Hindi idioms

Thanks The das nambar interpretation pretty much solves it. I thought basta alif and be are real legal terms, but here they're probably just metaphorical.

By the way, in Hebrew also the names of the first letters are "Aleph" and "Bet".

I would like to write some hindi idiom here and these are:
जान है तो जहान है
जंगल में मोर नाचा किस ने देखा ?
जिस की लाठी उस की भैंस
घर का भेदी लंका ढाये
बंदर क्या जाने अदरक का स्वाद .......




mod note: Please provide translation - the language of IM is english.

Enjoy this!

He who has the stick, owns the buffalo. (But....)

In fact I had thought of meri bhains ko danda too.

जिस की लाठी उस की भैंस = might is right

Other appropriate translations?

I could not think of any other translations.

I think every thing has limit .....

"jaise ko taisa mila"...what does "taisa" mean?

As you know,"jaise ko taisa mila" conveys almost the same meaning as "Tit for Tat" in English.

To my understanding "taisa" is used only to rhyme with "jaisa". I have not seen this word being used in any Hindi sentence construction and in spoken Hindi as well, except for "Aisi-Taisi", which would loosely translate to "mess-up".

thank you. i thought as much.

In modern spoken Hindi one would say jaise ko vaisa mila. Taisa is now considered archaic and is part of the "correlative" series so, taun, tis, tin which have now been replaced by vo, ve, us, un. The proverb jiski laThi uski bhains also exists in the more traditional form jiski laThi tiski bhains.

And the proverb बंदर क्या जाने अदरक का स्वाद ... bandar kya jaane adrak ka svaad can be rendered as casting pearls before swine.

Where are the days, when I could spend most of my time occupied with these kind of things...

Thanks for sharing this interesting piece of information about Hindi, which is in the process of extinction (or evolution as some say, god knows). I have few following questions

a) Can words like "taun, tis, tin" be assigned to a particular region in the Hindi speaking belt?

b) Words like "vo, ve, us, un" are used in written Hindi as well. Were "taun, tis, tin" also in use in the written language. Or perhaps, the written Hindi took precedence over the words used in local dialect, with the passage of time?

c) I thought that hindi proverbs have retained their originality in terms of the words used. For instance, if "jiski laThi tiski bhains" was the original and preceded "jiski laThi uski bhains". It would have been still in use. Any thoughts?

d) I guess if we search, we would come across instances where authors have modified words to suit their creation (in terms of rhyming). E.g. "Jin Khoja, tin paiya". Here "jin" means "jis" and "tin" means "us". So, did these words (like tin) actually have any meaning or were used/modified as per convenience to convey a specific meaning?

"chullu bhar pani me doob mar"...i have no idea what "chullu" means...:-(

You'll find them in the spoken language all across the Hindi belt. Of coursse through literacy and mass-media many more people speak "standard" Hindi and avoid such forms, at least in formal situations.

"Bharatendu" Harischchandra used these forms in his prose. Further innovations since Bharatendu's time have been the loss of the ko-kaun distinction. (ko hai? vs. kaun hain? has now become kaun hai? and kaun hain? for the singular and plural numbers respectively), but you will still hear ko hai? anywhere in the Mathura to Banaras belt just as you will hear jaun being used as a plural of jo.
One likes to sound "modern".
The modern rendering would be jinhen khoja unhen paya or jinko khoja unko paya. The simple jin and tin, like jis and tis still exist in Panjabi and western dialects of Hindi (Jis Lahore nahin dekhya!). The play is written in Hindi but the title is Panjabi.

@anar
"chullu" is a cupped hand