Very little research has been done on the narrative value of Islamic popular devotional literature. Analyses and translations of such Sunni or Shi'i texts from the vernacular languages are still rare, as scholarly attention has tended to focus on the musicological and anthropological aspects. Recently, however, Isma c ili scholars have devoted increasing attention to religious hymns from the Indian subcontinent.

The Isma c ili (or the Shia Imami Isma c ili Muslims, to give their full name) presently rank among the most progressive and prosperous of the Muslim groups, despite their relatively small numbers (some fifteen million people) and great geographical dispersion over approximately twenty-five countries, from their original base in the Middle East and Central Asia into South Asia, and in more recent times into East and South Africa, Europe, and North America.

The Isma c ili sect has had a long turbulent history. From the ninth to the thirteenth centuries, when their power was destroyed by the Mongols and Mamelukes, they were the most controversial and powerful Shi c i splinter group; during the Fatimid caliphate they nearly achieved political and intellectual hegemony over the Muslim world. Because of the united efforts of their enemies they were pushed to the marginal regions of the Islamic world, that is, to South Asia and mountainous Central Asia. In the subsequent seven centuries of hiding and obscurity they managed to survive and even gain numerous converts, particularly in the Indian subcontinent, through their vigorous and astute missionary activities under the Pirs and Da c is (chief propagandists). These figures linked the community with the Imam, who remained in occultation in Iran until the middle of the last century, when the Isma c ilis finally reemerged in India from their long taqiyya (religious dissimulation). They started their reunification under the spiritual authority of the hereditary Imams and claimed a legitimate place within the Muslim and the world community.

The long centuries of persecution and oppression have resulted in great secrecy concerning the religion, particularly its sacred literature. Their rich medieval intellectual tradition was revealed during the first half of our century by the scholarship of W. Ivanow and H. Corbin, but it was the new generation of Isma c ili scholars (Azim Nanji being one of the first) who started paying serious attention to a later development of their literature, the partly neglected, partly concealed heritage of ginans, the remnants of their Satpanth (True Path) popular religious movement in India.

In her handsomely produced book the young Isma c ili scholar Tazim R. Kassam characterizes ginans as follows:

A heritage of devotional poetry, the ginan tradition is rooted in the musical and poetic matrix of the Indian culture.... Traditionally recited during daily ritual prayers, ginans have been revered for generations...as sacred compositions (sastra). The term ginan itself has a double significance: on one hand, it means religious knowledge or wisdom, analogous to the Sanskrit word jnana, on the other hand, it means song or recitation, which suggests a link to the Arabic ganna and the Urdu/Hindi gana, both verbs meaning to sing. (1)

Ginans are attributed to the medieval Isma c ili spiritual guides, the Da c is and the Pirs. They are are sung in the jama c at khanes (prayer halls) during morning and evening services, or on special occasions such as holidays and funerals. They are always sung to the traditional Indian raga tune, but are not accompanied by musical instruments.

Ginans, in addition to their liturgical role, serve as repositories for the collective memory, bearing testimony to the history of the Satpanth community (manuscripts were even used as legal documents in the nineteenth-century, when they helped reorganize the dispersed communities under the spiritual authority of the hereditary Imam). Great emphasis is laid on their memorization, and oral transmission is stressed. Though believed to have originally been oral compositions, there is also a manuscript tradition and a special type of archaic Sindhi script, the Khojki, used for their recording. The ancient manuscripts have been destroyed or buried; the oldest ones extant date to the eighteenth century. Ginans are found in many Indian dialects such as Sindhi, Multani, Punjabi, Gujarati, and Hindi. Recently the Gujarati language and script have played the principal role in the modern preservation of ginans.

It was a Gujarati anthology of ginans that the author used for her translations. The hymns are centered around the mysterious and complex figure of the great saint, Pir Shams, who has come to symbolize early Isma c ili missions (da c wa) in Sand, or more precisely in the Multan area. He is sometimes identified with Shams-e Tabrizi, Rumi's spiritual master. His activities are placed between the mid-twelfth and mid-thirteenth centuries by the author.

In order to better contextualize her translations of the 106 ginans relating to Pir Shams (about one-tenth of the estimated extant ginan corpus), Kassam devotes part 1, about one-third of the book, to a discussion of the history of Isma c ilism, the development of the Satpanth movement in India, the problems of Isma c ili cultural identity, and the state of scholarship on the sect. She supplements her explanations of these difficult topics with extensive notes and appendices, the latter containing a translation of a prose hagiography of Shams and glosses of the mostly Hindu names, epithets, and local characters.

Part 2 consists of the English translations of the 106 ginans from Gujarati. Their unusual imagery is the relic of the long taqiyya period, when inner meaning (batin) was enwrapped in a Vaishnavite surface structure (zahir) for the twofold purposes of secrecy and propaganda. References to Hindu mythology and epics are abundant. It is certainly surprising that c Ali, the first Shi c i Imam, appears as the tenth Avatar and is addressed as "Swami Raja" in addition to his usual Persian title "Shah," and even appears on a chariot in Indian heroic fashion (No. 32). Pious Isma c ili women converts are referred to as sati, and the Pir is addressed as Guru and nara.

Careful reading reveals the "hidden" recurrent theme of conversion and triumph over indigenous beliefs. Certain other hymns are in the traditional Muslim vein, depicting the fate of Everyman in his grave (an ancient and common motif well known from the Sufi literature [No. 23]) or the signs of the coming Last Judgment (No. 50). Others are simply didactic or polemic songs. No. 25 is a very interesting and puzzling narrative that describes, according to Kassam, the death of Pir Shams. It is a pity that the author does not provide here (as she usually does) the original term for the ambivalent English word "case," which the congregation must prepare for the farewell ritual. Would this be a coffin or a bier?

Also some comment would have been desirable concerning the mysterious ghatpat ceremony of offering up holy water, to which there are many references in the texts. Modern scholarship pays much attention to Isma c ili theology and philosophy but little to its ritual. Is this ceremony typical of the Satpanth only? Unfortunately, Kassam provides few details on the performance side, being primarily interested - like her predecessors - in problems of chronology and historicity, so that her focus is generally too much on the philological side. One wishes that she could have included more detailed anthropological or folkloristic accounts of the community.

The translation of the ginan anthology is concluded by twenty-eight garbis, special songs actually sung by Pir Shams himself as he began converting Hindus during a festival. Garbi originally meant a Gujarati folk dance, a circle dance (hence the title) around a lamp pot in honor of a deity (the goddess Mata Bhavani in the texts). According to legend, Pir Shams saw such a dance during a Hindu festival, joined in and started to sing, calling the Hindus to abandon the worship of their idols. He worked many miracles and finally converted even the Brahmins, the local king, and his ministers.

Syncretistic traditions are not faring well nowadays. Fundamentalists are more than eager to extirpate them, and even liberals have started to view them with contempt. For the intellectuals of a religious minority to disclose and even cherish their controversial cultural heritage requires great moral courage and dedication. There is a tendency in Isma c ili officialdom to discourage research on ginans; some of the ginans translated here (such as No. 32, the so-called Ten Avatar) are no longer in use. It is only individual scholars who still find them important for preserving the memory of the centuries-old life of the community with its great historical and emotional value. With the present loss and decay of traditional culture throughout the world, such efforts deserve our appreciation.

Kinga MARKUS Sagamihara, Japan

COPYRIGHT 1996 Asian Folklore Studies (Japan)

COPYRIGHT 1997 Information Access Company