Verse 3x1816aahe;N
G13
1
temple/church and Ka'bah -- a mirror of the insistence/repetition of longing
2
the fatigue/lagging of ardor carves out shelters/refuges
'A convent or monastery (of Christians, or of Sufis, &c.); a temple, a place of worship, a church'.
'Forbidden; sacred ;—s.m. The sacred territory of Mecca; the temple of Mecca, or the court of the temple; a sanctuary'.
'Repeating often; repetition; tautology; the chorus or burthen of a song; question, dispute; objection, controversy'.
'The remaining or lagging behind (esp. from fatigue); --openness; exposure'.
is an archaic form of ( GRAMMAR )
'To cut, hew, pare, clip, prune; to cut out, carve, shape, form, fashion'.
'Protection, defence, shelter, shade, asylum, refuge'.
| References | |
|---|---|
| Arshi, Imtiyaz Ali | Ghazal# 97 |
| Raza, Kalidas Gupta | 203-04 |
| Nuskhah-e-Hamidiyah | 149-150 |
| Asi, Abdul Bari | 168-170 |
| Gyan Chand | 272-273 |
| Hamid Ali Khan | Open Image |
These temples and holy places are both mirrors of the insistence of longing. That is, through them the situation is revealed, that ardor would again be refreshed and again there would be the habit of longing; so to speak, the fatigue of ardor, as if they are carving out shelters for the fatigue of ardor. That is, when ardor becomes tired, then one among them writhes with fatigue, and makes that very thing his shelter. The point of which is that again some longing should begin.
== Asi, p. 169
That is, ardor sometimes takes one to the temple, sometimes to the Ka'bah; but since ardor is not successful, it is fatigued. It wanders around seeking the shelter of houses of religion. Otherwise-- where are temple and Ka'bah, and where is the dwelling of the Houseless One?!
== Zamin, p. 250
The heart is in search of the True Beloved. It goes to a temple, seeking it. It discovers that this is not the desired destination. Then it goes to a mosque, and there too this same situation confronts it. Temple and Ka'bah are signs of the insistence of longing. The ardor of passion sets out in search of the beloved; walking and walking, it grows tired, and seeks some place of shelter. After one place of shelter, another place of shelter. These places of shelter are temple and mosque. The point is that temple [] and mosque are not the goal, they are camps along the road, from which the intensity of ardor can be guessed.
== Gyan Chand, p. 273
[This verse is part of his discussion of 99,7 .]
For background see S. R. Faruqi's choices . For more on Ghalib's unpublished verses, see the discussion in 4,8x .
The multivalent meanings of (see the definition above) have been elegantly deployed-- does it refer merely to 'insistence', or to theological disputes as well? The pairing of 'temple/convent and Ka'bah' could mean that the two are to be either taken together as a unit (mirroring 'insistence'); or opposed to each other (mirroring 'dispute' or 'controversy'). And do they 'mirror' the in the sense of imitating it, or in the sense of showing or revealing it? The several constructions also multiply the possible relationships among all these senses.
And (see the definition above) works equally well-- is it the 'fatigue', the 'lagging', the 'openness', or the 'exposure' of ardor that actually carves out those various religious 'shelters'? Each reading works intriguingly with the possibilities in the first line. How could Ghalib not have published this brilliant and haunting verse in his divan ? It's deservedly almost as famous as the other best-known unpublished one, 4,8x .
By shifting the emphasis placed on different words, and different senses of each word, in each of the two lines, the verse can be readily, and radically, and most fascinatingly, transformed.
Compare other unpublished verses about the existential perils of fatigue: 12,6x , 314x,2 . About the role of religions, compare the pathos-filled 102,2 , the more radical 298x,4 , and especially the Sufistic 440x,1 . There's also Mir 's take on traveling beyond the , in M 101,1 .
Although can mean a wide range of sacred spaces from several different traditions, it's common in South Asia to take it as referring to a Hindu temple. That's what Gyan Chand does, when he equates it with . I can't resist including Therond's engraving of my own favorite temple, the Kandariya Mahadev at Khajuraho (11th c.):
graphics/khajurahokandariya.jpg
