Friday 22 January 2016

Authenticity of Pata Khazana in the eyes of Qalandar Mohmand

Pashtun writers from Afghanistan told late Qalandar Mohmand that casting doubts on the authenticity of Pata Khazana is against the national interests of Afghanistan !

Qalandar Mohmand refers to Professor Shakoor Rashad and writes that  :  "The present shape of the letter "ځ" (zeem) of Pashto Alphabets , has been created by Wazir Muhammad Gul Khan Momand. This letter has been used in "Patta Khazana" and "Tazkirat-al-awlia" of Suleiman Mako. But as this letter has come into being after the creation of Patta Khazana , so if on one hand , by using this letter , "Patta Khazana" is proved to be controversial document , on the other hand its usage also proves "Tazkirat-al-awlia" to be a forged document, and the poetry of Bait Neka , Malikyar Gharsheen , and Shaikh Ismail (which is recorded by the same book) is proved to be unauthentic. 

Qalandar Mohmand also argued against the orthography and writing style of the book.  He raised objections against some words which according to him, have not been used according to the style of old times and whose meaning seem to be the creation of the mind of present time. He has opposed this statement of the so called compiler of the book ;

 "I started to write the book (Pata Khazana) on 16-Jamadi-al-Sani, 1141 AH, and it was "Friday"

According to Qalandar Mohmand , on 16-Jamadi-al-Sani, it was "Monday" and not "Friday", which shows that book has been created by a forgerer.

Qalandar Mohamnd has written a full chapter on the topic of "Anachronism"  and has explained the meaning of the term as:  "The term anachronism is used for the historical error , when a writer relates an event to a wrong period of time".

According to Mohmand, "Pata Khazana has related such events which come under the definition of anachronism. For example the poet "Khkaronday" has used the word the word "Attock" for the river Indus. But the authentic historians of the Mughal Period agree with the fact that Attock has never been used for River Indus , but it is a name of place where Akbar had built a fort. (In 1581 A.D ,Akbar laid the foundations of fort on eastern bank of Indus and named it Atak Banaras. Mughal historian Badayuni (1540-1615) tell us that the name was chosen to rhyme with Katak Banaras ,a town in India.




2 comments:

  1. One Correction. Qalandar Momand in his book has not claimed that "Dzeem" was the creation of Wazir Gul Muhammad Khan. He says that "Rishad" saib a close friend of Habibi Saib is of the opinion that it was created by Wazir Gul Muhammad. He further says that none of the Afghan scholars including Habibi has rejected the claim of Rishad Saib. Which means they agree with him. If it is so then why the alphabet is used in Pata Khazana. That is his point.

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