Ghazal 224, Verse 4x

{224,4x}

har ;Gunchah asad baargah-e shaukat-e gul hai
dil farsh-e rah-e naaz hai bedil gar aave

1) every bud, Asad, is a pavilion/court of the grandeur/'thorn' of the rose
2) the heart is a carpet on the road of pride/coquetry-- if Bedil would come!

Notes:

baar-gaah [of which baar-gah is a contraction]: 'Place of audience, court; palace'. (Platts p.120)

 

shaukat : 'A thorn; — power, might, majesty, grandeur, magnificence, dignity, state, pomp'. (Platts p.737)

 

shaukat : 'One thorn; a sting (of a scorpion); a thorny plant; arms and their sharpness or edges; the brunt of the battle-field; ... majesty, power, grandeur; dignity, pomp;  ... — shaukat ul-((aqrab , The sting of the scorpion; — shaukat-e shaahaanah , Imperial majesty'. (Steingass p.767)

Gyan Chand:

baargah = royal tent. Every bud is a tent of the grandeur of the royal rose. That is, it's a destination for the welcoming/receiving of the rose. Based on a resemblance to this, for the welcoming/receiving of Hazrat Bedil my heart is a carpet on the road, on which he would/should proudly/coquettishly come. The heart has a similitude with a bud; and the bud, with a tent.

== Gyan Chand, p. 481

FWP:

SETS

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 For more on Ghalib's unpublished verses, see the discussion in {4,8x}.

I've been including all the Bedil tribute verses, just to show how extensively they've been excised from the divan. For discussion of this choice of Ghalib's, see {8,5x}.

But this verse isn't quite as anodyne as it may at first seem. The only meaning of shaukat that I was familiar with was the 'grandeur, majesty' one (such that people are named Shaukat). When I checked it in Platts and saw that the first meaning was 'one thorn', I was surprised and intrigued; then the much more helpful entry in Steingass made everything clear (see the definitions above). For shaukat seems to have a primary meaning of something sharp, piercing, dangerous. Steingass's examples are wonderful: the shaukat of a scorpion means its sting-- so that the shaukat of a king clearly has at least subtle undertones of danger and threat. (Moral: as Faruqi prescribes, always use dictionaries, even when you don't think you need to.)

Ghalib offers his 'heart' to be a red carpet, to be trampled on by an arrogant 'Bedil' (literally, 'heart-less') when and if he would condescend to come. A trampled heart may be a small price to pay for Bedil's arrival-- but it does sound as if that arrival will come at a price.