§ 31 .] THE ROMANTIC POETRY OF MALIK MUHAMMAD. [1640 A.D.] 
15 
CHAPTER III. 
THE ROMANTIC POETRY OF MALIK MUHAMMAD. [1540 A.D.] 
31. Malik Muhammad, of 
Jdyas, in Audh. FL 1540 A.D. 
He flourished under Sher Shah in the year 1540 A.D. He was 
the author of the Pad maw at (Rag.), which is, I believe, the first poem 
and almost the only one written in a Gaudian vernacular on an original 
subject. I do not know a work more deserving of hard study than 
the Padmawat. It certainly requires it, for scarcely a line is intelligible 
to the ordinary scholar, it being couched in the veriest language of 
the people. But it is well worth any amount of trouble, both for its 
originality and for its poetical beauty. 
Malik Muhammad was a Musalman faqlr of great sanctity. The 
raja of Amethl\ who believed that he owed a son and his general pros¬ 
perity to the saint, was one of his principal devotees. When the poet 
died he was buried at the gate of the raja’s fort at Amethl, where his 
tomb is still worshipped. He tells us himself, in the introduction to 
his poem, that he was a disciple of Sayyad Ashraf Jahan’gir and of 
Shekh Bur h an, 1 and that he subsequently studied under Hindu 
pandits. He is said not to have been a man of great learning, but 
was famed for his wisdom, and for the fact that he wrote for the people 
in the people’s tongue. According to the text of the Banaras edition 
of the Padmawat , which is very incorrect, 1 2 the poet commenced to 
write it in A.H. 927 (A.D. 1520); but this is probably a misreading, 
for he says in the preface that Sher Shah of the Sur dynasty, who 
1 Shekh Bur’han resided at Kal’pi, in Bundel’khand, and is said to have died 
at 100 years of age in A.H. 970, or A.D. 1562-63. See Rep. Arch. Sur. Ind. 
xxi, 131. 
2 My friend Pandit Chhdtu Ram Tiwarl, Professor of Sanskrit at Bapkipur 
College, has undertaken to translate and edit a correct text of this important 
work for the Bibliotheca Indica. (Alas, since the above was written, a learned 
and humble scholar, who never said an unkind word of anyone, and one of the 
most upright gentlemen with whom it has been my privilege to be on terms of 
intimacy, has gone to his long home. By his untimely death I have lost a 
true friend and a respected teacher.) 
