Hearing someone speak in true Siraiki is wonderful, this language is so beautiful Masha’Allah. One of the many beautiful languages of this world.
Bit of info. regarding it. The following paragraphs pertain more to its poetic essence; for its background info, please follow this link to read the article in its entirety. The following are extracts from the translator and editor’s introduction to Tenement of Sand, an English translation of selected Siraiki poems of Syed Hassan Raza Gardezi.
…] To this day, each generation of Siraiki speakers has learned the language by hearing the lullabies of mothers at home, speaking to playmates in yards and alleys and by listening to the elders, story tellers and folk singers. It has preeminently been the tongue of the truly creative living the language of essential human affections (in the Wordsworthian sense). This free and open environment of growth makes Siraiki a natural language endowed with its characteristic qualities which have fascinated many an outside observer.
…] A considerable part of Siraiki heartland is dominated by the Thar desert with its silvery sands and scorching day-time sun, unique flora and fauna, camel caravans, mysteries and optical illusions. Together these stretches of desert, cultivated fields, mighty rivers with their seasonal floods. long summers and scanty rainfalls form the natural surroundings which cradle the numerous Siraiki legends and folk tales celebrating love, beauty and self-sacrifice. These legends and folk tales continue to enrich the imaginations of contemporary Siraiki poets and artists as they have done in the past.
…the Siraiki language has a profoundly distinctive symbolism which gives its speech community a unified world view and perception of the cosmic order. This symbolism has its roots in the beliefs and teachings of the Hindu Bhakti saints and Muslim saints who freely intermingled with the common people since medieval times conveying their message through song and poetry composed in the folk languages. The content of this message is well articulated in the Siraiki poetry to which we now turn.
As is the case with the language itself, much of Siraiki poetry also belongs to an oral tradition and has never been put into writing. it is therefore not quite feasible to reconstruct a history of Siraiki Poetry and its thematic content from its very origins, although the imprints of the obscure past can readily be discerned in more recent and written literature. In what has been preserved orally, one comes, across diverse cultural ideas and beliefs, portrayals of nature and seasons, accounts of battles and conquests, odes and elegies, legends of love and passion, each written in different verse forms. By the 15th century AD however, most of these diverse strands seem to have undergone a striking thematic synthesis into a rich tradition of Sufi poetry. Since this synthesis has left its indelible mark on subsequent Siraiki poetry, it would be in order to recapitulate its salient features, with some introduction to its Poetic exponents.
…] The most celebrated Siraiki poet of the past, who carried the tradition of the Sufi poetry into the dawn of 20th century, is Khawaja Farid (1845 - 1901). His poems are composed in the verse form known as Kafi, most widely used by the Sufi poets of the region. Sufi poetry in Siraiki as well as Sindhi and Punjabi is always composed to be sung. Had it not been for generations of folk singers, minstrels and kawals (inspirational singers) who memorized and passed it on, much less of this poetry would have survived. The Kafi is specially designed for singing to the tunes of the prevalent musical system. Each Kafi is essentially a lyric comprising of unity of sound, imagery, feeling and subject matter. However, any one of these elements may be highlighted in a given Kafi. Thus a prominent English translator of Khawja Farid’s selected poems has compiled them into sections entitled 'faith and instructions ‘love and distress," “desert and rains.” Farid with his mastery over the language recreates in his Kafis superb images of nature, feelings of love and lovers’ distress while reflecting at the same time on the metaphysics of existence and reality. The following lines of Kafi for example stress the oneness of all existence.
The world is but an idle dream
It’s shapes a film upon a stream
If you would know reality
Then listen carefully, mark and see
That oneness is a mighty sea
Where pluralism’s bubbles team
The following lines of a Kafi show how Farid can skillfully combine onomatopoeic effects with a sensuous description of the beloved’s charms that torment the one who is in love.
The beloved’s intense glances call for blood
The dark hair wildly flows
The Kohl of the eyes is fiercely black
And slays the lovers with no excuse
My appearance in ruins, I sit and wait
While the beloved (Maru) has settled in Malheer
I feel the sting of the cruel dart
My heart the abode of pain and grief a life of tears,
I have led Farid
This had to be the script of my fate
A highly informative, if LONG, read is this one, titled, “Peoples and Languages in pre-Islamic Indus Valley” by Dr. Tariq Rahman, a Fulbright Visiting Fellow.
Thank you so much, i truly really am grateful for it.