Naddi ka mod, chashma-e shireen ka zer-o-bam
Chaadar shab-e nujoom ki, shabnam ka rakht-e nam
Moti ki aab, gul ki mehak, maah-e nau ka kham
In sab ke imtezaaj se paida hui hai tu
Kitne haseen ufaq se huvaida hui hai tu
Lehja maleeh hai ke namak-khwaar hoon tera
Sehat zaban mein hai ke beemar hoon tera
Aazad-e sher hoon ke giraftar hoon tera
Tere karam se sher-o-sukhan ka imam hoon
Shahon pe khandazan hoon ke tera ghulam hoon
The bend of the river, and the stream’s bubbly path
The veil of the starry night, and the moist dew of the morn
The pearl’s clarity, rose’s fragrance and the new moon’s swathe
All came together harmoniously and you were born
What a beauteous horizon have you arisen from!
Sweet is my speech for having tasted of your salt
Healthy my tongue that I am ill with love for you
My verse flies free, for I am entombed in your vault
It is your boon that I rule the realm of poetry too
I mock the kings now that I am your slave.
This beautiful ode to Urdu, written by Josh Malihabadi, was never published, but has found its way to Urdu lovers over time through a rich oral tradition. Contrast this verse with the playful comedy of Dilawar Figaar, a Pakistani poet who laments the replacement of Urdu by English in common usage.
Here are two shers (couplets) from his poem ‘Pure Ghazal in Urdu’ that exemplify how English has been incorporated into daily speech alongside colloquial Urdu:
Na ho jab heart in the chest, phir tongue in the mouth kyon?
To beautify this line, throw some light in Urdu.
There should be yaqeenan no milawat in the literature.
Therefore I never call shab ko night in Urdu.
Urdu has prided itself on its mongrel roots and cosmopolitan ethos. It was never a language of kings and courts (though a surprising number of rulers tried their hand at Urdu poetry), nor did it confine itself to any religion (despite its deployment by communalists and divisive rulers to drive a wedge between communities).
It is a quintessentially modern language, with neither a distinct writing style (no formalised diacritics, and a borrowed script) nor any claim to a direct link with a root language. To chart the emergence of Urdu is itself a fraught task, full of political pitfalls and contradictions. The progression between Hindavi, Rekhti and Urdu is a continuous one, and to break that continuity into a linguistic taxonomy is an act of social construction that is neither helpful nor productive.
In this anthology, for instance, I have included Amir Khusrau, who lived in the 13th century, as an Urdu poet. Others may choose the 16th-century Deccan king Quli Qutub Shah as an originary Urdu poet, while some may play safer and commence with the 17th-century poet Wali Dakkani.
At any rate, it is correct to say that the language has primarily thrived through an oral tradition, much of which is predicated on its poetry. That tradition has always been engaged with the direct reality of its purveyors, and I would venture to say that the best Urdu poetry is rarely the kind that is steeped in metaphysics, but one which talks of real issues: love and other relationships, jobs and occupations, bazaar scenes, feelings of marginality and oppression, revolution, the yearning of enslaved people to be free, and matters of religion (not metaphysical exegeses but rather matters of practice, celebrations of martyrs and making fun of hypocritical proselytizers).
...The period between the thirteenth and the sixteenth centuries CE can be said to mark Urdu’s prehistory, where the language existed primarily as consciousness rather than category. Much like Molière’s bourgeois gentleman who, when told about the distinction between prose and poetry, exclaimed ‘Par ma foi, il y a plus de quarante ans que je dis de la prose, sans que j’en susse rien’ (‘Good lord, for over forty years I have been speaking prose and I did not know it’), the exponents of the new tongue in that era would be shocked to hear that they were speaking a different language, one whose name would eventually be linked to military barracks (orda in Turkish).
Like all languages, Urdu emerged into consciousness primarily as speech and song, and did not detach itself from its roots in Hindavi grammar, Turkish/Pali vocabularies and plebeian deployment (as opposed to scriptural Sanskrit or courtly Persian) until the taxonomies of colonialism ripped it apart from Devanagri.
If one is looking for a definite date when Urdu was born, one should consider the year 1900, in which Anthony MacDonnell’s infamous ‘Nagri resolution’ postulated that Hindi and Urdu were separate languages. but to do that would get us ahead of our story.
For the moment, imagine if you will, a new way of speaking, that emerged as a fad and began spreading like wildfire across northern and western India, adopted by Sufi mendicants, bhakti singers, street balladeers and regular working folk who did not have access to more courtly languages.
Imagine tradespeople, holy men and other travellers who seeded the countryside with its common metaphors, turns of phrase and grammatical peculiarities. The argot grew in usage and popularity, flying under the radar of Persian court records, classical poems in Sanskrit, and florid Turkish tracts.
Then came Mir.
It is difficult to understate the role played by Mir Taqi Mir in legitimising Urdu as a language of culture as well as popular communication in the eighteenth century.
...The Mir era may have been the moment when Urdu began to achieve legitimacy, when the stuffed Farsi-daans of the Mughal court realized that this argot that had become the lingua franca of the subaltern class actually had poetic potential that far exceeded the derivative Persian of the court tracts, the ghostwritten princely memoirs or even the classical mushairas (social gatherings where poets gathered to recite poetry, often in the form of a contest).
The ghazal in the hands of Mir became a rapier, touching the vulnerable part of the listener’s heart in a way Hafiz may have touched the Persian heart, but which no Indian had replicated in Farsi. Mind you, the language was still known primarily as Rekhti, though ‘Urdu’ was now becoming an accepted word as well.
Mir’s acolytes adhered faithfully to the guidelines set by his creative genius, producing what we now refer to as the ‘Delhi school’ of Urdu poetry. outside of Delhi, there were stalwarts like Nazeer Akbarabadi writing the era’s equivalent of top hits in the nazm tradition, and parallel developments in the prose world led to the emergence of a loose consensus around how the language would be scripted.
...After Mir, came Ghalib.
Excerpted with permission from 'The Taste of Words.' Edited and translated by Raza Mir and Published by Penguin Books India.
Chaadar shab-e nujoom ki, shabnam ka rakht-e nam
Moti ki aab, gul ki mehak, maah-e nau ka kham
In sab ke imtezaaj se paida hui hai tu
Kitne haseen ufaq se huvaida hui hai tu
Lehja maleeh hai ke namak-khwaar hoon tera
Sehat zaban mein hai ke beemar hoon tera
Aazad-e sher hoon ke giraftar hoon tera
Tere karam se sher-o-sukhan ka imam hoon
Shahon pe khandazan hoon ke tera ghulam hoon
The bend of the river, and the stream’s bubbly path
The veil of the starry night, and the moist dew of the morn
The pearl’s clarity, rose’s fragrance and the new moon’s swathe
All came together harmoniously and you were born
What a beauteous horizon have you arisen from!
Sweet is my speech for having tasted of your salt
Healthy my tongue that I am ill with love for you
My verse flies free, for I am entombed in your vault
It is your boon that I rule the realm of poetry too
I mock the kings now that I am your slave.
This beautiful ode to Urdu, written by Josh Malihabadi, was never published, but has found its way to Urdu lovers over time through a rich oral tradition. Contrast this verse with the playful comedy of Dilawar Figaar, a Pakistani poet who laments the replacement of Urdu by English in common usage.
Here are two shers (couplets) from his poem ‘Pure Ghazal in Urdu’ that exemplify how English has been incorporated into daily speech alongside colloquial Urdu:
Na ho jab heart in the chest, phir tongue in the mouth kyon?
To beautify this line, throw some light in Urdu.
There should be yaqeenan no milawat in the literature.
Therefore I never call shab ko night in Urdu.
Urdu has prided itself on its mongrel roots and cosmopolitan ethos. It was never a language of kings and courts (though a surprising number of rulers tried their hand at Urdu poetry), nor did it confine itself to any religion (despite its deployment by communalists and divisive rulers to drive a wedge between communities).
It is a quintessentially modern language, with neither a distinct writing style (no formalised diacritics, and a borrowed script) nor any claim to a direct link with a root language. To chart the emergence of Urdu is itself a fraught task, full of political pitfalls and contradictions. The progression between Hindavi, Rekhti and Urdu is a continuous one, and to break that continuity into a linguistic taxonomy is an act of social construction that is neither helpful nor productive.
In this anthology, for instance, I have included Amir Khusrau, who lived in the 13th century, as an Urdu poet. Others may choose the 16th-century Deccan king Quli Qutub Shah as an originary Urdu poet, while some may play safer and commence with the 17th-century poet Wali Dakkani.
At any rate, it is correct to say that the language has primarily thrived through an oral tradition, much of which is predicated on its poetry. That tradition has always been engaged with the direct reality of its purveyors, and I would venture to say that the best Urdu poetry is rarely the kind that is steeped in metaphysics, but one which talks of real issues: love and other relationships, jobs and occupations, bazaar scenes, feelings of marginality and oppression, revolution, the yearning of enslaved people to be free, and matters of religion (not metaphysical exegeses but rather matters of practice, celebrations of martyrs and making fun of hypocritical proselytizers).
...The period between the thirteenth and the sixteenth centuries CE can be said to mark Urdu’s prehistory, where the language existed primarily as consciousness rather than category. Much like Molière’s bourgeois gentleman who, when told about the distinction between prose and poetry, exclaimed ‘Par ma foi, il y a plus de quarante ans que je dis de la prose, sans que j’en susse rien’ (‘Good lord, for over forty years I have been speaking prose and I did not know it’), the exponents of the new tongue in that era would be shocked to hear that they were speaking a different language, one whose name would eventually be linked to military barracks (orda in Turkish).
Like all languages, Urdu emerged into consciousness primarily as speech and song, and did not detach itself from its roots in Hindavi grammar, Turkish/Pali vocabularies and plebeian deployment (as opposed to scriptural Sanskrit or courtly Persian) until the taxonomies of colonialism ripped it apart from Devanagri.
If one is looking for a definite date when Urdu was born, one should consider the year 1900, in which Anthony MacDonnell’s infamous ‘Nagri resolution’ postulated that Hindi and Urdu were separate languages. but to do that would get us ahead of our story.
For the moment, imagine if you will, a new way of speaking, that emerged as a fad and began spreading like wildfire across northern and western India, adopted by Sufi mendicants, bhakti singers, street balladeers and regular working folk who did not have access to more courtly languages.
Imagine tradespeople, holy men and other travellers who seeded the countryside with its common metaphors, turns of phrase and grammatical peculiarities. The argot grew in usage and popularity, flying under the radar of Persian court records, classical poems in Sanskrit, and florid Turkish tracts.
Then came Mir.
It is difficult to understate the role played by Mir Taqi Mir in legitimising Urdu as a language of culture as well as popular communication in the eighteenth century.
...The Mir era may have been the moment when Urdu began to achieve legitimacy, when the stuffed Farsi-daans of the Mughal court realized that this argot that had become the lingua franca of the subaltern class actually had poetic potential that far exceeded the derivative Persian of the court tracts, the ghostwritten princely memoirs or even the classical mushairas (social gatherings where poets gathered to recite poetry, often in the form of a contest).
The ghazal in the hands of Mir became a rapier, touching the vulnerable part of the listener’s heart in a way Hafiz may have touched the Persian heart, but which no Indian had replicated in Farsi. Mind you, the language was still known primarily as Rekhti, though ‘Urdu’ was now becoming an accepted word as well.
Mir’s acolytes adhered faithfully to the guidelines set by his creative genius, producing what we now refer to as the ‘Delhi school’ of Urdu poetry. outside of Delhi, there were stalwarts like Nazeer Akbarabadi writing the era’s equivalent of top hits in the nazm tradition, and parallel developments in the prose world led to the emergence of a loose consensus around how the language would be scripted.
...After Mir, came Ghalib.
Excerpted with permission from 'The Taste of Words.' Edited and translated by Raza Mir and Published by Penguin Books India.
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