Muntakhab al-tawarikh 210: Opening Couplet of the Second Ode.
Muntakhabu-t-tawārīkh (Ranking, Lowe, Haig) 210
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Opening Couplet of the Second Ode.
210.1
“When the mirror is filled with roses, the reflection of the loved one’s face, The parrot who looks therein becomes a nightingale.” The following is an enigma on the name of God : — “Nobody has full knowledge of His essence, Shorn eternity without beginning has He been, He is limitless.” And the following is another enigma on the name of the prophet — “Since I journeyed along the road of the holy law, My path has been divided from that of Muhammad the prophet." He was the author of a well known diwan and has also written a masnawi which he has entitled Gul Afshan, a reply to the Bustan of Sa'di, corresponding with it rhyme for rhyme. Its opening couplet is — “To the world’s Creator be praises from the soul To the soul’s Creator a hundred worlds of praise.” The following is another couplet by him — “My cruel darling has killed thousands with her coquetries, My spoilt darling still continues her coquetries.” “The rain of misfortune has broken on my grief stricken body, What misfortune is there that the heavens have not rained on my head?” “No narcissus blooms in the place of my pilgrimage, My eyes are whitened with watching for thee.” The following couplet was written by him on a Hindu youth, a Jogi — “Thy flame-coloured face shines above the ashes on thy body like the lotus, Or it may be that thy head-cloth has been reduced to ashes by thy resplendent face.”
210.2
But the idea developed in this couplet very much resembles that which is the motive of the following couplet by Mulla Fasih of Kabul: — “It is not the burning fever of separation from thee which has induced me to choose the dust for a bed, Rather is it that my bed has been burnt to ashes by the ardent fever which possesses me, sick with my longing for thee.” When Mulla Qasim was told that most of his poetical ideas were stolen from others, he used to reply, “I have never asked you to believe that my poems were wholly my own. If they please you not, take a pen-knife, and erase them from the copies of my divan.” He has an excellent qasidah on the astrolabe, which runs on into an encomium on the late emperor, Humayun. His copiousness of diction is well exemplified therein. When Kh’aja Mu'azzam Khan, notwithstanding his lameness, came to visit Mulla Qasim-i-Kahi in his sickness, the Mulla composed the following extempore ode on the event, setting it to music at the same time: — “Thou did’st halt in affected disdain one pace from the face of my longing, May thy foot never pain thee more, my graceful cypress! Howmuchsoever I recounted, in the night of separation, the joys of thy presence, The tale of my long-drawn-out grief was not lessened.”
210.3
One day the Mulla was walking in the emperor’s garden, on the far side of the Jamna, when the poet Subuhi met him, and as soon as he saw him said, “Sir, have you heard that that man who accepted Islam late in life has died in Gujarat?” The Kahi replied, “May you be spared!” When the imperial army marched to Gujarat Mulla Ghazali accompanied it in the early stages of the journey. It so happened that a false report of the death of Mulla Qasim-i-Kahi was spread abroad, and when Ghazali heard it he composed the following chronogram which is, although far-fetched and based on a false rumour, not without elegance: ‘The wretched Kahi left the world. Should you wish to know the date of his death, Know that since he could not help but go he was constrained to go, And ‘Qasim-i-Kahi went from the world.’’ But before this lying tale became a fact Mulla Qasim-i-Kahi was enabled to take his revenge by composing a chronogram on the death of Ghazali, and a second one also, as full retribution. These have already been cited. But “What can a liar tell, but a lie?” Although the following couplet is true: “I have seen poets, within my experience, Without followers, without offspring, and without any successful issue of their labours,”
210.4
and all the poets of the present age together, both small and great, are, with the exception of three or four aged men, adherents of the Jaurati and Haidari sects, yet these two whom I have just mentioned were the guides and leaders of all the rest and left the heritage of their baseness to their followers and dependants, dividing it among them in due proportion to their natural fitness. and ability of each one to avail himself of it, and with due regard to the claims which each had acquired by former companionship with them. When I regard this vile gang I am oppressed by the fear that the poets of old (may God protect us from them !) may perhaps have resembled them. God forbid that it should have been so ! Yet the experience of ages tells us that worldly people in each particular period follow closely in one another’s footsteps and that there are no radical differences of disposition among them.