KARACHI, April 30: The Urdu Lughat Board has published the 21st volume of Urdu Lughat. The last volume came out in July 2005.

The president of the Urdu Lughat Board, Dr Farman Fatehpuri, said that the 21st volume consisted of 824 pages and contained thousands of words, idioms, phrases and proverbs. He added that the first and last words of the volume were “Waw” and “Hazarha”, respectively.

The Urdu Lughat Board plans to publish 22 volumes containing 300,000 words, give or take a few hundred words.

Dr Farman said work on the 21st volume of the Lughat was completed under the editorship of Dr Rauf Parekh who had joined the Urdu Lughat Board in July 2003.

Though the initial work of the Urdu Lughat Board — enunciation of guiding principles for Urdu lexicography, establishment of a well-stocked library, provision of books, appointment of scholars and staff, etc — began in 1958, the first volume of the Urdu Lughat came out in 1977.

The Urdu Lughat Board has modelled its flagship dictionary on the Greater Oxford Dictionary. When completed, Urdu Lughat would enable the Urdu language to join the exalted ranks of English and German, which are the only two languages in the world to have such comprehensive dictionaries.

At least seven scholars of the Urdu language worked at the Urdu Lughat Board as chief editor. They were the late Dr Maulvi Abdul Haq (from 1957 to 1961), the late Dr Abul Lais Siddiqui (from 1962 to 1984), Dr Farman Fatehpuri (from 1985 to 1995), Dr Hanif Qureishi Fauq (from 1995 to 1997), Prof Sahar Ansari (from 1998 to 2000), Mirza Nasim Baig (from 2000 to 2001) and Dr Younus Hasni (from 2001 to 2003). Currently, Dr Rauf Parekh is working as chief editor of the Urdu Lughat Board.