Subject: Re: 3 Persian/Urdu Related Issues Date: Sat, 26 Dec 1998 06:50:00 GMT From: il_khan@yahoo.com Organization: Deja News - The Leader in Internet Discussion Newsgroups: alt.language.urdu.poetry In article <367D1914.978FD2EA@post4.tele.dk>, kalsi@post4.tele.dk wrote: > As we are so fortunate as to have currently several active participants > with a good knowledge of Persian and Persian poetry, I should like to > take the opportunity to ask 3 Persian/Urdu related questions: > > 1. Ghalib and Persian poetry > > It is supposed to be a fact that Ghalib had completed the bulk of his > Urdu divan before the age of twenty ! From 1821 to 1847 he is claimed to > have devoted his entire time and energy on his Persian writings. He > resumed writing Urdu poetry after 1847, when he was attached to the > Mughal court, mostly panegyrics but also some ghazals. > Whatever the truth of the matter may be, there is no denying the fact > that Ghalib himself considered his Persian work as his ’magnum opus’, > which makes his Urdu work a mere by-product of his genius! Now my > question in this connection is whether he ever made his mark as a > Persian poet. What is his status in the world of Persian literature ? > What is the quality of his Persian poetry? How does it compare with his > Urdu poetry? > A similar situation exists in the case of Iqbal and the same questions > can be posed about him. Kalsi Sahib has raised some very pertinent queries. Although there can be no unanimity on many of these issues, kindly permit me to offer a few observations, my "two cents' worth" so to say, about some of these matters. I feel it may not be quite correct to assume that the bulk of Ghalib's Urdu compositions had been completed before the age of 20. This is applicable mostly to his comparatively obscure and highly Persianised poetry, a good deal of which was composed in the style of Mirza Bedil. However, much of his simpler verse was composed in his later years. He himself had deleted his Persianised compositions from his Diwan on the advice of his friends like Maulana Fazl-e-Haq Khairabadi and Maulvi Imam Bakhsh Sahbaai. In Ghalib's own words : "Jab tameez aayi to woh diwan ddor kiya---auraaq yak qalam chaak kiye". It was only around 1920 that the deleted compositions, discovered in the royal library of the Nawab of Bhopal, were published (along with his other---simpler---compositions) in a full Diwan in a special Edition, known to us as "Nuskha-e-Hamidiya", after the Nawab of Bhopal, Hamidullah Khan. Also, it is not quite correct to assume that his post-1847 output mostly comprised Paneygyrics or "Qaseedas". Comparatively speaking, his output of "Qaseedas" is quite meagre. Although they are of a high order but are not regarded as quite in the same class as those of Mirza Sauda and Zauq. There is no doubt about his preference to be known as a primarily Persian poet. His Persian output is about 5 or 6 times as prolific as his Urdu compositions. Unfortunately, however, his claim to fame in India rests almost entirely on his Urdu poetry. His Persian poetry is all but forgotten here. In Iran too, his popularity (as a Persian poet) has been only marginal. In another thread a few months back, I had expressed a view that the pointed indifference of the Iranians to acknowledge his status as a Persian poet was due to ethnic reasons. It is possible that, in the future, this view could change, although this seems highly doubtful at this stage. Iqbal's fate as a Persian poet is not much better. Most of his poetry had religious overtones and emphasised the PanIslamic concept. Although his claim as one of the greatest (if not the greatest) Urdu poet of this century is undisputed, his Persian poetry has also been placed "on the backburner", so to say. Apart from the fact that the appeal of his poetry is not all that univer- sal, another contributory factor has been the decline of Persian as a language in India. It would be quite true to say that the number of people interested in it is now confined to a few scholars and University students. His popularity in Iran and Pakistan must be at a higher level, but I am unable to express any definitive opinions in this behalf. > > 2. Different pronunciation of the letter’qaaf’ in Persian and Urdu > > In modern Persian the letter ’qaaf’ is pronounced as ’ghaaf’ making it > identical in sound to the letter ’ghain’, whereas Urdu has retained the > original Arabic sound of the letter. What is the explanation for this > phonetic discrepancy, Urdu basically being an offspring of the contact > between Persian and khaRi boli? > I can envision two possibilities. Either the sound change in Persian is > so recent that it took place after it had ceased to be a living and > spoken language in India, or it is the manifestation of a well-known > phenomenon in languages transported to new geographical locations. These > do not always follow the sound developments in the original homeland. A > classical example of this phenomenon is the retention in American > English of the original sound of the vowel ’a’ in words like ’last’, > ’bath’, ’mass’, etc, whereas in England this vowel sound has undergone a > drastic change in character and quality. > Which one is the correct explanation? Or is there an entirely different > one? This question has been succintly dealt with by Fuzuli Sahib. I would only like to add that in India Persian is pronounced rather differently than in Iran. A faarsi sher recited by an Indian (unless he is a noted scholar) sounds quite different and may not be easily understood by an Iranian. And the reverse is also true. This is probably due to the fact that people in India are so much accustomed to using the khaRi boli, hindi and Urdu dialects that their phonetic inflections are quite different from Iranian pronunciation. Of course, this is my impression. This is really a question for experts in Phonetics. Afzal > Tejjit Singh Kalsi > > -----------== Posted via Deja News, The Discussion Network ==---------- http://www.dejanews.com/ Search, Read, Discuss, or Start Your Own