The secret of letters: chronograms in urdu literary culture

Abstract

Letters of the alphabet are more than symbols on a page. They provide an opening into new creative possibilities, new levels of understanding, and new worlds of experience. In mature literary traditions, the “literal meaning” of literal meaning can encompass a variety of arcane uses of letters, both in their mode as a graphemic entity and as a phonemic activity. Letters carry hidden meanings in literary languages at once assigned and intrinsic: the numeric and prophetic, the cryptic and esoteric, and the historic and commemoratory. In most literary traditions there appears to be at least a threefold value system assigned to letters: letters can be seen as phonetic signs, they have a semantic value, and they also have a numerical value. Each of the 28 letters of the Arabic alphabet can be used as a numeral. When used numerically, the letters of the alphabet have a special order, which is