JABIR Ali Syed (1923-1985) in his book Lisani-o-Aroozi Maqaalaat (National Language Authority, Islamabad, 1989), or linguistic and prosodic papers, has discussed numerous works on Urdu prosody. The book includes a paper wherein he has mentioned a book by G.D. Pybus.

Titled A Text-book of Urdu Prosody and Rhetoric, it was published in 1924 by Rama Krishna and Sons, Anarkali, Lahore, and printed at The Baptist Mission Press, Calcutta. The article aroused such an interest that this writer tried to get a copy of the book. According to Jabir Syed, only two copies of the book could be traced, one was at Punjab University Library and the other at Multan’s Government College Library. But this writer was able to find a copy at Mushfiq Khwaja’s library and got it photocopied.

A large number of European scholars have contributed to enrich Urdu language and literature; especially Urdu lexicography and Urdu grammar-writing owe much to European scholars who showed the way to the locals by compiling earliest Urdu dictionaries and grammars. But Europeans’ interest in Urdu prosody and rhetoric has always been rare as it is considered much complex a topic to master and even natives generally dare not try their hand at it, let alone an entire book on the topic by a European.

G. D. Pybus was a British army officer posted in India, as the book mentions writer’s name as “Captain G. D. Pybus, 1/11th Sikh Regiment (K. G. O). K. G. O stood for King George’s Own, an honorific title given to show the patronage. The 11th Sikh Regiment was an infantry regiment of the British Indian Army. No further details about Pybus and his life are found. C. E. Buckland’s Dictionary of Indian Biography does not mention his name. Even DNB, or the Dictionary of National Biography — the famous, 60-volume dictionary with over 50,000 biographical accounts of notable figures from British history — has no article on G. D. Pybus.

But Pybus had dedicated his book to “R. R. Ramsbotham” who was, according to the author, a “fellow old Salopian and sometime fellow soldier” and this gives a clue: Salopian means of or relating to Salop, says Merrium-Webster Dictionary. Salop is another name for the county of Shorpshire, England. So Pybus was from that county. And that’s all this writer knows about him.

In his preface, Pybus has acknowledged various works that he had benefitted from and expressed his gratitude to several persons, including his teacher Abdur Rauf Ishart Lakhnavi (1868-1940). The book is divided into two parts: prosody and rhetoric, but the part discussing prosody is limited to little over 50 pages and about 100 pages are devoted to rhetoric. Pybus raised several points that Jabir Syed has rightly taken exception to. But then Jabir praises Pybus for his extra-ordinary clarity. An imaginary dialogue between a teacher and a student discussing prosody and scansion (taqtee’) in the book explicitly explains basic prosodic issues (page 14-15).

Pybus offers a very interesting idea when he says that a student should not bother to memorise 150 odd metres but just master six basic metres and later on can derive other prosodic measure (vazn) or metre (behr) from them, using “tana tan” instead of “mafa ee lun” (page 16). The hard work and scientific approach with which Pybus has made the prosodic issues look easy has rightly received generous praise from Jabir Sahib, who himself was a master prosodian.

Pybus does deserve this praise as he has given some basic rules that make it easier for the students to grip the very essence of Urdu prosody. For instance, he says about scansion that “only those letters which are pronounced are taken into account and not those which though written are not vocalised” (page 10). Then he gives the example of the word “bilkul” which contains five letters in Urdu but is pronounced as though it had four and in scansion only those four letters are taken into account. Similarly, aspirated sounds, such as bh, ph, gh etc, are treated as just one sound and not two (modern phonetic science has affirmed that these are single, distinct phonemes) but alif mamdooda (the long alif) “counts as two”. As for the part on Urdu rhetoric, it has two portions: figures of speech (ilm-i-badee’ or sanaae’ badaae’) and ‘the explanatory science’ as put by Pybus (ilm-i-bayaan).

An appendix proffers “specimens of the common Urdu metres for practice”. An index lists the prosodic and rhetorical terms used in the book.

The book, a compact work on Urdu prosody and rhetoric, is still relevant and useful — 102 years after its publication.

Published in Dawn, March 30th, 2026