Seraiki a source of Urdu
THIS refers to Rauf Parekh’s literary note about the origin of Urdu (Feb 8). Mr Parekh has mentioned a number of sources.
Out of these, he mentioned the work of Hafiz Mahmud Sherani’s ‘Punjab mein Urdu’ as the most plausible. He further mentioned that
Mr Grieson had suggested similarly in ‘Linguistic Survey of India’.
Mr Parekh summarised the views of Sherani but failed to mention the core of his idea that by Punjab he meant Multan and its surroundings. Since, unfortunately, Multan belonged politically to Punjab at that time, so he labelled this language as Punjabi. We call this language as Seraiki now.
It is a fact that Urdu was implanted in Brij by the Tughluqs.
The Tughluqs were Multanis who captured the Sultanate of Delhi after the fall of Khiljis in 14th century AD.
The mausoleum of Shah Rukun-i-Alam was constructed by Ghiasuddin Tughluq for his own burial. Later, after moving to Delhi, he passed orders for burying Shah Rukun-i-Alam there. Urdu is an adoption of Seraiki in ‘khari’ territory. The infinitive ‘karan’ became ‘karan-na’, which later developed into ‘karnan’.
Even the counting was plagiarised. Seraiki’s ‘baran’ became ‘bara’ and ‘baveeh’ became ‘baees’. Otherwise, as Urdu uses ‘do’ for two, then how come these words sneeked into it. The origin of these words lies in ‘ba’ which is two in Seraiki.
It is unfortunate that Seraiki, which is a repository of Indus Valley culture and can be called truly as ‘Pakistani’ has drawn little attention of Pakistani intelligentsia.
Seraiki is inexorably linked to Multan which is at least 4,500 years old. During this course it has mothered so many languages and dialects in Hind and Sindh. Incidentally this is the true Sindhi too.
AURANGZEB KHAN
Islamabad
Source: Dawn
Date:2/20/2010
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