The Story of Rekhta
Anisur Rahman
“Rekhta”, as a word and a language, has been defined and understood variously through the last eight centuries. Literally, the word “Rekhta” means both “scattered,” and “mixed”, and as a language it stands for a creative blending of various dialects. Interestingly, “Rekhta” is also a term in music. In the mid-seventeenth century, Alauddin Barnavi, in his 1655 treatise on musicology entitled Chishtiya Bihishtiya, identified Rekhta as a piece of composition in which Persian and Hindi are brought to bear upon one another and create a raga and a taala. This worked well with poetry owing to its close relationship with music which is well borne out by the development of Rekhta as a medium of poetic expression through centuries.
What we know as Urdu today has had several names to be known by like Hindavi, Hindi, Dehlavi, Gujari, Deccani, and Rekhta. Broadly speaking, Rekhta acquired a certain identity over the ages and emerged as a language of literary expression drawing upon Khariboli and Brajbhasha with a liberal blending of Perso-Arabic diction. The trajectory of its development shows that it drew upon several linguistic registers including the sufi and yogic registers. Unlike other languages that developed unilaterally, Rekhta developed multilaterally and was written in different scripts such as Persian, Gurmukhi, Kaithi, and Nagri by Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu authors and saints belonging to different traditions.
In the thirteenth century, it was the iconic poet Amir Khusrau 1253-1325 who evolved a language for his poetical compositions with an extremely creative blending of Persian and Hindavi. This language came to be known as Rekhta. Here is his most famous ghazal which is often quoted in this context:
Ze haal-e miskeen makun taghaaful duraai nainan banaai batiyaan
Ke taab-e hijraan na daaram ai jaan ne lehu kaahey lagaai chhatiyaan
Shabaan-e hijraan daraaz choon zulf o roz-e waslat chuun umr-e kotaah
Sakhi piya ko jo main na dekhoon to kaise kaatoon andheri ratiyaan
Yakaa yak az dil do chashm jaadu ba-sad farebam ba-burd taskeen
Kisey padi hai jo jaa sunaawey piyarey pee ko hamaari batiyaan
Chuun shamm-e sozaan chuun zarra hairaan ze mehr-e-aan mah bagashtan aakhir
Na neend nainan na ang chainan na aap aawey na bhejey patiyaan
Ba haqq-e aan mah ke roz-e mahshar ba-daad maara fareb Khusro
Sapeet man ke duraae raakhuun jo aae paaun piya ki khatiyaan
During the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, Rekhta continued to acquire its roots in north India and it was used creatively in the Sant and Sufi discourses. In the seventeenth century, Wali Deccani 1667-1707 surprised the literary readers by evolving a poetic diction drawn upon Persian and Hindavi and set almost a model for the Delhi poets to practice this evolving language with greater confidence. With his Hindavi ghazal, he paved the way for its larger acceptance in the courts of the Mughal emperors and the nobles. This period, as well as the succeeding period, also saw the Nirgun saints, the Krishna devotees, the authors of Guru Nanak’s Janmsakhis, and the court poets of Rajasthan using Rekhta as the preferred medium of secular and religious expression.
It was the major poet Meer Taqi Meer 1723-1810, however, who deliberated upon Rekhta more seriously in the eighteenth century and self-confessedly used Rekhta as the language of his poetical compositions. In addition, he appropriated the word Rekhta interchangeably for poetry. He even theorized upon Rekhta and classified it into six categories with different styles of linguistic intermixing of Hindi and Persian. He liked this new-found language for his poetic expression in no uncertain terms:
Dil kis tarah na khainchein ashaar Rekhtey ke
Behtar kiya hai main ne is aib ko hunar se
One of the prominent poets and a close contemporary of Meer, Qayem Chadpuri 1723-1793 also appropriated this language with pride:
Qayem mein rekhta ko diya khilat-e qubool
Warna ye pesh-e ahl-e hunar kya kamala tha
Qayem main ghazal taur kiya rekhta karna
Ik baat lachar sib a-zabaan-e Dakani thi
Interestingle enough, the great poet of nazm Nazeer Akbarabadi 1735-1830 rightly chose this language for himself and praised it as much:
Yaar ke aagey padha ye rekhta jaa kar Nazeer
Sun ke bola waah waha achha kahaa achha kahaa
Ghulam Hamadani Mushafi 1751-1824 also chose to use this language for his ghazal. He said so in express terms:
Tha jo sher-e raast sar-wo bostaan-e Rekhta
Ab wahi hai lala-i zard-e khizaan-e Rekhta
Kya Rekhta kam hai Mushafi ka
Buu aati hai is mein Farsi ki
Even Asadullah Khan Ghalib 1797-1869, the foremost nineteenth century poet acknowledged Meer as the master of Rekhta. Although he himself wrote in Rekhta, he gave the real credit to Meer for authenticating it. He acknowledged Meer’s mastery but considered himself no less a master in using this language for his own poetry:
Rekhta ke tumhein ustaad naheen ho Ghalib
Kehtey hain agley zamaaney mein koi Meer bhi tha
Apart from his indebtedness to Meer, Ghalib also praised it for how Rekhta appealed to him as a medium of his kind of literary expression:
Tarz-e Bedil mein rekhta kehna
Asadullah Khan qayaamat hai
Jo yuun kahey ke rekhta kunke ho rash-e Farsi
Gufta-i Ghalib ek baar padh ke usey suna ke yuun
Rekhta grew and prospered in the Mughal court where it was first called Zaban-e Urdu-i Mu’all-i Shahjahanabad. Later, through a process of abridgement, it came to be known as Zabaan-e Urdu-i Mu’alla. Subsequently, it came to be termed as Zaban-e-Urdu, before it finally came to be labelled as Urdu. With an intermixing of vocabulary from Persian, the predominant language of the day, Rekhta, now called Urdu, got reconfigured from poet to poet and from age to age. It acquired its intriguing character which distinguished it as a virile language of poetic expression. It finally came to stay for good and for good reasons.
In the twentieth century, the language that we know as Urdu is yet another avatar of Rekhta which is a rich product and manifestation of the inclusive cultural manifestations of India, Pakistan, and the rest of the Urdu speaking world. It is a language that stands for hybridity, shows a constant flux, incorporates vocabulary from other dialects and languages, and absorbs echoes from multiple sources from literature to film, home to office, academia to marketplace. Today, Urdu is yet another form of Rekhta which stands as a secular language of larger connectivity, cohesion, and togetherness.