RASUL MIR (19th century), the Kashmiri romantic poet was a contemporary of Gami and Miskin. His poems, of which 79 remain, are remarkable for their rich sensuousness. Some of them are in the traditional vatsun form while others are ghazals. Rasul Mir used the ghazal form so artistically that it is now a part of Kashmiri literary tradition.
If love is the theme of his poems, music is its vibrant note. Alive to the musical possibilities of language, the poet uses words, speech, rhythm, internal rhymes and inflexion with an ingenuity that leaves the reader spellbound. In the skilful use of alliteration and assonance, Rasul Mir stands unrivalled in Kashmiri poetry. The reader receives some fine samples of his poem in the translations provided in this book.
G.R. MALIK (b. 1946) is Reader in the Post- Graduate Department of English, University of Kashmir, Srinagar. In this monograph, Dr. Malik examines Rasul Mir's poetry against the background of his life and times.
I do not know whether I would ever have thought of writing about Rasul Mir had the Sahitya Akademi not asked me to do it. However, having been entrusted with the job, I have tried to do it as well as I could. I am fully conscious of my limitations and shall be extremely grateful to scholars of Kashmiri language in general and Mir specialists in particular if they kindly let me know of the lapses and shortcomings in this monograph. To the most prominent authority on Mir, Mohammad Yousuf Taing, I should acknowledge my debt here: but for his pioneering work in editing the collected poems of Rasul Mir, it would have been very difficult to prepare this monograph. I am also thankful to Professor Rahman Rahi, one of the most distinguished poets of modern Kashmir, and a former Professor of Kashmiri in the Kashinir University, for some fruitful discussions I had with him about Rasul Mir. Last but not least, my heartfelt gratitude is due to the Sahitya Akademi which invited me to write this monograph and condoned a lot of delay on my part in writing it out.
In this monograph very few Kashmiri words and verses have been used in the original and those only when it seemed absolutely necessary to illustrate some point. Such words and verses appear in the Roman script where I generally follow Sir George Abraham Grierson from whose practice I have not deviated except for strong phonetic reasons.
In the English rendering of Kashmiri verses, words like 'thou', 'thy' and some other archaic words and expressions, common to poetry and translations of poetry, have not been used because they are now regarded as obsolete and out of date.
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