Description
لعلو ڀڳت Lalu Bhagat.
Kámsen Kámrúp. An Original Poem by Lalú Bhagatú. Prepared for the Press by Moonshee Oodharam Thawardass, Assistant Translator of Government in Sind
كامسينء كامروپ
Karachi (Kurrachee): تعليم كاتي چي ڇاپخاني مر ڇپيو Educational Press 1869.
[and:]
آخوند عبد الرحيم (Akhund Abdul Rahim Abbasi also Akhund Abdur Rahim Abbasi).
عمر مارئي جو قصو
[Umara Maruiya Jo Qiso‘ / The Story of Umar’s Assassination]
Karachi: تعليم كاتي چي ڇاپخاني مر ڇپيو [Educational Press] 1872.
[and:]
آخوند عبد الرحيم (Akhund Abdul Rahim Abbasi also Akhund Abdur Rahim Abbasi).
بلي كون جو قصو
[Bili Kuan Jo Qiso’ / The Story of Cats and Rats]
Karachi: تعليم كاتي چي ڇاپخاني مر ڇپيو [Educational Press] 1872.
Two titles bound together in one volume. 8°, [6 pp.] with title pages in English and Sindhi and an introduction, 131 pp. lithographed text in Sindhi, 14 pp. index, 8 pp. errata. 51 pp. lithographed text in Sindhi. Title page, 18 pp. lithographed text in Sindhi. Contemporary brown goat with gilt floral tooling in margins, contemporary colourful endpapers, red edges (binding slightly scratched and battered with traces of old white colour on the boards, spine with small cracks, missing head- and footband, internally clean and with only hardly noticeable staining and minor cracks close to hinges on the last pages).
The volume includes three rare books, lithographed in Sindhi language in 1869 and 1872 by the Educational Press in Karachi, Pakistan, under the British sponsorship. All three works are stories, put in verses; the first one is a love story in Persian tradition, the second one an account on the assassination of the Rashidun caliph Umar from the Islamic history and the third work is a moral tale on cats and rats.
The stories are accompanied with educational chapters on recognizing the Perso-Arabic letters with additional Sindhi characters in words and the dictionary of synonyms.
Akhund Abdur Rahim Abbasi, the author of the last two stories, later authored a Persian-Sindhi dictionary, which was never published (Amaresh Datta, Encyclopaedia of Indian Literature: Devraj to Jyoti, Volume 2, 2005, p. 1037).
The Educational Press for Sindhi books in Karachi, was set by the British after their taking over Karachi in 1839 and after their occupation of Sindh, when the region was annexed with the Bombay Presidency in 1843. The Sinshi language was promoted over Persian and the state officials were encouraged to take an exam in Sindhi.
The Perso-Arabic script with additional 18 letters for sounds particular to Sindhi was made official by the British in 1853. The first books in Sindhi, made for the education of the officials, were made in Karachi as early as 1851 (Hidayat-ul-Salheen’ (Religious instructions in verse by Wali Muhammad Hasim).
Note on Rarity and References
All the early Sindhi lithographed books are extremely rare today. These are the earliest and possibly the only lithographed editions of these three texts.
We could not find any other examples of the three books on the market not in institutions.
The first work is work is mentioned as Qisso Kamasen ain Kamarupa, “a love poem, that explores popular Persian themes as well as local legends” by Sisir Kumar Das, and as Kamsan Ain Kamroop Jo Qiso’ (A Tale in Verse) by Dr. Mumtaz Hussain Pathan. The latter author, whose list of Sindhi publications is available only to the letter L, also mentions the third book.
References: Sisir Kumar Das, A History of Indian Literature, 2005, p. 150; Dr. Mumtaz Hussain Pathan, Early Sindhi Books.
