‘THOSE who live in a glasshouse should change clothes in dark’, goes the anti-proverb, parodying the last part of the famous saying that advises to refrain from throwing stones.

Anti-proverb is a slightly altered form of a well-known proverb, either for the sake of humour or sarcasm. Examples abound: ‘if at first you don’t succeed, skydiving is not for you’, or ‘if at first you don’t succeed, blame it on your wife’, are twisted version of famous adage that says ‘if at first you don’t succeed, try, try again’. But standard proverbs, too, are often witty and capture the essence of a situation pithily.

Studying proverbs is as interesting as rewarding an activity since proverbs are succinct and witty sayings that carry the wisdom as well as clues to societal norms and mores of the people who use them. The study of proverbs is a subfield of linguistics and is known as paremiology. Derived from a Greek root ‘paroimia’, which means maxim or proverb, paremiology is basically recording, collecting and studying proverbs.

According to Encyclopaedia Britannica, proverbs were collected in most literate societies and the Egyptian collections of proverb date back to circa 2500 BC. In ancient China, too, proverbs were used for moral and ethical values. Aside from Biblical literature and folk literature, proverbs have been an integral part of almost all the spoken languages, says Britannica, and the Pashto language is no exception.

S. S. Thorburn, an administrative officer in the British India government, had penned a book in English, titled Bannu: Or Our Afghan Frontier (1876). Thorburn not only captured the life back then in the areas that are now part of KP, but also recorded the fables, ballads, proverbs and riddles of Pashto. But he did not give the original Pashto text. In 1953, Gul Muhammad Noori published a book Pashto Matloona (Pashto proverbs) from Kabul, wrote Muhammad Nawaz Tair, and it had more Pashto proverbs than Thorburn had collected. But most of the Pashto proverbs compiled by Noori were collected from certain parts of Afghanistan.

Muhammad Deen Zhwaak’s book, published probably in 1970, had 2,500 Pashto proverbs. Vali Muhammad Khan Khayal Kakar’s book (1976) enlisted Pashto proverbs but most of them were the ones spoken by Balochistan’s Pashtun tribes.

Peshawar University’s Pashto Academy published a monumental work Rohi Matloona in two volumes in 1975. Compiled by Muhammad Nawaz Tair, it included over 11,000 Pashto proverbs. It is by far the most comprehensive collection of Pashto proverbs. Much of the information given above was collected from an article co-authored by Munazza Mubeen and Naqeeb Ahmed Jan, the two scholars from Women’s University, Swabi, KP. Their article was published in April-June, 2020, issue of Urdu Adab, the research journal published by Anjuman Taraqqi-i-Urdu, Delhi.

Now a new collection of Pashto proverbs has just been published. Compiled by two scholars — Robert Sampson and Momin Khan — and titled Love Grows by Coming and Going: Popular Pashto Proverbs, the book proffers 400 most popular Pashto proverbs. There have been some such collections in the past, as we have mentioned above, but what makes this collection unique is English translation of each proverb along with its Pashto version in Pashto script. Proverbs are given under certain headwords given in alphabetical order and mentioning topics they cover, such as, anger, blessing, competition, disgrace, and so on.

Additionally, at the back of the book are given two portions; one consists of notes to the proverbs, explaining their linguistic and cultural background and making them clearer; the other one enlists all the proverbs in alphabetical order, giving the initial words of the Pashto proverb in Pashto script. Both the portions mention the serial numbers of the proverbs as they are listed in the text, but the digits mentioned against each entry, both in the text and lists, are so minute that they are hardly visible and most of the readers might not be able to find them, let alone reading them.

Aside from this minor printing issue, the book is a delightful collection of witty and succinct Pashto proverbs, full of wisdom. Some of the English translations are: a bent stick can’t be tied for loading; the sieve told the water pot you’ve got two holes; Muslim character is not defined by a beard.

As mentioned in the introduction, Pashto proverbs are used on every occasion and every one, whether educated or unlettered, to pepper their talk with witty, pithy and sometimes rhyming proverbs that have deeper meanings than they apparently convey. The authors have apologised for resorting to some literal translations as “the sparkling eloquence of the original” can only be “a poor imitation” as the vigour, rhythm and subtle word play “has to be heard in Pashto to feel its effect”.

drraufparekh@yahoo.com

Published in Dawn, November 7th, 2022