FWP:
SETS == DEFINITION
ARCHERY: {6,2}
DEFINITION verses: {6,9x}; {9,1};
{22,4}; {28,4x}; {33,3};
{60,2}; {68,9x};
{75,2};
{86,5}; {86,6};
{86,7}; {88,7x};
{99,7}; {101,1};
[116,1}; {125,2};
{126,9}; {145,1};
{147,1}; {162,8};
{162,10}; {163,3};
{181,2};
{186,7x}; {203,4}; {209,3};
{214,13x}; {229}, most verses; {351x,3}
For background see S. R. Faruqi's choices. This verse is NOT one of his choices; I thought it was interesting and have added it myself. For more on Ghalib's unpublished verses, see the discussion in {4,8x}.
The colloquial possibilities of niklaa are wonderfully relevant here. For a full discussion of these possibilities, see {219,1}. Here two of them are particularly apposite.
If we take niklaa to mean 'turned out to be', then we have a report of a new diagnosis. There was something pricking or throbbing in the speaker's chest, and everybody thought that what he was feeling was a soreness in his heart. But now the doctors have learned something new-- it wasn't a 'heart' at all, but an arrowhead.
If we take niklaa more literally to mean 'emerged', then this seems to be a discovery made through some kind of dire surgery, or else when the lover is on the point of death. The arrowhead is literally drawn out of the chest, or perhaps works its way out-- and only then is its real identity recognized.
In either case, the question is inescapably suggested: what happened to the heart? Did the lover give it away so long ago that not a trace remains? Did it turn itself into blood through its suffering, and flow away in the form of bloody tears? Did the invading arrowhead pulverize it? Or was the lover's heart itself never other than (by definition?) an arrowhead in the first place?
In any case, apparently the arrowhead then became so precious and
beloved that it acted as a heart, keeping the lover alive (albeit in pain).
So the earlier (mis)identification of it as a 'heart' perhaps wasn't so wrong
after all. Compare the preciousness of the arrowhead in {70,2}.
Asi:
I knew that something was pricking/throbbing in my breast, but I considered that perhaps it was the heart. Now I have come to know that it is not the heart, but the head of an arrow.
== Asi, p. 54