Preface

Preface

It is my belief that the Urdu language, through its own merits, will advance day by day and rule over the largest part of the world, and will certainly become a language of learning. So I wish that now, in its early state, when its foundation has been laid, people should follow its highest centre, Delhi and Lucknow, and not step beyond the bounds. The popularity of Urdu made it necessary for newspapers to be started in this same language throughout India. So people, having no choice, began to use it in their own regions in different ways, and turned away from the language of the centre. Each city came to have idioms of its own, and the Urdu of one city began to differ so much from the Urdu of another that people found it harder and harder to understand, and it was thought that little by little, through change upon change, this language would perish. Every well-wisher of the language felt this fear. So some gentlemen, to stop it, consulted the trusted poets of the country and began to refute wrong idioms; and those who did not know the language well took this ill and began to say, "After all, we too live in India, and Urdu is the language of all India, so why is Delhi and Lucknow given honour above us? We say that what we speak is right." This wind was blowing in one or two big cities, and some faults had begun to enter the language. And there was a fear that in time many cities of India would catch this disease. Then there would be no help for it but to count Urdu, too, as dead, like other weak and unlearned languages, and to recite the *fatiha* (prayer for the dead) over it. As I understood it, the reason was that there were no books on the nature of this language and on what one should know of its special features, with whose help people could gain the power to speak the language correctly. So those people are helpless and forced to get their meaning across by speaking the language wrongly. I wished to remove this complaint of the country. The knowledge of the language that had been kept with me from breast to breast since the time of Mir, I wrote down and offered in the form of a book; and people looked at my work with great eagerness, let fairness enter into their understanding of Urdu, and began to avoid using wrong sentences. I thank God that my first work, *Zaban-dani* (Knowing the Language), was much liked. In the same way *Islah-e-Zaban-e-Urdu* (The Correction of the Urdu Language), *Qawaid-e-Mir* (The Rules of Mir), *Shairi ki Pahli Kitab* (The First Book of Poetry), *Shairi ki Dusri Kitab* (The Second Book of Poetry) and *Usul-e-Zaban-e-Urdu* (The Principles of the Urdu Language) are accepted by high and low. Their printing in great numbers has assured me that the people of India have a heartfelt wish to speak correct and eloquent Urdu, provided that they go on getting such books. So I have written and published a treatise of mine, *Jan-e-Urdu* (The Soul of Urdu), which meets the needs of the people of the country.

Khwaja Muhammad Abdur Rauf Ishrat Lakhnavi