Pashto proverbs (mataluna): collections, themes and examples

At a glance

• Mataluna is the word for Pashto proverbs in the titles of two modern collections. [3, 4]

• The first printed English collection of Pashto proverbs came from Septimus Thorburn, a British Settlement Officer in Bannu, in 1876. He printed the sayings in Pashto script and in English, grouped under headings such as honour, home, enmity and hospitality. [1, 2]

• Thorburn wrote that proverbs are to a Pashtun what scriptural texts are to a Christian, a rule that cannot be argued with. [1]

• Pashto-language collections followed. Muhammad Nawaz Tair's Rohi Mataluna (Pashto Academy, Peshawar, 2006) runs to 385 pages, and Edward Zellem's Mataluna (2014) gives 151 Afghan proverbs. [3, 4]

The first collection, Bannu 1876

Septimus Thorburn began the land settlement of Bannu district in 1872. His duties, he wrote, gave him the chance to study the people and made them ready to help him, and he "commenced making a collection of their proverbs for my own pleasure". With encouragement from the government he arranged it for print in the hot weather of 1874. [1] The result is Chapter III of Bannu; or, Our Afghan Frontier (London, 1876), pages 231 to 413, with the same sayings in Pashto script in Chapter IV. [1, 2]

Thorburn is a colonial witness, and what he says about his method is useful. He called the book "the first yet attempted of Pashto proverbs" and admitted it was "necessarily very imperfect". He rejected several hundred sayings: some he found grossly indecent, some lacking popular sanction, some recent translations from another language, and some the same saying in a different dress. He tried to leave out sayings plainly taken from Persian or Arabic, though he kept some where they suited the tribe. When he had used up the proverbs of the Bannu Pashtuns, he received others from Khost and Peshawar, and most proved to be ones he already had. [1]

His own comments on Pashtuns, such as his remarks on which Bannu communities have honour, are his opinions as a British official and are not repeated here. What lasts in the book is the Pashto and its literal English.

Thorburn also says that his English is "literal or nearly so" and that it cannot carry the rhyme, rhythm and word play of the Pashto. He spelled Pashto in the manner of Raverty and Bellew and noted that Bannuchis, Wazirs and Marwats each pronounce words differently, so no two scribes would spell a proverb alike. [1, 2]

How people use them

Thorburn says a limited number of the sayings is common in the mouths of the poorest and rudest Pathans, and that those whose daily food is assured have a large store they are always drawing on. Where a reader of books would quote a book, he writes, the people quote their proverbs and give them the same weight as a trusted author. [1]

He also notes that proverbs bend to the occasion. As one verse of scripture can be read several ways, a proverb is applied in different ways, and he saw "a curious antagonism" between sayings that pull in opposite directions. [1] Several entries carry a short story for the saying. In one, a Marwat man named Umar marries well abroad and sighs for the "thousand-holed" food of home, and when his wife follows him there she finds it is only a coarse cake. The moral Thorburn gives is that every man boasts of his own land. [1]

Some entries are verse. Thorburn says the couplet "Don't expect good faith from a low-born man; reeds will never become sugar-cane" is from Abdul Hamid, "an old Pashto poet", and that another, on the anguish of the heart, is "from Moolah Abdul Hamid". [1] Proverb and poetry overlap here, as they do in the folk verse described in the landay article and in Pashto literature and oral poetry.

Hospitality

Thorburn opens his hospitality section by calling the Pashtuns very hospitable and by describing the village guest house, where any traveller is welcome for a night and the cost is met by the headmen or shared by the whole community. [1] The sayings cover both sides of the meal. Melmastia describes the custom itself.

اوله ورځ بادشاه بله ورځ وزير بله ورځ له خاورو خمير

Awwala wradz bādshāh, bala wradz wazīr, bala wradz la khāwro khamīr.

The first day a king, the second a vizier, the third mixed with the earth. (Thorburn's translation)

Thorburn's gloss is that this refers to a guest's treatment by his host. [1, 2]

د دوو کورو ميلمه خوار وي

Da dwo koro melma khwār wi.

The guest of two houses fares badly. (Thorburn's translation)

His gloss is that each host thinks the other is feeding him. [1, 2] A third saying gives the cost of the custom: "A reputation for hospitality depends on grain, war on weapons", for without a full granary one cannot play the host, as with a good sword one can be a warrior. [1]

Honour and shame

Thorburn's honour section holds twenty-nine sayings, among them these. [1]

دریاب په لوښي نه وچیږي

Daryāb pə lokhay na wachegi.

The river cannot be dried up with a cup. (Thorburn's translation)

He says it is said of a good man whose character his enemies' attacks cannot take away. [1, 2]

په سلو مي مړ کړې په يوه مي پړ مه کړې

Pə salo me mṛ kare, pə yawa me paṛ ma kare.

Mayest thou kill me at a hundred men's hands, but not make me in fault towards one. (Thorburn's translation)

Thorburn compares it to "death before dishonour". [1, 2] Other sayings in the same section tell a man to "die for that man's honour whose name you take", and say that a poor man may tell a great one, "Don't put hands on my blanket, and I won't put hands on your shawl", to remind him that they are equal in honour. [1] See nang and badal for the values the sayings speak from.

Home and land

هر سړي ته خپل وطن کشمير دي

Har saṛay ta khpal watan Kashmīr day.

To every one his home is Cashmere. (Thorburn's translation)

Thorburn gives the English equivalent "Home is home, be it never so homely". [1, 2] A neighbouring saying says that "every one is a king in his native place", meaning that he is happy there. [1]

Thorburn gives a long run of sayings on farming, weather and health, to which, he says, Marwat is the chief contributor. He writes that they embody the deliberate opinion of the farming population about their work, and that the Marwat farmer, on land that depends on rain, has cause to think about his condition. [1] One tells the farmer not to stint the seed: "If you fill the soil, it will fill you; if you leave it hungry, it will leave you hungry." Another says that "so much cultivated land is good as a horse may roll on, not gallop over", that is, little land well worked beats much land ill kept. [1] A saying in the strength section is blunter: "If the strong man be strong enough, the field and the seed become his." [1]

Family and enmity

The sayings on enmity are short and hard. Two read: "A cousin's tooth breaks on a cousin's", which Thorburn glosses as cousins being rivals, and "Though your enemy be a rope of reeds, call him a serpent", meaning never despise an enemy. [1] On marriage and descent one says that if you do not marry a gentle woman, she will not bear you a gentle son. [1] These sit beside the code of Pashtunwali and the household life in the hujra and qala.

Later collections

Thorburn's book was an English-language record made by an outsider. Collections made by Pashtuns for Pashto readers followed. A catalogue record for Rohi Mataluna names Muhammad Nawaz Tair (born 1934) as its compiler. It was published by the Pashto Academy of the University of Peshawar in 2006, was reprinted by Wipf and Stock in 2009, had been published earlier by the InterLit Foundation, and has Pashto and English text with a bibliography and an index. [3] Edward Zellem's Mataluna: 151 Afghan Pashto proverbs (Tampa: Cultures Direct Press, 2014) has 167 pages. [4]

For the dictionaries that record Pashto words and the sayings that use them, see Pashto dictionaries.