PESHAWAR: The Gandhara Hindko Academy has published the 5th edition of the Hindko-Urdu dictionary.
The two-volume dictionary has 2032 pages and more than 100,000 words and expressions, the Gandhara Hindko Academy said in a press release.
It said that the latest edition is a continuation of the first lexicon prepared by the late Prof. Dr. Elahi Bakhsh Awan, who belonged to the walled city of Peshawar.
Prof Dr Elahi Bakhsh Awan earned his doctorate in Linguistics fifty years ago from the University of London, England, after carrying out extensive research on the phonology of the Hindko language.
The Gandhara Hindko Board published the dictionary’s first edition in 2008 during the lifetime of Dr Elahi Bakhsh Awan who had many other research-based publications to his credit.
Dictionary’s Previous Editions
Later, the board and the academy brought out 4 editions of the dictionary in 2017, 2019, 2022, and now the latest one in the year 2023.
The work was accomplished by a team comprising Dr Muhammad Adil, Saqib Hussain, Ali Awais Khayal, Zeeshan Ghaznavi, Muhammad Noman Qayyum, and Bilal Ahmad.
Muhammad Ziauddin, a research scholar of Hindko and General Secretary of the Gandhara Hindko Board, supervised all the work.
Ziauddin has rich experience in documentation and is the chief of the Executive Committee of the Hindko Academy which has been working under a public-private partnership since its establishment on 1 April 2015. He reviewed the earlier editions and added more expressions and words to the dictionary.
Ziauddin said that dedicated teamwork was there at all the stages of composing, proofing, and printing.
He said the Hindko-Urdu dictionary compiled by Sultan Sakoon, Sheraz-ul-Lugahat by Sheraz Tahir, and Ferozul-ul-Lughaat by Maulvi Ferozudin) had been consulted while preparing the latest edition of the dictionary.
The latest edition of the dictionary also includes write-ups of Prof Dr Elahi Bakhsh Awan, founding-chairman of Gandhara Hindko Board Prof Dr Zahoor Ahmad Awan, Aftab Iqbal Bano, Nazeer Bhatti, Pakistan Academy of Letters Chairman Dr Muhammad Yousuf Khushk. and National Language Authority Chairman Dr Rauf Parekh.
