Dastarkhan is a abbreviation of "Dast Tar Khan" (دست تر خوان) which word by word means "Wet Hand Tablecloth" and it's comes from tradition of the host providing water with "Aftabeh Lagan" (آفتابه لگن) for guests to wash their hands before and after spreading the tablecloth. It was based on Islamic teachings of washing hands before eating and considered as means of respect and service to the guests. The tradition is almost vanished in Iran and Tajikistan but still lightly lasts in Afghanistan. Therefore in Iran for new generation the word dadtarkhan not being used anymore and its meaning not clear for the younger generation but the word is vastly used in Afghanistan though the tradition is fading.[citation needed]
The word mainly used in Persian for tablecloth is Sofreh (سفره) and in older times the word Khan (خوان) used to. And Dastarkhan was due to tradition of providing water to wash hands before and after eating. It is used in many other languages of the South and Central Asian region such as Uyghur, Balochi, Bengali, Pashto, Urdu, Sindhi, Hindi, Kyrgyz, Kazakh, Uzbek, Turkmen, Bhojpuri and Nepali.[5][6]
^Everaert, Christine (2010). Tracing the Boundaries Between Hindi and Urdu: Lost and Added in Translation Between 20th Century Short Stories. Brill Publishers. p. 75. ISBN9789004177314.
^Brice, Nathaniel (1864). A Romanized Hindustani and English Dictionary Designed for the Use of Schools and for Vernacular Students of the Language. Trübner & Co. p. 66.
^Yates, William (1855). Introduction to the Hindustani Language: In Three Parts, Viz. Grammar, Vocabulary, and Reading Lessons. Calcutta: Baptist Mission Press. p. 128.
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