Urdu and its origins

Often, when I see ‘Indian Idol’ I take notice of the complaints by the eminent judges that the contestant is not pronouncing the Urdu language properly. Javed Akhtar’s countenance changes, his brows wrinkle, his face takes on an indignant frown and he lets loose a tough sermon to the nervous singer in front.

I can imagine that Javed Bhai was severely lectured on this by his illustrious father the Urdu poet Jan Nisar Akhtar and his famous uncles and his grandfather, all of whom were great Urdu poets. I mean no disrespect to any of these people; I hold them all in greatest regard. However, I wanted to share with you all some details on how the language evolved, from its origins as a language meant to be spoken by the lowly soldiers in the Islamic ruler’s military. I have to make a comment here, which is..... It is after all a camp soldier’s language that morphed into the poet’s language. As a mixture of a number of languages, corrupted over time, could it ever have ‘a’ correct pronunciation? A Turk would balk at the way a Turkish component in Urdu is pronounced, so also an Arab would frown at the Arab word as pronounced in Urdu!!

Now how would I ever know about all these? It takes me back to the 51/2 years I spent in Turkey. Many people there would ask me ‘you speak Urdu’? Did you know that Urdu evolved from Turkish? Some would say – Urdu is not how it was called originally, it was Urduca (Urduja if phonetically spelt) or soldier’s language. Then I came across a very interesting person, an ex Ambassador of India in Turkey, Mr Gajendra Singh who had done his doctorate on this very subject. He provided me with a copy of an article written by him ‘contribution of Turkic languages to Hindustani languages’ which I then read with great interest.

Starting with Mahmud of Ghazni (971-1030AD), Urdu grew to lay its roots in the North West and Central India. It evolved over the last two centuries and soon became a base for poetry in the North of India and Pakistan. The mogul courts used basically two languages, Persian or Farsi and the religious language which was Arabic. The sultans themselves spoke Turkish (or a Turkic variant). Urdu or Ordu means tent or army and Urduca was thus the language of the army. This ‘Lashkarai Zaban’ or Zaban e Ordu was needed for the armies of India, armies that often comprised soldiers with various native mother tongues from diverse regions of the Middle East & India. Hence, Urdu evolved to become the chosen language to address these soldiers as it abridged several base languages.

Urdu later enjoyed commanding status in the literary courts of late Muslim rulers and Nawabs, and flourished under their patronage, partially displacing Persian as the language of elite in the then Indian society.

Mir Amman of Dihli (1804) explains the origins in the preface of his popular Urdu book ‘Bagh O Bahar’ – (Extracted from J Muir’s Origin & history of the people of India Vol2 pg 6)

I have heard the following from my ancestors – The city of Delhi has existed in the opinion of Hindus for the last four yugas. It was inhabited of old by the kings with their subjects, who spoke their own dialects. A thousand years ago, the rule of the Mussalman’s began. Sultan Mahmud of Ghazni came. Then the Ghori and Lodi dynasties held sway. In consequence of this intercourse, a certain mixture of the languages of the Mussalmans and Hindus took place. At length, Amir Taimur conqured Hindustan. In consequence of his arrival and residence, the bazaar of the army was introduced into the city and the bazaar of the city came in consequence to be called Urdu. When King Akbar acceded to the throne, all races, learning the liberty of that unequalled family and patronage of merit gathered round his court from all the surrounding countries. But the language of all the people were different. From their being collected together, trafficking together and talking with each other, a camp (Urdu) language became established. At length the Urdu language being gradually polished attained such a degree of refinement that no speech of the city can vie with it.

The Encyclopedia Britannica by Chisholm states that it is the dialect of prose, rather than poetry. But over time Urdu got heavily Persian’ized. It is interesting to note that this happened due to the Hindu’s in the Mughal courts and due to their apparent intent to please their rulers who spoke mainly Farsi or Persian. The formal prose took shape in the College of Fort William when text books had to be written in early 19th century for the new Soldiers of the British army. The recent forms are mainly due to the loading of Arabic and even more Farsi words into that Urdu by the users in Lucknow. The present form of Hindi was also apparently due to the teachers at Fort William, adopted to teach the Hindu soldiers. But the naturally adapted version of Urdu became popular with poets.

Today when you hear the adab’s and takalluf’s, think a bit of the rough and tough of the battle field – for that is also where all this politeness and polish of tongue was perfected. The word horde comes from Ordu – Army!! Interesting, isn’t it?


Pic – Battle of Haldighati – Historical Rajasthan