In our world at times we come across persons who by virtue of their rare qualities remain unaffected by what drives it; power, wealth and glamour. Perhaps they are able to find happiness and pleasures in doing things which are hidden lynchpins of working of human society but apparently seem unenticing and tedious and thus boring.They are hidden not in the sense of being out of the public eye but for the fact that being there for immeasurable span of time they appear to have lost meanings and are taken for granted. Rediscovering the lost meanings means a lot to unusual minds.

Rediscovery becomes discovery when by providing a fresh perspective it explores the interconnections between things visible and invisible in a particular domain. What matters for this type is their pursuit, not what may emerge consequently as its byproduct. People with such an attitude however great they might be prefer to live and die uncelebrated. They are happy with what they do and are least bothered about the recognition of their work. In our recent literary history we find one such man who not only shunned limelight but also chose the life of fecund anonymity. He was none other than little known Sardar Muhammad Khan; a mighty Khan indeed in the domain of lexicography and linguistics. The annals of Punjab’s intellectual world would have been much poorer without him. His monumental work “Punjabi Urdu Dictionary” was posthumously published by Pakistan Punjabi Adbi Board and Sachal Studios in 2009 which has been hailed as a unique achievement. The dictionary has entries from 64 dialects of Punjab. No other dictionary has such a broad sweep. Recently a collection of Sardar Muhammad Khan’s articles “Punjabi Zaban [Punjabi Language]” has been published by Pakistan Punjabi Adbi Board, Lahore. The editor is R. Khanum, the late Khan’s daughter. The articles deal with the origins of language, history and development of Punjabi language, Punjab’s dialects and other aspects associated with linguistics.

Before commenting on the articles let us hear from Khan’s daughter R. Khanum a very brief story of his life. Sardar Muhammad Khan, says, R. Khanum, was born in Basti Danish Manddan of Jalandhar district in 1915. His ancestors had migrated to this town from Waziristan [Pakistan’s Pashtun tribal area] in the reign of Emperor Akbar, the Great. He did his matriculation from Jalandhar and BSc from the Punjab University in 1943. He got employed with the department of Military Accounts after completing his studies. He married S. Khanun in 1952 who being a student of Arabic taught him Arabic language. The compilation of dictionary was his remarkable achievement which he wanted to see published. He planned to publish it under the pseudo name of S. Khanum, his wife [No employee associated with military was allowed to publish anything according to the service rules]. He got hold of a calligrapher by the name of Munshi Sadar ud Din in the Moti Bazar Rawalpindi. He finally succeeded to publish 152 pages starting with the first alphabet of Punjabi. He himself proofread the pages. The process was time consuming. So he got retirement. Now he, says R. Khanum, would go to Munshi at 10am and would forget that he was supposed to buy green grocery for the kitchen. No grocery, no food for the family! At times he would come back after sunset. He installed a small printing machine at his house at the suggestion of calligraphers. But how could a man who was always busy reading or writing run an enterprise? Consequently he could neither run the printing press nor publish his dictionary. Her father, Khanum tells us, used to crib that lot of stuff he had collected was lost in the aftermath of the Partition as he was posted in Rawalpindi while his home in Jalandhar became part of India from where he couldn’t retrieve anything. He would start working at about five in the morning till the time to leave for his office. The children and cleaning maid were specially instructed not to remove even a mean piece of paper without his permission. They couldn’t even touch his empty cigarette pack if it had any kind of scribbling on it. He at times used his cigarette pack as a handy notebook. But Sardar Muhammad Khan was not a dry sulking figure as optics may suggest. He was a music aficionado who was quite familiar with classical Ragas. Two harmoniums and a sitar were his prize possessions. He could play harmonium, sitar and tabla [a percussion instrument]. It’s worth noting that there is something imperceptibly common between language and music; high level abstraction.