Hindi, Urdu: ardab

[aevynn]

Hello, friends! The following is an entry from Shabdsagar --

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जिच्च १ jicca संज्ञा स्त्री॰ [?] १. बेबसी । तंगी । मजबूरी । २. शतरंज में शाह की वह अवस्था जब उसे चलने का कोई घर न हो और न अर्दब में देने को मोहरा हो । ३. शतरंज के खेल की वह अवस्था जिसमें किसी एक पक्ष का कोई मोहरा चलने की जगह न हो ।​

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What is this "अर्दब"? I have run into many typos in the DSAL transcription of Shabdsagar before. Usually they are innocuous enough, but if this is a typo, it is not readily clear to me what it might be a typo of. I referenced the scanned copies of Shabdsagar that are currently on archive.org and it is not very clear from that either:

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[Alfaaz]

What is this "अर्दब"?

pin (chess)

 

[aevynn]

Ah, cool! Thank you @Alfaaz! I see it now and I record it here for others' reference:

( شطرنج ) کسی مہرے کا مخالف شہ روکنے کے لیے بادشاہ کی سپر بن جانا اور حرکت کرنے کے قابل نہ رہنا ؛ ہل نہ سکنے کی کیفیت ؛ معذوری ، پیچارگی ؛ روک ، آڑ.

(शतरंज) किसी मोहरे का मुख़ालिफ़ शह रोकने के लिए बादशाह की सिपर बन जाना और हरकत करने के क़ाबिल न रहना। हिल न सकने की कैफ़ियत। माज़ूरी, बेचारगी। रोक, आड़।

 

[Qureshpor]

No, it's not a typo.

Urdu Lughat

From Nuru_lluGhaat

shatranj meN us muhre ko kahte haiN jo shaah ko kisht se bachaane ke liye biich meN laayaa jaataa hai.

 

[marrish]

As a reference from literature may serve this occurrence in Premchand's 1936 ga'uu daan (which one was first, the Urdu or Hindi language version? And, is the word there in the Hindi one?)

دل میں سوچ لیا تھا کہ ہوری کو کسی اردب میں ڈال کر گاے اڑا لینی چاہیے

(۱۹۳۶، پریم چند ، گئو دان ، ۱۶۸)

dil meN soch liyaa thaa kih horii (?) ko kisii ardab meN Daal kar gaae uRaa lenii chaahiye. (prem chand, ga'uu daan, 168, 1936).

 

[aevynn]

The word also seems to occur, using the spelling अरदब, in the Devanagari-script printing of Premchand's (Hindustani-language?) novel:

This screenshot is from page "६२" of a 1947 printing available on Archive, which bears a "छठा संस्करण" inscription at the beginning. The same sentence is repeated all over the internet, and so is the assertion that the novel was first published just some months before Premchand died in October of 1936, but I am having trouble finding a scan of the earliest Devanagari-script printing on the internet.

Would you be willing to share something that corroborates a 1936 dating for an Urdu-script printing of this novel?

The earliest such printing I am able to find is the one available on Rekhta from 1939. It bears the following "طبع اول" inscription towards the beginning:

Here is a screenshot of the relevant sentence, from page "۱۸۸" of this printing, which (more-or-less) matches the transcription you've given above:

Harish Trivedi, a scholar of Postcolonialism and a retired Professor of English at the University of Delhi, wrote in a 2017 article titled "The Urdu Premchand and the Hindi Premchand" that:

Syed Ehtesham Hussain writing in 1963 claims the Hindi Godan (1936) to be the Urdu Gaudan, which was in fact published three years after Premchand's death in someone else's translation in 1939.​

This assertion is not corroborated. (For the record, the article ultimately reaches some points I find somewhat strange and problematic, but elaborating would lead us strongly off-topic.)