Safarnama 03 - The Triangle

This is river Vaksh, a tributary of Amu Darya (Oxus to the ancient Greeks). It was on the banks of Oxus that Alexander fell in love with a local princess and married her. Her name was Roxana (Ruksana in original Persian). The interesting thing to note is that the word "Vaksh" comes from Sanskrit. In fact Oxus is the latinised word for "Vaksh". Basically, both the river and its tributary have a Sanskrit connection.

Several lakes in Central Asia end with a suffix "kul" which means a lake (Karakul, Issykul etc). A blog I read claimed that "kul" means "pond/lake" in Sanskrit. I'm not sure if that's correct, I think the equivalent Sanskrit word is "kund". But if the claim is indeed true, then it would mean that almost all lakes in Central Asia have a Sanskrit suffix. That would be quite huge.

Most Indians recognise the strong link between Hindi and Farsi (Persian), several words are common to both. The popularly held view ascribes this connection to the Mughals who were great patrons of anything and everything Persian. But this is not the only reason as I'm beginning to realise/feel now. There is another link - a third corner of a triangle - Central Asia. Our languages (Farsi & Sanskrit) seemed to have met in the valleys and meadows of Central Asia thousands of years before the Mughals even arrived on the scene.

Today that third vertex of this triangle is most firmly placed in Tajikistan. Tajik, as also Dari in neighbouring Afghanistan, is a close relative of Persian, so close that it can be considered a dialect. Its Persian parentage is an exception within Central Asian - all the four other countries speak languages similar to Turkic, which is why Tajiks can't converse with any of their neighbours without resorting to their imperialist bond - Russian.

This personal discovery of the third vertex was a great joy to us. But it brought greater joy to our driver, Naseem. He had proudly played his Tajiki/Pamiri songs for the first few hours in our drive. But as soon as we played the first Bollywood song he got hooked. For the next 8 days it was only Bollywood that blared from our car. Naseem looked forward to each morning enthusiastically, hoping to hear more Bollywood in case we downloaded it the night before. His interest was not just in the music though, it was also the words, they were puzzles for him to solve. Every time he recognised a word he beamed and shared his excitement. On one sleepy afternoon Kishore was entertaining us, and just as he had finished singing a particular line, Naseem turned around and counting each word on his fingers he said - Waqt Guzarta Nahin. He had scored a hat trick!! 🙂

Good Night.