Muhammad Ilyas Saleem

Bilingual Lexicography in the Indian Sub-Continent

A historical perspective of English-Hindustani/Urdu dictionary writing

Abstract: The linguistic exploration in the subcontinent began with the arrival of
the Europeans, i.e. Portuguese, Dutch, French and finally the British. Following the
grant of the Royal charter to a group of merchants of London on 31st December 1600
AD, Queen Elizabeth I gave the British East India Company a monopoly over trade
with India. The company established a transit trading post in the coastal city of Surat
in 1608, where East India Company opened its first factory in 1612 after royal
patronage was granted by the then Mughal Emperor Nuruddin Salim Jahangir. The
Dutch East India Company (VOC) had already established itself in Cochin on the
Malabar Coast in 1605. The Europeans were quick to identify that success in trade lay
in their ability to communicate effectively in the local languages. They also identified
that India was multilingual but one language practically served as lingua franca, they
called it variously as Moors, Moorish, Indostan, Jargon, or Hindustani. This
common vernacular was locally known as Hinduwee, Hindavi, Zaban-e-Hind
(literally means tongue of India), Zaban-e-Dehli (language of Delhi), Zaban-eUrdu-e-Mualla (means language of the royal camp), ultimately clipped to just
Urdu/Oordoo (a Turkish word meaning a camp or bazaar).
The roots of early bilingual lexicography lie in the development of grammar books
that contained bilingual glossaries. This started with a Dutch emissary, Joan Josua
Ketelaar in 1698 (see Linguistic Survey of India, Sir George A Grierson) and
continued in the form of early military grammars by Captain George Hadley (1772)
and Captain James Fergusson (1773) of The British East India Company. This was
followed by proper lexicographic works by several eminent scholars including J B
Gilchrist, Thomas Roebuck, Dr Hunter, John Shakespeare, Duncan Forbes, and SW
Fallon, and so on. In this paper I will examine the evolution of dictionary writing in
the Indian subcontinent with special reference to English-Hindustani/ Urdu
lexicographic tradition over the past two hundred years.

Introduction
Lexicographic tradition in India:
The tradition of lexicography in the Indian subcontinent is very old, in fact older than
that of Arabic. It was a religious discipline. Nirukta of Yaska was written around 600
B.C. It contained the etymology, derivation, meanings and explanations of obscure
words used in Veda texts. This can be regarded as the first Sanskrit Etymological
Dictionary. This was followed by Kosh-writing (the proper dictionary). These were
not alphabetically arranged; usually words were grouped in thematic strings. These
can be regarded as proto-thesauri, and proto-lexicons
Modern Lexicography on western principles:
Modern lexicography in the Indian subcontinent started with the arrival of European
missionaries followed by western traders and colonial masters. Communication
barrier between the natives and the foreigners dictated the need for language learning
and the development of bilingual and monolingual dictionaries. People of Northern

Muhammad Ilyas Saleem

India spoke a variety of languages and dialects, but one language practically served as
the lingua franca in the whole subcontinent. This has been variously termed as
Moor/jargon/Indostan/Hindoostanee, etc. Hindi and Urdu are the two refined products
of this common ancestor.
a)Early grammars:
Ketelaar's Grammar of Hindustani
The roots of bilingual lexicography in the subcontinent lie in the development of early
Hindustani language grammars. Joan Josua Ketelaar wrote his Hindustani grammar
book (in Dutch) in the late 17th Century when he was an envoy of the Dutch East India
Company in India. There is only one surviving manuscript copy of the first ever written
grammar of Hindustani language by Ketelaar. It is preserved in the state archives at The
Hague
Military Grammars
Capt. George Hadley was the first Briton to write a grammar for the officers of the East
India Company in 1772. His grammar had a glossary, which contained English and
Moor (Hindustani) words. This was the prototype of a bilingual dictionary. He was
soon followed by Capt. J. Fergusson who produced his first Dictionary of the
Hindoostan language in two parts in 1773. This work, in his own words, "contained a
great variety of phrases, to point out the idiom, to facilitate the acquisition of the
language" (Hadley 1772, 1801). The vocabulary in these early military grammars relates
to the kind of language an officer commanding an army for the East India Company
might need to know. Therefore it contained words that they (officers) learned from their
sepoys (men under their command) (Friedlander
2006). These men came from various parts of the country to serve in the East India
army. They spoke different dialects; hence speech of a military bazaar/camp was highly
heterogeneous and rustic due the fact that these men were largely illiterate. The language
of these men would not represent what was called Hindustani. This was a corrupt jargon
and an amalgamation of various dialects and local accents. This is clearly revealed in the
dialogues contained in these books (Hadley 1772).
b) Earlier dictionaries
J. Borthwick Gilchrist
He was born in Scotland and qualified as a doctor in Edinburgh. He then joined the East
India Company and was appointed as an assistant surgeon in Calcutta. He became
interested in Hindustani language and learned it from ordinary people in the North of
India. His informants were from all walks of life. He travelled far and wide and
employed indigenous people who spoke better language than the rustic tongue of the
East India Company's sepoys (from Persian Siphis meaning soldiers) and orderlies.
Therefore his collection of parlance was superior to those of Hadley's or Ferguson's
(Gilchrist 1826). His dictionary was published in Calcutta and London in 1796. He
recorded words in both Perso-arabic and Devanagari scripts. His roman transliterations
indicate that he was more familiar with Hindustani phonemes than his predecessors.
Gilchrist was later appointed principal at the famous Fort William College Calcutta
where he was responsible for the production of literature in local languages, especially in
Hindi and Urdu. Some researchers believe that he contributed to Hindi-Urdu divide by
asking pundits (Hindus) and maulvis (Muslim clerics) to produce parallel literature
based on religious, cultural and geopolitical affiliations.
S. W. Fallon
J. B. Gilchrist was followed by many other eminent orientalists like John Shakespear
(1817) and Duncan Forbes (1845). They both produced grammars of Hindustani and
Hindustani English Dictionaries in the first half of the nineteenth century, but the most
elaborate work in this field was undertaken by Dr. Fallon (1879). For the first time he
included, not only the colloquial terms and ordinary words of day-to-day speech but

Muhammad Ilyas Saleem

also the refined language ofwomen of high social status. His treatment of the Hindustani
language was thorough and comprehensive. Unfortunately he died before the
completion of his work in 1880, but this was later on completed by Rev. J. D. Bate in
1883. Soon he was followed by Platts (1884), whose Dictionary of Urdu, Classical
Hindi and English is still regarded as a reference work by scholars of today.
c) Doctors as linguists and lexicographers
c) Power politics and reversal of L1-L2
When the Europeans first entered India in the seventeenth century as traders and
missionaries their priority was to learn the local languages to achieve better
communication. Hence early English-Hindustani dictionaries were L1L2 (for
encoding purposes). Later on when the British assumed power in the region and India
went under direct rule from the Westminster, learning English became a necessity for
the local masses. As English became a medium of instruction in schools, EnglishHindustani school dictionaries were written in L2L1 pattern for decoding purposes.
Unfortunately many dictionaries that were written before or after the partition of India
were based on monolingual Concise Oxford Dictionary and hence lacked an approach
that was required to create truly bilingual or bilingualised dictionaries for ESL/EFL
readership. This flaw has hitherto remained in English-Hindustani dictionaries
(Saleem Muhammad Ilyas, Linguistik online 31, 2/07).
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Muhammad Ilyas Saleem

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