Urdu & Persian Philatelic Glossary
The covers collector needs to be able to decipher a certain amount of Persian and Urdû script. The handwriting seen most often on Kashmir covers is in the šekaste-style, a form that exhibits much simplification and exaggeration. In rapid writing the normal dotting of letters may be all but abandoned and it happens that certain letters that are never connected in the canonical styles are indeed found joined, sometimes in unobvious ligatures. And conversely; in fact the word šekaste means ‘broken’. The words are listed by common English transcription, not by Persian letters & order.
Amritsar. Sometimes the final t of amrit (~ ambrosia) is in
its word-final form (left) and sometimes not (right.) The notation ‘Amrit Sir’ is sometimes seen in
English lettering.
dar Amritsar ~ to Amritsar.
shahr(-e) Amritsar. Town/city of Amritsar. The h here is the
blip in the line with the faint redundant upstroke underneath, compare next.
dar shahr-e Amritsar ~ to (the city of) Amritsar. The h here is the
knot in the line.
shahr-e Amritsar. In front of dates the same
form shahr means ‘month’.
Amritsar Katra Âhlûwâlia, an important
postal depot at Amritsar in the textile district.
dar qasbah Amritsar ~ to
the ‘old-city’ of Amritsar, often seen on covers arriving at the depot at
Katra Âhlûwâlian.
dar qasbah Amritsar Katra
‘Ahluwala’.
dar qasbah Amritsar dar ‘Katra(h)
Aluwala’.
dar qasba Amritsar ‘Katra
Âluwala’.
dar shahr-e Amritsar Katrâharî Singh.
lefâfe hundâ dar
shahr-e Amritsar Katrâharî Singh ~ letter
prepaid to ...
dar Amritsar Katrâharî Singh.
Ambâla ~ Umballa. Town in Panjâb between Delhi and Amritsar on the rail line.
shahr Ambâla ~ (to the city of) Umballa. The Persian looks like ‘Anbâla’,
but that n becomes [m] in pronunciation preceding as it does the bilabial b.
Nîûyâk Amrîkâ ~ New York America.
Anant Nâg, a town southeast of Srinagar. Anant ~ Vishnu, infinity, snake, etc.
Anant Nâg was also known as Islamabad, though seldom seen in the postal doings of our period.
ânâ ~ anna ~ 1/16 rupee. Read bottom up.
2 âna
chahâr ânâ ~ four annas. Unexplained postal notation on a 1a stamp.
Collection Jaiswal.
11 mâh assûj sâl 1950 ~ 25 September 1893.
The flourish represents the Persian word sâl ~ year. The dot is the zero, the circle is the five.
The other circle near the lower right is the final h in the Persian word mâh for ‘month’ (see
also next entry.)
28 mâh assûj sâl 1932 ~ 11 October 1875.
7 mâh assûj sâl 1949 ~ 21 September 1892.
14 assûj sâl [19]24 ~ 28 September 1867.
27 mâh assûj sâl [19]34 ~ 11 October 1877.
ath âna 8 ~ 8 annas, in Urdû in the lower section. (Persian
8 is hasht.) The upper illegible section is the Dogrî 8a ~ at' ânâ.
az ~ (prep) from. Here, az Ladâkh. Many such names simply have to be
recognized as recurrent logograms. The six elements that appear here, reading from right to left,
are: a-z; La-d-â-kh. The z and the kh are dotted.
az Jammûn (on left), az Kashmîr.
az taraf ~ from, on behalf of, in favor of.
ba'd az vaqt ~ after time.
bâgh ~ (large) garden, from Persian. Common in city placenames. A small garden is bageecha.
Munshî Bâgh or ‘Officers Park’ in the European Quarter of Srinagar, near the official
British Residency for Kashmir.
Baghdâd. Contrast the short-a here with the long-a in the preceding entries.
baisâkh. Here 31 baisâkh sâl 1936 ~ 12 May 1879.
8 mâh baisâkh sâl [19]28 ~ 19 April 1871, with cover corroboration.
11 mâh baisâkh sâl 1933 ~ 21 April 1876.
Year reading forced by cover from which this was taken.
22 baisâkh sâl 1929 ~ 2 May 1872.
26 mâh baisâkh sâl [19]26 az srînagar ~ 6 May 1869.
The Urdû bâlâ that occupies the rivet positions at the top of
the 1a and 2a New Rectangular sheets means just that: ‘top’ of sheet.
Bombay.
Bandipur. Here, dar (to) Banda-pura. This town is a few kilometers northeast
of Lake Wular. The pur, pura, puram, etc. is a town (Sanskrit.)
bar dûkân ... ‘c/o company...’ The modern Persian for ‘shop’
is dokkân, i.e., no vav and k doubled. Arabic has the doubled-k but
no vav. Urdu, etc., is as shown.
bar dûkân ... as above.
bar dûkân ... as above. The dal-vav ligature that looks like
Greek beta also means do ~ ‘two’ when it is independent.
And yet a couple more bar dûkân ... oddly rendered.
bar shud ~ paid, received
bârah ânâ 12 ~ twelve annas. Urdû, not Persian.
Upper section same in Dogrî. The bârah is a development from Sanskrit
via Prâkrit: dvâ-dašan > vâraha.
Cf. Gk. dô-deka.
Barilî ~ Barelî. Bareilly, headquarters of the British Military District (2nd class) of Rohil Khand
(east of Delhi.)
Bâzâr Mârwârî. A postal destination in Bombay.
Bhadarwah (in eastern Jammu.)
bhâdon. Year 1938 ~ 1881.
2 bhâdon sâl 1941 ~ 16 August 1884. Variously spelt on account of
Hindu version bhâd(r)om.
27 bhâdon sâl 1924 ~ 10 September 1867.
4 bhâdron sâl 1931 ~ 18 August 1874.
5 mâh bhâdon sâl 33 ~ 19 August 1876.
14 shahr bhâdon [...19]34 Jammûn ~ 28 August 1877.
28 bhâdron [...] 1934 ~ 11 September 1877.
Benares ~ Varanasi.
bhâ'î ~ brother, ‘and co.’, etc, often seen in commercial addresses.
Bombay, rendered in script as Bamba'î or Bama'î.
bôst mâster ~ postmaster.
bîst-o-panj ~ 25 on this 25 rupee telegraph stamp impression. panj is
5, as seen in Panjâb (‘five rivers’.)
chait sâl 1936. Caution. This month is very easily taken
for jeth and vice-versa.
Sometimes there can be really no telling which is the correct reading.
chahâr ânâ ~ four annas. Unexplained postal notation
on a cover bearing a 1a circular.
Calcutta.
Cawnpore ~ Kânpur.
Chandosi.
chauk ~ “chowk”. Market-place, exchange depot, etc. The word seems to be
spelt “chaunk” here, as is often the case, cf. ‘runners chowki’ for a postal station.
dâd-e shud ~ given, paid.
dah ‘rupya’ ~ ten rupees (from the telegraph stamp.) The u is not long despite
somewhat recalcitrant appearances.
dâk ~ The Post. Image on the left is dâk
khâna ~ post office.
dâktar. English doctor.
The diacritics show that the d and t are adopted
as retroflexed versions in Urdû (not Persian.)
dar. Preposition. English equivalents may be ‘in’; ‘at'; ‘to'; etc. This word
is very common on Jammu-Kashmir covers, often preceding the names of destinations.
Dehlî.
do tolah ~ two tola. A dal-vav ligature is used here for the do. A tola is a measure of weight for such
as gold, silver, letters, etc.
ek ânâ ~ one anna. Notice the introductory alif hamza in the Urdû. Were
it absent (as on the stamps for example) one would be reading yek, as in Persian.
Ferozpûr.
Gujrânwâla. Second image, dar Gujrânwâla .
Gujrât ~ Gujarât.
Gulmarg ~ Gulmargh
Gurdarspura.
zila' Gurdarspur.
dar zila' Gurdarspura.