Unearthing a forgotten poet: Vājīd in legends and in manuscripts

The paper shows on the example of Vājīd, a poet once popular but neglected in colonial and nationalist historiography, that rich treasures of Indian literature still await unearthing and philological work. The extraordinary popularity of Vājīd (fl. 1600) in Hindi before the advent of western modernism is shown by the high number of manuscripts containing his works and by the fact that he was considered to be the best exponent of the poetic form arilla. Hardly anything of his more than hundred and twenty works is published today and he is scarcely mentioned in modern literary histories. The paper examines early sectarian and secular sources on Vājīd’s life, compares them with Vājīd’s poetry and with early manuscript material, follows up his modern reception and presents the range of this poet’s works