Is there a "nuun-i-Ghunnah" in Persian Poetry 2
Naseer
I started a thread with the above title in June 2009. Here is a link
to that thread.
Today I came across a shi'r from Rumi's Masnavii-i-Ma'navii which IMHO
(and even humbler knowledge) proves beyond any doubt that "nuun-i-
Ghunnah" was part and parcel of Classical Persian poetry. I would be
grateful for your views.
chuuN tuu juzv-i-'aalam-ii pas ai mahiiN
kull raa bar vasf-i-Khud biinii Ghavii
chuuNkih tuu dunyaa kaa Hissah hai, is liye ai zaliil
tuu sab ko apnii sifat ke mutaabiq gumraah samajhtaa hai
I am of course alluding to mahiiN/Ghavii.
Naseer
Jamil
> Dear Friends,
>
> I started a thread with the above title in June 2009. Here is a link
> to that thread.
>
>
> Today I came across a shi'r from Rumi's Masnavii-i-Ma'navii which IMHO
> (and even humbler knowledge) proves beyond any doubt that "nuun-i-
> Ghunnah" was part and parcel of Classical Persian poetry. I would be
> grateful for your views.
>
> chuuN tuu juzv-i-'aalam-ii pas ai mahiiN
> kull raa bar vasf-i-Khud biinii Ghavii
>
> chuuNkih tuu dunyaa kaa Hissah hai, is liye ai zaliil
> tuu sab ko apnii sifat ke mutaabiq gumraah samajhtaa hai
>
> I am of course alluding to mahiiN/Ghavii.
>
> Naseer
Naseer Sahib
Admittedly mahiin and Ghavii do not rhyme, but do mahiiN and Ghavii
rhyme? Does one find instances in Urdu where, for example, nahiiN has
been rhymed with kahii or rahii?
Jamil
Naseer
muHtaram Jamil Sahib, aadaab-o-tasliimaat.
Firstly, apologies for the delay in responding to your post.
It has to be said that when I first saw this shi'r, I too was somewhat
taken aback at one line ending with a nuun-i-ghunnah and the other
with a yaa-i-ma'ruuf. I had always thought that one had to have "like
for like"; in this case a nuun-i-Ghunnah rhyming with another nuun-i-
Ghunnah. The couplet I quoted comes from volume 4 (page 228) of a six
volume publication of Masna'vii-i-Ma'navii of Maulana Jalal-ud-diin
Rumi, the publisher being Haamid and Co, 38 Urdu Baazaar, Lahore 2.
The date of the publication is January 1977.
More important than what I have stated above is the tranlator. Maulana
Qazi Sajjad Hussain Sahib, is a well known scholar of Persian who has
translated a number of classics, the Gulistan, Bostan and Diivaan-i-
Hafiz being amongst them. He translates the couplet in the following
manner.
chuuNkih tuu dunyaa kaa juzv hai, is liye ai zaliil
tuu majmuu'ah ko apnii sifat ke mutaabiq gumraah samajhtaa hai
If the words "mahiin/mahii (Arabic) [zaleel] and "Ghavii" (Arabic)
[gum-raah] had not been in the translation, one could assume that the
couplet has been misquoted. Upon this logic, and thinking that as
"nuun-i-ghunnah" is not counted for meter purposes, the shi'r must be
in meter (and I assume it is). Hence my "jubilation" at this "find"
which I felt I ought to share with fellow ALUPers.
Of course, I ought to have exercised a little caution. Your response,
in which you posed a question about the possibility of the occurrence
of "kahii/rahii" rhyming with "nahiiN". This cast a doubt in my mind
about the accuracy of the shi'r I quoted. And to answer your question,
frankly, I have not come across this kind of rhyme.
Since then, hence the reason for the delay, I have spent considerable
time searching for this shi'r within the Masnavii-i-Ma'navii on the
internet. The problem has been that there are very few complete
sources of the Masnavi where the text is given in the original
Persian. My endeavour has not been in vain. I have managed to find two
other "versions". I shall transcribe the lines with a normal "n".
Please provide your own nasals wherever they occur.
chuun tu juzv-i-'aalam-ii, pas ai mahiin
kul aan raa ham-cho Khud biinii yaqiin
chuun tuu juzv-i-'aalam-ii har chuun buvii
kull raa bar vasf-i-Khud biinii savii
My "research" has further revealed that the late Profesor Reynold. A.
Nicholson, a renowned Persian scholar from Cambridge University, feels
that the word ought to be "Ghavii" in place of "savii". It therefore
seems that Sajjaad's version is a mixture of the above two couplets.
Alas, my joy is short lived!
Ok then! You know I don't accept failure that easily. Would you not
agree that the following four lines ( from a Ghazal by Hakiim Sanai d.
1131) go a long way in proving that there indeed was a nuun-i-Ghunnah
in the Iranian Classical Persian repertoire.
baa uu dilam ba mihr-o-mu'addat yagaana buud
siimurGh-i-'ishq raa dil-i-man aashiyaana buud
dar lauH Khvaandah am ki yake la'natii shavad
buudam gumaaN ba har kas va bar Khud gumaaN nabuud
Writing it slightly differently, brings out the occurence of a nuun-i-
Ghunnah more clearly.
baa uu dilam ba mihr-o-mu'addat yagaa nabuud
siimurGh-i-'ishq raa dil-i-man aashiyaa nabuud
dar lauH Khvaandah am ki yake la'natii shavad
buudam gumaan/N ba har kas va bar Khud gumaa[N} nabuud
Over to you good sir!
Naseer
Naseer
Further to my previous....
I have been busy searching for the "nuun-i-Ghunnah" phenomenon in
Classical Persian but my rummaging around has not been all that
fruitful. Nevertheless, I did find a couple of writers who have
mentioned this topic.
1) C.John.Holcombe
http://www.textetc.com/workshop/wt-khusraw-1.html
If you scroll down the Amir Khusrau article, you will come across the
section on Persian Metre. In it you will find the following sentence.
"The sh ch kh etc. consonants count as one consonant. Likewise w and y
in the diphthongs aw and ay. The n plus another consonant is counted
as one consonant"
The same author in "Translating Hafiz 2" has this to say about this
nuun.
http://www.textetc.com/workshop/wt-hafez-2.html
"A vowel is regarded as long when: 1. it is intrinsically long or 2.
when it is a short vowel followed by two consonants, either
immediately following in the same word, or ending one word and
starting the next — all consonants, that is, except 'n', which is
nasal and doesn't count."
2. Nargis Virani in “I am the Nightingale of the Merciful”: Rumi's
Use of the Qur’an and Hadith" in Note 74 says about the following Rumi
ash'aar from a Ghazal of his. (Again please provide your own nasals)
zabaan-i-charb-i-u kard daraKhtaane pur az zaituun
lab-i-shiiriin-i-u Khvaanad ba-afsuun suurah-i-vattiin
ayaa man 'ishqu Khaddayhi yuziibu alfa Huur-in 'iin
havaahu kaashifu_lbalvaa ka-'ain-siin-qaaf au yaasiin
"The printed text represents the three mysterious letters ‘ayn, sin,
and qaf as one word "‘asq." which under no circums-tance can fit the
meter. Therefore, they are emended according to the metrical
requirements. However, both ‘ayn and sin are overlong syllables not
permitted in Arabic prosody. Technically, Persian prosody does not
permit it either. Thus, it is a metrical violation in both
traditions. However, this is a typical example of how the oral
recitation undermines the written rules because these words, when
recited orally, may conceivably either treat the "nun" end-sound as a
nasal pronunciation not to be counted (as allowed by Persian
prosodists) or hum the nun sound maintaining the rhythm of the poem
instead of stumbling over the meter and revealing the violation."
Naseer
Jamil
Naseer sahib
Your perseverance in getting to the bottom of the matter is
admirable. You are following Ghalib's prescription (that one to
another end, but no matter): shauq-e-fuzuul o jur'at-e-riNdaanah
chaahiye. Please note that the original meaning of fuzuul is curious.
What is clear in this nuun Ghunnah question that in WRITTEN classical
Persian the same letter (nuun) is used for both nuun and nuun
Ghunnah. And I agree with you that the pronunciation must have been
different, depending on the requirement of meter. After all, when
nuun comes in the middle of a word (jang, nang), it is nasalized;
there is no reason why it would not be similarly nazalized at the end.
My guess is that some where along the line, Urdu started writing nuun
Ghunnah without the nuqtah, while Farsi continued to use the nuqtah.
Also somewhere along the line, Iranians gave up the nasalization of
the terminal nuun, but to save many thousands of verses from getting
out of beHr, they resorted to shortening the vowel before the final
nuun. Thus they started reading the following line:
saaqiaa jaam-e bedeh taa chehrah raa gulguuN kunam
as
saaqiaa jaam-e bedeh taa chehreh raa gulgunn kunam
gulgunn instead of gulguuN; jahann instead of jahaaN; inn instead of
iiN. (And chehreh instead of chehrah, but that is another story.)
So, your search for verses to prove your point runs into a logical
impossibility, a linguistic perpetual motion machine. No matter what
verse you find will fit the meter both ways, otherwise a great body of
Farsi poetry will be rendered out of meter. In Rumi's word:
chiize keh yaaft me-nashavad, aan-am aarzuust
One other point: I would be careful about citing C.John.Holcombe's
work as authentic. It is full of very obvious mistakes. Look at his
literal translation of the ash'aar of Hafiz. For example the first
she'r:
sh'raab o 'aish-e-nihaan chiist kaar-e-be-bunyaad
zadiim bar saf-e-rindaan o har cheh baadaa baad
[chhupi huuii sharaab-noshii kyaa hai, kaar-e-be-bunyaad hai
ham ne to apne aap ko sharaab KhoroN kii safoN meN Daal diyaa hai, jo
ho so ho]
Holcombe translates it as:
wine and living empty what is that art without foundation
from face burden order words every little let it be as God wills
A reading of word by word translation reveals that he has read 'aish-e-
nihaan as 'aish-e-tahii (empty life), zadiim as zi (from) diim (face)
bar as baar (burden), rindaan (words) cheh (little) and so on. There
are many other errors.
Jamil
Naseer
On Nov 27, 9:22 pm, Jamil <dehq...@gmail.com> wrote:
> Your perseverance in getting to the bottom of the matter is
> admirable. You are following Ghalib's prescription (that one to
> another end, but no matter): shauq-e-fuzuul o jur'at-e-riNdaanah
> chaahiye. Please note that the original meaning of fuzuul is curious.
My problem, if one can call it as such, is that I neither have the
poetic knowledge nor am I in possession of any formal linguistic
training. My endeavours are indeed "fuzuul" and I have in mind the
normal everyday accepted meaning of this word, namely "worthless"!
However, it is my great fortune that my nonsense is not going totally
down the drain. I have in you a kind gentleman who is a good listener.
> What is clear in this nuun Ghunnah question that in WRITTEN classical
> Persian the same letter (nuun) is used for both nuun and nuun
> Ghunnah. And I agree with you that the pronunciation must have been
> different, depending on the requirement of meter. After all, when
> nuun comes in the middle of a word (jang, nang), it is nasalized;
> there is no reason why it would not be similarly nazalized at the end.
Ah, but this is where I would beg to differ with you Jamil Sahib
concerning what is nuun-i-Ghunnah and what is n't. Please allow me to
elaborate. There was an interesting thread with the title " kisi paRi
mire aa kar sune fasaane ko" started by Aslam Sahbaa Sahib. Here is a
link to this 2002 thread in which several ALUP notables took part.
I feel that UVR Sahib and Roshan Kamath Sahib were on the right track
there. When one talks about "nasal" or "Ghunnah" sounds, we Urdu
speakers normally just think about the dotless final position nuun and
that is about it. But the reality is that in Urdu, there are several
kinds of nasals and they are represented by "miim" (labial) and nuun
(both with and without the dot).
We have the "normal" kind of "nuun" (dental) as in "naam" and "paan"
etc. If I am not mistaken, I believe this kind of nuun is called "nuun-
i-mu'allan" or the (openly) announced nuun. This nuun's place of
utterance (maKhraj) is the same as t, th, d, and dh. The full dotted
nuun is used to convey this sound.
Then there is that "nuun" which is pronounced from the same place as
ch, chh, j and jh (palatal, e.g Ghunchah/ganj) on the one hand and
from the position of k, kh, ga, gh (velar,e.g sang) on the other. I
believe both these nuuns are called "nuun-i-iKhfaa" or the nuun of
concealment. Once again, the full dotted nuun is used in both of these
cases.
So far I have mentioned one kind of miim and three kinds of nuuns. The
fourth kind of nuun is nuun-i-iqlaab or the nuun of changing or
transformation. We know a wordlike "junbish", for example, is
perceived as if it was "jumbish". Here the "nuun" is changing to a
miim because of the presence of the following b ( the same will apply
for p, ph and bh).
Finally we have what is termed as "nuun-i-Ghunnah". In medial postion,
once again the full dotted nuun is used as in meNh but in the terminal
position a dotless nuun is used.
So in summary, a miim and any kind of nuun is "technically" a nasal or
Ghunnah sound. The difference is that the "normal" nuun as in "jaan-i-
man", "matn" and "tund" is quite obvious. When it is followed by a set
of consonants like ch/chh/j/j and k/kh/g/gh it becomes "concealed"
somewhat due to the fact that it is being pronounced in the same place
as its matching consonats. These nuuns, as far as I know, are counted
in prosody. The one that is not, is the terminal one in words like
jaaN, zamiiN and zabuuN. I suppose the medial one is probably not
counted either.
> My guess is that some where along the line, Urdu started writing nuun
> Ghunnah without the nuqtah, while Farsi continued to use the nuqtah.
> Also somewhere along the line, Iranians gave up the nasalization of
> the terminal nuun, but to save many thousands of verses from getting
> out of beHr, they resorted to shortening the vowel before the final
> nuun. Thus they started reading the following line:
> saaqiaa jaam-e bedeh taa chehrah raa gulguuN kunam
> as
> saaqiaa jaam-e bedeh taa chehreh raa gulgunn kunam
>
> gulgunn instead of gulguuN; jahann instead of jahaaN; inn instead of
> iiN. (And chehreh instead of chehrah, but that is another story.)
You could have also added in your first sentence Farsi too. That is to
say, somewhere not too far in the distant past (perhaps as early as
the late eighteenth to early ninteenth century), Urdu and Farsi
terminal nuun-i-Ghunnah began to be written with a dotless nuun in
India.
> So, your search for verses to prove your point runs into a logical
> impossibility, a linguistic perpetual motion machine. No matter what
> verse you find will fit the meter both ways, otherwise a great body of
> Farsi poetry will be rendered out of meter. In Rumi's word:
> chiize keh yaaft me-nashavad, aan-am aarzuust
But according to your system of reckoning, i.e gumaaN >> gumann, how
would you "convert" these ash'aar to the modern Iranian manner?
baa uu dilam ba mihr-o-mu'addat yagaana buud
siimurGh-i-'ishq raa dil-i-man aashiyaana buud
dar lauH Khvaandah am ki yake la'natii shavad
buudam gumaaN ba har kas va bar Khud gumaaN nabuud
Would it be "yagann buud", "shiyann buud" and "gumann nabuud"?
> One other point: I would be careful about citing C.John.Holcombe's
> work as authentic. It is full of very obvious mistakes. Look at his
> literal translation of the ash'aar of Hafiz. For example the first
> she'r:
>
> sh'raab o 'aish-e-nihaan chiist kaar-e-be-bunyaad
> zadiim bar saf-e-rindaan o har cheh baadaa baad
>
> [chhupi huuii sharaab-noshii kyaa hai, kaar-e-be-bunyaad hai
> ham ne to apne aap ko sharaab KhoroN kii safoN meN Daal diyaa hai, jo
> ho so ho]
>
> Holcombe translates it as:
>
> wine and living empty what is that art without foundation
> from face burden order words every little let it be as God wills
>
> A reading of word by word translation reveals that he has read 'aish-e-
> nihaan as 'aish-e-tahii (empty life), zadiim as zi (from) diim (face)
> bar as baar (burden), rindaan (words) cheh (little) and so on. There
> are many other errors.
Yes, I was aware of the errors. But I was merely being selective here
to point out that there are people out there, of non-Subcontinental
origins, who are convinced of nuun-i-Ghunnah. In my previous thread, I
mentioned a couple of Persian language scholars.
Here is something to think about.
(Historical Grammar of the Ancient Persian Language- Johnson (P 83 of
the book; 6b Section 179)
The author is talking about nasals in ancient Persian. I quote:
"Aryan n remained n in Ancient Persian before vowels but was not
written before explosives nor when final." On page 99, section 230,
the learned author goes on to say, "Final n is never written in
Ancient Persian".
He cites the following examples
Before vowels........... naama (name)
Before "explosives" [take the meaning to be the sets of consonants
mentioned above).... "ba[n]daka (subject]
Final position "abara[n]" (They bore).
What do you make of this? When the Persians adopted the Arabic script,
did they choose to include this "hidden" n using a nuun, just to
indicate that it *is* there really. And our nuun-i-Ghunnah is
reverting to their original way of writing??? Mere conjectures, I am
afraid. Besides, I don't quite follow the reasoning for the n to be
excluded after the "explosives".
Naseer
PS Do you remember a certain Mr. Fuzuli Sahib? I wonder where he is
these days.
Jamil
>
> Ah, but this is where I would beg to differ with you Jamil Sahib
> concerning what is nuun-i-Ghunnah and what is n't. Please allow me to
> elaborate.
> We have the "normal" kind of "nuun" (dental) as in "naam" and "paan"
> etc. If I am not mistaken, I believe this kind of nuun is called "nuun-
> i-mu'allan" ...
> Then there is that "nuun" which is pronounced from the same place as
> ch, chh, j and jh (palatal, e.g Ghunchah/ganj) on the one hand and
> from the position of k, kh, ga, gh (velar,e.g sang) on the other. I
...
> So far I have mentioned one kind of miim and three kinds of nuuns. The
> fourth kind of nuun is nuun-i-iqlaab or the nuun of changing or
> transformation. ...
>
> Finally we have what is termed as "nuun-i-Ghunnah". In medial postion,
> once again the full dotted nuun is used as in meNh but in the terminal
> position a dotless nuun is used.
>
> So in summary, a miim and any kind of nuun is "technically" a nasal or
> Ghunnah sound.
>
Naseer Sahib
So many different types of nuun and such a short life! If I have come
this far in life without knowing how many different nuun sounds are
there and which part of my mouth produces which one, I believe I can
spend whatever little might be left
in blissful ignorance.
> But according to your system of reckoning, i.e gumaaN >> gumann,
how
> would you "convert" these ash'aar to the modern Iranian manner?
>
> baa uu dilam ba mihr-o-mu'addat yagaana buud
> siimurGh-i-'ishq raa dil-i-man aashiyaana buud
> dar lauH Khvaandah am ki yake la'natii shavad
> buudam gumaaN ba har kas va bar Khud gumaaN nabuud
>
> Would it be "yagann buud", "shiyann buud" and "gumann nabuud"?
>
No, in the first two lines, yagaana buud, and aashiyaana buud will be
pronounced normally, without either nasalizing or shortening the
vowels. It is in meter that way.
In the fourth line the pronunciation is "gumaa-nabuud". The nasal N
of gumaaN runs into the following syllable na-buud. Thus the three
words; yagaa-na-buud, aashiyaa-na-buud and gumaa-na-buud (or gumaaN-na-
buud) have the same vazn, and they rhyme perfectly.
...
> What do you make of this? When the Persians adopted the Arabic script,
> did they choose to include this "hidden" n using a nuun, just to
> indicate that it *is* there really. And our nuun-i-Ghunnah is
> reverting to their original way of writing??? Mere conjectures, I am
> afraid. Besides, I don't quite follow the reasoning for the n to be
> excluded after the "explosives".
The inscriptions in miniature paintings that I have seen always had
nuun with the nuqtah. I don't know what the position was when they
first adopted Arabic script. An examination of old manuscript would
make it clear, but I don't have access to them.
>
> PS Do you remember a certain Mr. Fuzuli Sahib? I wonder where he is
> these days.
yaadash baKhair; no I have no idea about his whereabouts.
Jamil
Naseer
On Dec 2, 10:21 pm, Jamil <dehq...@gmail.com> wrote:
> So many different types of nuun and such a short life! If I have come
> this far in life without knowing how many different nuun sounds are
> there and which part of my mouth produces which one, I believe I can
> spend whatever little might be left in blissful ignorance.
Jamil Sahib, aap kaisii baateN kar rahe haiN? abhii to maashaa Allah
aap apnii 'umr-i-'aziiz kii "noon" hii ko pahuNche haiN. nah sih-pahr
hu'ii hai aur nah hii shaam!
> > But according to your system of reckoning, i.e gumaaN >> gumann,
> how> would you "convert" these ash'aar to the modern Iranian manner?
>
> > baa uu dilam ba mihr-o-mu'addat yagaana buud
> > siimurGh-i-'ishq raa dil-i-man aashiyaana buud
> > dar lauH Khvaandah am ki yake la'natii shavad
> > buudam gumaaN ba har kas va bar Khud gumaaN nabuud
>
> > Would it be "yagann buud", "shiyann buud" and "gumann nabuud"?
>
> No, in the first two lines, yagaana buud, and aashiyaana buud will be
> pronounced normally, without either nasalizing or shortening the
> vowels. It is in meter that way.
>
> In the fourth line the pronunciation is "gumaa-nabuud". The nasal N
> of gumaaN runs into the following syllable na-buud. Thus the three
> words; yagaa-na-buud, aashiyaa-na-buud and gumaa-na-buud (or gumaaN-na-
> buud) have the same vazn, and they rhyme perfectly.
> ...
I was thinking about how the modern Iranians would pronunce "gumaaN na-
buud". If they pronounce the first two lines as in our manner namely
"yagaana buud", "aashiyaana buud", then how would they pronounce the
final line? As they do not have the concept of nuun-i-Ghunnah, would
they not pronounce the last line as "guman(n) na-buud? If this is
correct, then guman na-buud does n't seem to rhyme with yagaana buud
and aashiyaana buud.
More on this topic to follow!!
Naseer
Naseer
Jamil Sahib, aadaab.
Please take a look at page 199 of the article entitled, " Rhythmic
Structures of Persian" by Professor Bruce Hayes. He quotes on the page
the following line..
pisar-i-NuuH baa badaaN binishast...
which he scans as..
pi sa re Nuu h baa ba daa bin shas t
1 1 2 2 1 2 1 2 2 2 1
and leaves out the nuun of badaaN, treating it as a nuun-i-Ghunnah.
Naseer
Jamil
> Jamil Sahib, aadaab.
>
> Please take a look at page 199 of the article entitled, " Rhythmic
> Structures of Persian" by Professor Bruce Hayes. He quotes on the page
> the following line..
>
> pisar-i-NuuH baa badaaN binishast...
>
> which he scans as..
>
> pi sa re Nuu h baa ba daa bin shas t
> 1 1 2 2 1 2 1 2 2 2 1
>
> and leaves out the nuun of badaaN, treating it as a nuun-i-Ghunnah.
>
> http://docs.google.com/viewer?a=v&q=cache:jJBO6DlCrcYJ:www.linguistic...
>
> Naseer
Naseer Sahib
Your shauq-e-fuzuul is not fuzuul at all. You have uncovered several
references, which show convincingly that there was a nuun Ghunnah in
Farsi.
Nevertheless, the way a present-day speaker of (Iranian) Farsi would
pronounce the line that you have quoted would be:
pi sa re Nuu h baa ba dann bin shas t
1 1 2 2 1 2 1 2 2 2 1
But just because it scans the same, does not mean the pronunciation
was always this way.
Jamil
Naseer
This topic has been waiting for it to be put to rest; for some form of
resolution or conclusion. The ultimate solution would have been to
cite some treatise by a well known non-Indian Persian poet, who also
happened to be a master 'uruuzii". Alas, it seems that the likes of
"Nizami 'Uruuzii" for example, did not leave such an essay on the
subject of the existence of the "nuun-i-Ghunnah" concept, not only
when reckoning in prosody but also the pronunciation of a long
nasalised vowel in the form of -aaN/iiN and -uuN. I have tried my best
to search for such evidence but perhaps there is n't any.
In the absence of clear irrefutable evidence, I thought I might
present my lay person's perspective from both aspects, i.e from
Iranian/Afghan side and from the Indian side.
It seems rather bizarre that the people who use Farsi in their daily
lives as a living language (in Iran, Afghanistan and Tajikistan) have
had the "memory", if ever there was one, of this nasal nuun totally
and utterly erased from their consciousness!
All the people that I have personally come across hailing from these
countries are totally oblivious of nuun-i-Ghunnah. Indeed, when they
look at a book published in India or Pakistan containing Farsi poetry,
they are dumbfounded when they see a dot-less nuun. When an
explanation is offered, they are not convinced at all. Therefore, I
wonder, if there is another explanation to resolve this issue, in
addition to the fact that when these people recite poetry, they tend
to shorten the long vowel preceeding the n. But, I wish life was as
simple as this. I asked an Afghan friend of mine to recite the
couplets mentioned in this thread.
baa uu dilam ba-mihr-o-mu'addat yagaanah buud
siimurGh-i-'ishq raa dil-i-man aashiyaanah buud
dar lauH Khvaandah am kih yake la'natii shavad
buudam gumaan ba-har kas-o-bar Khud gumaan nabuud
I expected that he would pronounce gumaaN as guman, but he did n't! He
is fully aware of "vazn" criteria in poetry. He read the gumaaN as
gumaan but, to my ears, he just "caressed" the nuun. I had a lengthy
chat with him about nuun-i-Ghunnah but he, expectedly, informed me
that he had never heard about nuun-i-Ghunnah in Persian poetry. In
Qur'aan tajviid yes but not in poetry! After some deliberation, he
came up with the concept of "idGhaam", which is something similar to
"tashdiid" but not quite. The nuun is touched upon so delicately as if
one has n't even pronounced it and then one moves onto the next
consonant. I think Jamil Sahib mentioned a certain Humayun Shirzadeh's
recitation of Iqbal's poetry. I believe he is using both vowel
shortening and idGhaam, hence appearing as if he was using a nuun-i-
Ghunnah in places.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3eHBm9H0pJY&feature=fvst
زمستان را سرآمد روزگاران
نواہا زندہ شد در شاخساران
گلان را رنگ و نم بخشد ہواہا
کہ می آید ز طرف جویباران
چراغ لالہ اندر دشت و صحرا
شود روشن تر از باد بہاران
دلم افسردہ تر در صحبت گل
گریزد این غزال از مرغزاران
دمی آسودہ با درد و غم خویش
دمی نالان چو جوی کوہساران
ز بیم اینکہ ذوقش کم نگردد
نگویم حال دل با رازداران
I agree with Jamil Sahib that his recitation of the -aan sound is
rather "indistinct" (By the way Jami Sahib, Humayun Shirzadeh's mother
tongue is neither Farsi nor Urdu. He grew up in the area of Edgware
Road, London where there is a high density of Persian {and Arabic}
speakers. From a private communication I know that he is a doctor by
profession but he did not divulge his ethnicity.) A clearer example of
this so called idGhaam and the shortening of the vowel is provided in
the following "recitation". The singer is a young Iranian man called
Pouria Akhavas. It might be unfair and inaccurate to compare
recitation with singing. In any case, below is a link to a Rodaki
poem, beautifully sung by Akhvaas where I can discern what appears to
me to be "idGhaam" and vowel shortening. In my view, this vowel
shortening is longer than a zabar but shorter than a mad. By the way,
my friend could be wrong about idGhaam, so far as Persian poetry is
concerned. Certainly, it is a concept in tajviid which comes under the
overall umbrella of "Ghunnah", i.e nasalization.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=P7UJkYV3PUY
(ai aankih Ghamginii-o-sazaavaarii—Rodaki)
Please note the shortening of Ghamgiin to Ghamgin. I wonder if this
has any connection with the subject in hand?
Now let me turn to our side of the planet.
Farsi did not originate in India albeit it has been there for over a
millenium. Most, if not all the rules and regulations would have come
with its speakers. For this reason it is difficult to suggest that
nuun-i-Ghunnah was "injected" into it from the "nuun-i-Ghunnah
saturated"
surroundings. We have in our possession Iqbal's hand written Farsi
kalaam which shows that nuun-i-Ghunnah was certainly part and parcel
of at least Indo-Persian.
It is a fact that before the innovation of the dotless nuun to
represent nuun-i-Ghunnah as in "maaN" (mother), nuun with a dot was
being employed for both purposes. In Urdu there was no dearth of words
with nasalised vowels and so, at some stage which is quite recent, the
dotless nuun was brought into Urdu to distinguish between say "maan"
as in maan lo and maaN. (An analagous situation is for chhoTii ye and
baRii ye). Zafar Sahib, in an earlier thread has said the following.
"I think dropping the "nuqta" from noon e Ghunna is an invention of
the Subcontinental writers and the practice is not very old either.
I've seen books written in the late 19th century where the nuqta is
used for all kinds of noons". Hitherto both Farsi and Urdu had only
one nuun and that was with a dot. The readers of both languages would
need to employ nasalisation with their inherent knowledge of prosody
for the former and accuracy for the latter. One could say that as
India already had nasalization of vowels, it was easy to "preserve"
the nasalization in Persian poetry whereas the Farsi speaking
"natives" who in thier normal speech did not have nasalization, simply
lost it from their poetry too. Then, a new way of reciting poetry
evolved which would take care of the metrical requirements. This is
what Afzal Sahib has suggested in an earlier thread.
"I have a theory which may be completely wrong. The absence of a
written noon-e-GHunna may only be a script aberration. In other words,
the sound did exist, but it was not made clear (in writing) by
omitting the dot ('nuqta').
Possibly, we may have no evidence of how verses involving this sound
were actually pronounced. Is it not possible that people in Iran/
Afghanistan were also in a position to distinguish between the two
sounds (i.e with or without the 'elaan)? The dot might have been
written in all cases, but could have been omitted in apropriate cases,
while reciting the verses?
Allow me to resubmit the "evidence" for the existence of nuun-i-
Ghunnah in Classical Persian poetry.
"Syllable-final n preceded by a long vowel is generally not reckoned
in scansion. Formerly this must have resulted in nasalization of the
vowel; but it is not done in reciting Persian poetry in Iran today,
although the practice is general in the Indian subcontinent." (A
Millenium of Classical Persian Poetry" by Wheeler. M. Thackston.)
Professor Finn Thiesen from his " A Manual of Classical Persian
Prosody" 1982 Otto Harrassowitz Wiesbaden p 41) tabulates his reasons
for the presence of nuun-i-ghunnah in Classical Persian as follows:
a) The fact that the prosodists do not reckon the "nuun". Had "nuun"
been shortened--as in present day recitation-- we should have expected
the
prosodists to reckon the "nuun" and instead not to reckon the
preceding alif, vaa'o, ye.
b) Indo-Persian pronunciation which preserves the nasalised vowels.
c) Most important of all, the numerous Persian loan words in Urdu and
Hindi which have nasalised vowels. Thus "maaNdaa" tired from Persian
"maandah". It is important to notice that there is nothing in the
phonetic
system of Hindi to prevent a form like "maandaa". "He acknowledges"
is
always "maantaa hai", never "maaNtaa hai; thorn is always "kaaNTaa"
never "kaanTaa". Hence, when the Indians pronounce "maaNdaa", not
"maandaa", the reason for this must be sought in Persian itself.
Thiesen goes onto say (page 50)
"Persian does not admit of triple consonant clusters, and even if the
poetry of Moulavi is known to be "sangiin" (heavy), it is not probable
that he should have produced verses with such clusters. Examples of
the above type are therefore very strong evidence for nuun being
realised as suprasegmental nasalisation in the position between long
vowel and consonant, since with that pronunciation the question of
triple consonant clusters no longer arises. The Classical Persian
pronunciation of "pinhaanst" must therefore have been "pinhaaNst".
What are the views of ALUP jury? Are you in a position to come to a
judgement?
Naseer
Naseer
We know that a final n is nasalised for prosodical reasons. Why do we
find nasalised final N in Farsi prose printed in the Subcontinent?
Naseer
humay...@yahoo.co.uk
Thanks for the thread. Nun ghunnah exist in persian language but not in Iranian Persian. This is an old trait of Indo-European languages and still survives in French with full expression. By the way I am Homayun Shirzadeh. Although I am doctor by profession but I never grew up in London. I am from Midlands.
Homayun
Naseer
Here is a quote from ملک الشعراء محمد تقی بہار from his book "Sabk Shinasi" Volume 3 pp 307-308
دررسم الخط ھندوستان دو نکتہ وجود داشتہ و دارد کہ در ایران بی سابقہ است و گویا در خراسان قدیماً بودہ است و بعراق سرایت ننمودہ و آن معین کردنِ نونِ غنّہ و یاءِ مجھول است در کتابت۔
توضیح آنکہ در زبانِ فارسی حروف بودہ است کہ در رسم الخط قبل از اسلام، شکلی خاص داشتہ و امروز ندارد۔۔۔۔۔
این حروف [یاءِ مجھول و نونِ غنّہ] بایستی علامت داشتہ باشند و در خط اوستا مانند دیگر حروف متشابہ ھر کدام بشکلی است، ولی در کتب ایران ھیچ امتیازی در شناختنِ آنھا بدست نداریم۔ امّا خطّاطانِ ھند این امتیاز را در نون غنّہ و یای مجھول یا ما قبل مفتوح محفوظ داشتہ و دارند و ہم اکنون استادان خط نون غنّہ را در آخر بدون نقطہ نویسند و در وسط علامتی مانند عدد ھفت روی آن گذارند و آن را در خیشوم و بینی تلفّظ کنند و نون بعد از الف را بلفظ در نمی آورند، و یاءِ مجھول یا ما قبل مفتوح رابصورتِ یاءِ معکوس نویسند و این امتیاز در خطِ ایرانیان فوت شدہ است۔
Translation to follow
Naseer
Naseer
In the script of India, two features existed and continue to exist that are unprecedented in Iran but it seems they did exist in Khorasan of old and had not penetrated into Iraq and they are specification of the “nuun-i-Ghunnah “ and “yaa-i-majhuul” in writing.
Explanation is that in the Persian language there have been letters which in the pre-Islamic script had a special form but they no longer exist today………
These letters [nuun-i-Ghunnah and yaa-i-majhuul] undoubtedly must have had a sign and in the Avestan alphabet, like other similar letters, each one had its own format but in the books of Iran we do not have any distinguishing feature to recognise them. However, the calligraphists of India have preserved and continued to preserve this distinguishing feature in the form of nuun-i-Ghunnah and yaa-i-majhuul or yaa-i-liin and still the masters of the script write the final nuun without a dot and in the middle they place a sign like the number seven upon it and pronounce it at the back of the nose and do not pronounce the alif after the nuun. They write the yaa-i-majhuul and yaa-i-liin in the form of a reverse yaa . This distinction in the writing of Iranians has got lost.
۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔۔
ٰI balieve it is amply clear that the nuun-i-Ghunnah once was distinguished in writing in pre-Islamic times in iran but this feature was not preserved in the Persio-Arabic aplhabet and its existence is like a faint memory in the minds of scholars like Bahar. It was left to the Indian script writers not only to preserve this sound in speech but also to preserve it in writing.
Naseer
Afzal A. Khan
There are no recent threads where something new or worthwhile can
be said --- they have sort of reached a dead-end.
So I thought about finding another issue to say something,
although I am least qualified (if at all) to do so. An
instance of "Bekaar ma~baash...." perhaps.
Janaab-e-Mohammed Taqi Bahaar Saheb does not indicate when
exactly the "signs" (or perhaps "symbols") of these two
letters disappeared in Iran. But these symbols did exist
in the pre-Islamic period.
The Islamic period of Iranian history dates from the era of
the second Caliph Hazrat 'Umar (R), around mid-7th century
AD.
Nobody could have imagined, at that time, that India too would
usher in an Islamic period of its own, about 400 years in the
future (around the 10th century AD). {My reference is to the
Ghaznavi/Ghauri period, disregarding the conquest of Sindh by
Mohammed bin Qaasim.}
Additionally, in the 7th century AD, nobody could have thought
about the emergence, in India, of Urdu as a separate, distinct
language (with its own script); that came about a thousand
years later, in the 17th/18th century AD.
In these circumstances, how can Janaab Bahaar Saheb say that
Indian (Urdu) calligraphists "have preserved and continue to
preserve" the representation of these two specific symbols
{noon-e-GHunna and yaa~e maj'hool} that had disappeared or
ceased to be used in Iran of a much earlier era ?
Perhaps I am missing something or, maybe, a re-look at the
translation of Bahaar Saheb's commentary is warranted.
Afzal
Naseer
> On 8/21/2019 2:16 PM, Naseer wrote:
>
>
>
>
>
> Janaab-e-Mohammed Taqi Bahaar Saheb does not indicate when
> exactly the "signs" (or perhaps "symbols") of these two
> letters disappeared in Iran. But these symbols did exist
> in the pre-Islamic period.
>
>
>
> Indian (Urdu) calligraphists "have preserved and continue to
> preserve" the representation of these two specific symbols
> {noon-e-GHunna and yaa~e maj'hool} that had disappeared or
> ceased to be used in Iran of a much earlier era ?
>
> Perhaps I am missing something or, maybe, a re-look at the
> translation of Bahaar Saheb's commentary is warranted.
>
>
>
> Afzal
No you are not missing anything and neither is it necessary to review the translation as it is my own translation!:-) This does not of course imply that there can be no errors in my rendition. Truth of the matter is that I became aware immediately that Mohammad-Taqi Bahar was not fully conversant with the history of the "nuun-i-Ghunnah" in the Urdu script convention but I was waiting for someone to point this discrpency out. Now that you have done so, I can proceed with finalising this thread!:-)
We know that in Urdu there are Indic words with nasal short and long vowels, e.g "muNh" and "maaN". We also know that even in the final position "nuun-i-Ghunnah" was not being indicated using a dotless nuun and the convention of using the dotless nuun for final position only began as late as around 1820! Before this date (and even sometime afterwards!) the reader would know that the word is "kahaaN" and not "kahaan" just ny intuition. Whereas Indian psyche had this knowledge, the Persian speakers' psyche had long lost this awareness. It was this Indian psyche which preserved the nasal in Persian poetry in India, firstly in the recitation of poetry and secondly much later on in writing. The same goes for the majhuul sound "e" ے.
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/alt.language.urdu.poetry/nuun-i-Ghunnah%7Csort:date/alt.language.urdu.poetry/-266zdfJILk/6uMif1rEKxQJ
(Early Representation of "nuun-i-Ghunnah" in the Urdu Alphabet)
https://groups.google.com/forum/#!searchin/alt.language.urdu.poetry/yaa-i-majhuul%7Csort:date/alt.language.urdu.poetry/MWAwvRA2z4A/3roqKS8SSgwJ
(Early Representation of "yaa-i-majhuul" in the Urdu Alphabet)
Now coming to the other point about Bahar not going to detail when the symbols for the nasal sound disappeared in Iran. He can be forgiven for this because he perhaps did not have the necessary insight into Persian phonology. This is where
Professor François de Blois comes into the discussion whom I had the pleasure of meeting once in Cambridge. Here is short biographical information about him.
"François de Blois has published widely on Semitic and Iranian languages and on the history of religions in the Near East in pre-modern times. Notably, he contributed to the multi-volume work entitled Persian Literature, which had been initiated by C.A. Literature, which had been initiated by C.A. Storey and published by the Royal Asiatic Society.
He served as Professor of Iranian Studies at Hamburg University from 2002 to 2003. Currently he is a research fellow at University College London where he is engaged in a major project on al-Biruni’s Chronology and other Arabic texts on non-Islamic calendars.
He is also a teaching fellow for Aramaic and Middle Iranian languages at the School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London. He has been a frequent contributor to the Encyclopaedia of Islam."
Scholars divide Persian language into three groups: Old Persian which is from before and up to the 3rd Century BC. Middle Persian spans from 3rd Century BC to the 9th Century AD. The transcriptions of Middle Persian which we have access to today were written in Pahlavi script (derived from Aramaic) and Pazend (derived from Avestan script). Early New Perian written in the Arabic alphabet starts its journey from around the 9th Century AD.
From another group, a gentleman stated:
"I should update my comment: it turns out I simply hadn't explained myself well, and my tutor is well aware of the 'nuun-e ghoneh'. She said the concept is known in Iran by the educated, though of course not used in contemporary pronunciation of poetry. We then speculated on the presence or absence of such a sound in Middle Persian. I don't know how much is known (or even how much can be known) about MP phonology...."
And in the same group, this is what Professor François de Blois had to say.
"We know quite a lot about the phonology of Middle Persian, but not all that much about its phonetics. But in so-called Pazend (that is: Middle Persian written in Avestan script) the group /-ān/ is normally written with the letter that we transcribe as ą, which is a nasalised vowel." He goes onto say..
"It is true that, in Persian poetry, syllables ending in –ān count as long, not as over-long (long+short). Or to put it another way: in the sequence ان the nūn does not count as sākin. Many good scholars have explained this with the hypothesis that in Early New Persian /-ān/ was actually realised with a nasalised vowel. However, Persian and Afghan literati do not read it in this way, and it is possible that the long scansion of ān has some other rationale."
Professor Wheeler.M.Thackston in his "A Millenium of Classical Persian Poetry" has this to say about this issue of nasalisation. "Syllable-final n preceded by a long vowel is generally not reckoned in scansion. Formerly this must have resulted in nasalisation of the vowel; but it is not done in reciting Persian poetry in Iran today, although the practice is general in the Indian subcontinent....".
All this may have given the impression that after Middle Persian, the Iranians became totally obvlivious of the nasal sounds in their language. This is far from the truth. Here is a link to Professor L.P. Elwall-Sutton's "Persian Meters".
http://books.google.com/books?id=Smy5GE48bWsC&pg=PA1&lpg=PA1&dq=persi...
Pages 1-4 are the most relevant to our topic. Along with other authors, he mentions the following:
1) Shamsu_ddiin Muhammad bin Qais Raazii
(al-mu'jam fi ma'aayiri ash'aari_l'ajam...written in 1217)
2) Nasiiru_ddiin Tuusii ( mi'yaaru_lash'aar 1251)
3) Saifii (of BuKhara) ('aruuz-i-Saifii..1491)
4) Abdu_rraHmaan Jaamii (Note: This is the famous poet Jami) (rasaa'il-i-'aruuz..1480)
The author says that his resume is based on all these sources. On page 4, he goes onto mention the letters which are of no phonetic value and I quote:
A) Letters that are always omitted
1) Silent v after Kh
2) n after a long vowel (aa, ii, uu) (Ghunna)....
Naseer
Naseer
Anyone interested in reading further about the presence of nuun-i-Ghunnah in Persian, please take a look at an article on this subject (as well as majhuul e and o sounds) on page 142 included in a book entitled "tafhiim" by Rasheed Hasan Khan.
https://www.rekhta.org/ebooks/tafheem-rasheed-hasan-khan-ebooks
Naseer
Tanveer Shah
I hope everything is well. This is Tanveer from youtube channel.
I am need your contact info please. I need to talk to you about Israr e Khudi.
I will be grateful for your response.
JazakAllah
Tanveer
sn2...@live.com