Beher (poetry)

Beher (poetry)
Beher or Bahr (Arabic/Persian/Urdu: بحر) in Urdu poetry is the meter of a sher (couplet). Essentially, beher is a specific pattern, combining the arkaans of Urdu prosody that define the "length" of a sher. However, generally beher is categorized in three classes: Short, medium, long, depending upon the length of the sher of the ghazal.
For a ghazal, since all the shers in it should be of the same beher, determining the beher of one sher (or even one line of the sher) is enough to determine the beher of the entire ghazal. For example, in this ghazal of Ghalib, the length and meter of the ashaar is same throughout. In terms of the European method of scansion, the metre can be written as follows (where "x" = long or short, "u" = short, "–" = long, "u u" = one long or two short syllables):
x u – – u – u – u u –
koii ummiid bar nahiin aatii
koii suurat nazar nahiin aatii
aage aatii thii haal-e-dil pe hansii
ab kisii baat par nahiin aatii
jaanataa huun savaab-e-taa'at-o-zahad
par tabiiyat idhar nahiin aatii
hai kuchh aisii hii baat jo chup huun
varna kyaa baat kar nahiin aatii
kaabaa kis muunh se jaaoge 'Ghaalib'''sharm tumako magar nahiin aatiiThe ghazal above is written in a beher called: khafiif musaddas makhbuun mahzuuf maqtu (Meter G8). This is a ten-syllable beher and by the standards of Urdu poetry, is a chotii (small) beher.
As with the scansion of Persian poetry, a syllable such as miid or baat consisting of a long vowel plus consonant, or sharm consisting of a short vowel and two consonants, is "overlong", and counts as a long syllable + a short one.
In Urdu prosody, unlike Persian, any final long vowel can be shortened as the metre requires, for example, in the word kaabaa in the last verse above.
Taqti
The process of breaking down a sher of a Ghazal into fundamental syllables and calculating its weight (vazn) is called taqti. For example, the word "Jaanisaar" can be broken down into four syllables "Jaa", "ni", "saa" and "r". The weight of "Jaa = 2", "ni = 1", "saa = 2" and "r = 1" and weight of the word "Jaanisaar" is 2121. Rekhta (website) has developed free online tool "Rekhta Taqti" for poets to calculate and check Beher of Ghazal or a sher.
Types of Beher
There exist many behers, but mainly there are 19 behers used in Urdu poetry. These behers are further distributed in different types, but they are not described here. The names are:
beHr-e-rajaz
beHr-e-ramal
beHr-e-baseet
beHr-e-taweel
beHr-e-kaamil
beHr-e-mutadaarik
beHr-e-hazaj
beHr-e-mushaakil
beHr-e-madeed
beHr-e-mutaqaarib
beHr-e-mujtas
beHr-e-muZaara
beHr-e-munsareH
beHr-e-waafer
beHr-e-qareeb
beHr-e-saree
beHr-e-khafeef
beHr-e-jadeed
beHr-e-muqtaZeb
Example
مفاعیلن مفاعیلن مفاعیلن
زندہ تھی کبھی توحید جن کے دلوں میں
وہی لوگ آج باہم بُغض رکھتے ہیں
کرکے رائیگاں زندگی کس طلب میں اپنی
کیوں یہ ہاتھ آج دھرے بیٹھے ہیں
جیسے سہانی ہوتی ہے خوشبوگلاب میں
ویسے ہی تیراذکرہے میری کتاب میں
ماناکہ چاند حسن میں ضرب المثال ہے
اس سے بھی تم حسین ہو میرے حساب میں
References
Bibliography
Deo, Ashwini; Kiparsky, Paul (2011). "Poetries in Contact: Arabic, Persian, and Urdu". In Maria-Kristina Lotman and Mihhail Lotman ed. Proceedings of International Conference on Frontiers in Comparative Metrics, Estonia, pp. 147–173.
Pritchett, Frances W. (1993). "Orient Pearls Unstrung: The Quest for Unity in the Ghazal". Edebiyât'' vol. NS 4, pp. 119–135.
Thiesen, Finn (1982). A Manual of Classical Persian Prosody, with chapters on Urdu, Karakhanidic and Ottoman prosody. Wiesbaden.
Urdu-language poetry
Indian poetics
Ghazal
Poetic rhythm