WHILE going through the evocative history of Urdu lexicography, we come across, aside from the published Urdu dictionaries, quite a few of Urdu’s lexicographic works that could not see the light of day.

Some of them either remained on the drawing board or could not take off after a short run. A few Urdu dictionaries were either partially published or simply remained unpublished, with their manuscripts gone to god knows where and one knows about these dictionaries just because their titles are mentioned in the annals of literary history.

The Urdu dictionaries planned but not compiled include one by Sir Syed Ahmed Khan (1817-1898). He had planned to compile a comprehensive Urdu-Urdu dictionary and had sent its sample pages to Garcin de Tassy (1794-1878), the renowned French scholar of Urdu. The Frenchman much appreciated the idea and encouraged him as no such dictionary existed at that time and the ones available were Urdu-to-English or Urdu-to-Persian dictionaries. Garcin de Tassy also suggested a thing or two. He mentioned it in his 1869 annual review of Indian literature, too. But Sir Syed was, perhaps, busy with other more gigantic tasks, such as educating the nation, and could not work any further on the dictionary. Had it been compiled, it would have been a treasured gift for the posterity, just like Farhang-i-Asifiya. A few sample pages of Sir Syed’s proposed dictionary were reproduced by Ismail Panipati who edited Sir Syed’s collected works, published by Majlis-i-Taraqqi-i-Adab, Lahore. Muhammad Hussain Azad, too, wanted to compile a comprehensive Urdu dictionary.

There are some Urdu-to-Urdu dictionaries that could get published only partially. For example, only the first volume of Bahaar-i-Hind, a four-volume Urdu-to-Urdu dictionary compiled by Mirza Muhammad Murtaza Aashiq Lakhnavi, appeared in 1888. It announced that the remaining three volumes would be printed soon, but they never appeared and no one knows anything about the manuscript even. Only two volumes of Ameer-ul-lughaat, an eight-volume Urdu-to-Urdu dictionary planned on a grand scale, could be published during the lifetime of Ameer Meenai, the compiler. The first volume was published in 1891 and the second in 1892. The third volume was published by Punjab University in 2010. No one is sure about the remaining unpublished volumes.

Urdu dictionaries compiled but not published include the ones by Qadr Bilgirami and Shamsuddin Faiz. Ghulam Maula Qalaq, the poet, too had compiled an Urdu dictionary but it was never published. Ahsan Marehravi was compiling and publishing in parts an Urdu dictionary, but it remained unfinished and hardly hundred pages were published.

But more tragic, indeed, are the tales that tell about the huge, most comprehensive dictionaries that were compiled completely but not a single page from them could be published. One such dictionary was written by Abdul Majeed Khan Rampuri. In 1918, he submitted the entire manuscript of his 19-volume Urdu dictionary to the nawab of Rampur who intended to publish it, but the nawab died and nobody knows whatever happened to it. An article by Altaf Hussain Hali hints that it might still be housed in Rampur’s state library, now known as Raza Library.

Of all the unpublished Urdu dictionaries, the most comprehensive is Qaamoos-ul-Hind. It is an Urdu-to-Urdu dictionary and its only manuscript, consisting of 55 thick, large-size volumes, is preserved and housed in Karachi University’s central library, named Dr Mahmood Hussain Library. The 55-volume lexicographic feat was compiled by Rajeshwar Rao Asghar, the ruler of Jatpol, a small princely state in district of Nizamabad in north-western India. Though Asghar had penned some 50 books — mostly dictionaries, thesauruses and wordlists — little is known about him. According to an article by Tamkeen Kazmi, published in Nuqoosh (vol. 59-60, 1956), it can be reckoned that Asghar was born circa 1880 and died around 1940.

The 55 volumes of Qamoos-ul-Hind were purchased by Karachi University in 1987 when Dr Jameel Jalibi was the vice chancellor. It is not known, however, when and how these bulky, weighty volumes were brought from India to Pakistan. They must have been brought in through some ‘unofficial’ channel, to put it mildly. It reminds one of the divan of Ghalib’s manuscript, which was said to be “smuggled” from India into Pakistan. It had caused such an uproar in India in those days that on the floor of the Indian parliament the question was raised as to how a rare manuscript, discovered in Amroha, India, had reappeared in Lahore and its facsimile published by Nuqoosh.

This writer has been fortunate to have seen and surveyed these 55 volumes that consist of some 32, 000 pages. Though the number is reduced to half (16,000 pages) when the actual text is considered, as the entries of the dictionary are penned only on one side of the leaf, it must contain at least a quarter of a million (250,000) entries — words, phrases, idioms and proverbs — or headwords, as this is what they are referred to in lexicographic terminology.

The staff of Karachi University’s library must be admired for having done a wonderful job of preserving this rare feat of lexicography. These 55 volumes are in quite a good condition and though the paper has become brittle, the pages have been protected with tracing paper. The new, hard binding holds the pages together quite well.

What we need to do is to get these volumes edited and published. At least, they should be preserved on computer by scanning the entire 16, 000 pages. It would be an added service to the Urdu language if the scanned images of 55 volumes are displayed on a website. The standard of the dictionary and the definitions given may be debatable at times, but preserving these 55 volumes must be a national priority.

drraufparekh@yahoo.com

Published in Dawn, August 8th, 2016