;hairat hamah asraar pah majbuur-e ;xamoshii
hastii nahii;N juz bastan-e paimaan-e vafaa hech
1) amazement-- wholly secrets/mysteries, but compelled to silence
2) there is no existence apart from the binding of the promise of faithfulness-- it's nothing!
bastan : 'To bind, shut, close up; to contract, get, acquire, incur'. (Steingass p.186)
paimaan : 'Measuring; — agreement, compact, convention, treaty, stipulation, pledge, promise; security; confirmation; asseveration, oath'. (Platts p.301)
hech : 'Not any, none, no; nothing; — worthless, good-for-nothing; — shallow, superficial; — a mere trifle; — adv. Never; at no rate, on no account at all'. (Platts p.1244)
hech : 'Nothing; a mere trifle; lost, annihilated; never, at no rate, on no account at all'. (Steingass p.1520)
Amazement is entirely secrets [saraasar asraar], and the one who bound himself by the promise of faithfulness is necessarily compelled to silence. That is, we were born so that we might bind ourselves by the promise of faithfulness.
A stage on the [Sufistic] path is amazement. In the midst of existence, a person is in the state of amazement, but at what is the amazement? This is not made clear, it has become entirely a secret. The traveler or witness knows at what thing he feels amazement, but he is compelled to remain silent. Humankind has bound itself by a promise of faithfulness to the Lord; it cannot reveal the secret of existence because this is a part of that promise.
For more on Ghalib's unpublished verses, see the discussion in {4,8x}. See also the overview index.
On the special, mystically framed nature of ;hairat , see {51,9x}.
The grammatical unmooredness of ;hairat means that there are several ways to read the first line:
=What an amazement! So many secrets, but compelled to silence!
=Oh Amazement-- so many secrets, but compelled to silence!
=Amazement is wholly secrets, but is compelled to silence.
The first two readings leave entirely open the question of who has the secrets and the silence-compulsion. Is it the speaker? Is it 'existence' itself? It could even be the 'binding of the promise of faithfulness'. It's a reflective, verb-free line that
Moreover, the nature of the 'promise of faithfulness' never becomes at all clear. It might be, as Gyan Chand maintains, a promise of religious faithfulness to the Lord, the divine beloved. But it might also be the kind of pledge that the lover, in the ghazal world, makes to the beloved-- of a faithfulness that will be maintained at any cost, even if it is unrequited, even if it is unrecognized, even if it carries the lover to his grave. In the ghazal world, existence indeed offers nothing at all like the depth and mystery of that inexpressible vow.
Asi:
Amazement is a thing that is entirely secrets/mysteries, but silence has compelled it. Thus no secret can be expressed by it. And by comparison to it, existence has only the rank of a binding of the promise of faithfulness; for the rest, it's nothing at all.
== Asi, p. 107