उन्नत उर्दू व्याकरण एवं छंदशास्त्र
What Urdu is, linguistically
The classical division of words
Urdu grammar, following the Arabic tradition, sorts words into three:
The point a paper tests: Urdu and Hindi differ in script and in the register of their vocabulary, not in grammatical structure. A question that treats them as unrelated languages is built on a false premise.
उन्नत उर्दू व्याकरण एवं छंदशास्त्र
Persian constructions that run through Urdu
इज़ाफ़त — the Persian way of joining two nouns, or a noun and an adjective, with a short -e- (the zer under the first word). It reads right to left in Urdu and is translated with of:
वाव-ए-अत्फ़ — the Persian conjunction -o- (and), joining two words into a pair:
Why both matter. Most titles in Urdu literature are built from one or the other, so a candidate who can take a title apart can usually say what it means and where it belongs. The two are asked together because they look alike and do opposite work: इज़ाफ़त links one word to another as its possessor or quality; वाव-ए-अत्फ़ sets two words side by side as equals.
उन्नत उर्दू व्याकरण एवं छंदशास्त्र
The anatomy of a ghazal — इल्म-ए-अरूज़
इल्म-ए-अरूज़ is the science of Urdu prosody; बह्र is a metre.
| Term | Meaning |
|---|---|
| शेर | a couplet — the unit of the ghazal |
| मिसरा | one line of a शेर; the first is मिसरा-ए-ऊला, the second मिसरा-ए-सानी |
| रदीफ़ | the word or phrase repeated unchanged at the end of every second line |
| क़ाफ़िया | the rhyming word that comes just before the रदीफ़ |
| मतला | the opening शेर, in which both lines carry क़ाफ़िया and रदीफ़ |
| मक़्ता | the closing शेर, in which the poet names himself by his तख़ल्लुस |
| तख़ल्लुस | the poet's pen-name |
One शेर, taken apart — Ghalib's matla:
> हज़ारों ख़्वाहिशें ऐसी कि हर ख़्वाहिश पे दम निकले
> बहुत निकले मिरे अरमान लेकिन फिर भी कम निकले
A ghazal's शेर are independent — each is complete in itself, and the ghazal is held together by its metre, रदीफ़ and क़ाफ़िया rather than by a single subject. That is what separates it from a नज़्म, which develops one theme throughout.
उन्नत उर्दू व्याकरण एवं छंदशास्त्र
The forms of Urdu verse, and how each is recognised
| Form | Shape | Recognise it by |
|---|---|---|
| ग़ज़ल | independent शेर, one रदीफ़-क़ाफ़िया | मतला and मक़्ता; love, mysticism, loss |
| नज़्म | a poem on one theme | unity of subject, any rhyme scheme |
| क़सीदा | a long ode | praise of a patron or a figure |
| मर्सिया | an elegy | mourning, above all for the martyrs of Karbala |
| मसनवी | a long narrative poem | each शेर rhymes within itself (AA, BB, CC…) |
| रुबाई | four lines in a fixed metre | rhyme AABA; a complete thought in four lines |
| क़ता | two or more शेर | continuous sense, without the opening मतला |
The distinction that decides most questions. The मसनवी is the only form built for storytelling at length, because it is the only one that needs no single rhyme across the whole poem — each couplet carries its own. That is why the great narrative poems of Urdu — Sehr-ul-Bayan, Gulzar-e-Nasim — are मसनवी.
उन्नत उर्दू व्याकरण एवं छंदशास्त्र
Points to Remember