GHALIB CAME TO UPNISHADS THROUGH HIS GURU BEDIL

     

GHALIB  CAME TO UPNISHADS THROUGH HIS  GURU  BEDIL..

                                           

                                

( Photo of Bedil's  sculpture in Tajikistan a part of the then Soviet Cetral Asia )

Hai Saadagi e zehan Tamanaa e tamaasha

Jaae ke Assad Rang e chaman Baakhtani hai

( Ghalib )

Meaning:-

“ The desire to be known and noticed ,

What Innocence , Assad !

Even the garden’s bloom is transitory

and destined to vanish.”

And see what the Upnishads say:-

“ What do you seek in this transitory world ?

Seek to know him from whom all beings are born;

In whom ,

Being born, They live ;

And to whom they return at death,

He is Brahman .”

( Taittriya Upnishad )

I can quote many couplets of Ghalib that bear influence of Upnishadic thought . All this came to him from Persian poet Abdul Qadir  Bedil.Ghalib  has acknowledged the guiding role that Bedil’s poetry played for him. He says this :-

(Mujhe raah-i-sukhan mein khauf-i-gumraahi nahin Ghalib

A’saa-i-Khizr-i-sehra-i-sukhan hai khaama Bedil ka.)

(I do not fear going astray while I tramp the desert of poetry since Bedil’s pen serves as if it were Khizr’s walking stick, i.e. support and guidance)

Ghalib has admitted how difficult it was to emulate Bedil’s poetic style, as he says:

Tarz-i-Bedil mein rekhta likhna

sadullah Khan Qayamat hai

(To write Urdu ghazal in Bedil’s style is nothing short of the Day of Judgement, i.e. extremely trying and stressful)

Ghalib remained under the  influence of Bedil throughout his life. As for Bedil,  along with his Islamic thought, he also delved deep into ancient Indian wisdom to create  a synthesis of the two. It was for this reason that while Bedil grew incomprehensible for others, he became meaningful for Ghalib and served as a source of inspiration for him.Bedil had a deep study of Yog Vashita and Upnishads . He had also studied Buddhism. Abdul Qadir ‘Bedil’ was born in 1644 into a Sunni Muslim family of Central Asian Turkic origin in the province of Bihar, in North India.

And Dr Kashi Nath Pandita ,the  noted Persian scholar , translator and historian did his doctorate from Tehran University  on Bedil's Persian poetry known as Sabak e  Hindi. His teacher was none other than the liberal scholar cum linguist of Tehran University Prof .Zabiollah Safa. Dr Safa was an authority on Bedil.

Bedil sokhanat nist joz insha-ye tahayyur

ku ayina ta safha-ye divan-e to bashad

( Bedil, your poetry’s nothing but the creation of astonishment.

Show me a mirror that aspires to a page of your Divan.)

( Avtar Mota )

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