Love
is the loveliest of human emotions; it is the most colorful and
tender of them all. Human heart is its native place where love in
utter privacy, far from reason, grows its delicate tendrils and
sprays. Through various phases and varying moods, love acquires
powerful intensity in its birthplace demanding expression.
Language
is the most readily available medium of expression which can give
voice to love delicately and subtly, with fidelity and freshness. But
then the language of love must be as privy to the heart as is the
emotion of love; it must be alive with passionate vigor peculiar to
love. Thus there must be a symbiosis between the heart and the
language that speaks its private feelings. From this viewpoint, the
language of love-songs can provide a very sensitive and objective
measure of nature and quality of love articulated and expressed
through it.
No
sensible man is likely to dispute the truth of these simple and
general statements. They are empirical and they can be easily
verified, or falsified, which is the same thing, really.
However,
one conclusion that these major premises necessarily lead to is at
variance with an undeniable feature of popular love songs sung in
Hindi films. The conclusion I am referring to is that the
‘love-tongue’ of a people cannot be other than their native
tongue, which is intimate with the heart of the people. But the
material feature of the love-songs in Hindi movies, which even a
casual listener cannot fail to notice, is the use of ‘love-words’
borrowed from Arabic to articulate and communicate love. These songs
give one the feeling that love is not love that is not spoken of in
Arabic words.
For
these love-songs, love is muhabbat
.
A lover is either mahboob
or
Mahbooba
depending
on the sex of the lover. The former refers to the male lover, and the
latter to the female lover. Or else love is ishk,
and the beloved is maashooka,
of course. One of the terms of endearment used for the male lover in
these love-songs is sanam,
which means ‘idol’, and the other one is saajan.
Hindi
appears to have innovated the term sajani
to
refer to the woman lover; it pairs off neatly with saajan,
and it follows the grammatical pattern of deriving feminine nouns
from masculine nouns in Hindi. The denotation of saajan
calls
for some comments at this point. In Arabic the dictionary meaning of
saajan
is
‘prisoner’, ‘captive’. In the songs the word is used,
metaphorically, to refer to ‘a prisoner of love’. This
metaphorical extension of the meaning saajan
seems
to be in keeping with the poetic conventions in Arabic itself. Notice
the following:
To
be sure, there is a similar sounding good old Hindi word, which may
be transcribed as sajjan
meaing
a true man, a man of integrity, a moral man. But surely love songs
sing of prisoners of love rather than people of moral virtues. With
the literary convention of Arabic love lyrics in mind it does not
seem very far-fetched to interpret saajan/sajani
of
Hindi love-songs as borrowed from Arabic with their Arabic meanings.
Of
course, the lovers are beautiful people; the male lover is hasiin
‘beautiful’,
while the female lover is hasiina.
They have beauty husn.
Indeed, lovers find every part of the visible world, duniya
charged
with beauty. In the love-songs they sing of hasiin
fiza or
of hasiin
shamaa and
hasiin
zamaanaa. The
value that governs their love-relation is wafaa;
‘fidelity,
loyalty’ to each other. Their love-songs are prone to lament
bitterly the slightest possible deviation from it. Infidelity is
their ultimate sorrow. Of course, there is the sorrow gam
of
separation furqa(t),
but it can be for a short while and can be borne, but not the
ultimate sorrow produced by the loss of wafaa.
We
can cite many more examples of such Arabic words borrowed into Hindi
which have come to constitute the idiom of love crafted so charmingly
in Hindi film songs. However, our aim at the moment is not detailed
documentation; our aim is to state simply what is perhaps plain to
all who enjoy these songs that nagma
may
not be sung, and gazal
remain
unborn without these Arabic loans.
Some
Arabic knowing readers might have observed that Arabic words borrowed
into Hindi, and as recorded here, are not exactly the same as they
know them to be in their native habitat. They are right and their
observation is just and undeniable. But I should point out that there
are two processes responsible for the difference between them; one of
them is a general process that operates in the case of every word
borrowed into any language from any other, and the other is a
specific process peculiar to Arabic words borrowed into Hindi in
particular. The general process is inevitable; it accounts for
modification, large or small, phonological, grammatical or semantic,
of the loan words as they adjust themselves and adapt to the genius
of the host language. In the case of Arabic words borrowed into
Hindi, the general process of adaptation and assimilation is mediated
through the Persian language. That is, most Arabic loans have entered
Hindi through Persian: in other words, they have undergone two
sets of modifications in two stages; the first modifications were
introduced by Persian and the second by Hindi, and later than the
Persian modifications. However, there is strong linguistic evidence
to support the hypothesis that a sizable number of Arabic words were
borrowed into Hindi unmediated through Persian. That is , mediated or
not, Arabic loan-words in Hindi have undergone a variety of
modifications; moreover, such modifications are inescapable. These
general observations can bear some elaboration, but this does not
seem to be the right occasion to elaborate them or illustrate them;
we shall rest content with their simple statement here.
However,
there are some other interesting aspects of this subject that deserve
mention, if not a detailed description at this stage. One of them
relates to the question whether these borrowed Arabic words filled
any real communicative needs of the speakers of the borrowing
language or not. In other words, the question is; is it possible to
assert categorically that without these Arabic words the love-idiom
of Hindi film lyrics would not exist at all, or if exist would be
inadequately expressive of love. The answer is in the negative, for
the meaning,
if
not the form
of
every Arabic word existed from before in Hindi, and exists even now.
If even then the love-idiom of Hindi film lyrics cannot get off the
ground without these borrowed Arabic words, the explanation has to be
sought in Indian history, not in Hindi semantics. There was a time in
Indian history when the rich and the cultured, the privileged and the
sophisticated, considered those love-lyrics elegant, charming and
worth listening to which were articulated in and through Arabic words
processed through the Persian language. And this tradition, hundreds
of years old, continues even today through the powerful medium of
cinematography. It seems that even today listeners of Hindi film love
lyrics can afford the luxury of cultivating and enjoying more than on
love-idiom and a variety of love lyrics not possible for other
linguistic groups.
What
is really intriguing is that most listeners of Hindi love lyrics of
films seem quite ignorant of the meaning, however defined, of the
borrowed Arabic words and yet appear to be genuinely affected by
them. The most striking example of this phenomenon can be gathered
from the fact that when they propose love to their lovers, these
listeners tend to do it in terms of the love-idiom crafted through
Arado-Persian loan words.
Finally, it is possible to account for their behavior by assuming that what they respond to is the charm of a style rather than the content of the message, the presumed elegance of a little understood love-idiom intrinsic to a culture that not only has a long past, but endures even today in India. But what really ensures the living presence of this elegant style of fugitive charms is the abiding reality of the love-idiom Arabic loan words have given birth to.
(This article was first published in Yemen Times on August 23rd 1999)
