S. R. Faruqi:

In this verse Mir has made clear what excellences, in his view, a good verse ought to have. In contrast to the excellences mentioned by Hali (simplicity, realism, and fervor [sādagī , aṣliyat , josh]), the excellences that Mir mentions are more fundamental, and also do more justice to eastern views of poetry. By 'tumult' [shorish] is meant intensity of emotion-- but an intensity in which there would be heat and depth, not limpness or emotionality. That is, the words too would be in proportion to the intensity of the emotion-- not that the emotion would be superficial or light, but would be expressed in a breast-beating or head-smashing style.

By 'mood' [kaifiyat] is meant that in the verse there would be an effective kind of atmosphere, whether the meaning of the verse would be straightforward or would not at once be entirely apparent-- or whether in the verse there wouldn't be any special meaning;

{17,1}

is a good example of 'mood'. The difference between 'mood' and 'tumult' (or 'tumult-arousingness') is that a verse with 'tumult' the poetry passionately expresses a thought about some human situation. The poet himself (that is, the speaker) usually doesn't participate in this situation. In a verse of 'tumult' the theme and meaning have an importance, while in a verse of 'mood' the theme and meaning are very minor. That is, in such a verse the basic emphasis is on atmosphere and effect, which would be established at once by the verse. A verse of 'mood' makes its effect immediately.

By 'meaning' [maʿnī] is meant 'meaning-creation'. 'Meaning-creation' and 'theme-creation' are two separate things. By 'theme-creation' is meant: 1) to create some new theme; 2) to bring out some new aspect of an old theme; or 3) to express some old theme in a new way. The meaning of 'meaning-creation' is: 1) to search out a new meaning in some thing or reality; 2) the meaning of the poem would apparently be something, but after reflection some more meanings would emerge; or 3) one meaning of the poem would be apparent, but after reflection it would be evident that in it there are numerous meanings; or 4) the poem would be obviously and apparently full of meanings; or 5) in the poems there would be such wordplays [riʿāyateñ] as would cause the possibility of new meanings to emerge.

These terms are ones that have been shaped by the Indo-Persian poets (and to a large extent by the Urdu poets). The early Persian masters didn't differentiate poetically between theme and meaning; among the Hindustanis too, examples of this can be found. But by around the early years of the eighteenth century, the Urdu poets had accepted the difference between theme and meaning. In Mir's poetry and that of other poets, many terms of Urdu poetics appear; it's only necessary to look for them.

In the present verse, the question of why he has called Sauda a 'drunkard'-- this doesn't become clear. But he might have said it in order to take advantage of the word saudā . But it's also possible that in Sauda's temperament there might have been some quality that he would have been able to construe as 'drunkenness'. Thus Qa'im, in a verse-set founded on Mir's theme, has said absolutely the same thing:

ay gardish-e zamānah tirī kaj-ravī ke bīch
yaksar navāḥ-e hind se shiʿr-o-suḳhan gayā

saudā to apne ḥāl meñ muddat se mast hai
qāʾim rahā thā ek so apne vat̤an gayā

[oh revolving of the times, amidst your crooked-movingness
entirely, from the territories of Hind, poetry and poetics went

Sauda has been for some time drunk, in his condition/state
Qa'im who alone had remained-- he went to his homeland]

In Mir's verse, the zila of gayā and rahā is also fine.

A further note by SRF, made for the Murty translation:

'Tumult', shorish, suggests also the sense of enjoyment caused by the passionate tone of the poem; 'mood', kaifiyat, also has the sense of 'the effect of wine', thus 'subtle enjoyment'; 'meaning', ma'ni, also has the sense of theme of a poem, or verse.

The reference here to Sauda (Mir's most prominent contemporary) as mastāna (dead drunk, surely conventional) is to a verse by Sauda himself in a two-verse ghazal in the rhyme and metre of Mir’s ghazal translated here. The second verse of that ghazal by Sauda is:

binā hī uṭh gaʾī yāro ġhazal ke ḳhūb kahne kī
gayā maẓmūn dunyā se rahā saudā so mastānah

(Friends, the very foundation for composing ghazals well is now gone from the world
Mazmun has left this world and Sauda is always drunk.)

(Divan-e Ghazaliyat-e Sauda, ed. Nasim Ahmad, Varanasi, BHU., 2001, p. 343.) Mazmun died in 1744/45. There is a pun here because mazmun means ‘theme’, specifically 'a theme or themes used in poetry'.

FWP:

SETS == POETRY
MOTIFS == MADNESS; NEIGHBORS
NAMES == REKHTAH; SAUDA
TERMS == MEANING; MEANING-CREATION; MOOD; THEME-CREATION; TUMULT; TUMULT-AROUSING

On the spelling of the rhyme-word, see SRF's comments in {84,1}.

The verse is in the subjunctive-- why wouldn't Urdu poetry be in dire shape, if crazy Mir would be gone, and Sauda would be dysfunctional because he's a drunkard? The general sense of a vividly back-handed compliment to the poetic skills of Mir and Sauda emerges clearly, and the rest might well be wordplay. The three relevant words in the first line are technical literary terms (as SRF explains), and in addition they have a wide range of meanings and are also used more generally (see the definitions above), so that the possibilities remain wide open. And certainly the first line sets up a 'mushairah-verse' effect, since it asks a piquant but unanswerable question.

Then the second line answers that question in an enjoyably punchy way. SRF has pointed out the wordplay of gayā and rahā . There's also the name-wordplay, since Mir is a madman and one meaning of saudā is 'madness'. And above all there's the rhythmic internal rhyme at the quasi-caesura (since dīvānah is perfectly placed to rhyme-- and resonate-- with mastānah . In the ghazal world, madness and drunkenness provide some of the lover's most potent vantage points from which to view the cosmos.

But in worldly terms, a madman and a drunkard are a dubious pair. And since the speaker is someone else, someone who talks about both poets in the third person, who knows what tone he might be using? Possibly a censorious or at least patronizing tone ('It's a sad day for Urdu poetry that it has had to rely on untrustworthy, mad, dead, drunken reprobates like them-- and now has lost even them!')

Compare Ghalib's wry, self-ironizing evocation of a similar kind of patronizing bystander. This one too combines praise with criticism-- in ways that radiate outward beyond his control:

G{20,11}

MIR ON OTHER POETS: It's extremely rare for Mir to refer in verses to any of his contemporaries among Urdu poets; and of course he was so early that he hardly had many (North Indian) predecessors. Here's the only other notable such verse, from the first divan [{336,8}]:

mīr-o-mirzā rafīʿ-o-ḳhvājah mīr
kitne ek yih javān hote haiñ

[Mir and Mirza Rafi' [Sauda] and Khvajah Mir [Dard]--
how singular/unique/excellent these young men [habitually] are!]

This is the only mention of Dard. Sauda obviously looms larger in Mir's imagination, for he gets one more mention, in the second divan [{592,7}]:

t̤araf honā mirā mushkil hai mīr is shiʿr ke fan meñ
yūhīñ saudā kabhū hotā hai so jāhil hai kyā jāne

[to be beside me is difficult, Mir, in this art/craft of poetry
by happenstance there's sometimes Sauda-- well, he's ignorant, what would he know?]

After this bit of friendly needling, no further such references to contemporaries occur anywhere in Mir's later divans. There are, however, a few references to Persian predecessors. The Persian poet Sa'ib (1601/2-1677) is mentioned in the first divan [{30,11}]:

shiʿr ṣāʾib kā munāsib hai hamārī or se
sāmne us ke paṛhe gar yih koʾī jā āshnā

[the poetry of Sa'ib is suitable/congruent, from our side
if some friend would somewhere read something of his before me]

In other words, Mir would listen to Sa'ib's poetry if the occasion arose, but apparently wouldn't actively seek it out.

This ghazal also includes an unusual closing-verse expressing grief at the early death of Mir's friend Taban (d.1749); Taban was a poet too, but appears here only as a friend [{30,13}]:

dāġh hai tābāñ ʿalaih ul-raḥmah kā chhātī pah mīr
ho nijāt us ko bichārā ham se bhī thā āshnā

[there is a wound on my breast, Mir, for Taban, may God have mercy upon him
may he find salvation; the poor man was a friend even/also of ours]

If Sa'ib is awarded a kind of back-handed compliment, Nizami receives a small, rivalrous touch of wordplay based on his famous 'Khamsah' [{580,3}]:

huʾī haiñ fikreñ pareshān mīr yāroñ kī
ḥavās-e ḳhamsah kare jamʿa so niz̤āmī hai

[Mir, the friends' thoughts have become scattered/anxious
if their five senses would be collected/'khamsah', then-- it's Nizami]

Finally, when it comes to the Persian-born Mughal court poet Naziri (c.1560-c.1613), in the first divan we find [{508,10}],

hai jī meñ ġhazal dar ġhazal ai t̤abʿa yih kahye
shāyad kih naz̤īrī ke bhī ʿahde se bar āve

[in the inner-self there is ghazal upon ghazal-- oh Temperament, please say:
perhaps it would fulfill the position of even/also Naziri]

And Naziri receives two more rather perfunctory mentions, late in the kulliyat. The first is [{1057,4}]:

kyā qadr hai reḳhte kī go maiñ
is fan meñ naz̤īrī kā badal thā

[what respect does Rekhtah receive?-- although I
in this art/craft was the peer of Naziri]

The second example, based on an obvious use of wordplay, from the sixth divan [{1897,8}]:

nah huʾe ham naz̤īrī se yūñ to
shiʿr ke fan meñ be-naz̤īr huʾe

[we didn't become like Naziri, but well, somehow
in the craft/skill of poetry, we became peerless]

But that's just about all the significant references there are. (I am not counting the vague wordplay with the name 'Shifa'i' in {435,1}; there's a similar wordplay with 'Ghani' in {1730,5}.) In his Urdu ghazals Mir simply doesn't go in that much for the kind of 'shout-outs' to other poets that were very common in the Persian tradition.