The Interest of the Day: Lexicographers

That is what I am searching on today. Random searches led by curiosity and they led to a few nuggets of thought:

1. I reread about 'The Whole Earth Catalogue.' I identified with the vision of the man who had a simple idea: to create a single platform for any man seeking for knowledge on anything on this earth. It inspired Steve Jobs as a child, and decades later, he talked about it in his famous commencement address at the Stanford University that so inspires me. It's marvelous- how the light of inspiration ideas spreads.

2. I searched for Bhai Kahn Singh Nabha. I wanted to know what had motivated him to compile the 'Mahaan Kosh'- till date the only encyclopedia of Punjabi. I read that he was a great scholar, and that all his knowledge was self-amassed, that he had had no formal learning. And, I read that he spent 15 years researching for the 'Mahaan Kosh.' A thought came to me- he put in so much hard work, and he is revered for that too, but only within the boundaries of the Punjabi speaking community. Had he done the same amount of work in a more 'economically powerful' language, such as English, his fame would have spread so much wider.

I have had the same thought regarding Waris Shah before. His 'Heer' is the soul of the Punjabi literature. When people have to convey his stature in Punjab to an outsider, they say, 'He is the Shakespeare of Punjabi.' But no one will face the need to introduce Shakespeare as 'the Waris Shah of English.'

Both the men were equally talented, both were geniuses with words, both had great imagination. Both are revered as the grand old men of their respective languages.

The only reason why one is so far ahead of the other in a casually compiled 'Who's Who' list is that one's language is more powerful than the other.

What makes a language powerful or weak is the political power of those who speak it. The reason why English is ascendant over French, German, and Punjabi (which lags quite far behind in this list) is that it had the patronage of the UK and the USA.

I've been a passionate proponent of 'Punjabi Bachao' efforts. But one thing that I have come to understand is that people cannot be made to speak Punjabi with mere sentimentality, by telling them that it is their mother-tongue and so they must not forget it. Rather, I think, people will speak Punjabi if it makes practical (read 'Economic') sense to do so. That is the reason why Punjabi households strive to speak in English today.