ज़बानें अपना कल्चर रखती हैं और वही ज़बान बड़ी तसव्वुर की जाती है जिस में ख़याल और इज़हार के लिए अल्फ़ाज़ की तंगी न हो, यूँ तो सारी ज़बानों के अपने लफ़्ज़ और अपना शब्द-कोश होता है। और दुनिया के मुखतलिफ़ हिस्सों में बस्ने वाले लोग अपनी ज़बान पर फ़ख्र भी करते हैं, इसी तरह… continue reading
Some stories never die; they are told again and again, from time to time, place to place, author to author. One such is the story of Heer and Ranjha. About six centuries old now, it was first narrated in verse by one DamodarArora during the reign of Emperor Akbar. Damodar was a native of Jhang where the story is broadly based and he had heard it from one Raja Ram Khatri who is supposed to be an eyewitness to all that happened. Since then it has been narrated variously and in various languages, both in verse and prose. One of the most notable narratives came from Waris Shah in 1766, apart from several others in Sindhi, Haryanavi, Hindi, Urdu, Persian, and English. In Persian alone, there are as many as twenty versions of this story and in Urdu not less than fifteen.
अच्छी शायरी का मुआमला ज़रा अलग क़िस्म का होता है, इसमें लफ़्ज़ों के परे एक ऐसी दुनिया होती है कि अगर आप उस तक पहुंचने से असमर्थ रहे तो शायरी के असल आनंद से वंचित रहेंगे।
It is almost impossible to say for sure when the story of prince Manohar and princess Madhumalti was told first and by whom. It may be safe to surmise that it is essentially a travelling tale that reached different people through folklorists. Supposedly, Sheikh Manjhan was the first to write this story in Hindi under the title of Madhumalti sometime in the mid-sixteenth century. During different periods of history, this story was written and re-written at least nine times in Persian and thirteen times in Urdu with different titles. The one written by Mohammad Nusrat Nusrati in 1657 is a memorable literary memento from the garden of love, so appropriately titled as Gulshan-e-Ishq.
Traced back to a canonical Sanskrit source—Saptashati—the stories of a parrot and a myna have reached larger sections of readers through Persian, Hindi, Gujarati, Marathi, Rajasthani, Bangla, and Urdu languages in India and English, French, German, and Czech languages elsewhere. There are at least six retellings available in Persian and eight in Urdu. The one told in Urdu by Ghawwasi, a prominent poet supposed to be born during the reign of emperor Ibrahim Qutub Shah of Deccan, is much more valued than others.
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