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Document Details :

Title: Maulānā Dāūd and his Candāyan
Author(s): PANDEY, S.M.
Journal: Orientalia Lovaniensia Periodica
Volume: 30    Date: 1999   
Pages: 129-150
DOI: 10.2143/OLP.30.0.583580

Abstract :
Maulānā Dāūd’s Candāyan is the first Sufi text in Hindi which was composed in A.H.781 (1379A.D.). Candāyan has been referred to by Shaikh Quddūs Gangohī (1456-1537 A.D.) and the famous historian Al Badāūni and in the Gazetteers of Awadh and Raibareli district of Uttar Pradesh. However real study of Candāyan started when Parameśvarī Lal (P.L.) Gupta published his book Maulānā Dā?d Dalmaikṛt Candāyan in 1964. Later Mātā Prasād (M.P.) Gupta in 1967 published another text, called Candāyan, (Daūd Viracit Pratham Sūfi Premākhyān). P.L. Gupta had discovered a new manuscript from the Ryland Museum Manchester, in which three hundred and twenty folios are in tact. The manuscript is illustrated with miniature paintings and three hundred and twenty three verses are preserved. In his edition M. P. Gupta utilised the Bikaner manuscript, not available to P.L. Gupta, in which ‘four hundred and thirty nine verses are incorporated. M.P. Gupta’s text is more complete than that of P. L. Gupta since the initial parts of the work, in which praise to God, praise to Muhammad and his four friends and the date of composition of the text and the contemporary king and his Vazir, are all mentioned. These eighteen important verses of the beginning in their complete form are found in the Bikaner manuscript which is in the Devanagari script and was written in Vikram Samvat 1673 (1616 A.D.). Mātā Prasād Gupta’s edition is much better but many textual errors as well as the mistakes of the interpretations in modern Hindi commentary are found in this edition also. Although Candāyan needs reediting, M.P. Gupta’s edition is the most useful edition available to us until now. Recently a text in Urdu has been published by Muhammad Ansarullah but this is not a critical edition at all. Ansarullah has merely produced a text on the basis of P. L Gupta’s and M. P. Gupta’s editions. However, his introduction is useful in that he has given information on the contributions of Urdu scholars to the studies of Candāyan, whereas Hindi scholars have generally ignored their contributions.
Jamīl Jālvī has pulished another text in Pakistan but I have not been able to obtain a copy as yet. In recent years our knowledge of Candāyan has much improved but more work about its content and form, such as the Sūfī elements in the text and the language, still needs to be done.

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