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Posts Tagged ‘Persian’
Ode to Benaras - Ghalib’s grand vision
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A Brahmin resident of Benaras |
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Ghalib |
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Benaras: “forever spring” |
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It is incredible that a Muslim poet who prided himself on his Turkic ancestry and invoked the “warrior” past in his day-to-day conversation (through his letters) could compare the divine light at Mount Sinai to the lamps at Benaras |
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he cancer of communalism and bigotry in South Asia continues to haunt us. These days, the Muslims are once again a subject of intense, though not always fair, scrutiny in India: their loyalties are being questioned and many are potential terrorists if not already abettors of violence. The post 9/11 world has contributed to the demonising of the Muslim identity and history to surreal heights.
The recent bomb blasts in Delhi have placed the communal discourse on the front pages. The invaders and violent Muslims have done it again. A friend called me from Delhi and narrated the profiling that takes place at marketplaces and how the gulf between different communities is widening.
There was a time, not in the ancient past, when in Delhi the greatest of Urdu poets Mirza Ghalib (1796-1869) lived in an age when Hindus and Muslims shared common saints, dargahs and even popular gods and goddesses. Written accounts of this age – the mid to late 19th century – relate how intimate co-exitence of “Mussalmans” and “Hindoos” had led to a relative amalgamation of customs among the common people. And poets like Ghalib could see the commonalities of spiritual streams:
I n the Kaaba I will play the shankh (conch shell)
In the temple I have draped the ahraam (Muslim robe)
The verse above delineates the Sufi concept of fana (or dissolution of the self in divine reality) and the unity articulated by the ancient Indian texts such as the Vedanta. Sufis were to elaborate this as the wahdat-al-wajood (Unity of Being) philosophy.
Tags: Benaras, Calcutta, Delhi, Ghalib, Hindus, Islam, mathnavi, Muslims, Pavan, Persian, poem, Poetry, tolerance, Varma, wahdatalwajood
The Veil - Attar
by Farid al-Din ‘Attar (1142-1220)
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We are the Magians of old,
Islam is not the faith we hold;
In irreligion is our fame,
And we have made our creed a shame.
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Now to the tavern we repair
To gamble all our substance there,
Now in the monastery cell
We worship with the infidel.
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When Satan chances us to see
He doffs his cap respectfully,
For we have lessons to impart
To Satan in the tempter’s art.
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We were not in such nature made
Of any man to be afraid;
Head and foot in naked pride
Like sultans o’er the earth we ride.
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But we, alas, aweary are
And the road is very far;
We know not by what way to come
Unto the place that is our home.
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And therefore we are in despair
How to order our affair
Because, wherever we have sought,
Our minds were utterly distraught.
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When shall it come to pass, ah when,
That suddenly, beyond our ken,
We shall succeed to rend this veil
That hath our whole affair conceal?
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What veil so ever after this
Apparent to our vision is,
With the flame of knowledge true
We shall consume it through and through.
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Where at the first in that far place
We come to the world of space,
Our soul by travail in the end
To that perfection shall ascend.
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And so shall ‘Attar Shattered be
And, rapt in sudden ecstasy,
Soar to godly vision, even
Beyond the veils of earth and heaven.
Translated by A. J. Arberry
Tags: Fariduddin Attar, mystic, mystical, Persian, Poetry, sufi, Sufism, veil