PHYSIOGNOMY is one of the methods fortune-tellers use. It is the art of telling the character and destiny from physical features, especially the facial features of a person.
In Urdu, physiognomy is given different names, including ‘chehra shanaasi’ and ‘qiyaafa’. In Urdu, some books, too, have been written on the practice which claims to tell the future and character of a person by looking at the facial or physical features. Though we may not have faith in face-reading or physiognomy, what may interest one is the fact that a book on physiognomy was written in Urdu in 1873 and it was written in verse form. Since we know some versified grammars of Persian and Urdu and versified Persian-Urdu dictionaries were written in the subcontinent, the versified book on physiognomy, titled Risala-i-Qiyaafa and written by Debi Prashad Sahar, does not surprise us much.
But the number and variety of the books by the same author do surprise us: Debi Prashad wrote a large number of books in Urdu on topics as varied as history, physiognomy, prosody, law, grammar, jokes, logic, geography, fables, mathematics, orthography, land-measuring and surveying --- not to mention several collections of his poetry.
The word ‘munshi’ comes from Arabic and it literally means a writer or author, a scribe. In the subcontinent, the word ‘munshi’ was a title of respect, used for a tutor of oriental languages. It also meant ‘a clerk’. With the passage of time the connotation ‘clerk’ --- or someone who copies down documents or maintains accounts in an office --- got more currency. But Debi Prashad was called ‘munshi’ because of the respect he had earned as a writer and man of letters. Sahar was his ‘takhallus’, or penname, and since Badayun, a town in North India, was the place where he was born on Dec 24, 1840, Badayuni was a part of his full name.
According to Lala Siri Ram, Debi Prashad was brought up in Delhi and Lucknow, but his poetry and linguistic approaches were more influenced by Lucknow School (Khum Khana-i-Javed, vol. 4). Debi Prashad belonged to the Kayastha community, wrote Hamid Hasan Qadri. The community was known for being educated and serving as administrative officers and keepers of official records since the Mughal era. Debi Prashad was employed in the education department and rose to the post of deputy inspector of schools, hence justifying both the title ‘munshi’ and the roots to the Kayastha community.
Urdu orthography and common errors made in writing Urdu was one of the myriad topics that allured Debi Prashad. He wrote a book and named it Meyaar-ul-Imla, or the standard of orthography. Published by Munshi Naval Kishore from Lucknow in 1876, the book is one of the earliest efforts to standardise Urdu orthography, an issue that still needs serious attention and many scholars have since then expressed their dissatisfaction over the anarchy and disorderliness rampant in Urdu orthography. It was Debi Prashad who first realised that Urdu orthography must be homogenised and must have unified standards. Though Rasheed Hasan Khan has done a wonderful job of trying to standardise and systematise Urdu orthography by writing Urdu Imla (1974), many scholars still disagree and, in some cases, have bitterly criticised Rasheed Hasan Khan for the book. Ironically, a PhD dissertation on Urdu orthography surmised that no books on Urdu orthography were penned before 20th century, a claim that reveals the standard of Urdu research these days. Had the PhD student had bothered to read just one book by Dr Abu Salman Shahjahanpuri, she would have realised that there have been quite a few books on the issues related to standardisation of Urdu orthography and systematisation of Urdu punctuation, Urdu grammar and usage, all published in the second and third quarters of the 19th century. Imam Bakhsh Sehbai, Sir Syed Ahmed Khan and Moulvi Nazeer Ahmed had written on the issue. But it was Debi Prashad who took the lead. Sadly, the said dissertation was published in book form by a prestigious government organisation responsible for the promotion of the national language!
Another book by Debi Prashad is named Meyaar-ul-Balaaghat, or the standard of rhetoric and eloquence. First published in 1866, the book discusses prosody, rhetoric, figures of speech and the art of writing poetry and prose.
Debi Prashad was a poet of considerable talent and among other things he wrote ‘vasaukht’, a genre which lampooned the unfaithful sweetheart and which is almost dead as it is rarely composed these days (perhaps the poets have gladly accepted the unfaithfulness of sweethearts since it gives them an excuse to settle the score).
Debi Prashad wrote some 34 books and some of them are: Aasaar-ush-Shuara-i-Hunood, Nafaais-ut-Tawaareekh, Tareekh-i-Tuzk-i-Hind, Khulaasat-ul-Mantiq, Lataaif-i-Hindi, Nazm-i-Parveen, Deevaar-i-Qehqaha, Ta’leem-ul-Atfaal, Khulasa-i-Jughraafiya and Talkhees-i-Hisaab,
The strange fact is that though Debi Prashad’s date of birth is recorded and quoted, his exact date of death is not known. According to Lala Siri Ram, Debi Prashad was alive in 1893. But Malik Ram has mentioned the year 1902 as his year of death.
Published in Dawn, October 21st, 2020
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