# Urdu/Hindi - daakh vs. anguur



## tonyspeed

Does anyone use daakh still for grape?


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## Qureshpor

tonyspeed said:


> Does anyone use daakh still for grape?



Tony SaaHib, I am aware of the word but I have n't heard it used. However, there is a very well known poem "Banjaaraa-naamah" by the Urdu poet Nazeer Akbarabadi (born 1735-1830) in which, apart from "daakh", you will find many a fruit and spice. He has written on an extremely wide range of topics. Here is a quote:

gar hai tuu lakhii banjaaraa aur khep bhii terii bhaarii hai
ai Ghaafil tujh se bhii chaRhtaa ik aur baRaa byopaarii hai
kyaa shakkar misrii qand girii kyaa saaNbhar miiThaa khaarii hai
 kyaa *daakh* munaqqaa soNTh mirch kyaa kesar lauNg supaarii hai
sab ThaaTh paRaa rah jaave gaa jab laad chale gaa *banjaaraa

*English Translation (from Wikipedia)

If you are a millionaire, and your stores are brimming,
Know, O ignorant! There is always another merchant who is even greater than you.
What of your sugar, candy, jaggery and nuts? What of your doughs, sweet and salty?
What of your grapes, raisins, ginger and pepper? What of your saffron, cloves and betel?
All your splendor will lie useless, when the nomad packs-up and leaves.


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## UrduMedium

QURESHPOR said:


> Tony SaaHib, I am aware of the word but I have n't heard it used. However, there is a very well known poem "Banjaaraa-naamah" by the Urdu poet Nazeer Akbarabadi (born 1735-1830) in which, apart from "daakh", you will find many a fruit and spice. He has written on an extremely wide range of topics. Here is a quote:
> 
> gar hai tuu lakhii banjaaraa aur khep bhii terii bhaarii hai
> ai Ghaafil tujh se bhii chaRhtaa ik aur baRaa byopaarii hai
> kyaa shakkar misrii qand girii kyaa saaNbhar miiThaa khaarii hai
> kyaa *daakh* munaqqaa soNTh mirch kyaa kesar lauNg supaarii hai
> sab ThaaTh paRaa rah jaave gaa jab laad chale gaa *banjaaraa
> 
> *English Translation (from Wikipedia)
> 
> If you are a millionaire, and your stores are brimming,
> Know, O ignorant! There is always another merchant who is even greater than you.
> What of your sugar, candy, jaggery and nuts? What of your doughs, sweet and salty?
> What of your grapes, raisins, ginger and pepper? What of your saffron, cloves and betel?
> All your splendor will lie useless, when the nomad packs-up and leaves.



This is lovely QP. Thanks for sharing. I read this so long ago that it sounded brand new, except the last line of course. 

So many interesting words ...

Is it _*lakhii *_or *laakhii*? Both are new to me.
_*khep *_- good to hear this word after a long time. More like stock (supplies).
Wonder if _*saaNbhar *_for dough is still used in Urdu?
To keep the rhyme, I think _*mirch *_here will be read as _*mirach *(similar to *shakkar *in the line before)_


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## BP.

Really nice translation there Qureshpor. You should try translate the entire poem and put it up on the Internet so such a makhzan of dying vocabulary could become available to people that follow us.


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## greatbear

Is daakh the same as draaksh? The latter is widely used.


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## Qureshpor

BelligerentPacifist said:


> Really nice translation there Qureshpor. You should try translate the entire poem and put it up on the Internet so such a makhzan of dying vocabulary could become available to people that follow us.



I wish I was worthy of your compliments, BP SaaHib. The translation (and the quote) have been taken from Wikipedia and I did indicate that the translation was from there. It is unfortunate that Nazeer Akbarabadi has been assigned the "taaq-i-nisyaaN".


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## BP.

^of course quick reading such small details like the authorship of the translatio$.

This poem of his has now struck us three times on this forum since I've been here. Even if as a poet he's been awarded the taaqe nisyan, this poem soldiers on because of the quantity of vocabulary, particularly a rural one.


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## greatbear

By the way, thanks QP for introducing me to another beautiful poem.


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## Qureshpor

greatbear said:


> Is daakh the same as draaksh? The latter is widely used.



Yes, draakshaa is the Sanskrit for daakh; [S. द्राक्षा],


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## Qureshpor

greatbear said:


> By the way, thanks QP for introducing me to another beautiful poem.



You are most welcome. It's a pity that you can't read Urdu, otherwise I could have sent you a few samples of his work. You might already have heard a poem entitled "Holi kii bahaareN", begining with the line "jab phaagun rang jhamakte hoN" in the divine voice of chhaya Ganguli. It is available on Youtube. Of course she only sings a small piece from the longer poem and her version's order is somewhat mixed up.


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## greatbear

Thanks; I am unaware of the Holi poem, I will see if I can find it on YouTube (though not being a fan of Holi itself, I don't think I may appreciate it that much). Well, if one could read all the languages of the world, indeed one would be so rich: it's always a pity when one comes across something in another literature and one knows there is so much more that is inaccessible, because even after translations, so much beauty can never be transferred (except very rarely).


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## BP.

Although the title says داخ, could someone please clarify if it isn't actually داکھ? Thank you.


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## Qureshpor

BelligerentPacifist said:


> Although the title says داخ, could someone please clarify if it isn't actually داکھ? Thank you.



daal + alif-i-maddah + kaaf +do chashmii he


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## BP.

Oh, would never had guessed from this thread minus post 13. tëshekkür edir.


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## Qureshpor

BelligerentPacifist said:


> Oh, would never had guessed from this thread minus post 13. tëshekkür edir.



I would say that the title of the thread is spelt correctly! In addition, in the quote from Nazeer Akbarabadi's poem, I have spelt it as "daakh" too. So, BP SaaHib what made you suspect it was "daax"?


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## BP.

Don't we on this forum use kh and x interchangeably?


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## Qureshpor

BelligerentPacifist said:


> Don't we on this forum use kh and x interchangeably?



I see what you mean. I always wrote Kh (not kh) for x before I started using x on this forum. So, if kh=x, how do we write the synonym for "anguur"?


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## BP.

Ah just stuck with the k.h we had since pg introduced the . notation here. It's clumsier but unambiguous. Thanks for waking me up to the modern wrf-iil notation.


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## Qureshpor

mbasit said:


> This is lovely QP. Thanks for sharing. I read this so long ago that it sounded brand new, except the last line of course.
> 
> So many interesting words ...
> 
> Is it _*lakhii *_or *laakhii*? Both are new to me.
> _*khep *_- good to hear this word after a long time. More like stock (supplies).
> Wonder if _*saaNbhar *_for dough is still used in Urdu?
> To keep the rhyme, I think _*mirch *_here will be read as _*mirach *(similar to *shakkar *in the line before)_



The word in my book is "lakkhii" (i.e with a tashdiid)

H سامبهر साम्भर _sāmbhar [S. शाकं+भरीय; साम्बर], s.m. A kind of fossil salt extracted from a lake in the vicinity of the town of Sāmbhar (śākam-bharī) near Ajmīr (cf. *sāṅbhar*)._


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## tonyspeed

BelligerentPacifist said:


> Although the title says داخ, could someone please clarify if it isn't actually داکھ? Thank you.



daakh is from Prakrit, not from Persian.


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## BP.

Thank you.


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## Faylasoof

tonyspeed said:


> Does anyone use daakh still for grape?


 Not in common speech! We certainly don't!


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## greatbear

Faylasoof said:


> Not in common speech! We certainly don't!



We do use draaksh in common speech though (which is even more common in Gujarati speech). I was unaware of the existence of "daakh", so thanks to the thread I know another word now.


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## hindiurdu

Crossing over due to relevance from http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=2467933 (Punjabi: Camel) where there was also some confusion on "داکھ" vs "داخ". Since this is derived from the Sanskrit द्राक्ष (draakṣh, where the pronunciation of the ṣh fricative is about halfway between x and sh) and it seemed from another thread (http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=2420597) that there's a Skt-Pers cognate relationship between ṣh (ष) and x (خ/ख़​), I set about trying to find a Persian/Avestan cognate for draaksh that may have an 'x' in it, just to confirm or contradit the hypothesis. There's bound to be some cognate here, which must've lost currency when angoor became dominant (as it has in Hindi/Urdu/Punjabi where it has more-or-less killed daakh, which apparently was used more frequently in Nazeer Akbarabadi's time, i.e. 1735-1830). 

I haven't found it, though I did find the Greek cognate rhax/ραξ (http://books.google.com/books?id=0CkYAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA239). It turns out that the English word 'raisin' itself is a cognate of draaksh/daakh (reference: http://books.google.com/books?id=xl9KAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA1011)! Still, drew a blank on Persian though.


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## Qureshpor

hindiurdu said:


> Crossing over due to relevance from http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=2467933 (Punjabi: Camel) where there was also some confusion on "داکھ" vs "داخ". Since this is derived from the Sanskrit द्राक्ष (draakṣh, where the pronunciation of the ṣh fricative is about halfway between x and sh) and it seemed from another thread (http://forum.wordreference.com/showthread.php?t=2420597) that there's a Skt-Pers cognate relationship between ṣh (ष) and x (خ/ख़​), I set about trying to find a Persian/Avestan cognate for draaksh that may have an 'x' in it, just to confirm or contradit the hypothesis. There's bound to be some cognate here, which must've lost currency when angoor became dominant (as it has in Hindi/Urdu/Punjabi where it has more-or-less killed daakh, which apparently was used more frequently in Nazeer Akbarabadi's time, i.e. 1735-1830).
> 
> I haven't found it, though I did find the Greek cognate rhax/ραξ (http://books.google.com/books?id=0CkYAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA239). It turns out that the English word 'raisin' itself is a cognate of draaksh/daakh (reference: http://books.google.com/books?id=xl9KAAAAcAAJ&pg=PA1011)! Still, drew a blank on Persian though.



What about vrkSh (tree) and daraxt (tree), hindiurdu SaaHib?

I have wondered whether the Persian daraxt was really varaxt since the daal/vaa'o are very similar and through the writing system the wrong pronunciation could have evolved. Very unlikely though!


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## hindiurdu

QURESHPOR said:


> What about vrkSh (tree) and daraxt (tree), hindiurdu SaaHib?



This seems like a definite possibility!



QURESHPOR said:


> I have wondered whether the Persian daraxt was really varaxt since the daal/vaa'o are very similar and through the writing system the wrong pronunciation could have evolved. Very unlikely though!



Might not be that far fetched. There's definitely some v-d relationship in Indo-Iranian. Vekkho (punj) / vuchiv (kash) vs dekho (HU). These sounds are not alike so I wonder why they got entangled.


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