उर्दू का जन्म

In various parts of India, Sanskrit was the language of scholars, while Prakrit was the language of the common people. One might even call Prakrit the Hindustani, Urdu, or Hindi of that era. By the time Mahatma Gautam Buddha began his preaching, Prakrit had evolved into Pali. Consequently, Buddha chose Pali—the language of the masses at the time—to spread his religious teachings. It was through Buddha that the language of the common people first achieved the status of a scholarly and literary language, and today, a vast portion of Buddhist literature and philosophy is found in Pali. As time passed, Pali and its literature reigned supreme for approximately a thousand years. Later, in various regions of India, Prakrit and Pali underwent further transformations. By absorbing certain Sanskrit words, they branched out into several new languages, such as Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Sindhi, Hindi, and Punjabi. The languages of the Deccan, such as Tamil, Telugu, and Kannada, should also be viewed as evolved forms of South Indian Prakrit and Pali. This development took place roughly a thousand years ago. Up to this point, these various popular languages were still taking shape as regional dialects. Before the arrival of the Muslims, they had not yet developed enough to attain the status of scholarly and literary languages. In fact, following the decline of Pali, literary and scholarly traditions across different parts of India had once again been revived in Sanskrit.

Once Muhammad bin Qasim's army established a firm foothold, the Muslims began their advance toward North India. Passing through Maharashtra and Gujarat, and bringing these regions under their control, they eventually reached Punjab. From there, they arrived in Delhi and turned toward the Ganga-Yamuna Doab, subsequently spreading into the province of Bihar and, eventually, all the way to Bengal. After casting its shadow over North India, this wave then turned southward toward the Deccan. To understand the impact of this expansion on India's various languages, it is crucial to recognize the demographic makeup of the Muslim population at the time. Only one or two percent of the Muslims visible in India had actually migrated from Arabia or Iran; the rest were indigenous Hindus who had converted to Islam. This meant that as Islam and the Muslim population spread, the native tongues of ninety-nine percent of these Muslims were not Arabic, Afghan, Turkish, or Persian, but rather Sindhi, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Hindi, and Bengali. A religion might be erased, but a language cannot be—at least not by the hands of religion or the state. However, religion and the ruling state did have one undeniable impact on Indian languages: the vocabulary of every regional language was enriched with numerous Persian and Arabic words, along with some Turkish and other foreign terms. The script of Sindhi transformed into an Arabic or Arabic-derived script, and a vast number of Arabic and Persian words were seamlessly integrated into the language. While Gujarati and Marathi did not absorb these words in such overwhelming quantities, they still assimilated a significant number of Arabic and Persian terms. They did so to such an extent that local Hindus and Muslims today generally cannot even recognize that the birthplace of these words was Iran or Arabia. However, the scripts of Gujarati and Marathi did not change to Persian or Arabic. Instead, their ancient Devanagari-based scripts remained largely intact, with only minor modifications, and the names of the languages remained unchanged. Similarly, Punjabi retained its Gurmukhi script—itself an evolved form of Devanagari—and kept its original name, even as a multitude of Persian and Arabic words became an integral part of its vocabulary. As for Hindi, which was spoken across half of India—if not more—it retained its Devanagari script, yet thousands of Persian and Arabic words found their way into its lexicon. The Bengali script also endured, though the Bengali language absorbed a massive influx of Arabic and Persian vocabulary. South India had maintained ties with the Arabs even before the advent of Islam. While the scripts of the Deccani languages did not change, Arabic words can still be found woven into their regional dialects, whether overtly or subtly. In this context, a couple of points are particularly fascinating. Sindhi, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Hindi, Bengali, and the Deccani languages—and even their various local dialects—absorbed different Arabic and Persian words. Just as Sindhi adopted certain Arabic and Persian terms, so too did Hindi, Marathi, and Bengali. For instance, Phadnavis is widely considered a Marathi word and forms a part of certain Marathi names, such as Nana Phadnavis. In reality, however, this word was originally the Persian Fard-navis (record-keeper). Bengalis casually use the word balish for a pillow—a term that even the greatest Urdu writers or Arabic and Persian scholars of Delhi and Lucknow would never use in everyday speech, nor write without a grammatical construct (izafat). Similarly, Bengalis refer to a grave as gor; upon seeing a grave, they will effortlessly say, Look, a gor. An Urdu speaker would never use the word in such a colloquial manner. In the Purab (eastern) region, there is a village named Karawal, which is actually a corrupted form of the Arabic Qura-e-Awwal (the first village). Likewise, majoori is a word found in the rustic dialects of this province. It was originally the Persian mazdoori (labor). However, mazdoori or majoori will not be found in any other language of India. In the villages of the Purab region, two other interesting words are commonly spoken. For example, locals might say a certain field is very daar (a Persian suffix meaning possessor or holder), using it to mean highly productive or fertile. In Urdu, or even in Persian, the word daar would never be spoken or written in isolation like this. The second word is sayyar. They might say that a certain object or endeavor will prove sayyar, meaning it will bring blessings or abundance. This word was originally the Persian bisyar (much/abundant). In short, across the Deccani languages, Sindhi, Gujarati, Marathi, and Bengali—and within the dialects of millions of Indian villages, across various social classes and professions—Arabic and Persian words have seamlessly entered everyday speech and idioms. Interestingly, many of these words are not even used in the most highly Arabicized forms of Urdu. A villager in the Purab region once looked at a bull and remarked, That is a very jayyid (excellent/sturdy) bull. Everyone has heard of a jayyid ustad (an outstanding scholar), but a jayyid bull? Ultimately, people everywhere adopted the Persian and Arabic words that best suited their own preferences, temperaments, and local dialects. If a comprehensive dictionary of India's hundreds of dialects were ever compiled, it would reveal Arabic and Persian words whose existence is entirely unknown even to the eminent Islamic scholars of Nadwa and Deoband.

Although there are more than a thousand dialects in the Indian subcontinent and roughly two dozen established languages with their own literature, the language of more than half of India is Hindi. Even before the arrival of the Muslims, this Hindi language was more or less understood and spoken in a broken form throughout India. Why was this so? This was because the cradle of all Hindu religious, cultural, and civilizational traditions has been the Ganges Doab (the region between the Ganges and Yamuna rivers). All the major Hindu pilgrimage sites (the very compound word teerath-gah for pilgrimage site is noteworthy) are located in North India, and those in South India are also associated with Ram and Krishna. For Hindus, the ritual bathing festivals (nahan and ashnan) hold the same significance that the Hajj pilgrimage to the Kaaba holds for Muslims. For thousands of years, annual bathing fairs have been held at the Sangam in Prayag, as well as in Haridwar, Banaras, Gaya, and Jagannath Puri. A similar bathing festival takes place in Ayodhya, and Hindus from all over the country make pilgrimages to Mathura and Vrindavan. In ancient times, millions of Hindus would travel to these sites in North India every year, and this pilgrimage (yatra) would take a year or two to complete. This meant that millions of Madrasi, Gujarati, Marathi, and Bengali Hindus had the opportunity to undertake extensive travels across North India. In this way, Hindi—or the language of North India—had already acquired the status of a national or common language long before the arrival of the Muslims. Religion was the driving force and catalyst behind this.

Urdu is a Turkish word. Until a century and a half ago, no language in India was known by the name Urdu. The Mughal army, however, was called Urdu-e-Mualla. The word Urdu was used to refer to the military camp and its accompanying bazaar. Later on, the mixed dialect or language spoken in these camps and bazaars came to be known as Urdu. At its core, this dialect was the Hindi spoken in the areas surrounding Delhi, known as Pachahin (Western) Hindi or Khari Boli. When non-Hindi words—namely from Persian and Arabic—were incorporated into this dialect, the Urdu language was formed. However, this Persian- and Arabic-infused Hindi dialect was strictly limited to the marketplace and commercial transactions. It was not a written language, and on the rare occasions it was written down, Muslims used the Persian script while the majority of Hindus used the Nagari script. For a very long time, no literature or poetry was produced in this language. Amir Khusro did compose some superficial verses in it for public amusement, either as a pastime or an experiment. While the historical significance of these verses is undeniable, they hold no particular literary value. However, while not all of Mahatma Kabir’s poetry falls into this category, a certain portion of his work undeniably represents the creation of literature in Khari Boli or Western Hindi. Yet, as far as vocabulary is concerned, these compositions by Kabir contain little to no Persian or Arabic words. Nevertheless, the linguistic structure of these works differs from Braj Bhasha, Awadhi, and other forms of Hindi. This distinction is most evident in the use of verbs. Instead of using the verb forms found in Braj Bhasha or other variants of Hindi, Kabir employed the verb forms prevalent in the areas surrounding Delhi in some of his compositions.

For example:

Kare singar naar albeli sajan ke ghar jana hoga

[The charming woman adorns herself, for she must go to her beloved's house]

Or:

Mitti orhna mitti bichhona mitti ka sirhana hoga

[Dirt will be the covering, dirt the bed, and dirt the pillow]

Jana hoga (must go), sirhana hoga (will be the pillow)—these are phrases that poets like Malik Muhammad Jayasi, Tulsidas, or Surdas would never have written. In short, these compositions by Kabir are written in the same Urdu that Insha used to write Rani Ketaki Ki Kahani, or what Hazrat Arzu refers to as pure Urdu. In the Hindi literature that emerged after Kabir, Khari Boli or the Delhi dialect was completely abandoned. As far as North India was concerned, the language of literature and poetry was either Persian, Braj Bhasha, or the language used by Malik Muhammad Jayasi and Tulsidas—namely, Awadhi. Rahim Khankhanan was just as accomplished a poet in Hindi as he was in Persian. Both his Hindi and Persian poetry had achieved widespread acclaim among the highest echelons of society. In essence, although sustained literary works were not being produced in Urdu in North India—particularly in Delhi—the language that had formed from the blending of Persian and Arabic elements into the local Hindi of the Delhi region (which we might call Persian-infused Dehlvi) continued to be polished. It gradually became more structured as a spoken dialect, not only among the cultured elite but also among the common people of Delhi, continuously refining, evolving, and flourishing. During this period, although prose and poetry incorporating Persian and Arabic words were being produced in Sindhi, Marathi, Gujarati, and Bengali, there was a distinct difference between those languages and this new linguistic form emerging in Delhi. The city of Delhi was the epicenter of the Mughal Empire. Therefore, even though literature was not yet being composed in the Delhi dialect, it was developing a certain richness and cultural synthesis that Sindhi, Marathi, Gujarati, and Bengali lacked. Persian and Arabic vocabulary had permeated those languages as well, but not with the same elegance, seamlessness, and style with which they had integrated into the Hindi of Delhi. Furthermore, the native words and phrases of those other languages did not have the same opportunities to be refined and polished. They lacked the environment that afforded the Delhi dialect its sharpness, flexibility, softness, delicacy, brilliance, vibrancy, subtlety, and eloquence. The eloquence and rhetorical power of those languages relied ninety percent on Sanskrit words and phrases. The purely indigenous elements of those languages remained largely unpolished, and to a great extent, they still are today. Even within Hindi literature itself, the purely indigenous vocabulary and native idioms lacked the expansiveness, eloquence, and rhetorical grace that were rapidly developing in the Delhi dialect. Now, all that remained was for the Delhi dialect to ascend to the status of a literary language and a medium for the highest forms of poetry. However, the prestige and influence of Persian literature and Arabic scholarly texts were so overwhelming that the writers of Delhi either remained silent or quenched their literary thirst by composing prose and poetry exclusively in Persian. They failed to recognize the reality that, despite the awe and imposing majesty of the sovereign Persian language, Delhi’s homegrown dialect was rising with such grace that, sooner or later, it was bound to command attention.

However, the Islamic empire established in the Deccan—which had brought along the latent Hindi or Urdu language from North India, and whose newly settled administrators and armies were beginning to absorb the vocabulary and accents of Deccani languages into their speech—was the first to incline toward composing Urdu prose and poetry. The Urdu language was not born in the Deccan, nor could it have been. Yet, the inception of literary works in a somewhat or heavily Deccani-influenced Urdu took place there during that era, roughly three hundred years ago. The population that had migrated from North India to settle in the Deccan was surrounded by Deccani languages and the local people. It was a situation akin to the famous Persian couplet:

Darmiyan-e qa'r-e darya takhta bandam karda-i

Daman tar makun hushyar bash

[You have tied me to a plank in the middle of the ocean,

Yet you warn me to be careful and not get my hem wet.]

Separated from their homeland, these new settlers in the Deccan began to be tormented by a longing for their native tongue. The true value of this language dawned upon them, and, trapped in this cage, the nightingale of Urdu began to sing in such piercing tones—its voice carrying such a fiery pang of separation from the homeland—that a mere bazaar dialect transformed into melodies. The voice of Persian poetry also blended with this Hindi voice, and thus, Urdu poetry was born. Kings composed ghazals and nazms in praise of their queens and beloveds. Since these women were of Indian descent, they could not understand the Persian marsiyas (elegies) recited during Muharram, nor could they mourn during the poignant verses. Consequently, marsiyas began to be composed in Deccani Urdu. Furthermore, because these women had previously been Hindus and carried the influence of Hindu traditions in their hearts even after converting, the tales of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata were also molded into the lyrical forms of Deccani Urdu. Quli Qutb Shah and other Muslim elites and writers—among whom Saadi Deccani and Bahri are highly renowned—produced a mountain of poetry within a century. Later, to preach religion and Sufism to a population surrounded by a vast Hindu majority, mystics like Shah Gesu Daraz wrote scholarly and religious books in prose. In this way, a spoken dialect became a language of reading and writing. In both prose and poetry, this language was no longer the specific Urdu of Delhi; rather, it was Deccani Urdu—but it was Urdu nonetheless. Even today, though the language of Urdu speakers settled in the Deccan has been greatly refined, the speech of the royal family of Hyderabad, as well as that of the Hindu and Muslim feudal lords, aristocrats, middle classes, and commoners who migrated there from North India, still retains a Deccani flavor.

In short, while Urdu was still being polished on the lips of the people in Delhi, it had already begun to display its refinement on the written page in the Deccan. As time passed, the spoken Urdu in Delhi grew increasingly beautiful, while Urdu literature continued to be forged in the Deccan. This continued until the era of Shah Hatim and Mazhar Jan-e-Janaan, when Wali Deccani compiled his voluminous, alphabetically ordered diwan (poetry collection) and traveled from the Deccan to Delhi. He did so with the understanding that while the people of the Deccan were indeed people of literature, the true native speakers of the language were the people of Delhi. Delhi's Persian-educated writers, who composed poetry in Persian, were thrilled to see that their domestic and bazaar dialect had been systematically organized in Wali's diwan and was now following in the footsteps of the Persian ghazal. Although in some places it had strayed from Delhi's idioms, everyday speech, and standard vocabulary, they nonetheless welcomed Wali warmly. And while they offered Wali corrections here and there, they used this as an excuse to abandon Persian poetry and pivot toward composing Urdu ghazals. In this way, they became Wali's masters, and Wali became theirs. Thus, Shah Hatim, Mazhar Jan-e-Janaan, and their companions and contemporaries began composing poetry in Wali's authentic, standard, and deeply seasoned Urdu. Following them, four pillars of Urdu literature emerged, holding up the grand edifice of Urdu: Mir, Sauda, Soz, and Dard.

From then on, additional elements continued to enter the Urdu language. For example, the word 'ne' came from Punjab, but in Urdu, it was adopted for the past tense in specific grammatical conditions. Words from other languages also continued to be incorporated, a process that is still ongoing. However, according to the Farhang-e-Asifiya dictionary, the Urdu lexicon consists of seven thousand Arabic words, nearly six thousand Persian words, and forty thousand other words—of which around thirty-nine thousand are pure Hindi or words from the pure dialect spoken around Delhi. In total, it comprises about fifty-two to fifty-three thousand words. Nazeer Akbarabadi included many words in his works that either belonged to the Agra region or were coined by Nazeer himself. The people of Lucknow added some words and a vast number of idioms and phrases. Certain writers from the province of Bihar, such as Nawab Nasir Khayal and Shad Azimabadi, along with writers from Punjab, also infused Urdu with several of their own regional characteristics. In some of my own works, I have attempted to embed new Sanskrit words into Urdu sentences in such a way that they enhance the language's beauty manifold. This work of mine, titled Jhalakiyan (Glimpses), which contains nearly four hundred rubaiyat (quatrains) on beauty and love, is currently under publication.

This is how the Urdu language has been mingling and evolving. To consider it merely a language of the royal court is a grave mistake; it is the language of the common people. The most radiant, melodious, and impactful segments of Urdu literature, especially Urdu poetry, are composed of indigenous words and fragments of local dialects. Seamlessly weaving them into expressions that convey lofty thoughts is the work of true masters. Urdu elevated the local dialect, infusing it with such expressiveness and flexibility that the writer's personality and artistry began to reflect in the diverse and colorful stylistic expressions of Urdu prose and poetry. It forged a continuous and vibrant history of Urdu prose and poetry. Look at the prose of Rajab Ali Baig Surur and the writers of Fort William College; look at the prose of Ghalib's letters; look at the prose of Muhammad Husain Azad and Abul Kalam Azad, the prose of Shibli, Sarshar, Premchand, Rasheed Siddiqui, and Niaz Fatehpuri. In short, the styles of numerous distinguished prose writers were born from this very dialect, and the exact same phenomenon occurred in poetry. Ghalib, Dagh, Anees, Hali, Akbar, Josh, Iqbal, and many other such masterful poets emerged, each of whom molded the language of the nation into the cast of their own unique voice. That is to say, a variety of styles became possible in Urdu—something that cannot be found in a mere local dialect until it flourishes and evolves from a regional tongue into a national language, acquiring the capacity for literary creation.

In various parts of India, Sanskrit was the language of scholars, while Prakrit was the language of the common people. One might even call Prakrit the Hindustani, Urdu, or Hindi of that era. By the time Mahatma Gautam Buddha began his preaching, Prakrit had evolved into Pali. Consequently, Buddha chose Pali—the language of the masses at the time—to spread his religious teachings. It was through Buddha that the language of the common people first achieved the status of a scholarly and literary language, and today, a vast portion of Buddhist literature and philosophy is found in Pali. As time passed, Pali and its literature reigned supreme for approximately a thousand years. Later, in various regions of India, Prakrit and Pali underwent further transformations. By absorbing certain Sanskrit words, they branched out into several new languages, such as Bengali, Marathi, Gujarati, Sindhi, Hindi, and Punjabi. The languages of the Deccan, such as Tamil, Telugu, and Kannada, should also be viewed as evolved forms of South Indian Prakrit and Pali. This development took place roughly a thousand years ago. Up to this point, these various popular languages were still taking shape as regional dialects. Before the arrival of the Muslims, they had not yet developed enough to attain the status of scholarly and literary languages. In fact, following the decline of Pali, literary and scholarly traditions across different parts of India had once again been revived in Sanskrit.

Once Muhammad bin Qasim's army established a firm foothold, the Muslims began their advance toward North India. Passing through Maharashtra and Gujarat, and bringing these regions under their control, they eventually reached Punjab. From there, they arrived in Delhi and turned toward the Ganga-Yamuna Doab, subsequently spreading into the province of Bihar and, eventually, all the way to Bengal. After casting its shadow over North India, this wave then turned southward toward the Deccan. To understand the impact of this expansion on India's various languages, it is crucial to recognize the demographic makeup of the Muslim population at the time. Only one or two percent of the Muslims visible in India had actually migrated from Arabia or Iran; the rest were indigenous Hindus who had converted to Islam. This meant that as Islam and the Muslim population spread, the native tongues of ninety-nine percent of these Muslims were not Arabic, Afghan, Turkish, or Persian, but rather Sindhi, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Hindi, and Bengali. A religion might be erased, but a language cannot be—at least not by the hands of religion or the state. However, religion and the ruling state did have one undeniable impact on Indian languages: the vocabulary of every regional language was enriched with numerous Persian and Arabic words, along with some Turkish and other foreign terms. The script of Sindhi transformed into an Arabic or Arabic-derived script, and a vast number of Arabic and Persian words were seamlessly integrated into the language. While Gujarati and Marathi did not absorb these words in such overwhelming quantities, they still assimilated a significant number of Arabic and Persian terms. They did so to such an extent that local Hindus and Muslims today generally cannot even recognize that the birthplace of these words was Iran or Arabia. However, the scripts of Gujarati and Marathi did not change to Persian or Arabic. Instead, their ancient Devanagari-based scripts remained largely intact, with only minor modifications, and the names of the languages remained unchanged. Similarly, Punjabi retained its Gurmukhi script—itself an evolved form of Devanagari—and kept its original name, even as a multitude of Persian and Arabic words became an integral part of its vocabulary. As for Hindi, which was spoken across half of India—if not more—it retained its Devanagari script, yet thousands of Persian and Arabic words found their way into its lexicon. The Bengali script also endured, though the Bengali language absorbed a massive influx of Arabic and Persian vocabulary. South India had maintained ties with the Arabs even before the advent of Islam. While the scripts of the Deccani languages did not change, Arabic words can still be found woven into their regional dialects, whether overtly or subtly. In this context, a couple of points are particularly fascinating. Sindhi, Gujarati, Marathi, Punjabi, Hindi, Bengali, and the Deccani languages—and even their various local dialects—absorbed different Arabic and Persian words. Just as Sindhi adopted certain Arabic and Persian terms, so too did Hindi, Marathi, and Bengali. For instance, Phadnavis is widely considered a Marathi word and forms a part of certain Marathi names, such as Nana Phadnavis. In reality, however, this word was originally the Persian Fard-navis (record-keeper). Bengalis casually use the word balish for a pillow—a term that even the greatest Urdu writers or Arabic and Persian scholars of Delhi and Lucknow would never use in everyday speech, nor write without a grammatical construct (izafat). Similarly, Bengalis refer to a grave as gor; upon seeing a grave, they will effortlessly say, Look, a gor. An Urdu speaker would never use the word in such a colloquial manner. In the Purab (eastern) region, there is a village named Karawal, which is actually a corrupted form of the Arabic Qura-e-Awwal (the first village). Likewise, majoori is a word found in the rustic dialects of this province. It was originally the Persian mazdoori (labor). However, mazdoori or majoori will not be found in any other language of India. In the villages of the Purab region, two other interesting words are commonly spoken. For example, locals might say a certain field is very daar (a Persian suffix meaning possessor or holder), using it to mean highly productive or fertile. In Urdu, or even in Persian, the word daar would never be spoken or written in isolation like this. The second word is sayyar. They might say that a certain object or endeavor will prove sayyar, meaning it will bring blessings or abundance. This word was originally the Persian bisyar (much/abundant). In short, across the Deccani languages, Sindhi, Gujarati, Marathi, and Bengali—and within the dialects of millions of Indian villages, across various social classes and professions—Arabic and Persian words have seamlessly entered everyday speech and idioms. Interestingly, many of these words are not even used in the most highly Arabicized forms of Urdu. A villager in the Purab region once looked at a bull and remarked, That is a very jayyid (excellent/sturdy) bull. Everyone has heard of a jayyid ustad (an outstanding scholar), but a jayyid bull? Ultimately, people everywhere adopted the Persian and Arabic words that best suited their own preferences, temperaments, and local dialects. If a comprehensive dictionary of India's hundreds of dialects were ever compiled, it would reveal Arabic and Persian words whose existence is entirely unknown even to the eminent Islamic scholars of Nadwa and Deoband.

Although there are more than a thousand dialects in the Indian subcontinent and roughly two dozen established languages with their own literature, the language of more than half of India is Hindi. Even before the arrival of the Muslims, this Hindi language was more or less understood and spoken in a broken form throughout India. Why was this so? This was because the cradle of all Hindu religious, cultural, and civilizational traditions has been the Ganges Doab (the region between the Ganges and Yamuna rivers). All the major Hindu pilgrimage sites (the very compound word teerath-gah for pilgrimage site is noteworthy) are located in North India, and those in South India are also associated with Ram and Krishna. For Hindus, the ritual bathing festivals (nahan and ashnan) hold the same significance that the Hajj pilgrimage to the Kaaba holds for Muslims. For thousands of years, annual bathing fairs have been held at the Sangam in Prayag, as well as in Haridwar, Banaras, Gaya, and Jagannath Puri. A similar bathing festival takes place in Ayodhya, and Hindus from all over the country make pilgrimages to Mathura and Vrindavan. In ancient times, millions of Hindus would travel to these sites in North India every year, and this pilgrimage (yatra) would take a year or two to complete. This meant that millions of Madrasi, Gujarati, Marathi, and Bengali Hindus had the opportunity to undertake extensive travels across North India. In this way, Hindi—or the language of North India—had already acquired the status of a national or common language long before the arrival of the Muslims. Religion was the driving force and catalyst behind this.

Urdu is a Turkish word. Until a century and a half ago, no language in India was known by the name Urdu. The Mughal army, however, was called Urdu-e-Mualla. The word Urdu was used to refer to the military camp and its accompanying bazaar. Later on, the mixed dialect or language spoken in these camps and bazaars came to be known as Urdu. At its core, this dialect was the Hindi spoken in the areas surrounding Delhi, known as Pachahin (Western) Hindi or Khari Boli. When non-Hindi words—namely from Persian and Arabic—were incorporated into this dialect, the Urdu language was formed. However, this Persian- and Arabic-infused Hindi dialect was strictly limited to the marketplace and commercial transactions. It was not a written language, and on the rare occasions it was written down, Muslims used the Persian script while the majority of Hindus used the Nagari script. For a very long time, no literature or poetry was produced in this language. Amir Khusro did compose some superficial verses in it for public amusement, either as a pastime or an experiment. While the historical significance of these verses is undeniable, they hold no particular literary value. However, while not all of Mahatma Kabir’s poetry falls into this category, a certain portion of his work undeniably represents the creation of literature in Khari Boli or Western Hindi. Yet, as far as vocabulary is concerned, these compositions by Kabir contain little to no Persian or Arabic words. Nevertheless, the linguistic structure of these works differs from Braj Bhasha, Awadhi, and other forms of Hindi. This distinction is most evident in the use of verbs. Instead of using the verb forms found in Braj Bhasha or other variants of Hindi, Kabir employed the verb forms prevalent in the areas surrounding Delhi in some of his compositions.

For example:

Kare singar naar albeli sajan ke ghar jana hoga

[The charming woman adorns herself, for she must go to her beloved's house]

Or:

Mitti orhna mitti bichhona mitti ka sirhana hoga

[Dirt will be the covering, dirt the bed, and dirt the pillow]

Jana hoga (must go), sirhana hoga (will be the pillow)—these are phrases that poets like Malik Muhammad Jayasi, Tulsidas, or Surdas would never have written. In short, these compositions by Kabir are written in the same Urdu that Insha used to write Rani Ketaki Ki Kahani, or what Hazrat Arzu refers to as pure Urdu. In the Hindi literature that emerged after Kabir, Khari Boli or the Delhi dialect was completely abandoned. As far as North India was concerned, the language of literature and poetry was either Persian, Braj Bhasha, or the language used by Malik Muhammad Jayasi and Tulsidas—namely, Awadhi. Rahim Khankhanan was just as accomplished a poet in Hindi as he was in Persian. Both his Hindi and Persian poetry had achieved widespread acclaim among the highest echelons of society. In essence, although sustained literary works were not being produced in Urdu in North India—particularly in Delhi—the language that had formed from the blending of Persian and Arabic elements into the local Hindi of the Delhi region (which we might call Persian-infused Dehlvi) continued to be polished. It gradually became more structured as a spoken dialect, not only among the cultured elite but also among the common people of Delhi, continuously refining, evolving, and flourishing. During this period, although prose and poetry incorporating Persian and Arabic words were being produced in Sindhi, Marathi, Gujarati, and Bengali, there was a distinct difference between those languages and this new linguistic form emerging in Delhi. The city of Delhi was the epicenter of the Mughal Empire. Therefore, even though literature was not yet being composed in the Delhi dialect, it was developing a certain richness and cultural synthesis that Sindhi, Marathi, Gujarati, and Bengali lacked. Persian and Arabic vocabulary had permeated those languages as well, but not with the same elegance, seamlessness, and style with which they had integrated into the Hindi of Delhi. Furthermore, the native words and phrases of those other languages did not have the same opportunities to be refined and polished. They lacked the environment that afforded the Delhi dialect its sharpness, flexibility, softness, delicacy, brilliance, vibrancy, subtlety, and eloquence. The eloquence and rhetorical power of those languages relied ninety percent on Sanskrit words and phrases. The purely indigenous elements of those languages remained largely unpolished, and to a great extent, they still are today. Even within Hindi literature itself, the purely indigenous vocabulary and native idioms lacked the expansiveness, eloquence, and rhetorical grace that were rapidly developing in the Delhi dialect. Now, all that remained was for the Delhi dialect to ascend to the status of a literary language and a medium for the highest forms of poetry. However, the prestige and influence of Persian literature and Arabic scholarly texts were so overwhelming that the writers of Delhi either remained silent or quenched their literary thirst by composing prose and poetry exclusively in Persian. They failed to recognize the reality that, despite the awe and imposing majesty of the sovereign Persian language, Delhi’s homegrown dialect was rising with such grace that, sooner or later, it was bound to command attention.

However, the Islamic empire established in the Deccan—which had brought along the latent Hindi or Urdu language from North India, and whose newly settled administrators and armies were beginning to absorb the vocabulary and accents of Deccani languages into their speech—was the first to incline toward composing Urdu prose and poetry. The Urdu language was not born in the Deccan, nor could it have been. Yet, the inception of literary works in a somewhat or heavily Deccani-influenced Urdu took place there during that era, roughly three hundred years ago. The population that had migrated from North India to settle in the Deccan was surrounded by Deccani languages and the local people. It was a situation akin to the famous Persian couplet:

Darmiyan-e qa'r-e darya takhta bandam karda-i

Daman tar makun hushyar bash

[You have tied me to a plank in the middle of the ocean,

Yet you warn me to be careful and not get my hem wet.]

Separated from their homeland, these new settlers in the Deccan began to be tormented by a longing for their native tongue. The true value of this language dawned upon them, and, trapped in this cage, the nightingale of Urdu began to sing in such piercing tones—its voice carrying such a fiery pang of separation from the homeland—that a mere bazaar dialect transformed into melodies. The voice of Persian poetry also blended with this Hindi voice, and thus, Urdu poetry was born. Kings composed ghazals and nazms in praise of their queens and beloveds. Since these women were of Indian descent, they could not understand the Persian marsiyas (elegies) recited during Muharram, nor could they mourn during the poignant verses. Consequently, marsiyas began to be composed in Deccani Urdu. Furthermore, because these women had previously been Hindus and carried the influence of Hindu traditions in their hearts even after converting, the tales of the Ramayana and the Mahabharata were also molded into the lyrical forms of Deccani Urdu. Quli Qutb Shah and other Muslim elites and writers—among whom Saadi Deccani and Bahri are highly renowned—produced a mountain of poetry within a century. Later, to preach religion and Sufism to a population surrounded by a vast Hindu majority, mystics like Shah Gesu Daraz wrote scholarly and religious books in prose. In this way, a spoken dialect became a language of reading and writing. In both prose and poetry, this language was no longer the specific Urdu of Delhi; rather, it was Deccani Urdu—but it was Urdu nonetheless. Even today, though the language of Urdu speakers settled in the Deccan has been greatly refined, the speech of the royal family of Hyderabad, as well as that of the Hindu and Muslim feudal lords, aristocrats, middle classes, and commoners who migrated there from North India, still retains a Deccani flavor.

In short, while Urdu was still being polished on the lips of the people in Delhi, it had already begun to display its refinement on the written page in the Deccan. As time passed, the spoken Urdu in Delhi grew increasingly beautiful, while Urdu literature continued to be forged in the Deccan. This continued until the era of Shah Hatim and Mazhar Jan-e-Janaan, when Wali Deccani compiled his voluminous, alphabetically ordered diwan (poetry collection) and traveled from the Deccan to Delhi. He did so with the understanding that while the people of the Deccan were indeed people of literature, the true native speakers of the language were the people of Delhi. Delhi's Persian-educated writers, who composed poetry in Persian, were thrilled to see that their domestic and bazaar dialect had been systematically organized in Wali's diwan and was now following in the footsteps of the Persian ghazal. Although in some places it had strayed from Delhi's idioms, everyday speech, and standard vocabulary, they nonetheless welcomed Wali warmly. And while they offered Wali corrections here and there, they used this as an excuse to abandon Persian poetry and pivot toward composing Urdu ghazals. In this way, they became Wali's masters, and Wali became theirs. Thus, Shah Hatim, Mazhar Jan-e-Janaan, and their companions and contemporaries began composing poetry in Wali's authentic, standard, and deeply seasoned Urdu. Following them, four pillars of Urdu literature emerged, holding up the grand edifice of Urdu: Mir, Sauda, Soz, and Dard.

From then on, additional elements continued to enter the Urdu language. For example, the word 'ne' came from Punjab, but in Urdu, it was adopted for the past tense in specific grammatical conditions. Words from other languages also continued to be incorporated, a process that is still ongoing. However, according to the Farhang-e-Asifiya dictionary, the Urdu lexicon consists of seven thousand Arabic words, nearly six thousand Persian words, and forty thousand other words—of which around thirty-nine thousand are pure Hindi or words from the pure dialect spoken around Delhi. In total, it comprises about fifty-two to fifty-three thousand words. Nazeer Akbarabadi included many words in his works that either belonged to the Agra region or were coined by Nazeer himself. The people of Lucknow added some words and a vast number of idioms and phrases. Certain writers from the province of Bihar, such as Nawab Nasir Khayal and Shad Azimabadi, along with writers from Punjab, also infused Urdu with several of their own regional characteristics. In some of my own works, I have attempted to embed new Sanskrit words into Urdu sentences in such a way that they enhance the language's beauty manifold. This work of mine, titled Jhalakiyan (Glimpses), which contains nearly four hundred rubaiyat (quatrains) on beauty and love, is currently under publication.

This is how the Urdu language has been mingling and evolving. To consider it merely a language of the royal court is a grave mistake; it is the language of the common people. The most radiant, melodious, and impactful segments of Urdu literature, especially Urdu poetry, are composed of indigenous words and fragments of local dialects. Seamlessly weaving them into expressions that convey lofty thoughts is the work of true masters. Urdu elevated the local dialect, infusing it with such expressiveness and flexibility that the writer's personality and artistry began to reflect in the diverse and colorful stylistic expressions of Urdu prose and poetry. It forged a continuous and vibrant history of Urdu prose and poetry. Look at the prose of Rajab Ali Baig Surur and the writers of Fort William College; look at the prose of Ghalib's letters; look at the prose of Muhammad Husain Azad and Abul Kalam Azad, the prose of Shibli, Sarshar, Premchand, Rasheed Siddiqui, and Niaz Fatehpuri. In short, the styles of numerous distinguished prose writers were born from this very dialect, and the exact same phenomenon occurred in poetry. Ghalib, Dagh, Anees, Hali, Akbar, Josh, Iqbal, and many other such masterful poets emerged, each of whom molded the language of the nation into the cast of their own unique voice. That is to say, a variety of styles became possible in Urdu—something that cannot be found in a mere local dialect until it flourishes and evolves from a regional tongue into a national language, acquiring the capacity for literary creation.