hayuulaa : 'Matter; first principle (of everything material); — first sketch (of a picture, &c.); — appearance'. (Platts p.1246)
taqriir : 'Speaking, discoursing; relating; explaining; confirming; speech, discourse, statement, declaration, assertion, relation, recital, narrative, account, detail; exposition; avowal, confession; ascertainment; confirmation
fikr : 'Thought, consideration, reflection; deliberation, opinion, notion, idea, imagination, conceit; counsel, advice; care, concern, solicitude, anxiety, grief, sorrow'. (Platts p.783)
giribaanii : 'A kind of loose vest; a leathern braid or trimming sewed to the collar of a coat'. (Steingass p.1086)
hayuulaa = The very original; that is, the matter from which something was made. do-((aalam = Extremely much; here this is only an expression of amount. do-((aalam .suurat-e taqriir = Extremely much speech. garebaanii = A garment like a vest or waistcoat [vaaski;T] that has no sleeves of skirt, and that is worn over a robe [qabaa] for adornment.
The essence/origin of speech is silence, because silence exists before speech. The meaning of the verse is, 'Oh Asad, I am the essence/origin of an extreme amount of speech-- that is, I have the skill/ability. An excess of thought has given me the 'collaring' of silence-- that is I have established silence as a means for adornment for myself. Otherwise, when I would set out to speak then I would keep on speaking. Since the place of speech is the collar and the vest, he has called silence 'collaring'.
SETS
CLOTHING/NAKEDNESS: {3,5}
SPEAKING: {14,4}
For more on Ghalib's unpublished verses, see the discussion in {4,8x}. See also the overview index.
On do-((aalam expressions, see {18,2}.
Asad claims to be the ultimate speaker, the source and essence of speech in the two worlds. But 'thought' has confided to him the garebaanii of silence. The striking word garebaanii , placed as it is in the emphatic closural position, is obviously the heart of the verse. But what does it mean? Gyan Chand would have it refer to a decorative sleeveless vest (in British English, a waistcoat); he is backed up by Steingass (see the definition above). On this reading, the peerless speaker Asad has been entrusted by his 'thought' with an additional ornament: a decorative over-vest of 'silence'.
But Zamin takes an entirely different tack (though he doesn't explain it very clearly): he sees the reference to a 'collar' as suggesting struggle or grappling. For indeed that's the idiomatic direction in Urdu: girebaan paka;Rnaa means 'To lay hold of the collar (of); to seize by the neck'; girebaan-giir is 'Seizing by (or (one who seizes by) the collar; — an accuser, a prosecutor, plaintiff, complainant' (Platts p.907). In discussing {183,1}, Nazm uses dast-o-garebaan , 'hand and collar', to describe a tightly interlocked cluster of words. But above all, the ghazal world is full of chaak-e garebaa;N , as the mad lover rips open the (slit) collar of his kurta (for discussion of this extremely common motif, see {17,9}).
Thus when we see the abstract noun garebaanii -- 'collar-ness'? 'collaring'?-- we might well be inclined to think of struggle, of grappling and seizure. (Along the same lines, English has 'The watchman collared the thief'.) On this reading, the second line suggests that what 'thought' has confided to Asad is the obligation to grapple with silence, to 'lay hold of' silence, to seize it by the collar and overcome it. And isn't this exactly what any 'speaker' must do?
Zamin:
The confiding of the 'collaring' of silence can mean that we would always remain fallen, with our hands gripping the neck of silence. This service was assigned by 'thought' and 'speech'. The gist is that thought and speech always remain fallen, heads in their collars [with shame]. But what kind of silence is this, that through this essence/origin the speech of the worlds takes shape?
== Zamin, p. 370