سنڌي ورچوئل لائبرري

In the 19th century, during the British rule, when Sindhi was declared the official language of Sindh and was made compulsory for all the foreign government functionaries, Dr. Ernest Trumpp and Captain G. Stack were the two gentlemen who endeavoured to make it practically possible by preparing bilingual dictionaries and grammar books. They took upon themselves the task of thorough research and study of the language and its structure, with the help of some local Sindhi-speaking people- thus preparing the two initial dictionaries (English-Sindhi and Sindhi-English) and two books on the grammar of Sindhi Language. Although by that time the government had approved the Persio-Arabic script for Sindhi language, these two gentlemen used the Devanagari script in their books, for which they had their own reasons. Since majority of the population of Sindh was Muslim, they could not read this script and therefore could not benefit from these works at all.

After Acquiring a diploma in Hindi language from the University of Karachi in the late 80’s, when I was able to read Devanagari, I was astonished at the scope of study and extant of research conducted by the Western scholars for our language. I also came to know that most of the grammar books written afterwards were infact based on their research work. In 2008 when I joined Sindhi Language Authority, I decided to get these books translated in Sindhi along with the transliteration of the text in Devanagari, so that the students and common readers in Sindh could also benefit from these classics. Work was initiated on four books, out of which three have already been published with the financial assistance of Endowment Fund Trust for Preservation of Heritage of Sindh.

The present book “A Grammar of The Sindhi Language” by Captain G. Stack is the last in this series. Since Dr. Trumpp’s Grammar had already been translated in Sindhi, it was decided that Captain Stack’s Grammar should be reprinted in English with transliteration of the Devanagri text into the Persio-Arabic script.

We are grateful to the “Endowment Fund Trust for Preservation of Heritage of Sindh” for providing the necessary funds for printing of these 19th century monumental works.

I hope the students, teachers and scholars of Sindhi will appreciate this effort of Sindhi Language Authority and Endowment Fund Trust for Preservation of Heritage of Sindh, for reproducing and reprinting of these classics written about one and a half century ago.