رائے مُنّو لال تھامسن: سِوَل انجینئرنگ کالج، رڑکی کے ایک گمنام مترجم

Abstract

Urdu prose made some headway at first, during the 17^th century. For a long time Urdu writers were interested only in pure literary texts. They did not focus on the disciplines of modern knowledge. After the rise of British power in India some attention was paid, in the early 19^th century, to a few scientific topics. This work undertook privately in various parts of India. Meanwhile the British rulers also realized that the people of the sub-continent should be taught modern scientific subjects in their own language. In 1847, a Civil Engineering College (Later, Thomason Engineering College) was established in Roorkee (Uttarakhand, India). The purpose was to recruit and train overseers for public civil works. Urdu was picked as the medium of instruction for local students in this College. Engineering books were translated from English into Urdu. But it is also a fact that, contribution of this College to technical and scientific prose in Urdu is ever ignored and no remarkable effort has been made to acknowledge it. Rai Munnu Lal was one of the translators and compilers of College. In the first part of this article, a brief introduction of College is presented. Subsequently, contribution of Rai Munnu Lal to technical and scientific prose in Urdu has been explained and analyzed..