THE%20SINDH%20STORY

Sindhian ra istalah Sindh madah;
Hindian ra istalah Hind madah.
(The Sindhis are welcome to use the Sindhi idiom; the Hindis are welcome to use
the Hindi idiom.)
Sindhi as we know it today is about 800 years old. But the earliest Sindhi
writings, are only 600 years old. These are the seven riddles (mamui) spoken by
seven faqirs on being decapitated by the rulers. Two of the more important
riddles warned of the dangers from the Kandhar side and prayed for the Sindhu
shifting its flow eastwards.
At about the same time came the religious writings of Ismaili Khojas (Khwajas),
known as “Ginan” (Gnan). They availed of the local language to reach the masses
for religious conversion. However, their diction and idiom were almost entirely
Hindu. Asking the people to get up early and pray, one Ginan says: “Jago Jago
Bhayara, raina wihai” (Wake up dear brothers, the night is over) --- or else “the
hooris will not hold hands with you.”
Other Sindhi poets, it is known, used to sing Sindhi Kaafi in the durbars of
Sheikh Farid and Nizamuddin Aulia. And of course there had been any number
of ballads sung from generation to generation --- and improvised in the process.
The first major Sindhi poet was Qazi Kadan (d.1551), the scholar statesman of
Bakhar. Most of his Dohas have been recovered from Bhagat Haridas’s mutt, in
village Ranela in the Bhiwani district of Haryana, after Independence. They are
transcribed in the Devnagri script. He says: “Let others study grammar, I only
want to contemplate the Lord.” He had no use for “Qanz, Qaduri, Kafiyan”
(Prophet’s traditions, Hanifi law, and traditional grammatical poem); he found
the Lord, he said, elsewhere. He says: “Jogi jagayos, sutto huyus ninda mein”
(The yogi woke me up when I was fast asleep).
Qazi Kadan influenced the great Hindu saint Dadu Dayal of Haryana, who
himself has written some Sindhi poetry.
The next great poet-saint was Shah Abdul Karim (1536--1623). His guru was
Sultan Ibrahim of Bihar, who was so disgusted with killing men in war that h-
renounced the world and arrived in Sindh. When his master presented him a
pair of shoes, Abdul Karim had them re-made into a cap -so that he could wear it
on his head, and not on his feet. Abdul Karim was a simple farmer; but he was a
man of God. Once when his elder brother saw him dance in ecstasy, he slapped
him and dragged him to his mother. The mother rebuked her elder son and told
him that his brother was a spiritual man. Once a friend asked him how he could
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