Western theorist, as he struggled to explain how an untrue statement could have a morally salubrious effect.
Now the questions raised by Plato and Aristotle were unknown to, or unrecognized by, Arab-Iranian and Indian literary theory, the two traditional and formative influences on Urdu literature.' The classical Indian theorists were interested in questions about how poetry worked, not in asking what social service it performed, or whether it was true or false, it was perhaps obvious to the Indian thinkers that the poet was a maker of things, not a discoverer of verifiable "truths." As V. Raghavan says, "The Upanishad said that what was well done was indeed the most delectable thing (rasa). Here can be seen the concept of rasa which later became the core of Indian aesthetics." Discussing the seminal ideas of the great Kashmin theoretician Nayaka (10th century), Raghavan says, "Comparing poetic expression with law and scripture on one hand, and story and news on the other, Nayaka said that in the former the letter mattered; in poetry the way a thing was said or conveyed was all in all."
The Arabs viewed the question of the truth of poetry in two ways, one of them strikingly similar to the Indian vision. Qudama ibn Ja'far (11th century) plainly declared that what matters in poetry is the words, not the content. Words make poems: content does not. Ibn Qutaiba, writing what is widely regarded as the first major book of Arabic poetics, nearly two centuries before Qudama, asserted that poetry contains "wisdom resembling the wisdom of philosophers." Thus poetry produced its own kind of knowledge, it didn't depend on philosophy for its validity According to Ibn Qutaiba, poetry is "the mine of knowledge of the Arabs, the book of their wisdom the truthful witness on the day of dispute, the final proof at the time of argument."
The history of Western speculation about the nature of poetry is the history of discussions emanating from the conflicting claims made against and for it by Plato and Aristotle respectively. Much European critical literature of the medieval period, and certainly all of it after the Renaissance, can be properly understood only if this fact is kept in view M. H Abrams sees the whole of Western literary theory as nothing but a chart of the battle between Platonic and Aristotelian views of literature A battle, it must be remembered, whose shock waves did not reach Arab or Indian shores. It seems unlikely the Indians were even aware of Greek theories of literature; what these theories meant to the Arabs can be seen in Averroes' summary of Aristotle's Poetics and his commentary on it. Averroes, writing in the twelfth century in Spain, was one of the greatest analytical and assimilative philosophers who ever lived, and a firm follower of Aristotle. Yet his summary and
1 See Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, "Expression of the Indo-Muslim Mind in the Urdu Ghazal" (pp 1 -23) and Gilani Kamran The Urdu Ghazal as Material for the Study of Muslim Society in South Asia' (pp 24-43), in Muhammad Umar Memon (Ed) Studies in the Urdu Gazaf and Prose Fiction (Madison South Asian Studies, Univ of Wisconsin 1979) [This and all subsequent notes have been added by the editor ]
Annual Of Urdu Studies, #6 44