has been already mentioned.*