
A Dictionary Packed with Stories from Eighteenth-Century Delhi - Thevet
http://britishlibrary.typepad.co.uk/asian-and-african/2016/01/a-dictionary-packed-with-stories-from-eighteenth-century-delhi.html
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selimthegrim
I have to admit Hindi muhavare (aphorisms) are pretty awesome. I hadn't heard
of the one they quoted but some of my favorites are

ghore bech kar sona - sleep like you sold horses (sleep soundly)

(nak) chana chabwana -to make someone chew chickpeas with their nose (to give
someone a (very hard) time)

munh tor ke jawab dena - to break someone's face in answer (to give a
fitting/equal reply)

unt ki munh men zira - cumin in a camel's mouth (peanuts, trifling, nothing,
in the Zia to Carter sense)

dudh men mengni dalna - to put scat in the milk (poisoning the well (in
rhetoric))

bandar kya jane adrak ka swad - What does a monkey know of ginger's taste?
(ie. pearls before swine)

Nach na jane aangan terha - Can't dance? Crooked stage. (A poor workman blames
his tools)

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lgessler
Never expected to be trading Hindi aphorisms on Hacker News of all places.
Here's one of my favorites from a book full of them I leafed through one time:

दो-एक गाँव में भोज हुआ और कुत्ते की जान हड़बड़ी में ही चली गई।

My attempt at a translation:

'There were feasts in two villages, and in their running back and forth, the
dogs died.'

(A bird in hand is worth two in the bush.)

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pm90
This is an amazing article, and now my interest is piqued in the author's work
:). Kudos to him for undertaking the task of figuring out more details about
that period of Indian history.

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dang
It really is! though I wish it included more than one example from the
dictionary.

And how's this for a parenthetical aside:

 _(The fullest account of Persian lexicography in English remains Henry
Blochmann’s 1868 article)_

... with a hyperlink to a working version:
[https://archive.org/details/contributionstop00blocuoft](https://archive.org/details/contributionstop00blocuoft).
There can't be many fields where the fullest account in English remains an
1868 article.

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greglindahl
I once ran into a French/English dictionary from 1611 that had a bunch of
proverbs in it[0], but this Persian thing is way more interesting!

0:
[http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/proverbs/](http://www.pbm.com/~lindahl/proverbs/)

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kafkaesq
_During war they don 't hand out sweets._

Love that saying.

