Saraiki literature

Tomb of Sufi poet Khwaja Ghulam Farid

Saraiki literature is the literature of the Saraiki dialect of Western Punjabi Language, which is mostly spoken in central Pakistan. The main Saraiki-speaking areas are Multan, Bahawalpur, Dera Ghazi Khan, Mianwali and Dera Ismail Khan. Most Saraikis are Baloch, Khans, Pathans (Niazis), Syeds, Gailanis, Qureshis or Non Natives of Punjab who immigrated lately in the last 500 years.

The separate Seraiki identity stems from the fact that many of the immigrant Baloch and Pukhtoon population who inhabited the lands of Punjab refused to integrate into the culture of Punjab and rather they tried to carve out their own identity different from the people of Punjab.For example Durranis, Rabbanis, Niazis and Tareen tribes were the part of Afghan Empire and later they looted, killed and took away most of the lands from local people of South Punjab. Still Tareens and Durranis are feudals of South Punjab on the same land which they captured and snatched from local population during Durrani empire time. Even tough Ranjit Singh later attacked Multan and Bahawalpur regions and as a result many Afghans ran away and they had taken their lost lands back but still some Afghans remain behind. The reason of the separate identity away from Punjab stems from the racist point of view where Punjabis are considered lower caste converts from Hinduism while Syeds, Gailanis, Rabbanis, Durranis, Niazis Baloch etc. consider themselves as a ruler and super class. The same reason led to the strange phenomenon in Mianwali district where Niazi people called themselves Seraiki while they live in North Punjab and their language is pretty closer to Northern Dialects of Punjab but still they are adamant not to call themselves Punjabi at all. Saraiki is also spoken widely in the Sindh and Baluchistan provinces of Pakistan.

Since the start of consciousness-raising efforts about common ethnic dialect in the 1960s, the number of Saraiki publications has increased. Most of the writings from the 1960s to the 1980s were political in nature and are coloured by the ethnopolitical aims of the writers. Even though the number of publications has increased in the last and present decade, the Saraiki intellectuals themselves admit that there is not much readership, except perhaps for the works of some renowned contemporary poets, especially of the revolutionary poet Shakir Shujaabadi. Although writings in all the regional dialects are suffering from lack of readership for similar reasons, in the case of Saraiki there are two additional reasons. Firstly, most of the writers bring in colloquial phraseology (which varies from one variety to the other) in their writings and secondly, many writers, in their zeal to prove the antiquity of Saraiki and to promote its Indo-Aryan feature, tend to use more Sanskrit words instead of the more common Arabic-Persian words in order to distinguish it from Punjabi and Urdu, thus blocking the understanding of their general readers.

Folk literature and tales

There many folk tales associated with Ghazi Khan and his minister Gaaman Sachar, which is a legendary character in Saraiki folk tales.

Poetry

Some of the prominent Sindhi and Hindko poets have also done poetry in Saraiki. Sultan Bahu's (1628–1691) poetry is one of the examples of the junction of Saraiki dialect and Majhi (Standard Punjabi dialect).

Early poetry

There are very rare written poems available from the early history in Saraiki. The research is going on about the early Saraiki poetry.

18th century

19th century

20th century

Prose

Translation of Quran in Saraiki

There are more than twenty translations of Quran in Saraiki. Dr. Maqbool Hassan Gillani did his Doctriate[4] in Saraiki Translations of Quran.

Saraiki Dictionaries

Names of some dictionaries writers in saraiki are:[7]

Novelists

2- *Ashraf Javed Malik had wrote a New saraiki Novel (pandhi )in 2013 .The Novel is a great voice of the saraiki area about its culture n the traditional sketch of its natives.The Novel expanded from 5 thousands years ago to update area land ascape culture and traditions of the saraiki tribe throughout its start to its greatness of this age .the story start from kiship to muzzafar khan n from muzzafar khan shaheed to the start of freedom from British ruling power in 1947.we see every coulour of the life of saraiki peoples...Novel is published from (jhoke) saraiki Multan under the supervision of Zahoor Dhareja, Legend of Saraiki prose Shoukat Mughal and Basit Bhati... Ashraf Javed Malik proved that his saraiki style n diction of saraiki language is pure as like as the saraiki culture n land....

Fiction authors

Linguists

Critics

Dramatists

See also

References

  1. ↑ sadia kamal
  2. ↑ http://www.wasaib.com/shakir-shujabadi/
  3. ↑ http://ramzangaddi.blogspot.com/2014/01/ramzan-gaddi-died-on-9-august-2013-and.html
  4. ↑ http://www.kitabmela.com/index.php?act=lst&code=readDetail&id=8389
  5. ↑ http://www.bibliography.com.pk/bookdetail_urdu.php?id=5981
  6. ↑ http://www.wichaar.com/news/117/ARTICLE/8935/2008-09-18.html
  7. ↑ http://epaper.dawn.com/DetailNews.php?StoryText=04_01_2014_178_004
  8. ↑ http://siraiki.blogspot.com/2014/01/blog-post.html
  9. ↑ http://iub.edu.pk/teacher.php?dept_id=26&teacher_id=563

External links