''Rekhta'' ( ur, ; hi, रेख़्ता ) was the

Hindustani language Hindustani (; Devanagari: , * * * * ; Perso-Arabic: , , ) is the '' lingua franca'' of Northern and Central India and Pakistan. Hindustani is a pluricentric language with two standard registers, known as Hindi and Urdu. Thus, the lang ...

as its dialectal basis shifted to the

Delhi dialect Kauravi ( hi, कौरवी, ur, ), also known as Khaṛībolī is a set of Western Hindi varieties of Shauraseni Prakrit mainly spoken in Northwestern Uttar Pradesh. Standard Hindi and Urdu are based on Khariboli, specifically on its De ...

. This style evolved in both the

Perso-Arabic The Persian alphabet ( fa, الفبای فارسی, Alefbâye Fârsi) is a writing system that is a version of the Arabic script used for the Persian language spoken in Iran (Western Persian) and Afghanistan (Dari Persian) since the 7th ce ...

and

Devanagari Devanagari ( ; , , Sanskrit pronunciation: ), also called Nagari (),Kathleen Kuiper (2010), The Culture of India, New York: The Rosen Publishing Group, , page 83 is a left-to-right abugida (a type of segmental writing system), based on the ...

scripts and is considered an early form of Urdu and Hindi. The 13th century

Sufi Sufism ( ar, ''aṣ-ṣūfiyya''), also known as Tasawwuf ( ''at-taṣawwuf''), is a mystic body of religious practice, found mainly within Sunni Islam but also within Shia Islam, which is characterized by a focus on Islamic spirituality, r ...

Muslim poet Amir Khusraw used the term " Hindavi" (meaning "of Hind or India") for the 'Rekhta' dialect (the ancestor of Modern Urdu), the Persianized offshoot of the Apabharamsa vernacular

Old Hindi Old Hindi was the earliest stage of the Delhi dialect (Khariboli) of the Hindustani language, and so the ancestor of Modern Hindi and Modern Urdu. It developed from Shauraseni Prakrit and was spoken by the peoples of the Hindi Belt, especially aro ...

, towards it's emergence during the era of

Delhi Sultanate The Delhi Sultanate was an Islamic empire based in Delhi that stretched over large parts of the Indian subcontinent for 320 years (1206–1526).

, and gave shape to it in a handful Islamic literature, thus called "the father of

Urdu literature Urdu literature ( ur, , ) is literature in the Urdu language. While it tends to be dominated by poetry, especially the verse forms of the ''ghazal '' غزل and '' nazm '' نظم, it has expanded into other styles of writing, including that of ...

". Other early Sufi poets includes

Baba Farid Farīd al-Dīn Masʿūd Ganj-i-Shakar ( ; – 7 May 1266) was a 13th-century Punjabi Sunni Muslim preacher and mystic, who was one of the most revered and distinguished Muslim mystics of the medieval period. He is known reverentially as B ...

. later from the 18th century, the dialect was became the literary language and was further developed by the poets

Mir ''Mir'' (russian: Мир, ; ) was a space station that operated in low Earth orbit from 1986 to 2001, operated by the Soviet Union and later by Russia. ''Mir'' was the first modular space station and was assembled in orbit from 1986 to&n ...

and

Ghalib ) , birth_date = , birth_place = Kala Mahal, Agra, Maratha Confederacy , death_date = , death_place = Gali Qasim Jaan, Ballimaran, Chandni Chowk, Delhi, British India , occupation = Poet , language ...

in the late Mughal period, and the term eventually fallen out and came to be known as "Urdu", by the end of the century.

Origin and usage

''Rekhtā'' (from Persian verb ) means "scattered" but also "mixed". The name was given to an early form of courtly literature in

Delhi Delhi, officially the National Capital Territory (NCT) of Delhi, is a city and a union territory of India containing New Delhi, the capital of India. Straddling the Yamuna river, primarily its western or right bank, Delhi shares borders w ...

, where poems were made by combining Persian and early Hindustani (referred to as Hindavi or Dehlavi). Sometimes this was done by writing some lines of the poem in Persian, and others in Hindavi. Alternatively, both Persian and Hindavi could feature in a single line. As Hindavi began to evolve into a literary language in the 18th century, the term Rekhta carried over to describe this new form. It denoted the Persianised, "high" form of Hindavi used in poetry, as opposed to the speech of the common population. The word was used alongside names like Urdu and Hindi. Its usage in this sense lasted into the 19th century, as evidenced by a '' sher'' of

Mirza Ghalib ) , birth_date = , birth_place = Kala Mahal, Agra, Maratha Confederacy , death_date = , death_place = Gali Qasim Jaan, Ballimaran, Chandni Chowk, Delhi, British India , occupation = Poet , language ...

:
By the end of the 19th century however, the term Rekhta had largely fallen out of use, and terms like Hindi, Urdu, and Hindustani were favoured.

Rekhti

The grammatically feminine counterpart of ''Rekhta'' is ''Rekhti'', a term first popularised by the eighteenth-century poet

Sa'adat Yar Khan 'Rangin' Nawab Saadat Yaar Khan Rangin ( ur, ) (1757, Sirhind – 1835, Lucknow) was an Urdu poet and prose writer. He is credited with the creating a feminist form of Urdu poetry known as " Rekhti". Background He was born in Sirhind, brought up Delhi, ...

to designate verses written from the perspective of women. The Lucknow poet

Insha Allah Khan Insha Allah Khan ( ur, ; c. 1752 Murshidabad –1817), known as Insha, was an Urdu poet in the courts of Lucknow and Delhi in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth century. A multi-talented polyglot, he was the author of the first grammar of ...

was another well-known poet who composed ''rekhtis'', according to Urdu scholar

C M Naim Choudhri Mohammed Naim (born 3 June 1936) is an American scholar of Urdu language and literature. He is currently professor emeritus at the University of Chicago. Naim is the founding editor of both ''Annual of Urdu Studies'' and ''Mahfil'' ( ...

References

{{reflist Dialects of Urdu Hindustani language

Origin and usage

Rekhti

See also

References