


Hindi is the official language of the Republic of India (projected to overtake China as the world’s most populous nation by 2030) and the most widely spoken language in South Asia.The entry for the year is bolded if it is for the version published first. The bare bones of this information has been compiled into the table below for all the stories in this collection. It was published in Hindi with the title 'Yehi Meri Matribhumi Hai' in Prem Prasun (1924). Now available in Kulliyaat-e Premchand 9 (2000). Asaduddin):įirst published in Urdu with the title 'Yehi Mera Watan Hai' in the Urdu anthology, Soz-e Watan (1908). In any case, all his works throughout his life in both Hindi and Urdu were published under Premchand's own name with no mention of a translator and are treated by the common reader as being equally original.Ī sample entry from the "Notes" section, when there are no additional comments regarding differences between the Urdu and Hindi versions, is as follows (taken for the short story This Is My Homeland, translated into English from Urdu for volume 1 by M. Though the early translations from Urdu into Hindi were mostly done by Premchand himself, we have firm evidence, for example, that the final manuscript of the Hindi Rangbhumi was translated into Urdu by another person who demanded a rate that Premchand thought to be exorbitant. It is now possible to say with certainty which of the two versions of the story was first published, and in the great majority of the cases it is clear that the version first published was also the first to be written. Asaduddin and published by Penguin Books. Sumit Sarkar notes that the switch was prompted by the difficulty of finding publishers in Urdu.Īs someone who speaks neither Hindi nor Urdu (but can at least see the difference in written text, since they use different alphabets), how can I tell whether a given Premchand story, which I'm reading in English translation, was originally written in Urdu or in Hindi?įor example, the short story "Catastrophe", which has already had a few questions asked about it on this site - was it originally in Urdu or in Hindi? The collection Short Stories of Premchand, available on the Internet Archive, has a Translator's Note which discusses in general the translation of Premchand's work from both Hindi and Urdu to English - are the stories in this volume translated from Urdu, from Hindi, or a mixture?ĭetailed publication information regarding Premchand's short stories-along with valuable comments on the differences between the Urdu and Hindi versions-is available in the "Notes" at the end of each of the four volumes of Premchand: the complete short stories (2017), edited by M. By this time, he was already reputed as a fiction writer in Urdu.

In 1914, Munshi Premchand started writing in Hindi (Hindi and Urdu are considered different registers of a single language Hindustani, with Hindi drawing much of its vocabulary from Sanskrit and Urdu being more influenced by Persian). The Indian writer Premchand started off writing in Urdu, and started writing Hindi stories later in his career.
