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DO WE REALLY NEED AN INTRODUCTION?
== You probably came to this site through my main
website, and you've probably looked at the Ghalib
site already, so perhaps I don't need to say much by way of a general
introduction. If you don't know much about the classical Urdu ghazal,
please do start with the Ghalib site! It will be much better as a jumping-off
point than this one.
'A GARDEN OF KASHMIR'
== In the verse from which the name of this project
is taken, I translate gulshan-e kashmiir as 'a
garden of Kashmir'. S. R. Faruqi would prefer (August 2003) 'the garden
that is Kashmir', since that would provide 'extra meaning' (by suggesting
size, elaboration, and the combination of natural and man-made qualities)
and would also correspond better to normal Urdu i.zaafat
usage in cases like this. I agree with him that an equational reading
would be the normal, least-marked usage in Urdu, but my reading is also
grammatically sound. After all, Kashmir not only 'is' a garden, but
'has' gardens too (chief among them Jahangir's famous Shalimar Bagh),
and the i.zaafat construction is easily multivalent
enough to permit both readings. My reading also makes for a more evocative
title, I think. Does it mean a garden that is located in Kashmir? A
garden of a special type characteristic of Kashmir (with all the qualities
mentioned by Faruqi)? A metaphorical garden that evokes Kashmir in some
crucial way? In short, I hope the title can work somewhat the way 'a
desertful of roses' does.
PRESENTING MIR'S GHAZALS ==
It's a very different problem from that posed by Ghalib. In the case
of Ghalib, we have a small divan of 234 ghazals, handpicked and edited
by the poet himself, discussed obsessively by many dozens of commentators
for well over a century.
In Mir's case we have a huge body of primary-source material-- six
divans [diivaan], totaling something like 1,916
ghazals-- from which no shorter selection was ever made by the poet
himself. And though we have many later anthologies or selections [inti;xaab],
we have no commentarial tradition at all. The only serious commentary
that exists, as far as I know, is Shamsur Rahman Faruqi's four-volume
one, which itself is based only on his own selection of the best of
the poetry. This invaluable work is going to be the foundation of the
commentarial part of this project. In fact this whole 'garden of Kashmir' project is dedicated to Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, my ustad and dear friend of thirty years' standing, without whom it could never have taken shape at all.
Fortunately, some pages on the Ghalib site will not need to be replicated.
In particular, the overview page called *About
the Genre* (as it develops over time), and the page on *Transliteration*,
will serve for both sites. *Urdu
Meter: A Practical Handbook* will be even more valuable for Mir,
since he's far more metrically adventurous than Ghalib. The 'Names'
and 'Terms' indices for the two poets will be linked, with the Ghalib
ones treated as primary.
In general, the Mir commentary is going to assume that the reader already
has some background-- the kind of background one would get from reading
the Ghalib commentary. Fewer names and terms in individual verses
will be hyperlinked to the indices, and more references will be left
unexplained. The basic reason for this practice is that the vastly greater
amount of poetry means that the structure of the site has to be more
complex, and moving up and down the layers is more cumbersome, so making
hyperlinks will be more time-consuming. Moreover, since I'd never live
long enough to do the whole kulliyaat , there
can't be even the hope of any kind of systematic indexing of things.
So I've decided to be more free-form in dealing with Mir than with
Ghalib. I'll translate large chunks of Faruqi's
commentary, mostly quite literally but once in a while with a bit
of flexibility. For example, I'll make more paragraph breaks than he does in the Urdu. And I'll generally omit the texts of the Persian verses he often supplies, and will confine myself to retranslating his translations.
The title of his commentary, shi((r-e shor-angez , comes from {1543,6}:
har varaq har .saf;he me;N ik shi((r-e shor-angez hai
((ar.sah-e ma;hshar
hai ((aar.sah mere bhii diivaan kaa
[in every page, every line, is a single/particular/unique/excellent tumult-creating verse
the scope of Doomsday is the scope of even/also my divan]
After translating from this commentary, I'll then add my own thoughts, and explain or discuss
various terms and concepts as the spirit moves me. Remember-- if you
don't understand something, look at the Ghalib website for many kinds
of introductory help that will NOT be replicated in the case of Mir.
Other decisions and policies I will have to make as I go along, and
I'll report them here.
Sometimes Faruqi selects for commentary a number of verses from a single ghazal, and sometimes just a few, or a single one. My policy is that when at least half of the verses in a ghazal have been selected, I will present the text of the whole ghazal. Otherwise I'll present only the selected verses. It would certainly be wonderful to present all Mir's ghazals on line, and eventually it will surely happen; but typing lots of them in by hand is not a good use of my time.
If you wonder why so many examples of traditional North Indian zardozi embroidery are embedded in the site, it's because these visual appetizers are a kind of introductory celebration of the poetry. (I could actually make quite a case about their resemblance to ghazals, but for the moment I'll refrain.) They also help me to refresh and delight myself while doing this very hard work.
I hope you too will enjoy them.
On textual problems: {745,4}; {757,1}; {1327,5}; {1341,5}; {1791,3}
THE GHAZAL INDEX ITSELF
== There has never been anything like a complete, well-organized
index of all Mir's ghazals. So one of the purposes of this project is to provide one. The *Ghazal Index*
page for Mir is far more complicated, but apart from that, the two kinds
of indices that are provided are the same as for Ghalib.
The indices on this site can thus help you find out whether a ghazal
ascribed to Mir is actually his, according to the best available scholarship.
And if it is, you'll have a bit of background information on it (meter,
divan number, etc.), and you'll easily be able to locate it by number
in the best current text.
For Mir far more than for Ghalib, a 'finding tool' is itself a real
contribution. In the past, comparative study of Mir's similar ghazals,
and comparison of his verses with relevant ones by Ghalib and other
poets, has been possible only for the most serious specialists. Now,
that kind of study will be within the reach of interested people who
have much less background.
In fact, the whole ghazal tradition is not attuned to indices; it's
sometimes even hostile to them. It favors memorization, oral recitation
and discussion, deep intimacy with a smaller number of poets, rather
than efficient, rationalized access to a large number of texts. In particular,
the radiif (and qaafiyah
) index of Mir's poetry goes way beyond anything that has ever existed
before, toward providing access for people who don't already know the
poetry well. This democratization of access is something that I as a
teacher value greatly. It's also a response to both new constraints
(the supply of traditionally-educated ahl-e zabaan
has virtually dried up) and new opportunities (who could have imagined
the wonders of the internet as a knowledge-sharing tool?).
The FIRST STAGE of the project thus consisted of indexing all 1,916 ghazals
by first verse in two different ways, and providing a little basic information
about each ghazal (number of verses; meter;
which verses have been included in Shi'r-e
shor-angez). This work is now complete, in a DRAFT form with no
doubt a number of errors, most of which will be corrected as I go along.
WORK IN PROGRESS:
=on 'iham': {178,1}
=on problems of 'mood' or 'tone': {724,2}
=an excellent credo: {736,1}
=on 'meaning': {770,7}
=on terminology and its discontents: {1579,3}
METER ==
introduce Mir meter page
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
== I began designing this site in the spring of 2003,
and starting to think of how it could develop; it first went on line
in early July 2003. When I got hold of the new gold-standard kulliyaat
in fall 2003, the indexing could begin in earnest. Making these two indices was a really horrible ordeal combining boredom and nuktah-chiinii in the most annoying way imaginable. The only thing that kept me going was stubbornness, and the realization that half an index was no use-- and how could I stand to waste all that work? I'm passionately glad it's over,
as of January 7, 2006. I worked
on it mostly while visiting my mother in Little Rock, Arkansas, and
it was her patience, love, and cheerful support that made it (barely)
endurable.
The commentary part began on February 2, 2007. After doing only a handful of ghazals, however, I stopped work. This was partly because Ghalib's unpublished ghazals were calling out to me; but I was also intimidated by the difficulty and sheer scale of the Mir project. Only now, on May 12, 2010, am I resuming work on the commentary for real.
For the project I'm using CSS
style sheets developed by my friend and software-designer Gary Tubb,
and relying on the same script-display program created by Sean Pue for
the Ghalib site. I'm altogether grateful to them both, for making me
such magnificent tools. Obviously this project would be nowhere without
the fundamental work of Shamsur Rahman Faruqi, and his ongoing help
and observations are a precious resource. Peter Hook generously helps me out with linguistic problems. Pasha Mohamad Khan and Owen Cornwall provide advice and encouragement. Zahra Sabri and Owais Syed have helped me correct some errors. I am also grateful as always to Columbia
University, my academic home and the home of this project.
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