*ईज़ाद-invention, creation
कितना वक्त लगता है
ख़ुद को बर्बाद करो तो।
सब पागल कहने लगता,
रस्ता इक ईज़ाद करो तो।
-Farhan Ashraf
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तब पागल रहना उचित है.
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Sophocles: “evil appears as good in the minds of those whom gods lead to destruction”.
Rephrased by Longfellow as “whom the gods would destroy they first make mad”. The latter is spoken, in Longfellow’s poem, by Prometheus, who is legendarily the first technologist.
This photo I took, in the Caucasian mountains, shows the actual peak where, in the legend, Prometheus was chained for eternity, as punishment for daring to do (ie create) what had been the sole prerogative of the gods themselves (which puts the origin of Intelligent Design way back into ancient Greek prehistory).
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Where Greece is definitely considered part of Europe, however, the Caucasus is east of Turkey. The mountain in the photo is in Georgia, while another Greek legend, the epic of Jason and his quest for the Golden Fleece takes one to Armenia, where the practice of panning for gold by filtering river water through a lambs fleece is several thousand years old. The local national museum (in Yerevan) has stunning works of crafted gold and copper dating back four thousand years, as does the national museum in Tbilisi.
In similar fashion, although more recently, perhaps five to eight hundred years ago, the origin of what is now modern Urdu and modern Hindi (formerly Hindustani, also Khari Boli) lay across much of Northern India, but was certainly carried southwards by the decision of Muhammad Tughlaq to move his national capital from Delhi to Aurangabad. In doing so, he also ordered the literary culture exponents of his court to migrate, and they brought to life the unique southern language of Deccan Urdu (dakhani), a literary resource that is independent and distinct from its northern counterpart.
Also, quite interestingly, while most Urdu scholars today believe that Urdu was an artificial language spawned in mixed soldier’s camps as a lingua franca, there are several who argue quite convincingly that in fact the word Urdu can also mean Royal Camp, and is actually a language created specifically to serve the needs of the upper classes. It is the British, they say, post Ghalib (one of the greatest Urdu writers of all time), who laid down this ‘soldier’ story, in order to (successfully) draw Hindi writers away from using either Urdu or Hindustani. Ghalib himself did not use the term Urdu.
Thus, this thread weaves together once again the complex threads of Indian culture. Hopefully, it will attract posts from natives of each language, as well as those whose skills lie in putting together gems from diverse cultures.
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