1638_01

{1638,1}

ġhuṣṣe meñ nāḳhunoñ ne mire kī hai kyā talāsh
talvār kā sā ghāʾo hai jab'he kā har ḳharāsh

1) in anger/sorrow, what pursuit/'search' have my fingernails made?!
2) a wound like that of a sword, is every slash/stroke of the forehead

Notes:

ġhuṣṣah : 'Choking, strangulation, suffocation; —(choking) wrath, rage, anger, passion; —grief, disquietude of mind, anxiety'. (Platts p.771)

talāsh : 'Search, quest; scrutiny; study, research; pursuit'. (Platts p.333)

ghāʾo : 'Wound, sore, hurt, bruise'. (Platts p.930)

ḳharāsh : 'Scratch, scraping, cutting, excoriation'. (Platts p.488)

*Platts Dictionary Online*

S. R. Faruqi:

The opening-verse is ordinary, but ġhuṣṣah has two meanings: that is, it can mean 'overthrownness, disorderedness' [barhamī], and also 'grief and sorrow'. The meaning of talāsh is 'wrestling' or 'battle'.

Jalil Manikpuri has, with the warrant of one other verse of Mir's, taken ḳharāsh to be masculine; although the reality is that from after Mir's time, it has been versified as feminine. Afaq Banarsi, in his muʿīn ul-shiʿr , entered it as feminine, and noted in his remarks that same verse of Mir's that Jalil Manikpuri in his essay tażkīr-o-tānīṡ has used as a warrant for its being masculine. Sauda has a whole ghazal of which the refrain itself is kā ḳharāsh . It's possible that in early Urdu ḳharāsh might have been only masculine. Nowadays, for quite a time it's been only feminine. Thus Afaq Banarsi has noted a verse of Zauq's [containing kī ḳharāsh].

FWP:

SETS == A,B; KYA
MOTIFS == SWORD
NAMES
TERMS

I have nothing special to add.