PESHAWAR, Jan 3: Obsession with purity of a language is the greatest barrier to its literary progress and cultural diversity, speakers observed at a seminar.

The two-day international seminar on the 'Effects of Persian on the National and Regional Languages of Pakistan' was organized by the Iranian Cultural Centre here on Saturday.

Provincial Public Service Commission Chairman Abdullah stressed a three-dimensional study of a language: its origin (as linguistics) and progress, historical association with other languages and a symbol of unity.

"There is a mention of names (nouns) in the Holy Quran. However, man is responsible for action (verbs). In Urdu, names are alien, but the verbs are locals. The combined movement of nouns and verbs takes the language forward," he pointed out.

Citing from Shah Nama, Mr Abdullah said, Firdousi had consciously avoided the use of Arabic words in his classic narration. It was a great epic, but it was poor at the cultural and aesthetic planes, he said and added that it could not match the ethical accounts of Saadi's Bostan and Gulistan, who had used Arabic words in his parables.

He said that Mehmud of Ghazna, whose forces attacked India 17 times, had sponsored the creative projects of Al Bairuni. The only barrier that hampered the development of a language was its obsession with the purity. "The pure language is a poor language," he added.

He urged scholars to bridge the widening gap between the language and speech, otherwise language would lose its content.

Dr Mohammad Siddique Shibli said Iran had gifted Persian language to the subcontinent. Urdu had borrowed use of prefix and suffix from Persian, he pointed out.

Prof Ali Bayat from Tehran University read out his paper about the contribution of Persian language in the structuring of the Urdu sayings and proverbs.