MIRZA GHALIB, ADI SHANKARA,AND THE LIGHT OF UPANISHADS

                                    

Mirza Ghalib, Adi Shankra And Upanishads 

It is well-established that Ghalib was deeply influenced by the Persian poet Mirza Abdul Qadir Bedil of the Sabk-e-Hindi tradition. Bedil studied ancient Indian philosophers extensively; the influence of the Buddhist philosopher Nagarjuna is evident in his poetry. Bedil was also influenced by the Advaita philosophy of Adi Shankara. This may well explain the Vedantic undertones discernible in Ghalib’s verse.

Did Ghalib read Dara Shikoh’s Persian translation of the Upanishads? There is no firm evidence. Yet Dara Shikoh, a devoted seeker of spiritual unity, commissioned the translation of fifty-two Upanishads into Persian . He also arranged Persian translations of the Bhagavad Gita and the Yoga Vasistha. In his foreword to the Persian  translation of the Upanishads , Dara wrote that the reader who studies this text  sincerely, abandoning prejudice, shall become fearless, imperishable, and eternally liberated. It is through Dara's translation that Upanishads reached the West . They were translated into French and Latin from  Persian. 

Dara Shikoh (1615-1659), in 1657  assembled Varanasi Pandits in Delhi and  got translated the Upanishads from Sanskrit to Persian as Sirr-i-Akbar, The Great Secret. In 1775 a copy reached French orientalist Anquetil-Duperron, who rendered it from Persian into Latin/French as Oupnek'hat (1801-02). This translation of a translation first introduced Vedanta to Europe, profoundly influencing Schopenhauer, who called Upanishads solace of his life and death.

 Ghalib endures as a poet of universal humanism, one whose art refuses sectarian delimitation. His conception of love, while steeped in sensuality, is ultimately sublimated into idealism and self-surrender. It is this duality that gives his verse its power ;  it emancipates reason while simultaneously making its home in the heart. Underlying it all is a profoundly inquisitive temperament, a mind given to metaphysical and cosmic questioning.

"Hasti ke mat fareb mein aa jaiyo Asad

Aalam tamaam halqa e daam e khayal hai"

(O Asad do not be deceived by existence

The entire world is but the loop of the snare of thought)

Commentary

This couplet of Mirza Ghalib presents in poetic form the central metaphysical insight of the Upanishads and Adi Shankara. The key term is "Hasti " which in this context signifies empirical existence that appears as independent and substantial. Ghalib warns the self not to be deluded by its apparent reality.

In the Upanishadic vision, this corresponds to the distinction between Brahman and Jagat. The Chandogya Upanishad declares "sarvam khalv idam brahma" , all this indeed is Brahman, and the Brihadaranyaka states that there is no duality. The world perceived as separate is not denied as an experience but its claim to ultimate reality is negated. Shankara formalised this as the doctrine of two levels of truth. "Paramarthika satya"  is the absolute truth of nondual Brahman, which alone is real. "Vyavaharika satya " is the transactional truth of the world, which is empirically experienced but not ultimately real.

Shankara calls this appearance "Maya" . In his Vivekachudamani and in his commentaries on the Brahma Sutras, Maya is not mere nothingness but an indescribable power of appearance that projects multiplicity upon the nondual. Ghalib's phrase" halqa e daam e khayal"  captures this with remarkable precision. Khayal is the equivalent of vikalpa or kalpana in Vedanta, the conceptualising activity of the mind. The world, "aalam" , is not a thing external to consciousness but a circle, "halqa" , formed by thought itself. The snare, "daam" , is not laid by the world for the self. The self lays the snare through its own imaginative construction and then becomes bound by it.

Thus the warning" mat fareb mein aa jaiyo"  corresponds to Shankara's constant exhortation to Viveka, discrimination between the real and the apparently real. The self that knows itself as Atman, identical with Brahman, ceases to mistake the loop of thought for existence itself.

The term "Hasti" denotes not mere life but that which appears to be, the empirical sense that a world stands apart from consciousness and possesses its own substance. The poet addresses himself by his early pen name Asad and issues a warning against ontological confusion. The Upanishadic root is in Chandogya Upanishad:

"Sarvam khalv idam brahma tajjalan iti shanta upasita"

(All this indeed is Brahman. From It all comes, in It all dissolves, by It all lives.)

And Brihadaranyaka Upanishad:

"Yatra hi dvaitam iva bhavati tad itara itaram pashyati, yatra tv asya sarvam atmaivabhut tat kena kam pashyet"

(Where there is duality as it were, there one sees another. But where all has become the Self alone, by what and whom should one see.)

Adi Shankara systematises this intuition. In Brahma Jnanavali Mala verse 20 and in Vivekachudamani he states:

"Brahma satyam jagan mithya jivo brahmaiva na parah"

(Brahman alone is real, the world is appearance only, the individual self is none other than Brahman itself.)

At the level of "Paramartha" , the absolute, only Brahman which is pure consciousness without attributes is satyam. At the level of "Vyavahara" , the everyday order, the world appears and is functional yet it is "mithya" , neither absolutely real nor simply nonexistent. Shankara explains this through "Maya"and "Adhyasa", the natural tendency to superimpose what is seen upon what truly is.

Maya is not a thing but the inexplicable power by which the formless appears as formed. This is precisely what Ghalib names "khayal". Khayal in his usage is not idle fancy but the active constitutive power of mind that projects, divides and names. The phrase "halqa e daam e khayal" suggests a circular trap. The circle is important. Thought creates the world and the world then validates thought, so consciousness moves in a loop.

Therefore "fareb" or deception does not come from outside. Existence does not deceive. The mind deceives itself by taking its own projection for an independent reality. Liberation in Shankara is not arrival at a new place but recognition through "Viveka"  and "Jnana" that Atman is ever free of the loop. In that recognition the snare is seen to be made of nothing but thought and the thought itself is seen to have no locus except Brahman. Ghalib thus reaches through poetry the same ground that Adi Shankara reaches through dialectic.

( Avtar Mota )

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