Hindi Diwas 2025: How Hindi's First Thesaurus Came Into Existence After Two Decades Of Painstaking Labour
Arvind Kumar also came out with a bilingual thesaurus in Hindi and English after putting in another 11 years of work
Published : September 13, 2025 at 4:34 PM IST
|Updated : September 14, 2025 at 8:10 AM IST
New Delhi: It was while returning from a party on December 26, 1976, that an idea struck Arvind Kumar as he regretted and questioned himself whether he was born to write just film stories. The idea germinated that very night, and he decided to compile Hindi’s first thesaurus.
On the occasion of Hindi Divas, it is important to remember those who have laboured hard to get this language its due and contributed towards its development. Among the names is that of Arvind Kumar, who developed the first thesaurus of Hindi after two decades of painstaking labour.
The effort that began in 1976 was taken to its logical conclusion in 1996. He then started working on a unique bilingual thesaurus, which was completed in 2007. He was helped by his wife, Kusum Kumar, along with other family members in the exercise.
Arvind was born on January 17, 1930, in Meerut in Uttar Pradesh and at the age of 13, he moved to Delhi. He passed away in 2021 because of COVID at the age of 91 years.
His work is being taken forward by his daughter Mita Lal, and it can be viewed at www.arvindlexicon.com
Mita Lal disclosed that the thought of a thesaurus in his mother tongue had actually crossed when Arvind was editing the Hindi magazine ‘Sarita’ and had come across Roget's Thesaurus in English.
She related that people had given grants for both English and Hindi after independence, but no thesaurus had been compiled.
Arvind shared the idea with Kusum on December 27, 1976, and he then quit his job at ‘Madhuri’ magazine in Mumbai to settle in Delhi.
The handwritten cards with parallel meanings of words written on them that ran into lakhs for the project were stored carefully in the attic of their house.
“He thought that the work would be completed in two to four years but it took 20 years during which the family went through many ups and downs like the house in Model Town in Delhi getting submerged in floods,” Mita related.
The cards kept in the attic were safe, and Arvind kept working on the project with inspiration and hope. The work was presented to the former President Shankar in 1996.
After this, Arvind took on another challenge to compile a bilingual thesaurus with an aim to create a bridge between Hindi and English through the words of these two languages.
He put in another 11 years of hard work, and the work being released in 2007 became a milestone in the Hindi-English linguistic world.
It had an English-Hindi-English dictionary, thesaurus and a mini encyclopaedia in black, yellow and red colours. The red section was English to Hindi, the black Hindi to English and the yellow section was for reference. It contained more than one million expression words.
With the changing times, it was felt that his works should be introduced to the digital world and Meeta along with other family members took the initiative.
These works are now accessed by Hindi lovers across the world through websites and apps. They are a modern medium for learning and understanding the language for the new generation.
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