Delhi College and Urdu* - MINDS@UW Home

134 • THE ANNUAL OF URDU STUDIESduring his long career as an educator. Among his works, in addition to alarge number of mathematics textbooks, was a laudatory history in Urduof Victoria’s reign, the Vikªåriy≥ N≥ma. He is the subject of a respectfulbiography by C.F. Andrews. 41In the long run, undoubtedly the greatest accomplishment of DelhiCollege was its contribution to Urdu language and literature. Through itsteaching, sponsorship of translations, and the writings and publications ofits teachers and students, Delhi College contributed to the developmentof Urdu prose as a vehicle for the transmission of knowledge. It encouragedthe development of a scholarly prose style, more direct than theflowery court prose of old, and contributed to the development of newliterary forms, such as the novel, the short story, the essay, and literarycriticism. New literary forms and styles encouraged the exchange of ideasin an emergent periodical literature, including newspapers and theperiodicals published by the college and other presses. Delhi College wasthus an institution that mediated between eastern and western culturesand mentalities, and did so in the vernacular, contributing to theemergence of an Urdu-speaking and reading élite in North India,composed of individuals of all religious persuasions. ❐41 C.F. Andrews, Zaka Ullah of Delhi (1929; rpt. Lahore: Universal Books,1976), pp. 57–66.