Acknowledgements



Acknowledgements for the OUP version (2001):


Above all we owe thanks to the National Endowment for the Humanities and to Columbia University, our host institution. From 1993 to 1996 an NEH Translation Grant enabled us to devote much of our research time to this project. Without help from NEH and Columbia, a collaborative project this large and complex would have taken many more years to complete.

We also thank our friends and colleagues, especially Adil Mansuri, Asif Aslam, Aditya Behl, Aslam Farrukhi, Farman Fathpuri, William Hanaway, Jamiluddin Aali, David Magier, C. M. Naim, Naiyer Masud, Brian Spooner, and Maulvi Niyaz ud-Din of Kutbḳhānah Anjuman Taraqqī-e Urdū in Delhi. We are grateful for the excellent support provided by our publisher, Oxford University Press (India). It has been a real pleasure to work with Rukun Advani, Anuradha Roy, and Veena K.P. On a more personal level, we have both been fortunate in the love and encouragement provided by our families throughout this long and demanding project.

An earlier form of F.W.P.'s introduction was presented as 'From (Braj) Bhasha to Urdu: the Conundrum of Āb-e ḥayāt', at the Sixth International Conference on Early Literature in New Indo-Aryan Languages, University of Washington, Seattle, 7-9 July, 1994. A somewhat later stage of this introduction, together with some excerpts from the translation, was published in the Annual of Urdu Studies 13 (1998):37-79.

An earlier form of Shamsur Rahman Faruqi's introduction, under the title 'Constructing a Literary History, a Canon, and a Theory of Poetry: Āb-e ḥayāt (1880) by Muḥammad Ḥusain Āzād (1830-1910)' appeared in Social Scientist (New Delhi) 23, 10-12 (October-December 1995):70-97.

A project this ambitious can never be error-free, but we've done our best, and we've tried to make our translation useful to as many readers as possible.




Acknowledgements for the DSAL version (2005):



We want to thank our editors at OUP New Delhi for giving us permission in our original contract to make the contents of this translation available online. The reason for doing so is not any dissatisfaction with the published version; OUP has been a pleasure to work with throughout the preparation of this work. This electronic version will not be identical to the printed version, and will not have the same format or page divisions. So serious scholars will be well advised to cite the printed version (especially since it's now out in paperback).

This online version will have typographical errors corrected where we've found them, and other changes in format suitable to an electronic medium of presentation. Best of all, it will have the pages of the translation hyperlinked to the corresponding pages in the Urdu version used as the text source. This will make it far more useful as a research and study tool for scholars and students of Urdu at all levels.

The calligraphic cover design that appears here at the top of the index page was created and generously provided by Adil Mansuri. The five section dividers were designed by FWP.

We thank the Uttar Pradesh Urdu Academy for allowing us to put online their photo reproduction (1982) of the 1907 edition published in Lahore by the Naval Kishor Press.

We thank James Nye, David Magier, Gerald Hall, and our other friends at the Digital South Asia Library for their wonderful work in imagining DSAL, creating it, and constantly augmenting it; it's an honor to be among the contributors to this free publically available global archive of South Asian materials. Special thanks go to Sean Pue, who converted the Nota Bene files into HTML pages and arranged the hyperlinks.


FRANCES W. PRITCHETT

SHAMSUR RAHMAN FARUQI