===
0002,
5
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{2,5}

jaanaa nahii;N kuchh juz ;Gazal aa kar ke jahaa;N me;N
kul mere ta.sarruf me;N yihii qi:t((ah zamii;N thaa

1) I knew nothing apart from the ghazal, having come into the world
2) {in all / wholly}, only/emphatically this section/'verse-set' of 'ground' was within my usage

 

Notes:

kul : 'The totality, the whole (of), total, sum; all, universal; (with an indef. subst.) each, every'. (Platts p.841)

 

ta.sarruf : 'Employment, use, application; possession, occupancy, sway; holding at (one's) disposal, disposal; expenditure, expenses; extravagance; diverting from (its) proper use, misapplication, misappropriation, embezzlement; power, influence, art, cunning; supernatural power'. (Platts p.325)

 

.zil((a : 'The art of speaking with double meaning so that the chain of both senses be uninterrupted through the discourse (syn. talaazum-e kalaam ), a kind of punning'. (Platts p.749)

*Platts Dictionary Online*

S. R. Faruqi:

The wordplay is worth looking at: juz , kul , jahaa;N , ;Gazal , qi:t((ah , zamii;N . There's also an affinity between ghazal and juz , because a ghazal is written on paper and they divide paper into signatures [juz]. The tone of the verse too is worth considering: outwardly he's lamenting his lack of opportunity, but in reality this is an expression of pride in poetic accomplishment. The word ta.sarruf requires attention, because the way a poet uses language, people call his ta.sarruf . Between aa kar and jaanaa there's the pleasure of a zila.

This same theme, in almost the same words, but with comparatively less power, he has used in the fourth divan [{1315,3}]:

zamiin-e ;Gazal mulk-sii ho ga))ii
yih qi:t((ah ta.sarruf me;N baa al-kul kiyaa

[the 'ground' of the ghazal became like a land
I brought this 'section' wholly into usage]

FWP:

SETS == POETRY
MOTIFS
NAMES
TERMS == GROUND; VERSE-SET; ZILA

SRF has said it all. Like so many of Mir's, the verse really is a tour de force of wordplay.

The double sense of kul also works well: the effect can be either humble ('out of all the world, only the ghazal was something I understood') or arrogant ('I was entirely focused on the ghazal, and over this I had complete command'). And when thinking of complete command, it's worth noticing the richly multivalent possibilities of ta.sarruf , including the possibilities of trickery and cunning (see the definition above).

One of the things I'll be doing in my commentary is keeping track of SRF's use of terminology in SSA. This is the first occurrence in his commentary of the term .zil((a (see the definition above). I'm not sure of the best way to translate it, so I'm just going to adopt 'zila' as an English word.