Sacred Literature: A Fallacy of the Term

Abstract

Linguistic problems of terminology in Urdu language have some complications, but the social and cultural issues of some terms are more serious. These are terms that are created due to a particular way of feeling or thinking, and later one's permanent emotional attachment to them is also made a part of belief.

Dr. Syed Yahya Nasheit in his PhD thesis entitled "Religious Trends in Urdu Poetry" (1987) has used a term "sacred literature", by which he means hymns, naat, manqibat, mursiya and other genres which are somehow related to religious feeling. The question is that if the literature created in the above-mentioned genres is holy, will the rest of the literary genres and the texts created in them be declared unholy? Why should the limit of sacred and non-sacred be established in literature? If this limit is to be established, what will be the standard or measure? What will be the limits of sacred literature?In this article author has analyzed the term of sacred literature by rising above questions and some others.

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