About the book
This dictionary is mainly for English-speaking learners of Urdu: it aims to give concise definitions of the vocabulary an English-speaking person would need to communicate effectively with Urdu speakers. However, Hindi-speakers wishing to improve their Urdu vocabulary will also find this dictionary useful.
Guest Speaker: Professor Walter N. Hakala, University at Buffalo
Professor Hakala is interested in the Literature and languages of North India and Central Asia; lexicography; Mughal and early colonial South Asian history; South Asian Islam and Sufism. Professor Hakala will give a lecture “The Right to Define: A Tale of Two Dictionaries”. In this lecture he speaks about Chiranji Lal, the author of an important 19th-century Urdu dictionary. Today, however, Chiranji’s useful dictionary has been all but forgotten while the contemporaneous Farhang-i Asafiyah of Sayyid Ahmad Dihlavi is celebrated. In the midst of the increasingly communalized linguistic environment of late-nineteenth-century northern India, Hindu lexicographers like Chiranji could no longer fit neatly into the emerging Urdu literary culture.
Sponsored by Department of Asian Languages and Cultures and Asian Studies Program.
Department of Asian Languages and Cultures
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