=== |
![]() |
fānūs : 'A pharos, lighthouse; a lantern; (in Urdu) a glass shade (of a candlestick, &c.)'. (Platts p.776)
yūñ hī : 'Thus, in this wise, in this manner; —just so, for no particular reason; without just ground, vainly, idly, causelessly, gratuitously'. (Platts p.1253)
nishān : 'Sign; signal; mark, impression; character; seal, stamp; proof; trace, vestige; —a trail; clue'. (Platts p.1139)
nihāyat : 'End, extremity, extreme point, term, goal, boundary, limit; —excess; —adj. & adv. Very much, extreme, excessive'. (Platts p.1162)
FWP:
SETS == GESTURES; MIDPOINTS; MUSHAIRAH
MOTIFS
NAMES == MOTH
TERMS == MOOD; 'TUMULT-AROUSING'On the nature of a fānūs , see G{39,1}.
In a normal 'mushairah verse', the sequence of the two lines as '1,2' is crucial to the effect. That is still true in this case, but there's also a kind of reversal: the narrative sequence '2,1' is crucial to the effect. 'When' [jo , meaning jab] the speaker asked, there (already, statively) 'was' [thā] a mark on the garment-hem. So probably the speaker is asking his question belatedly, after the Moth has already immolated himself. (Or he could conceivably be asking some other Moth who is not yet 'life-burned', but that would be a much less dramatically effective scenario.)
He asks the Moth-- but even as he asks, the Moth is already gone. The Moth doesn't even hear his question. The inquirer is left with no company except a small, casual mark of ash on the 'candle-glass'-- a protective glass shade that we should probably imagine as somewhat cone-shaped, so that it would resemble a skirt and could be said to have a 'garment-hem').
Along these lines, there could also be a 'midpoints' reading of jān-jale parvāne se . It could most obviously describe the inquiry ('When I asked from the life-burned Moth'); but might it not also be taken to describe the mark on the candle-glass ('a mark from the life-burned Moth')? On that reading, when the speaker went around with his theoretical questions about the nature of passion, asked from someone unspecified, the candle that lit their conversation already had a small smudge on its candle-glass, from the death of the Moth.
Here the yūñ hī works to devastating effect. 'For no particular reason, vainly, idly, causelessly, gratuitously' (see the definition above) there was some [kuchh] sort of mark or trace on the candle-glass. The speaker (if we assume he's the source of this information in the first line) is thus doubly distanced from the 'mark, trace': he has no idea why it is there, or what it is. But it certainly doesn't seem to be significant; naturally he sounds dismissive when he even mentions it.
Does the speaker ever even realize that it is the answer to his question? The verse gives no hint. Does the 'life-burned' Moth who made the mark care at all what the speaker, or anyone else (even the beloved?), thinks? The verse gives no hint. It's a perfect example of what I call a 'gesture' verse. Since the gesture is non-verbal, it remains unsatisfyingly (or satisfyingly), radically, irrevocably, uninterpretable. And what a potent, complete, self-consuming gesture it is, and what poetic power it gives to the verse!
Note for grammar fans: There's no ne , although pūchhī nevertheless agrees with the feminine nihāyat . Mir can get by with this sort of thing.
Note for translation fans: What to do about fānūs ? I really didn't want to call it a 'candle-shade', because shades in English are basically thought of as opaque, and it's crucial that this device for protection against the wind should be transparent, so that the candle can shine out through it (and the Moth can see the candle-flame through it). So I reluctantly went for the clumsy 'candle-glass', although the shape should surely be thought of as something like the top part of an oil lamp.