Abstract
Khattak dialect is one of the highlighted dialects of the Pashto language. The speakers of Khattak dialect fall between 2-3 million still this dialect is considered as a low resource language and is deprived of recognition which resultantly limits Khattak poetry only to its true natives. Yousafzai dialect has gained the status of lingua franca in documentation which has suffered the Khattak dialect on a large scale. This paper aims to highlight Danish Khattak’s poetic work, which is unveiling the profound potential of Khattak’s poetry and how it is alarming for the art of Khattak dialect, which is short-lived and asks for recognition. This research paper aims to explore the significance of the Khattak dialect in the poetic expression of Danish Khattak’s work.
Key Words
Khattak Dialect, Yousafzai, Danish Khattak Poetic Work
Introduction
Man cannot live without entertainment. It is a universally acknowledged fact that the human mind needs relaxation after a strong-headed day. Humans can find their happy times in multiple ways.
Even though we have been living in this technological age where technology has made its place on the palms of everyone's hands still, it has not taken the position of art. A high percentage of people go for watching either television or ended up engaging themselves on social networking sites, but others prefer to stay around the art. Therefore, art can be the perfect solution to bring ease to tired souls. Art itself is a broad concept. Numerous definitions of art are reported so far. Art is considered a medium of communication. This simply means that whatever the artist intends to communicate, this can be conveyed and jumbled up in different forms. Whether we name it painting or we name it the aesthetic moves, or if we place it in a poetry medium, everything comes under the huge umbrella of art. It allows the room for the expression of one’s thoughts and observation through songs, poetry, dance, paintings, and drama. These are all the tools that can be utilized to communicate the unsung and uncelebrated thoughts of one’s mind.
Defining art is a difficult task; it is one that many theorists, artists, and critics have tackled, trying to decide upon
the
best approach to understanding what we mean by art. It is a question still
being asked in contemporary literature (Crowther, 2007, Currie, 2010, Clowney, 2011). Art always demands appreciation as it unlocks
complex thoughts and puts them without being judged.
Betty Seabolt suggests that the appreciation of art
comes down to “understanding and enjoying art” (Seabolt, 2001). The world is full of artists, and it is mandatory to
secure it for the upcoming generation to witness.
'Art has no boundary' is a phrase that is on
everyone’s lips, but when it comes to documentation, then it bounds the art
only to its particular region. In the context of the English language, which
has received the status of lingua, franca welcomes a couple of dialects having
the privilege of their orthography medium, which does not limit the art from
going outside the country’s borders. And this is how English poetry travels
across the world. Therefore T.S Eliot, William Wordsworth, Robert Browning,
Robert Frost, John Keats, W.B Yeats, Sylvia Plath, Rudyard Kipling, Oscar
Wilde, Charlotte Bronte, William Blake, Percy Bysshe Shelley, Samuel Tylor
Coleridge, Alexander Pope, Edmund Spenser, Philip Larkin, Ted Hughes and John
Dryden, etc. are few to name. All of them have left a rich legacy that has
contributed a lot to English poetry as a whole. The reason for this strong
legacy is all about having a standard orthography but does every language
provides this privilege to its multiple dialects is thought-provoking.
In the context of the Pashto
language, as this language is inclined to the Iranian branch of the Indo-
European family is widely spoken by more than 40 million people. This is the
overall figure of speakers of Pashto that reside in Pakistan and Afghanistan
collectively. It is nonetheless considered as an official language in
Afghanistan, but the case is not the same in Pakistan as the official language
of the state is Urdu. The language activists are struggling hard to prioritize
Pashto in various domains for a long but in vain.
The late 1920s and 1930s are
significant for the development of Pashto nationalistic prose and poetry.
According to Ghani Khan, Makhfi of Charsadda, Abdul Malik Fida, Abdul Akbar
Khan, and Ghani Khan himself wrote nationalistic literature. (Interview, Ghani Khan, 2 Nov 1993). This paper aims to investigate
the issue of one of the dialects of the Pashto language, which is highly
alarming for the survival of its art to leave its footprints for generations to
come. Because
Limited corpora and Human
Language Technology (HLT) services are available for Pashto. At the same time,
in the catalogues of LDC1 and ELRA, the language resources for Pashto are not
available. There are variant dialects in Pashto, including Khattak, which is
not supported by Google in its search engine or translation services. Even the standard
Yousafzai dialect is not facilitated by Microsoft as the latter does not allow
a language pack on Windows 8 or Vista operating systems. The fact is there to
consider Pashto as a low resource language. The Khattak art, including poetry,
is always handwritten. This again reveals that the Khattak dialect also needs
orthography to be considered as a smooth medium of expression. Contrary to
this, the Yousafzai dialect has already paved its way to be used as a medium of
expression. But the Khattak dialect has not got the status of a strong medium
of expression yet. And this eventually limits the great work of Khattak artists
as a whole as no standard status has been given to the dialect for official
documentation. In the scope of a Khattak dialect’s art, Danish Khattak’s poetic
work is selected to investigate the rich art of this very dialect.
The speakers of the Khattak
dialect are found in Karak, Bannu, and Waziristan, which come in the southern
areas of Pakistan. The native speakers also come in a huge number of 2-3
million.
It is equally important to
acknowledge that Pashto can be pronounced with many variants such as Pushto,
Pukhto, Pakhto, Pashtu, etc. This variation in spelling shows the distant
pronunciations in different regions where the first vowel is pronounced as /a/
or /u/, similarly fricative is pronounced as /sh/ or /kh/, and the last vowel
is pronounced as /o/ or /u/.
The main issue of the Pashto
writing system is the lack of standard orthography (Kathol
2005). Two
different writing systems coexist for Pashto. Yousufzaï and Afghani Pashto, the
Yousafzai is spoken in the Pashto areas of Pakistan and is influenced by Urdu
and English on the other hand, Afghani Pashto is used in Afghanistan and seems
to be influenced by Dari. There is a great difference between the vocabularies
of Yousufzaï and Afghani Pashto. Apart from this, millions of speakers speak
and express their thoughts in the Khattak dialect as well, which are not easily
inferred by any Yousufzaï Pashto mother-tongue speaker. Yousafzai, being the
lingua franca of Pashto this serves as a medium of expression between two
speakers of different dialects, yet this has not witnessed the epic work of
many artists. Even the list of poets who made it to the world’s appreciation is
not long to surpass the English poets. They can be at everyone’s fingertips.
But still, the artists and the poets have managed to take their art to the last
corner of the world through their specific orthography. To name a few, the list
includes Khushal Khan Khattak, Rahman Baba, Khan Abdul Ghani Khan, Hamza Baba,
Afzal Khan Khattak, Ahmad Shah Abdali, Ameer Hamza Shinwari, and Ajmal Khattak.
But out of these poets, only a few have been blessed with recognition. Where
Khushal Khan Khattak, Rahman Baba, and Khan Abdul Ghani Khan are the names that
have highlighted the Pashto literature with their immense contribution, but it
is important to consider that they have opted for the medium of Yousafzai
dialect of the Pashto language.
Khushal Khan Khattak, who has
left a strong legacy of rich Pashto poetry in the Yousafzai dialect, has
claimed that “I have a great right over Pushto language, whether it is poetry,
prose, or script. There was neither a book nor writing in it at first; it was I
who authored a few books in it” (Rasa, M. S. R., 2001, p. 75). Khushal Khan Khattak has
gained the world’s attention as he is considered
the father of Pashtun Literature. Moreover, he is also called the
national poet of Afghanistan.
Khushal Khan Khattak cannot
be defined by a single adjective. His personality gave the vibes of a
multidimensional persona that has covered the essence of morality, a great
religious scholar, a thinker, and an ideal leader by all means. Whereas
kindness, chivalry, self-esteem, intelligence are other traits that add more
meaning to his introduction. He wanted his readers as a nation to be more skilful
and polish deeply their innate skills. Like, Rahman Baba, Kaushal Khan Khatam
also urges the nation to follow the righteous path and seek morality. His
Pashto poetry is a true reflection of his noble thoughts, which are delivered
to the world in Yousafzai Pashto.
Kaushal Khan Khatam was also
acknowledged by Allama Muhammad Iqbal, who is considered the national poet of
Pakistan. Even though the medium of expression was Yousafzai dialect, yet it
had reached the knowledge of Allama Iqbal through some orientalists. He had
expressed his desire that it was capable of understanding the Pashto language,
he would have translated his poetry into the Urdu language.
Khushal Khan
Khattak has penned down 45,000 poems, and his comparison is also made with
British playwright William Shakespeare. And sometimes with the German writer
and politician Johann Goethe. In the same manner, history also reveals to us
about Khan Abdul Ghani Khan, whose comparisons were made with John Keats and
Faiz Ahmed Faiz as the glimpses are there in the research work of Dr Shazia
Babar and Rubina Islam Mohammadzai. The notion of Khan's work strongly conveyed
that he was battling with stereotypes, and he showed his firm belief in the
strength of the Pakhtun youth through his poetry. He was the driving force to
uphold the Pakhtun, to be forward-looking and progressive, and to bring about a
substantive change in their societal fabric.
Rahman Baba
is yet another shining name in the Pashto literature whose work has spread over
343 poems. Where he has credited most of the work in his own native language
Pashto. If we talk about 'The
Diwan', it was in wide unstoppable circulation by 1728. Moreover, 25 original
hand-written materials of the Diwan are dispersed in different libraries around
the world, which covers ten in the Pashto Academy in Peshawar. Similarly, four
in the British Library while three in the Bibliothèque Nationale, which is in
Paris. Some of the copies are also present on the shelves of John Rylands
Library that is located in Manchester, the Bodleian Library in Oxford, and the
University Library Aligarh.
The highly acclaimed mystic
Rahman Baba was known to be the reformer of society. His entire also gives the
lesson to the people to follow the right direction. His work is so profound
that if it is allowed to become a part of our curriculum, then it can develop
self-realization in peoples’ minds and will deeper the humans' bonds with God.
And this one connection of man with God is sufficient enough to battle against
all odds. His poetry has the power of preaching all alone.
Therefore, all of his work
has revolved around rich subjects. This has benefited the nation in almost all
genres of life. His only mantra was to build your bond with God. Therefore, the
world has experienced this element of mysticism in his personality. But it was
expressed in his Pashto poetry which has made the audience clear about the
concept of God. Rahman Baba says.
Don’t dig a well in another’s
path;
You may come to the well’s
edge and fall in it.
Ghani Khan was marked
significant for his outstanding aura as his style of poetry did not go parallel
with his contemporaries. He made his poetry remarkable with his input of
allusions. Ghani Khan also opted for the Yousafzai dialect to express his
thoughts concretely. He is considered a pioneer who did a great experiment by
introducing free verse in Pashto Poetry. One of his poems, “Latoon” is poetry
that is full of free verse.
Ghani Khan has very
humorously depicted the humans' follies and fanaticisms. He has been given this
credit to artistically blend the thoughts of Western and Eastern hues both into
Yousafzai dialect.
Khushal Khan Khattak, Khan
Abdul Ghani Khan, Rahman Baba are the artists who let the world aware of the
artistic beauty of Pashto. No doubt, these artists have revived and cherished
Pashto literature. But when the miracles are penned down in Khattak dialect,
then the doors get closed. The speech variation between Yousafzai and Khattak
dialects is vividly there, which demands its documentation so that the art gets
preserved for the upcoming generations to experience.
The established dictionaries
and conventions for orthography will still make it clear if developed that how
the words can be spelt out in different ways as depicted in Table. Words from
the chosen work of Danish Khattak’s poetry ‘Ay da wareekwali Umra’ are selected
for comparison with the Yousafzai’s dialect, which foregrounds the significant
variation in speech sounds.
Table 1
|
Word |
Variant 1 |
Variant 2 |
|
English |
Yousafzai |
Khattak |
|
Foot |
??? |
??? |
|
Kid |
????? |
????? |
|
Youth |
????? |
?????? |
|
Manners |
???? |
??? ??? |
|
Asking |
????? |
?????? |
|
Run |
?????? |
???? |
|
y Cla |
????? |
???? |
|
Annoyed |
??? |
?????? |
|
er Ang |
??? |
??? |
|
Found |
???????? |
???? |
The above table 1 reveals the
outstanding variety of the Yousafzai and Khattak dialects vividly. At the same
time, the Yousafzai dialect also finds similarity with the Urdu language as
well. But Khattak dialect is finding no bonds. This, too, emphasis the idea of
the need for recognition for the Khattak dialect so that the Khattak literature
also makes it possible for the world’s audience. Because the Khattak dialect
has effectively laid down the foundation of the Pashto literary tradition.
Methodology
In this present study, the poetic analysis will be used to investigate Danish Khattak's poem, 'Ay da Wreekwali Umra' to unveil the structure, form, theme, language, and metrical pattern. All these components work together to unfold the plot and also create a complexity that is even more unique to the poetic verse. The purpose of the present study is to appreciate Danish's poetic work in the Khattak dialect on a deeper level.
Danish Khattak’s Introduction
Danish Khattak is a multi-dimensional personality. The art and work of Danish are limited to the natives of Karak as his mode of expression lies in Khattak’s dialect. However, the standard Yousafzai is the lingua franca that has welcomed the poetry of Khushal Khan, Rehman Baba, Ghani Khan, and many others. But Khattak dialect is confining the art of its natives like Danish Khattak only to the roots of its region. Due to which the art of Khattak’s poetry will not make its way to the international audience. The Khattak dialect is extremely rich and pure, and it needs to be noticed in the public eye. Danish Khattak’s poetry is of great caliber. The major works of Danish Khattak poetry are listed below.
|
??
??? ?????? ????? ??????? |
|
???
?? ??? ???? |
|
??
??? ??? ???? ? ?????? ?? ??? ?? |
|
??
?? ???? ??? ?????? ??? |
|
??
???? ??? ??? |
|
?
???????? ??? |
|
??
?? ??? ?? ?? ???? ?? |
|
??????
?? ??? |
|
???
?? ??? ??? ????? ?? |
|
??
?? ?? ???? ??? ?? |
Discussion and Conclusion
Theme
Danish Khattak has very convincingly conveyed the idea of childhood which is considered the golden period of one's life. As childhood is the central theme of 'Ay da Wareekwali Umra' where the poet asks and requests childhood to stay longer. He has purposely expressed his idea of freedom which is the gift of childhood as his every act can be taken for granted and every flaw will be forgiven in the name of a child. This idea continues to create an impact on the reader's mind till the last word of the poem.
Language
Danish's selection of words is perfectly aligned to build the mood and tone of the poem. The powerful imagination is contributing significantly to the rhythm of a poem. There is a vivid shift from one stanza to another by revealing another different aspect of childhood. This eventually paves the road for freedom and this freedom meets its deathbed when adult life starts.
Structure
The poem demands from the reader to read it the way it is written? The study reveals that how the execution of the idea is done through 5 stanzas. Tons of examples of rhyme patterns are there in every stanza which are thought-provoking. How the line breaks are the clear representation of punctuation and pauses.
The prominence of these components and others in this poem 'Ay da Wareekwali Umra' urges recognition and acceptance from the world to admit the rich and profound essence of Khattak dialect as well as other recognized work because admiration is the food of poetry. This is how we can say that the components which are responsible for the composition of poetry are followed properly in “Ay da Wareekwali Umra” poem by Danish Khattak. This again compels planning and recommendation from the language practitioners to consider and allocate a standard orthography for the Khattak dialect so that the art gets secured instead of going into the air.
Like several poems on the same subject are written by famous writers which includes David Bates whose poem name is Childhood. Not only this, Abraham Lincoln's My Childhood Home, I See Again also revolves around the same subject of Danish Khattak's poem.
Childhood by Rainer Maria Rilke is yet another poetic achievement where the poet has expressed his thoughts vividly on a piece of paper in the English language which possesses a profound orthography. As I mentioned earlier that art lies beyond boundaries therefore it is the need of an hour to give due credit to Khattak dialect as well as other standard dialects of the available languages so that this does not block the art in its surrounding region but it must provide the track to travel across the globe and receive appreciation.
References
- Shazia, B. (2006). Strains of Romanticism in Abdul Ghani Khan and John Keats Poetry. Pashto Academy, Peshawar.
- Clowney, D. (2011). Definitions of Art and Fine Arts Historical Origins. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism,69(3), 309-320. doi:10.1111/j.1540-6245.2011.01474.x
- Crowther, P. (2011). Defining art, creating the canon artistic value in an era of doubt. Oxford: Clarendon Press
- Currie, G. (2010). Actual Art, Possible Art, and Art's Definition. The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 68(3), 235-241.
- Khan, G., (1993). Interview with the author at Utmanzai, Charsadda 2 Nov. 22, 23
- Kathol, A., Precoda, K., Vergyri D., Wang W., & Riehemann, S. (2005). Speech translation for low-resource languages: The case of Pashto. In Proceedings of Interspeech, Lisbon, Portugal, September 4-8 2005.
- Rasa, M. S. R. (2001). Armaghan-e-Khushal. Peshawar: University Book Agency.
- Seabolt, B. O. (2001). Defining Art Appreciation. Art Education, 54(4), 44-49. doi:10.2307/3193903
Cite this article
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APA : Iqbal, M., Samad, A., & Ali, M. (2020). Lack of Recognition of Khattak Dialect is a Threat to Khattak Poetry. Global Language Review, V(III), 97-107. https://doi.org/10.31703/glr.2020(V-III).11
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CHICAGO : Iqbal, Maimoona, Abdus Samad, and Mansoor Ali. 2020. "Lack of Recognition of Khattak Dialect is a Threat to Khattak Poetry." Global Language Review, V (III): 97-107 doi: 10.31703/glr.2020(V-III).11
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HARVARD : IQBAL, M., SAMAD, A. & ALI, M. 2020. Lack of Recognition of Khattak Dialect is a Threat to Khattak Poetry. Global Language Review, V, 97-107.
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MHRA : Iqbal, Maimoona, Abdus Samad, and Mansoor Ali. 2020. "Lack of Recognition of Khattak Dialect is a Threat to Khattak Poetry." Global Language Review, V: 97-107
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MLA : Iqbal, Maimoona, Abdus Samad, and Mansoor Ali. "Lack of Recognition of Khattak Dialect is a Threat to Khattak Poetry." Global Language Review, V.III (2020): 97-107 Print.
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OXFORD : Iqbal, Maimoona, Samad, Abdus, and Ali, Mansoor (2020), "Lack of Recognition of Khattak Dialect is a Threat to Khattak Poetry", Global Language Review, V (III), 97-107
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TURABIAN : Iqbal, Maimoona, Abdus Samad, and Mansoor Ali. "Lack of Recognition of Khattak Dialect is a Threat to Khattak Poetry." Global Language Review V, no. III (2020): 97-107. https://doi.org/10.31703/glr.2020(V-III).11