bah qadr-e ;hauslah-e ((ishq jalvah-rezii hai
vagarnah ;xaanah-e aa))iinah kii fa.zaa ma((luum
1) according to the capacity/spirit of passion is the {glory/appearance}-scattering
2) otherwise, the width/expanse of the mirror-house {is / would have been}-- 'known' [to be nothing]
;hauslah : 'Stomach, maw; crop, craw; (fig.) capacity; desire, ambition; resolution; spirit, courage'. (Platts p.482)
fa.zaa : 'Width, spaciousness, openness, extensiveness (of ground, &c.); an open area, a court, a yard; a spacious tract, a wide expanse of land, a plain'. (Platts p.782)
SETS == A,B; VARNAH
JALVAH: {7,4}
MIRROR: {8,3}
Raza p. 149; Raza p. 150. S. R. Faruqi's choices. Ghalib originally composed a ghazal of seven verses, from which he chose one for publication in his divan. In the original seven-verse ghazal, this verse was the second one.
The first line gives us a very general maxim about passion and the manifestation of glory/appearance; the second line tells us that 'otherwise' the expansiveness of a mirror chamber-- well, it's (idiomatically) 'known', meaning known to be nothing; for more on this see {4,3}. For more on the nature of mirror-chambers, see {10,5}.
But it's that 'otherwise' that really fuels the verse. First of all, it can be grammatically either in the present tense ('is') or in the contrafactual ('would have been'). Obviously, to say that the mirror-chamber's expanse 'is' nothing, or that it 'would have been' nothing, makes a considerable interpretive difference.
But then the further question arises: what does the 'otherwise' apply to? Presumably to something in the first line-- but what exactly? Are we to envision a contrasted situation in which the capacity/spirit is (or might have been) lacking? Or the passion? Or the glory/appearance? Or the scattering?
And then, it's also unclear whose passion is at issue-- the mirror's, or the mirror-chamber's (as Gyan Chand explains), or that of the lover himself (human passion itself might be behind all divine manifestations in the world; or human passion might be the inducement that causes God to display glory/appearance). And is the 'mirror-chamber' the world itself, and the glory/appearance the light that causes it to sparkle? Or is it just a mirror-chamber, invoked as a metaphor?
In short, with all these mix-and-match permutations, this is another enjoyably open-ended 'put it together yourself' verse.
Gyan Chand:
The way passion, according to its capacity/spirit, rains down glory/appearance-- in comparison, the extent of the depth and breadth of a mirror-house is nothing at all. But since in the mirror is great capacity/spirit for passion-- that is, it wants continuously to keep beholding the beloved-- the beloved too rains down glory/appearance on it. For the beloved to come before the mirror is the mirror's 'glory/appearance scattering'. (251)