Rekhta


Rekhta was the Hindustani language as its dialectal basis shifted to the Delhi dialect. This style evolved in both the Perso-Arabic and Devanagari scripts and is considered an early form of Urdu and Hindi.

Origin and usage

Rekhta means "scattered" but also "mixed" and implies that it contained Persian. Rekhta is a very versatile vernacular, and can grammatically change to adapt to Persian grammar, without sounding odd to the reader.
The term Rekhta was in greatest use from the late 17th century until the late 18th century, when it was largely supplanted by Hindi/Hindwi and later by Hindustani and Urdu, though it continued to be used sporadically until the late 19th century. Rekhta-style poetry is still produced today by Urdu speakers, and is in fact the most common linguistic form of writing poetry in the Urdu language. Rekhta was also used for forms of poetry like Masnavi, Marsia, Qaseedah, Thumri, Jikri, Geet, Chaupai and Kabit.
The following popular sher by Mirza Ghalib also tells us that the linguistic term rekhta was extended in 19th-century North India to poetry written in the "rekhta" vernacular :



Reḳhta ke tum hī ustād nahīṅ ho ġhālib,
Kɛhte haiṅ agle zamāne meṅ koī 'mīr' bhī thā

Rekhti

The grammatically feminine counterpart of rekhta is rekhti, a term first popularized by the eighteenth-century poet Sa'adat Yar Khan 'Rangin' to designate verses written in the colloquial speech of women. The Lucknow poet Insha Allah Khan 'Insha' was another well-known poet who composed rekhtis, according to Urdu scholar C M Naim.