The earliest sample of Punjabi prose is now translated
By Moazzam Sheikh

The News: April 11, 2010

Discources by Hazrat Noshah Ganjbakhsh Qadri
Translated by Faiza Raana
Publisher: Suchet
Pages: 68
Price: Rs 200

The absence of the Punjabi language as a medium of education in the province of Punjab (on the Pakistani side) is a sad reminder of so many things gone wrong in our short history. While India fixed the problem and encouraged the development of native languages, the Pakistani ruling elite has showed tremendous lack of intelligence when it comes to education, especially mass education. Due to our dismal rate of literacy, it is not uncommon to run into educated people who express ideas as if education had barely touched them. Arguments against the Punjabi language often take two sad and comical shapes.

To illustrate my point, let me share briefly a conversation I once had with a dear friend, who is a well-respected senior Urdu writer, of Punjabi background, with fluent command of the spoken idiom. He once responded -- to my unease with the prevailing situation of the Punjabi in the land of five rivers -- by saying he saw no need to write in a language that hadn't developed as a literary language, a language in which not much had been written. This was astonishing and heartbreaking -- to hear that from a literary person and native speaker.

The other twist was when an Urdu academic friend of mine (whom I respect deeply) insisted that the Punjabiwallas should not have an animus relationship with Urdu; they should be proud of it and claim it as their language. What seemed to be missing from his world of understanding was how one can expect someone to accept someone else's language when their own language is not being given its rightful place in her own home due to, in parts, that very other language. Or to turn the table around -- he never seemed to ask: how many Urdu-speaking people have taken to writing in the language of Damodar and Waris Shah? Or Bullah and the Gurus? Or Shah Husain and Baba Farid?

I consider Urdu my mother tongue or my first language because that is the language my parents taught me, even when they spoke to each other in Punjabi. I learned to speak Punjabi as a young boy on the streets of Samanabad, Lahore. There, too, I would speak to one friend in Urdu, to another in the Punjabi. This type of ratatouille of language relationship is a trait common enough in Pakistani urban environment. No logic could explain why parents spoke to one child in Urdu, to another in English, to each other in the Punjabi. By the time I was a teenager I considered Punjabi my real mother tongue, though I loved Urdu too and still do.

Twenty-five plus years would pass by before I'd had the opportunity to read anything in the Punjabi and that too while I was living in San Francisco. I was stunned to realise that I could not read it despite the familiarity with the script. I virtually had no knowledge of the novels and short stories written in the language. Never had I ever noticed them in bookstores such as Ferozsons near the Al-Falah cinema.

Here in a San Francisco library I did a Worldcat database research and found many Punjabi novels in the possession of academic libraries. I interlibrary-loaned one of the novels by a Pakistani writer. I waited for it impatiently and when it arrived, it was as if someone had thrown cold water over my head. It felt like I was struggling with Greek. Dejected, I returned the book.

Another fifteen plus years would pass before I could do a second attempt at reacquainting myself with the prose literature being written in my native tongue. Whether written by writers from across the border or by Pakistanis, to read Punjabi fiction is sources of indescribable pleasure for me now. Moreover, that is why the printing of the Discources by Hazrat Noshah Ganjbakhsh Qadri translated from Punjabi into English by Faiza Raana is such an important event.

She states in the introduction that this is the earliest sample of Punjabi prose known. The book contains six discourses. The first discourse (pehla aakha) deals with human need to accept God as the Supreme Being, completely unconstrained by anything at all. Repeatedly, it stresses on the uniqueness of God. It touches on the inevitability of death, the faithful and the faithless; angels, especially Israfeel, the prophet Moses and his conflict with Pharaoh. It talks about God's gift to humans and the Day of Judgment. It ends on Moses' magical, multi-faceted staff.

This is the longest discourse.

The second discourse engages with human behaviour and how it affects the heart. Qadri expounds on the differences between good and bad deeds and what those lead to. The prose piece contains a short poem -- a five-liner -- as well, about the downside of not pursuing God or God's way. The next discourse is about the benefits of seizing the righteous path --  sirat-ul-mustaqeem/ vaat sachi sidhi -- and there's advice to stay away from the ones who have lost the path. This contains a wonderful quatrain with an amazingly delicious rhyming scheme.

The fourth discourse narrates the Quranic episode of the prophet Saleh where he tried to turn the tribe of Samood (Thamud) on the right path. In addition, when they didn't listen and in fact turned on the prophet, God punished the tribe.

The fifth discourse touches on a caste of Hindus, then known as karaars (another word for the khatri caste) and hints at the peaceful co-existence. The final discourse states the importance of God's Oneness, indivisibility.

Each discourse has three parts: the Punjabi original, translation, and Roman transliteration by Maqsood Saqib.

This reviewer has many questions regarding the final appearance of the book. Raana tells us that it is the first specimen, but does not elaborate on how, when and where it was discovered; who performed such a heroic task. If this is the first specimen (written somewhere in the late 1500s), what is the next earliest specimen our language can boast of? What are the reasons for the gaping absence of the Punjabi prose up until modern era? When did the Punjabi prose pick up in pace? Are there any letters written among the Punjabi poets (sufi or un-sufi) in the Punjabi language? Or even if they were written in Farsi or Sanskrit, do they talk about literary works in prose?

A note on the role of the British in shaping the tragic fate the Punjabi language would have shed some light.

Finally, a note on the quality of translation. It is awkward at many places and lacks the creativity that we know Raana is capable of when writing her own fiction. A few examples will suffice to make my point. The fourth discourse begins with, "Folks, HAZRAT SALEH tried to dissuade SMOOD his people from wrongdoing." Sentences like this could have used more editorial help. The word wrongdoing is a bad choice for kufr. Elsewhere, expressions such as "bore malice" and "Hyming angels" sound weak.

The purpose of transliteration also seems pointless, as does the translation. It would have been a better choice to stick to the original and translate the discourses into Urdu, Sindhi, Hindi, Pashto and Balochi, and instead of the Roman transliteration. Gurmukhi would have served a much better purpose. Hopefully this can still be done.

alifms@jps.net