Rudyard Kipling's Jungle book this mix up is all too evident. The British raj may have had a lot to do with this mixup as in English literature I.e. Cropped or dressed hair, fore-locks, tresses a particular method of dressing the front hair (of a girl or woman) fringe of hair worn on the forehead (by women) cropped hair (mane and forelock) of a horse curly hair of a camel. not only are you a sher but you are a babar sher which could be a means of connecting the animal to its mane as well as an intensification of the more understated yet ferocious tiger. So not only is Babar Sher an exaltation of the lion by way of intensification I.e. Only animal that has a mane of the two is a lion. Urdu, Hindi and Punjabi phones are prone to repetition and hyperbole. I don't know how the switch came to be and surely there must be a deeper explanation then the one provided in the article above which is largely a lament but doesn't explain anything other than it was never meant to be this way! Here's me just hazarding a guess. Perhaps there has been an evolution over time. Platts includes it as an entry but messes up on its actual meaning. As far as I am aware like Persian its babar and via Indic roots baagh, I quite like nimr too since a tiger could quite easily be called a nimrnii and a cub nimr-chah. Lastly one thing I do not get is that whilst babar alone means a tiger why does a babar-Sher equate to a lion? Similarly in that case would babarii be leonine or tigerish? Considering Tigers and not Lions are native to the region at least in greater numbers there ought to be a clear distinction between the two.

Would highly appreciate it if someone could tell me how the word for leopard above is meant to be pronounced. Similarly Leopard is explicitly tendwaa/tendu'aa. I would assume the same is the case for both Pashto and Dari since the British named one of their operations in Qandahar as panjah e palang and have translated it as the Panther's claw/s.

Palang so far as Urdu is concerned is merely used for a panther.

Lion in hindi meaning