Muslim Saints of South Asia: The eleventh to ... - blog blog blog

THE ASCETIC OF PAKPATTAN
reciprocal, because the gift of mystic clairvoyance had foretold a
surprise visit of the young friend to the saint, and on meeting him for
the first time he greeted Nizamuddin with the verse:
Ae ātish-i firāqat dilhā kabāb karda
Sailāb-i ishtiyāqat jānhā kharāb karda
The flame of separation from you has burnt hearts into
cinders
The deluge of passion for you has laid souls to waste.
(Amir Khurd 1978: 106)
Although Nizamuddin was far better educated than his murshid and,
in contrast to the unsophisticated sage, was a refined intellectual, for
his knowledge of people and an understanding of the secrets of
spiritual life he is wholly indebted to Shaikh Farid, who possessed
an inate wisdom. The latter kept him from the temptation of
arrogance, 20 so characteristic of educated person at all times, having
taught him one of his most important precepts: ‘Acquire knowledge
through humility’. When in the presence of the saint people extolled
the erudition, eloquence and manners of his favourite, he used to
joke that a pīr is only a mashshāt.a, a maidservant beautifying an
even otherwise beautiful bride.
Lying on his death-bed, Shaikh Farid had his thoughts riveted on
Nizamuddin Awliya, called him all the time and complained to his
associates that in his time he himself had been late to the death-bed
of Qutbuddin Bakhtiyar Kaki, thereby depriving himself of the
happiness of seeing his favourite disciple by his side during his hour
of death. Referring to his favourite son, also Nizamuddin by name,
who was an officer in the Sultan’s army, Baba Farid said in his last
moments: ‘He is coming to me, but what is the use of it, if I would
not go out to meet him?’ (Amir Khurd 1978: 90–1). As can be seen,
hagiographic literature is capable of being as dramatic and intensely
emotional as the best specimens of fiction.
For that matter Shaikh Farid was one of the first mystic poets
in the subcontinent whose literary activity manifestly exceeded the
limits of operative Sufi poetry as an allegorical expression of spiritual
experience, ineffable through other verbal means. Farid has left a
considerable number of verses in Persian, later somewhat artificially
collected into a dīwān, and a separate corpus of couplets in modern
Indian dialects (Multani and Khari Boli), whose fate is unique in their
own way. One hundred and twelve couplets, the so-called salokas
included in the ‘primordial’ book of Sikhs Ādi Granth (compiled
98