Ghazal 173, Verse 10

Nazm:

The secret that has made the breast into a fire-temple-- if it would become manifest, then what places would it not set on fire? (194)

Bekhud Dihlavi:

He says, from the heat of a hidden secret my breast has become a fire-temple. If that secret would become manifest, then no telling where fires will be started. (250)

Bekhud Mohani:

The secret of love, from the hiding of which the heart is becoming a fire-temple-- if it would become manifest, then what would happen? In the whole world a fire would be seen leaping up. (340)

FWP:

SETS == EXCLAMATION
RELIGIONS: {60,2}
SOUND EFFECTS: {26,7}

The idea of the lover's burning, secret passion as a fire is a fundamental metaphor of the ghazal world; but to call his breast a fire-temple is a new twist, and plays very cleverly with several theological possibilities. First, only Zoroastrians are allowed to tend and visit the sacred fire, so that the fire-temple too, like the lover's breast, is a private place, the repository of a powerful mystery/secret that must not be allowed to emerge. Second, to Zoroastrians fire is pure, and must not be polluted by the touch of certain ritually defiled things, so it must be kept away from the many contaminants of the outer world, the way the lover too must shelter his passion from the 'people of the world'. Third, a fire-temple is where the initiated go to worship and commune with the fire, and humbly learn its mysteries; which is just how the lover treats his passion.

The second line, inshaa))iyah of course, is a vigorous exclamation of dismay, of foreboding-- so energetic that it's easy to lose sight of how completely unspecific it really is. The commentators are sure that the lover's fear is that the fire in the breast, if released, would become a conflagration that would consume the world. Yet that's only one possible foreboding; there are plenty of others with fully as much claim on our attention:

=the fire/mystery is now safely controlled-- it might burst its bonds and become destructive (as the commentators fear)
=the fire/mystery is now secret-- it might become public knowledge
=the fire/mystery is now pure-- it might be rendered impure
=the fire/mystery is now mystical or transcendant-- it might become merely physical
=the fire/mystery is now in the hands of reverent initiates-- it might become available to the ignorant and the exploitative

And just to add to the complexity, is it the fire-temple, the breast, or the mystery/secret that is in danger of becoming manifest? The grammar would permit any of them to fill that role. And when the lover exclaims in dismay at the prospect of manifestation, is he worried about the effects on one of those three entities, or on himself, or on the world at large?

There are also the sound effects of juxtaposing ma((ri.z and i:zhaar -- especially after the first line has given us miraa raaz . Although they all look quite different on the page, to the ear they sound almost like transpositions of each other.

Other, more ambiguous uses of aatish-kadah : {38,7}; {91,8}.