Shah Latif, often known as the Shakespeare of Sindh, ‘burst on the scene with his passion and his melody’, in the words of Ram Panjwani. It was during the reign of the Kalhoros that the mystic poet Shah Abdul Latif Bhittai (Novem– January 1, 1752) made his presence felt. Ajwani also observes that Qazan’s verse ‘bears witness to the most remarkable character of Sindhi poetry-the mingling of the twin streams of Hindu philosophy and Muslim faith to form the swelling waters of what is popularly known as Sufistic poetry (1957:254).’Ī page from Mukesh Tilokani's Selected Poetry of Shah Abdul Latif in calligraphy In his essay on Sindhi literature in the Sahitya Akademi publication, Contemporary Indian Literature (1957), Ajwani also notes that the first recorded Sindhi poetry is the verses of Qazi Qazan at the end of the 15th century, cast in doha form, and ‘uttering the note that is a constant feature in Sindhi poetry, namely that without the sight of the Beloved (or realisation of the Infinite), external accomplishments such as scholarship and piety are so many monsters of the deep to drag one down to perdition’. ‘Sindhi literature has vanished into this limbo of oblivion,’ Ajwani writes, ‘and no excavation can give us an idea of the Sindhi literature earlier than the sixteenth century’.

Rakhal Das Bannerji’s epoch-making excavations in the 1920s unearthed Mohen-jo-Daro, the Mound of the Dead, revealing that as far back as 3240 BCE–2750 BCE, Sindh had a civilisation in many ways more advanced than that of Sumer or Egypt. Ajwani in his History of Sindhi Literature (1960), ‘The Sindhu has had a profound effect on Sindhi life and culture’, but its shifting character made Sindhi life unstable as the river constantly pushed its boundaries across the valley, wiping out whole towns, converting bustling ports into desert tracts. Back cover of Dr Parso Jessaram Gidwani’s book, Glimpses of Sindhi Language, showing the mighty SindhuĪccording to L.H.

Poetry sindhi