Person · Sindhi Sufi poet
Sachal Sarmast
Born at Daraza in Khairpur in 1739 and buried there in 1827, Sachal Sarmast is the most uncompromising voice in Sindhi Sufi poetry. He wrote in Sindhi, Siraiki, Punjabi, Urdu, Persian and Arabic, which earned him the title poet of seven languages, and Sarmast — the ecstatic — for the manner. Where Shāh Abdul Latīf argues the unity of being through story and figure, Sachal states it flatly and takes the consequences, praising Mansūr al-Hallāj and inviting the same charge.
- Function
- Religious institution & practice
- Confidence
- Not assessed
Worth knowing
Shāh Abdul Latīf is said to have met the boy and remarked that he would take the lid off the pot that Latīf had only lifted — a succession claim that Sindhi tradition has never let go of.
Connections (2)
- Teaching lineageShāh Abdul Latīf Bhittāī
Sindhi tradition makes Sachal Sarmast the successor Shāh Abdul Latīf named, reporting that Latīf saw the boy at Daraza and said he would take the lid off the pot Latīf had only lifted. The distinction holds up in the poetry. Latīf argues the unity of being through figures — the heroines of the romances, the desert, the river — and leaves the doctrine implicit. Sachal states it outright, praises Mansūr al-Hallāj who was executed for saying it, and invites the same charge in six languages.
- Craft tradition ofQawwālī
Sachal's kalām moved out of Sindhi devotional singing into the wider qawwāli and Sufi-rock repertoire of the subcontinent, and it is now among the most performed Sindhi verse outside Sindh. Abida Parveen, herself from Larkana, carries both his work and Latīf's; the Sabri Brothers and later Coke Studio arrangements took particular poems into a north Indian and Pakistani audience that does not read Sindhi. The words are usually sung without translation, which is normal in the qawwāli tradition and was true of Persian and Braj before it.
Sources
Wikipedia, “Sachal Sarmast”. Risālo of Sachal Sarmast, Sindhi Adabi Board editions; Annemarie Schimmel, Pearls from the Indus.
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