S. R. Faruqi:

From the introduction to SSA, volume 1, pp. 64-65. [Presented here for convenience:]

To be 'mounted on the horse of the wind' means 'to be very proud/arrogant'. Mir has turned the idiom back again into a metaphor, because in the present verse the meaning of this idiom is also that the dwellers in this garden were in great haste. The meaning of saakin is 'dweller', but 'one who has paused' is also called a saakin . In this way the words saakin and savaar -- and especially that savaar who would be riding on the horse of the wind-- create the pleasure of a paradox ( saakin savaar ).

In saakin with the meaning of 'dweller' there's also a sarcastic tension, because if those people are declared to be 'dwellers', 'pausers', then how did they disappear so quickly? Another aspect of the ironic tension is that those people were after all 'dwellers', but they were strange 'dwellers' who were mounted on the horse of the wind.

Among Farhad, Shirin, and Khusrau the affinity is obvious. But there's also an affinity among 'horse', Shirin, and 'rose-colored', because Shirin's horse was named 'Rose-colored' [gul-guu;N]. The affinity between 'garden' and 'rose-colored' is obvious. Between Khusrau and 'rose-colored' there's also an affinity, because in the king's hand a flower is usually shown, as a symbol of dewiness and freshness and refinement. On the king's face there's also the redness/ruddiness of prestige and dignity, so that 'rose-colored' is suitable in that way too.

But putting Farhad and Shirin on one side, and Khusrau on the other, also has a sarcastic point. 'Now where are Farhad and Shirin?'-- that is, wherever Farhad and Shirin are, they are together. 'Where is rose-colored Khusrau?'-- that is, Khusrau is separated from them. Because Farhad and Shirin have been versified in one grammatical clause, and rose-colored Khusrau in another, this new aspect of the meaning has been created.

FWP:

SETS
MOTIFS
NAMES == FARHAD; KHUSRAU; SHIRIN
TERMS == AFFINITY; CONNECTION; IDIOM; PARADOX

What is the 'connection' between the two lines? There are several possibilities:

=Where are Farhad, Shirin, and Khusrau now? Those three famous romantic figures of the past, in all their beauty and pride, riding the 'horse of wind', left the garden of this world so quickly!

=The 'dwellers in that garden' were so arrogant that they felt that compared to their own beauty and power, Farhad, Shirin, and Khusrau were nothing.

=The dwellers in that garden rode the 'horse of wind' so swiftly that they have already vanished from view. Now if one asks about their whereabouts, the answer can only be a poetic one: they've gone wherever Farhad, Shirin, and Khusrau have gone. (This reading evokes 'But where are the snows of yester-year?' and other examples of the 'ubi sunt' genre.)

The idiomatic kahaa;N yih kahaa;N vuh structure is used to refer to utterly incommensurable things, things that cannot even be mentioned in the same breath; see {1176,5} for an example. But in the present verse, not only is the word order altered, but also the second line begins with ab , which nullifies the idiom, since if it were being invoked then time would be irrelevant.

For another creative use of the 'horse of wind' idiom, see

{1091,4}.