Urdu prosody is perceived by many 'in the business' as a daunting task when in reality it should be almost trivial. The situation is exacerbated because many practising and established Urdu poets confess that they have no idea of how the underlying processes in Urdu prosody actually work even though they do have an innate understanding of whether a particular line is metrically acceptable or not. Partially as a result of this, it is difficult for them to impart their knowledge of prosody in concrete terms to fledgeling poets without hand-waving away many of the questions/objections that are raised as part of the learning process.
It is also significant that Urdu prosody derives substantially from Arabic prosody. All the terminologies, rules, and exceptions are still rooted in the Arabic context and heavily dependent on the Arabic script in turn.
In my mind, prosody should be defined independently of the script(s) used. Urdu prosody should be no exception. Ultimately, prosody is rooted in the phonology of the language whereas a script is simply a mnemonic approximation to represent the sounds of the language.
It certainly doesn't help an Urdu speaker who is unacquainted with Arabic orthography if the technical terms of prosody are intimately tied to the signs in the Arabo-Perso-Urdu script. Add the fact that the significant majority of the Indian population is completely unaware of even the rudimentary basics of the Arabic script - I'm only talking about the literate masses here - and one begins to comprehend why the prevailing feeling, that Urdu prosody is best avoided, is justified. (There are other socio-political factors that have created a 'false' dichotomy between Urdu & Hindi as two separate linguistic entities, but it is not my purpose to discuss them here.)
Urdu prosody needs to be disassociated from its dependence on the Arabic script.
What makes it worse, even for those who have grappled with Urdu prosody and internalized it, is that quite a number of the extant rules of Urdu prosody are no longer relevant in the phonological context of (modern) Urdu! But the establishment hasn't been able to cast-off its Arabic heritage and adopt criteria that better fit the Urdu context. Urdu prosody is, veritably, a dinosaur of the middle-ages and in serious need of evolution.
Urdu prosody needs to be redefined in terms of (modern) Urdu phonology with appropriate guidelines on how to extend it to future terms, words, and idioms.
In and of itself, the Arabic definitions are overly complicated in my opinion. The Arabic model may have succeeded in unifying the commonly used meters in Arabic poetry under a single umbrella-theory, but it is completely unnecessary. Eventually, when one gets down to it, there is no rationale within the model to justify why only a tiny sliver of meters generated from a parent template are acceptable while the vast majority of others aren't. One might as well jump directly to the acceptable meters and skip the obscuring fog in between.
As a taxonomical device though the Arabic model is quite something. But is the comprehension cost of the model justified when it comes to practice of Urdu poetry? Not in my mind. The Arabic model remains an academic artefact.
In subsequent posts I'll attempt to present what I think is a better way of imparting the secrets of Urdu prosody based purely on the phonetics of (modern) Urdu and on the Urdu definition of long/short syllables. Analogous to Bhatkhande's plan in Hindustani music, Urdu meters will be treated as instances of temperament groups classified on the basis of syllable arrangements. It is my hope that this will give a clearer understanding of what the individual meters are and how to intuitively scan a line.
Follow-up posts
It is also significant that Urdu prosody derives substantially from Arabic prosody. All the terminologies, rules, and exceptions are still rooted in the Arabic context and heavily dependent on the Arabic script in turn.
In my mind, prosody should be defined independently of the script(s) used. Urdu prosody should be no exception. Ultimately, prosody is rooted in the phonology of the language whereas a script is simply a mnemonic approximation to represent the sounds of the language.
It certainly doesn't help an Urdu speaker who is unacquainted with Arabic orthography if the technical terms of prosody are intimately tied to the signs in the Arabo-Perso-Urdu script. Add the fact that the significant majority of the Indian population is completely unaware of even the rudimentary basics of the Arabic script - I'm only talking about the literate masses here - and one begins to comprehend why the prevailing feeling, that Urdu prosody is best avoided, is justified. (There are other socio-political factors that have created a 'false' dichotomy between Urdu & Hindi as two separate linguistic entities, but it is not my purpose to discuss them here.)
Urdu prosody needs to be disassociated from its dependence on the Arabic script.
What makes it worse, even for those who have grappled with Urdu prosody and internalized it, is that quite a number of the extant rules of Urdu prosody are no longer relevant in the phonological context of (modern) Urdu! But the establishment hasn't been able to cast-off its Arabic heritage and adopt criteria that better fit the Urdu context. Urdu prosody is, veritably, a dinosaur of the middle-ages and in serious need of evolution.
Urdu prosody needs to be redefined in terms of (modern) Urdu phonology with appropriate guidelines on how to extend it to future terms, words, and idioms.
In and of itself, the Arabic definitions are overly complicated in my opinion. The Arabic model may have succeeded in unifying the commonly used meters in Arabic poetry under a single umbrella-theory, but it is completely unnecessary. Eventually, when one gets down to it, there is no rationale within the model to justify why only a tiny sliver of meters generated from a parent template are acceptable while the vast majority of others aren't. One might as well jump directly to the acceptable meters and skip the obscuring fog in between.
As a taxonomical device though the Arabic model is quite something. But is the comprehension cost of the model justified when it comes to practice of Urdu poetry? Not in my mind. The Arabic model remains an academic artefact.
In subsequent posts I'll attempt to present what I think is a better way of imparting the secrets of Urdu prosody based purely on the phonetics of (modern) Urdu and on the Urdu definition of long/short syllables. Analogous to Bhatkhande's plan in Hindustani music, Urdu meters will be treated as instances of temperament groups classified on the basis of syllable arrangements. It is my hope that this will give a clearer understanding of what the individual meters are and how to intuitively scan a line.
Follow-up posts
1 comment:
It is useful in this regard to have a look on the subject : "comparative metrics" where meter is expressed in a numerical form that eliminates the barriers of idioms.
https://sites.google.com/site/alarood/r3/Home/comparative-metrics
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