AMEER Meenai (1829-1900) was a multi-faceted diamond: he was a poet, lexicographer, prose writer, Sufi, scholar, editor, translator and linguist. He knew Persian, Arabic, Urdu, Sans­krit and Hindi and had mastered several branches of knowledge, including the occult.

Ameer Meenai wrote some 50 books in Urdu and Persian, many of the dictionaries. Some of his works still remain unpublished, though, luckily most of his lexicographic works have been published and the latest among them is a dictionary titled Surma-i-Baseerat. It also includes the text collated with another of his dictionaries named Mi’yar-ul-Aghlaat. Meenai had compiled Surma-i-Baseerat in 1865 and it was written by a calligrapher in 1872. So a dictionary compiled some 150 years ago has now been published — finally — and the credit goes to Dr Faiza Zehra Mirza, who has edited, compiled and annotated the manuscript. She teaches Persian at Karachi Uni­versity’s Persian department. Karachi University’s Bureau of Compilation and Translation has published it. The dictionary enlists words from several languages, such as Persian, Arabic, Hindi and Turkish, and the commentary is in Persian. But in fact, it is an Urdu-Persian dictionary of correct usage as almost all the words enlisted are used in Urdu.

In her intro, Dr Mirza has mentioned that while working on the manuscript of Surma-i-Baseerat, provided by Ameer Meenai’s grandson Israel Meenai, she read about another dictionary that Ameer Meenai had compiled. It is named Mi’yar-ul-Aghlaat and is hitherto unpublished. She somehow got a copy of the manuscript of Mi’yar-ul-Aghlaat, housed at Rampur’s Raza Library. On collating both the manuscripts, it was revealed that both the works are of similar nature.

Surma-i-Baseerat, says Dr Mirza, discusses the Arabic, Persian, Turkish, Urdu, English and Hindi words and compounds that are often used incorrectly. Either they are incorrectly pronounced or are used in wrong context. The book enlists the words according to their origin and words from different languages are grouped together in separate portions. In his Persian intro, Dr Mirza, Ameer Meenai has written that many lexicographic and linguistic works have erred when it came to pronunciation and diacritic marks. He has also noted that many words are used in different contexts than the actual ones and he wanted to put the record straight. Thus he began collecting and recording such words and penned two works — Surma-i-Baseerat and Mi’yar-ul-Aghlaat.

Mi’yar-ul-Aghlaat was pen­ned in 1864.

Since both the works are similar and many of the entries are the same, Dr Mirza collated them and compiled with meticulous research an authentic text with annotations and references.

In her foreword, she has given the details of the similarities as well as dissimilarities of the manuscripts, their salient features and linguistic peculiarities with bibliographical details. Dr Faiza Mirza has done a wonderful job by carrying out the editing of two rare works strictly according to the methodology and techniques of modern research. It shows her dedication as well as her training that she must have acquired while working on her PhD dissertation in Persian.

Let us have a look at some of the more interesting entries enlisted in the dictionary, which aims at correcting the common errors in usage:

• Asif /Asaf

Ameer Meenai says it is the name of a son of Barkhia, who was one of the scholars of Israelites. Asif was a minister in the court of Prophet Solomon. But Meenai says the correct pronunciation is Asaf and not Asif and cites a Persian ghazal wherein the words ‘saf’ and ‘kaf’ have been used as rhyming words and they rhyme with ‘Asaf’ and not ‘Asif’.

• angara

Ameer Meenai says angara means ‘ember’ or ‘a piece of burning coal’ in Hindi, but in Persian it is a different word meaning ‘a picture or sketch that is incomplete’. Care must be taken while using this word in Persian.

• angrez

Ameer Meenai describes the correct pronunciation of the word angrez (which means Englishman in Urdu) with the help of a prosodic foot of a verse and quotes this couplet from Nasikh:

Dil mulk-i-angrez mein rehne se tang hai
Qaid-i-hayat bhi mujhe qaid-i-farang hai

• ajeetan

Meenai says the word commonly pronounced as ‘ajeetan’ by locals is in fact a corruption of the English word ‘adjutant’.

• sufaldaan

According to Meenai, some say it is a utensil for spitting in. Others call it peekdaan, but peekdaan is another utensil kept for spitting paan in and sufaldaan is a part of tableware that is kept on dining table for bones and other “uneatable parts of meals”.

• khoja

Meenai says khoja should not be used to mean ‘castrated slave’ and the correct pronunciation and spelling is khwaja.

A language-wise index of words at the back of the book has made it more useful.

* *

Published in Dawn, March 22nd, 2021