THE genesis of Urdu is one of the questions that still haunt researchers of Urdu language. No one can say for sure where, when and how Urdu was born. The writers and scholars who have expressed their views on the issue can largely be divided into two groups those who said something on the basis of assumptions or a very little knowledge of linguistics; and those who thoroughly researched the issue from a scientific point of view and had modern linguistics at their back to support their theories.

While Mir Amman and Mohammad Hussain Azad belong to the first order, Dr Shaukat Subzwari, Dr Masood Hussain Khan and some other scholars founded their theories on comparative and historical linguistics and their premises merit at least a serious thought. Dr Subzwari wrote three full-length books to elaborate his views on how Urdu was born. In his first book on the issue, 'Urdu zaban ka irteqa' (1956), he intentionally avoided drawing any conclusions about how Urdu was born and tried essentially to present the historical development of Urdu with the help of linguistic analysis of the samples of different dialects and regional varieties of the Old Urdu. Though in this book he has a visible leaning towards drawing similarities between Urdu and Pali Prakrit, which led some to believe that Subzwari was of the view that Urdu was derived from Pali (the language of the scriptures of Buddhism), he never said that Urdu had its origin in Pali.

In his second work, 'Dastaan-i-zaban-i-Urdu' (1960), he clearly refuted some scholars' claims that Urdu was a 'camp-language' or 'lashkari zaban'. Quoting the acclaimed linguist Max Muller, Subzwari said that to determine the family of any language, vocabulary had no importance and it was the morphological and syntactical structure of a language that decided the family it belonged to.

In this scholarly work, Dr Subzwari ruthlessly criticised some western scholars for arriving at wrong conclusions about Urdu's genesis. He specifically mentioned G. A. Grierson's misleading theory suggesting that Urdu was an offshoot of 'western Hindi' spoken in the 11th century AD in a vast area of dialects such as Haryani, Khari Boli, Bundeli and Qannauji. Subzwari was of the view that there existed no language such as 'western Hindi' and it was only Grierson's 'imagination' and his 'mental abstraction' (second edition, 1987, page 96-97).

Subzwari Sahib also disagreed with the scholars who thought Urdu was an offshoot of Shauraseni Prakrit. He said this theory could not be correct because in Shauraseni nouns ended on an 'o' or 'u' sound (a sign of 'Pari Boli') while Urdu nouns usually ended on an 'a' sound (a sign of 'Khari Boli'). His hypothesis was that Urdu was derived from a form of Apabhransha that was spoken in Madhya Pradesh in the 11th century AD. He believed Urdu was not derived from 'Khari Boli' either but 'Khari Boli' itself was a later offshoot of Urdu.

His third book on the issue, 'Urdu lisaaniyat' (1966), includes some lectures, too, on descriptive linguistics that he delivered at Peshawar University. Further elaborating his thoughts, he said in the book that Urdu 'no doubt' was derived from a Prakrit that was the missing link of the chain that consisted of Sanskrit, Pali, Shauraseni Prakrit and western Apabhransha. He said that Urdu was the last ring in the chain of an ancient language spoken in Madhya Pradesh.

The issue of Urdu's origin may not be that easy to settle but no one who studies the issue can settle for a theory without taking into account what Dr Subzwari wrote. Born Syed Shaukat Ali, Shaukat Subzwari was a critic, researcher, linguist, grammarian, translator and lexicographer.

Born in Meerut in October 1908, he first obtained the oriental certificates of learning, Maulvi Fazil and Munshi Fazil. Then, having passed his high school exams in 1926, he joined Meerut's Madressa-i-Aaliya in 1930 as a teacher. He later resumed his education as private candidate and got an LLB and MAs (in Urdu, Arabic and Persian). In 1943, he joined Meerut College to teach Urdu and Persian. But his thirst for knowledge was unquenchable and he began learning Sanskrit from a pundit. Knowing so many languages was perhaps what gave him an invaluable insight to determine the origin of words and consider the genesis of certain dialects.

His literary career began as a short story writer and a poet but he soon turned to criticism. Shaukat Sahib wrote an article on Ghalib's poetry which expanded and bloomed into a book. Titled 'Falsafa-i-kalam-i-Ghalib', it was published in 1946. In the same year, Andaleeb Shadani, an accomplished critic and research scholar who then was teaching at Dhaka University, invited Subzwari Sahib to join the university. He accepted the offer and joined the university's Urdu department. In 1952, he did his PhD from the same university on Urdu linguistics. His dissertation was on the topic of development of Urdu language, which later published in book form in 1956.

In 1958, the Urdu Dictionary Board was established in Karachi and Baba-i-Urdu Maulvi Abdul Haq was made its first chief editor. Shaukat Subzwari joined the board as senior editor a little later and his perfect eye for words and their origin made him excel in the job. Though he could not see the printing of the first volume of the dictionary, which came out in 1977, he was among the scholars who played a vital role in laying the foundation of the institution and inscribing the basic principles of one of the greatest feats of Urdu lexicography — which is now nearing completion and its last and 22nd volume would probably be published in a couple of months.

His other works include 'Ghalib fikr-o-fan' (1960), 'Mayaar-i-adab' (1961), 'Nai purani qadren' (1961), 'Lisaani masael' (1963) and 'Urdu qavaed' (published posthumously in 1982).

Dr Shaukat Subzwari died in Karachi on March 19, 1973.

—drraufparekh@yahoo.com