Development of Urdu — as the most prominent form of Literature Language in India
Popularly known as the language of Shayar’s, Urdu. Urdu is not a very old language and its development as one of the most spoken and popular languages of literature is amazing. By tracing back the development of this language we can also get an idea how different languages might have come into existence. The word Urdu is derived from the Turkic word “ordu” (army) or “orda”, from which English horde is also derived. Although Turkic borrowings in Urdu are minimal and Urdu is also not genetically related to the Turkic languages.
Development of Urdu
Urdu developed from the local dialects spoken in and around Delhi called Dehalvi, which incorporated words from Turkish, Arabic and Persian in the 13th and 14th century. The closest relation of Urdu is Hindi. Spoken Urdu and Hindi are almost identical at the day-to-day functional level, apart from certain words. After learning Urdu, you’ll find it much easier to speak and understand Hindi but written Hindi will remain a mystery as it’s written in a different script. Around 75% of Urdu words have their etymological roots in Sanskrit and Prakrit, and approximately 99% of Urdu verbs have their roots in Sanskrit and Prakrit. Because Persian-speaking sultans ruled the Indian subcontinent for a number of years, Urdu was influenced by Persian and to a lesser extent, Arabic, which have contributed to about 25% of Urdu’s vocabulary. Other languages written in the same script as Urdu include Pashto, Kashmiri and Panjabi, although Panjabi is also written in a script called Gurumukhi.
Urdu in Contrast to other languages
There are over 100 million native speakers of Urdu in India (more than 80% of it) and Pakistan together: there were 52 million and 80.5 million Urdu speakers in India some 5% and 6.5% of the total population of India as per the 2001 and 2011 censuses respectively; approximately 10 million in Pakistan or 7.57% as per the 1998 census and 16 million in 2006 estimates; and several hundred thousand in the United Kingdom, Saudi Arabia, United States, and Bangladesh (where it is called “Bihari”)
Hindavi, Dehalvi, Gujri, Dakhini, Rekhta were the names given to the language which evolved from Hindustani to today’s Hindi and Urdu. The first writer to popularise Hindavi, which he referred to as Dehalvi, was the prolific and wondrous Amir Khusrau (read an interesting article about him from our blog) who is credited as being the father of Hindi and Urdu. Hindi was exchangeable with Rekhta till the 19th century as a name for the spoken language. Mushafi (1750–1824) himself was the first to use the word Urdu meaning a language in his first Divan. Till then it was called hindavi and Rekhta.
The Urdu Poetry
In India, Urdu poetry or shayri started surprisingly in the Deccan with Quli Qutub Shah in 1565–1611. He is the first poet to have a significant volume of work in Urdu. Wali Deccani (1635–1707) and Siraj Aurangabadi ( 1715–1763) followed in his glorious footsteps. There are three major schools of Urdu shayri in India: Deccan, Delhi and Lucknow. Each followed the other. In the 18th century came Mir Taqi Mir (1722–1810), Mirza Asadullah Khan Ghalib (1797–1869).
This is Ghalib’s famous couplet in which he compares himself to his great predecessor, the master poet Mir:
ریختے کے تمہیں استاد نہیں ہو غالبؔ
کہتے ہیں اگلے زمانے میں کوئی میرؔ بھی تھا
Transliteration(Hindi):
Reḵẖtah ke tumhī ustād nahīṉ ho G̱ẖālib
Kahte haiṉ Agle zamāne meṉ ko’ī Mīr bhī thā
Translation(English):
You are not the only master of Rekhta, Ghalib
(They) say that in the past there also was someone (named) Mir.
Romantic poetry or ghazal reached its zenith in Delhi under them. Other notable poets of the Delhi school were Mirza Mohammad Rafi Sauda (1713–80), Khwaja Mir Dard (1721–85), and Nawab Mirza Khan Dagh (1831–1905). After the sack of Delhi by Nadir Shah in 1739, by Ahmed Shah in 1769 and the First War of Independence in 1857, Delhi lost its importance and Lucknow became the cultural capital. Poets such as Ghulam Hamdani Mushafi (1725–1824), Inshallah Khan Insha (1757–1817), Khwaja Haidar Ali Atish (1778–1846), Iman Baksh Nasikh (1787–1838), Mir Babr Ali Anis (1802–74) and Mirza Salamat Ali Dabir (1803–1875 flourished under the patronage of the Awadh Nawabs. If Mir and Ghalib were masters of Ghazal, called Rekhta in those days, Sauda was known for qasida writing, masnawi grew with Mir Hasan and marsiya with Anis and Dabir.
Literature tools in Urdu include (Only Major forms):
1. Ghazal or Rekhta: It’s an Arabic word that means “conversing with the beloved.” It developed in Persia in the 10th century AD from the Arabic verse form qasida.
The ghazal came to India in the 12th century, courtesy the Sufi mystics and the Islamic Sultanates and it flourished here in Persian and later Urdu.
Traditionally a Ghazal contains minimum 5 couplets and goes up to 15, but typically most Ghazals have around 7.
A sher or couplet is independent of the rest of the ghazal and can be read alone, even though the poem may have a common refrain, which provides a link between the couplets. But every poem which has independent couplets is not a ghazal.
2. Nazm: this is a ‘well organized, logically evolving poem ‘ with a central theme and each verse is related to it. A nazm can be written in rhymed verse, unrhymed verse, or even in free verse. Nazm was preferred by the poets of the Progressive Writers Association in the 20th century to spread their message of freedom and equality. Sahir Ludhianvi and Ali Sardar Jafri being shining examples of this style.
“Kabhi kabhi mere dil mein khayal aata hai
ke zindagi teri zulfon ke narm chaon mein
guzarne pati to shadab ho bhi sakati thi
( kabhi Kabhi by Sahir)”
3. Qasida: Its a panegyric, or poem written in praise of a king or a nobleman, or a benefactor. The opening verse of the qasida is a rhyming couplet, as in a ghazal and its rhyme is repeated in the second line of each succeeding verse. It can run into 50 lines.
4. Marsiya: The word ‘Marsiya’ is derived from the Arabic word ‘Risa’, meaning a great tragedy or lamentation for a departed soul. It is an elegy, a poem of mourning which has now come to be specifically associated with the tragedy of Karbala. Marsiya generally consists of six-line units, with a rhyming quatrain, and a couplet on a different rhyme. It is characterized by six-line verses in an AA, AA and BB rhyme scheme.
5. Masnawi: A long narrative poem — much longer than the ghazal — embodying religious, romantic or didactic stories. It is written in rhyming couplets, with each couplet having a different rhyme and radeef.
6. Rubaii: A self-sufficient quatrain, rhyming (a, a, b, a) and dealing generally with a single idea
The principal collection forms of Urdu poetry are:
• Diwan, a collection of gazals.
• Kulliyat, a complete collection of poems by one author.
