SOME expressions and words used in Mir Amman’s Baagh-o-Bahaar may sound old-fashioned or obsolete. Some of them definitely resonate with different meanings and some seem downright incorrect. But they are not.

For example, the word randi is used in this 19th-cnetury masterpiece to mean ‘a woman’ — a perfectly noble and virtuous woman, though today the word’s meaning has changed wildly as it now means ‘a prostitute’. Some other words used in the book may sound offensive or pejorative, but they were perfectly all right at the time they were penned, about two centuries ago. Similarly, in Mir Muhammad Husain Ata Khan Tehseen’s Nau Tarz-e-Murassa, the word mujra has been used to say ‘salutation’, albeit today it means ‘dancing and singing by prostitutes’. In Nau Tarz-e-Murassa a character appears before a king to offer mujra, or salaam (he does not dance or sing).

But Baagh-o-Bahaar is still a part of syllabi at graduate and post-graduate studies for a degree in Urdu literature at our universities as it is considered a remarkable early work in Urdu prose, specifically recommended to students for evaluating and appreciating the flow of lovely prose and idiomatic expressions used with a touch of Delhi parlance some 220 years ago. Nau Tarz-e-Murassa, an earlier Urdu version of the same tale, namely Qissa-e-Chahaar Darvesh, on which Baagh-o-Bahaar is based, is often referred to while teaching the history of Urdu prose.

Mir Anees, one of the foremost poets of Urdu marsiya, or elegy, along with Dabeer, is often praised for his idiomatic usage and is referred to as standard language. But recently Mir Anees was accused of using “bad” or “offensive” language. In his address during a literary gathering, a scholar objected to the use of the word raand by Mir Anees to denote ‘a widow’. The venerable scholar was of the view that praising Mir Anees for his use of impeccable Urdu language, as is often the case, is a flawed idea. He commented on some religious notions in poetry of Anees and Dabeer, too, but I would restrict my submissions to linguistic ideas that he expressed.

The fact is the era in which Mir Anees was composing poetry had its own peculiar expressions and connotations when it comes to the use of the Urdu language. In those days the word raand meant ‘a widow’, though today it is used disparagingly to curse a woman and also means ‘a prostitute’. Mir Anees died in 1874 and since then a lot of change has occurred to the Urdu language. Just as we are to use the shades of meanings of the words today that are subject to change, maybe, in a few decades, Mir Anees, Mir Amman and Mir Tehseen were inextricably linked to their times, their texts interwoven with semantic contexts and cultural values. The shifting sands of time do change the languages, their words and nuances. The words randi, mujra, raand and many other expressions were perfectly all right to use and convey the meaning these authors intended to, notwithstanding what they denote today may be worlds apart.

We cannot object to the vocabulary and spellings used by William Shakespeare, or, say, Vali Dakani, though today they may at times sound dated or incorrect even. We have to put the language in perspective as it is an undeniable fact that languages change and so do the meanings of words. According to linguists, living languages go through change, a long and continuous process that causes alterations in languages. As a result of this process — known as language change or linguistic change — a language experiences many changes that include phonetic change, orthographical change, lexical change, semantic change and even grammatical change. This kind of study comes under historical linguistics. Another change that is called language variation or linguistic variation is undertaken in sociolinguistics and it studies the changes in a language that take place with reference to different places or in different communities where the language is spoken.

Language change refers to a change occurring during a period of time while language variation takes into account the change occurring in a language at the same time but at a different geographical area or social environment. So comparing Old English or Old Urdu — or the older versions of any other language for that matter — with the modern usage needs some knowledge of historical semantics and historical linguistics.

Classical Urdu literature, or classical English literature, cannot be accused of using bad or offensive language as they were the product of their own times with the specific meanings that words denoted back then. Anyone doubting Mir Anees’s use of Urdu language should study Anees’s contemporary critics, such as Shibli No’mani, and a little bit of historical semantics, too.

drraufparekh@yahoo.com

Published in Dawn, August 5th, 2024