Dastangoi (Urdu: داستان گوئی) is a 13th century

Urdu Urdu (;"Urdu"
''

oral storytelling Oral storytelling is an ancient and intimate tradition between the storyteller and their audience. The storyteller and the listeners are physically close, often seated together in a circular fashion. The intimacy and connection is deepened by t ...

art form. The Persian style of

dastan Dastan ( fa, داستان ''dâstân'', meaning "story" or "tale") is an ornate form of oral history from Central Asia, Iran, Turkey and Azerbaijan. A dastan is generally centered on one individual who protects his tribe or his people from ...

evolved in 16th century. One of the earliest references in print to dastangoi is a 19th-century text containing 46 volumes of the adventures of Amir Hamza titled '' Dastan e Amir Hamza''. The art form reached its

zenith The zenith (, ) is an imaginary point directly "above" a particular location, on the celestial sphere. "Above" means in the vertical direction (plumb line) opposite to the gravity direction at that location (nadir). The zenith is the "highest" ...

in the Indian sub-continent in the 19th century and is said to have died with the demise of Mir Baqar Ali in 1928. Dastangoi was revived by historian, author and director

Mahmood Farooqui Mahmood Farooqui is an Indian writer, performer and director. He specializes in a type of story-telling known as ''Dastangoi''. Farooqui along with his uncle Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, noted Urdu poet and literary critic, revived Dastangoi, the anci ...

in 2005. Syed Sahil Agha has amalgamated Dastangoi with music & singing in 2010. At the centre of dastangoi is the dastango, or storyteller, whose voice is his main artistic tool in orally recreating the

or the story. Notable 19th-century dastangos included Amba Prasad Rasa, Mir Ahmad Ali Rampuri, Muhammad Amir Khan, Syed Husain Jah, and Ghulam Raza. A Story-teller reciting from the

Etymology

Dastangoi has its origin in the

Persian language Persian (), also known by its endonym Farsi (, ', ), is a Western Iranian language belonging to the Iranian branch of the Indo-Iranian subdivision of the Indo-European languages. Persian is a pluricentric language predominantly spoken and ...

. ''Dastan'' means a tale; the suffix ''-goi'' makes the word mean "to tell a tale".

History

Indian urban anthropologist Ghaus Ansari ascribed the origin of dastangoi to

Pre-Islamic Arabia Pre-Islamic Arabia ( ar, شبه الجزيرة العربية قبل الإسلام) refers to the Arabian Peninsula before the History of Islam, emergence of Islam in 610 CE. Some of the settled communities developed into distinctive civilizati ...

, and detailed how the eastward

spread of Islam The spread of Islam spans about 1,400 years. Muslim conquests following Muhammad's death led to the creation of the caliphates, occupying a vast geographical area; conversion to Islam was boosted by Arab Muslim forces conquering vast territorie ...

carried dastangoi to

Iran Iran, officially the Islamic Republic of Iran, and also called Persia, is a country located in Western Asia. It is bordered by Iraq and Turkey to the west, by Azerbaijan and Armenia to the northwest, by the Caspian Sea and Turkmeni ...

and then to

Delhi Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, primarily its western or right bank, Delhi shares borders w ...

in India. From Delhi, dastangoi made its way to

Lucknow Lucknow (, ) is the capital and the largest city of the Indian state of Uttar Pradesh and it is also the second largest urban agglomeration in Uttar Pradesh. Lucknow is the administrative headquarters of the eponymous district and division ...

in the 18th century, aided by the

Indian Rebellion of 1857 The Indian Rebellion of 1857 was a major uprising in India in 1857–58 against the rule of the British East India Company, which functioned as a sovereign power on behalf of the British Crown. The rebellion began on 10 May 1857 in the fo ...

, during which several artists, writers and dastangos moved from Delhi to Lucknow. In Lucknow, dastangoi was popular across all classes, and was regularly performed at diverse locations including ''chowks'' (city squares), private households, and ''afeem khana'' (public opium houses). "It became so popular among opium addicts that they made listening to stories an important element of their gatherings," wrote Ansari. "The prolonged intoxication and prolonged stories narrated by professional story-tellers was mostly combined. Each afeem khana had its own story-teller to entertain the clients; whereas, among the rich, every household used to appoint a dastango as a member of its staff." According to Abdul Halim Sharar, the noted author and historian of nineteenth century Lucknow, the Art of dastangoi, was divided under the following headings:"War", "Pleasure, "Beauty", "Love" and "Deception". Mahmood farooqi

The early dastango's told tales of magic, war and adventure, and borrowed freely from other stories such as the

Arabian Nights ''One Thousand and One Nights'' ( ar, أَلْفُ لَيْلَةٍ وَلَيْلَةٌ, italic=yes, ) is a collection of Middle Eastern folk tales compiled in Arabic during the Islamic Golden Age. It is often known in English as the ''Arabian ...

, storytellers such as

Rumi Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī ( fa, جلال‌الدین محمد رومی), also known as Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī (), Mevlânâ/Mawlānā ( fa, مولانا, lit= our master) and Mevlevî/Mawlawī ( fa, مولوی, lit= my ma ...

, and storytelling traditions such as the

Panchatantra The ''Panchatantra'' (IAST: Pañcatantra, ISO: Pañcatantra, sa, पञ्चतन्त्र, "Five Treatises") is an ancient Indian collection of interrelated animal fables in Sanskrit verse and prose, arranged within a frame story.

. From the 14th century, Persian dastangois started focusing on the life and adventures of Amir Hamza, the paternal uncle of the Islamic prophet

Muhammad Muhammad ( ar, مُحَمَّد; 570 – 8 June 632 Common Era, CE) was an Arab religious, social, and political leader and the founder of Islam. According to Muhammad in Islam, Islamic doctrine, he was a prophet Divine inspiration, di ...

. The Indian stream of dastangoi added storytelling elements such as ''aiyyari'' (trickery) to these tales.

List of early Urdu Dastans

* ''Sab Ras'' - Mulla Wajhi * '' Nau tarz-i murassa‘'' - Husain ‘Atā Khān Tahsīn * ''Nau ā'īn-i hindī (Qissa-i Malik Mahmūd Gīti-Afroz)'' - Mihr Chand Khatrī * ''Jazb-i ‘ishq'' - Shāh Husain Haqīqat * ''Nau tarz-i murassa‘'' - Muhammad Hādī a.k.a. Mirzā Mughal Ghāfil * ''Ārā'ish-i mahfil ( Qissa-i Hātim Tā'ī)'' - Haidar Bakhsh Haidarī * '' Bāgh o bahār (Qissa-i chahār darwesh)'' - Mīr Amman * '' Dāstān-i Amīr Hamza'' - Khalīl ‘Alī Khān Ashk * ''Fasana e Ajaib'' - Rajab Ali Baig Suroor * ''

Deval Devi Deval Devi (variantly known as Dewal Devi, Dewal Rani, Deval Rani and Dewal Di) was daughter of Karan Deva II (the last sovereign of the Vaghela dynasty of Gujarat).She was married to Khizr Khan, the eldest son of Alauddin Khalji, in 1308. Eight ...

-Khizr Khan'' - (Romantic dastan of a Vaghela princess and Delhi's

Khalji The Khalji or Khilji (Pashto: ; Persian: ) dynasty was a Turco-Afghan dynasty which ruled the Delhi sultanate, covering large parts of the Indian subcontinent for nearly three decades between 1290 and 1320.Amir Khusrau Abu'l Hasan Yamīn ud-Dīn Khusrau (1253–1325 AD), better known as Amīr Khusrau was an Indo-Persian culture, Indo-Persian Sufi singer, musician, poet and scholar who lived under the Delhi Sultanate. He is an iconic figure in the cultural his ...

* Khamsa (Khamsa-e-Khusrau) ''five classical romances dastan'': Hasht-Bihisht, Matlaul-Anwar,

Khosrow and Shirin Khosrow and Shirin ( fa, خسرو و شیرین) is the title of a famous tragic romance by the Persian poet Nizami Ganjavi (1141–1209), who also wrote Layla and Majnun. It tells a highly elaborated fictional version of the story of the love ...

Layla and Majnun ''Layla & Majnun'' ( ar, مجنون ليلى ; Layla's Mad Lover) is an old story of Arab origin, about the 7th-century Bedouin poet Qays ibn al-Mulawwah and his ladylove Layla bint Mahdi (later known as Layla al-Aamiriya). "The Layla ...

and Aaina-Sikandari. -

Amir Khusrow Abu'l Hasan Yamīn ud-Dīn Khusrau (1253–1325 AD), better known as Amīr Khusrau was an Indo-Persian Sufi singer, musician, poet and scholar who lived under the Delhi Sultanate. He is an iconic figure in the cultural history of the Indian s ...

Dastangoi in print

Fort William College Fort William College (also known as the College of Fort William) was an academy of oriental studies and a centre of learning, founded on 18 August 1800 by Lord Wellesley, then Governor-General of British India, located within the Fort William co ...

Kolkata Kolkata (, or , ; also known as Calcutta , the official name until 2001) is the capital of the Indian state of West Bengal, on the eastern bank of the Hooghly River west of the border with Bangladesh. It is the primary business, comme ...

published an Urdu version of the dastaan of Amir Hamza in the beginning of the 19th century.

Munshi Nawal Kishore Munshi Nawal Kishore (3 January 1836 – 19 February 1895) was a book publisher from India. He has been called Caxton of India. In 1858, at the age of 22, he founded the Nawal Kishore Press at Lucknow. This institution today is the oldest printi ...

, a publisher in

, began publishing the dastaans by the 1850s. A few publications were also done in Persian. * In 1881, Nawal Kishore commissioned the print edition of the entire Hamza ''dastaan'' from three dastangos, Mohammed Husain Jah, Ahmed Husain Qamar, and Sheikh Tasadduq Husain. Over a period of twenty five years, the trio produced a collection of 46 volumes. Each volume could be read individually or as a part of the complete work. * ''Dastan-e-Hind'', is a collection of '' dastans'' and Indian

folklore Folklore is shared by a particular group of people; it encompasses the traditions common to that culture, subculture or group. This includes oral traditions such as tales, legends, proverbs and jokes. They include material culture, ranging ...

, has been performed by many artists around the globe, by '' Syed Sahil Agha''. 2010. *''Toh Hazireen Hua Yun... Dastan-e-Ankit Chadha'' - A collection of dastans woven, by ''

Ankit Chadha Ankit Chadha (21 December 1987 – 9 May 2018) was an Indian writer, story-teller, oral narrative performance artist, researcher and educator. He specialized in research-based narratives performed in the centuries-old Dastangoi form of storyte ...

''. 2019. *''Dastangoi-2'' is a sequel to earlier book. It contains the collection of modern dastans written and adapted, by ''

''. 2019.

References

External links

* * * {{cite book, last=Ghalib Lakhnavi & Abdullah Bilgram, trans Musharraf Ali Farooqi, title=The Adventures of Amir Hamza: Special Abridged Edition, year=2012, publisher=

Modern Library The Modern Library is an American book publishing imprint and formerly the parent company of Random House. Founded in 1917 by Albert Boni and Horace Liveright as an imprint of their publishing company Boni & Liveright, Modern Library became an ...