Urdu & Persian Philatelic Glossary IV
safar sâl [12]82 ~ starting 26 June 1865.
20 mâh safar sâl 1308 ~ 5 October 1890.
13 mâh safar.
17 shahr safar
sâhib. A title of courtesy, Sir or Mr,
but following surname. The underdot
on the b is often missing. Lit. ‘companion’.
sâhib bahâdur. Title of courtesy,
equivalent to English “Honourable.”
sâhib bahâdur.
This specimen is in the hand of Maharaja Ranbir Singh, from the Jaiswal collection.
sâl 1297. The various varieties of flourish that usually underlines a date
is the Persian word sâl ~ year, in a highly cursive convention. Some are very elaborate
(next entry.)
The great flourish is the sâl. Date 18 shahr sha'bân sâl
1283 ~ 26 December 1866.
Sambhar Lek ~ Sambhar Lake, Rajasthan, largest salt lake in India.
30 sâvan 1931 ~ 13 August 1874.
13 sâvan sâl 1929 ~ 26 July 1872.
14 mâh sâvan sâl 1935 ~ 28 July 1878.
21 sâvan sâl 1936 ~ 4 August 1879.
6 sâvan sâl 1949 ~ 19 July 1892, with cover corroboration.
20 sâvan sâl 1949 ~ 2 August 1892.
18 shahr sha'bân sâl
1283 ~ 26 December 1866. The great flourish is still the sâl.
18 shahr sha'bân sâl 1302 ~ 2 June 1885. As above, but different year, so note how
the Western month is different for the same day and month in the Moham system.
7 sha'bân 1278 ~ 7 February 1862, i.e, in the pre-stamp period.
Shâh. Title and name.
Muhammad Shâh.
shahr ~ city. It is also an Arabic word for ‘month’ used in place of
Persian mâh. The h is the blip in the line (with or without an underhook)
or rendered as a knot. The three dots on the sh- are often missing.
shahr ~ month. Unfortunately this is sometimes confusable for a 4 in dating
It also appears occasionally even without the jag, and thus confusable for a 1.
shahr zelqa'de, not a 4 here.
shahr 2 rajab 1307 ~ 22 February 1890.
dar shahr-e Amritsar ~ to (the city of) Amritsar. The h here is the
knot in the line.
shahr-e Amritsar.
dar shahr-e Peshâwar.
dar shahr-e Peshâwar dar
dâk khâna... ~ to (the city of) Peshâwar, post office ...
dar shahr-e Srînagar Kâshmîr.
dar shahr-e Wâzirâbâd.
Shâhpur. In full, dar zila' Shâhpur.
A zila' is an administrative district. This one
contained Lun Miani as tahsîl.
zili' Shâhpur.
14 shavvâl. Dated paid notation used at Amritsar.
23 shavvâl [1284]. Dated paid notation used
upon arrival at Amritsar, 17 February 1868. The cover was processed at Sialkot the day before.
17 mâh shavvâl 1284 ~ 11 February 1868. On reverse of preceding,
showing despatch date.
sher ~ Tiger (sometimes lion.) Sher Garî ~ ‘Tiger Fort’ was a
State post office in the southwest section of Srinagar,
site of the palace of the Maharaja, etc. This is really Urdû, not Persian.
dâd-e shud/bar shud ~ paid, given, received.
Siâlkot. Sialkot, in Punjab, operated what was in effect an extraterritorial office for Jammu.
dar shahr-e shâlkot ~ to the town of Siâlkot.
We get a clue about the pronunciation from these two details, though the final -t is
often shown retroflexed in Urdû (see next entry.)
By the way, the ancient name of Sialkot was Sâgala. The region was at that time occupied by
Indo-Greeks, late of Bactria. The -kot means fortification, and the ‘Sial-’ prefix is
undoubtedly an echo of the ancient name. Intervocalic velars tend to erode; someone tells me that
Ulaan Baator was once Ulagan Bagator and now we know.
[via] Siâlkot dar Amritsar. Here
the “flat-sign” (really a small version of one of the Arabic Ts) used in Urdu shows
that the final-t is retroflexed.
Ranbir Singh. Signature of the Maharaja Ranbir Singh. Jaiswal collection.
Sonîpat. Also Sonepat, town in Panjâb.
Srî-nagar.
Srî-nagar Kashmîr. One may notice the three very different treatments of the long-i in these
separate Srinagar entries. In the last, the letter is merely a tooth with two dots underneath.
dar shahr Srinagar.
dar Srînagar bar shud ~ to Srinagar paid.
Srî-nagar Munshî Bâgh. Munshi Bagh was the Residency park in the British
quarter of Srinagar.
az taraf ~ from, on behalf of, in favor of.
tîs ~ thirty (Urdû.) Persian 30 is sî.
do tolah ~ two tola. A dal-vav ligature is used here. A tola is a measure of weight for such
as gold, silver, letters, etc.
3 tolah. The weight of a letter that day.
Umballa or Amballa, town in Panjâb.
shahr Ambâla ~ (to the city of) Umballa. The Persian looks like ‘Anbâla’,
but not so pronounced.
va. Conjunction ‘and’. Also o and Arabic wa.
Varanasi ~ Benares.
vazn ~ weight.
vazn yek tolah ~ weight one tola.
Wâzirâbâd.
dar shahr-e Wâzirâbâd.
Yârkand. City in Chinese Turkestan, north of Ladâkh across the Karakoram range
in the Tarim basin. Detail from a Yarkand to Hoshiarpur cover, via Leh, 5 October to 19 November 1890
for a total of 55 days. Sometimes the k is rendered q, see next:
Yârqand. 9 mâh sâvan az Yarqand from a 23 July 1889 cover
(delivered September 29, total 69 days!)
zarûrî ~ urgent. Here jawâb talab zarûrî
~ requiring an answer urgently; called to account.
zelqa'de.
shahr zelqa'de ~ month of ...
6 mâh zelqa'de sâl 1282 ~ 23 March 1866 (earliest
for J&K. With thanks to A.S. Bard for the specimen.)
6 shahr zelqa'de and 8 zelqa'de in different hands on the same cover.
7 shahr zelqa'de.
15 mâh zelqa'de sâl 1282 ~ 1 April 1866, with datestamp corroboration.
11 shahr zelqa'de sâl 1283 ~ 17 March 1867. The extravagant flourish
is the sâl ~ year.
17 shahr zelqa'de ~ 23 March 1867.
21 mâh zelqa'de sâl 1283 ~ 27 March 1867.
14 zelqa'de [1283] ~ 20 March 1867, written two days after the British arrival cds was struck.
28 zelqa'de [1283] ~ 3 April 1867, together with corroborating Umritsar datestamp.
26 zelhejje sâl 1282 ~ 12 May 1866, with cover corroboration.
Caution: The zelhejje and zelqa'de can be easily confused in certain
renditions such as this one.
19 mâh zelhejje 1296 ~ 4 December 1879. The Jammu cds
is 23 maghar [1936] ~ 6 December 1879, in helpful corroboration.
21 mâh zelhejje sâl 1307 ~ 9 August 1890, with cover corroboration.
zil'. Also zila'
and informally ‘zilla’.
Administrative district, of which a pargana is a subdivision.
dar zila' Gurdarspura.
zila' Gurdarspur.
zila' Jalandhar.
zila' Jhelum.
dar zila' Karnaul.
zila' Shâhpur.
lefâfe hundâ dar zila' Shâhpur
Banga Miânî.
dar Lun Miani zila' Shâhpur.
NUMBERS
Scan was taken from Masson II, p 8. There are many schemes of of varying technical nicety
for romanization & transliteration. Some of them need a clever font set.
These are the first few numerals with a raqm-type underlining (which we are ignoring for now.)
The 2 and 3 look something like "ours" turned a
right angle. The 4 is subject to most variation, the example here being quite standard.
The Persian 5 is a circle, while the Persian zero (next entry) is a dot.
The zero ~ 0. This was taken from a September 1893 cover, honest.
The 6 is like a mirror-reversed 2. It is sometimes confusable with a 9.
The 7 is usually like logical disjunction, but is often seen rotated, resembling
the less-than sign ‘<’.
The 8, like lambda or logical conjunction. It is sometimes like a greater-than sign ‘>’.
Mercifully, the 9 is very much like 9. Often the bottom curls to the right, forming something
rather like a 2.
2 annas.
3 tolah.
nambar ~ number, in transcription from English.
23 wa 24 wa 25. Don't ask why.
tîs ~ thirty (Urdû.) Persian 30 is sî.
1297 ~ 1937. This doublet of overlapping years right in the middle of
J&K stamp production is easy to remember and can prove somewhat useful. They both overlap with AD 1880.
The flourish that usually underlines a date, as in both of the examples above,
is the Persian word sâl ~ year, in a highly cursive convention. Very
occasionally it is almost readable as such (but only if you already know.)
This exuberance entwines 18 shahr sha'bân sâl
1283 ~ 26 December 1866.
The raqm
There is a scheme of commercial notation called raqm (‘marking’) that is often found on Kashmir covers. For now we can merely display a few examples; perhaps one day we can learn enough about it to report back.
