Home | February '99 Index

Date: 22-Feb-99

We achieved a significant landmark on 21st 
February by adding the 1000th poem to the archive. 
Another major highlight is the addition of a search 
engine to the site, which allows text based searches. 
For those who may be unaware of the archive, it is 
located at http://www.geocities.com/~fhnaqvi/

Yes, we do have a new URL. However, you 
can still access the site using the old one.

In celebration of achieving this milestone, we 
thought of introducing our subscibers to a 
different Urdu poetry form - the Rubayi. Most 
of you will be familiar with the most famous 
collection of rubaayis - The Rubaiyat of Omar 
Khayyam. Numerous translations of this famous 
book are freely available at most book stores.

Before we present some rubayis for your reading 
pleasure, I would like to give a brief history of what 
is a rubayi. I beg the indulgence of the more 
knowledgeable of our readers but it is important to 
understand what constitutes a rubayi. For those 
who are interested, a brief description of the various 
forms of Urdu poetry is available at 

http://www.geocities.com/~fhnaqvi/define.html

The word "rubayi" (ru-baa-ee) has Arabic origins 
and is derived from the word "arbaa" meaning 
four. This is indicative of the structure of a rubayi. 
A rubayi is an independent 4 line poem rhyming 
a,a,b,a. K.C.Kanda in his book 'Masterpieces of 
Urdu Rubaiyat' further clarifies that "each line of 
the quatrain conforms to a specific poetic metre 
called the hazaj, consisting of four metrical units, 
represented in prosodic terms by the Persian 
notation: mufailun, mufailun, mufailun, mufailun."  
There are 24 variants of this basic 'metre'. But 
most stick to the basic metre.

More about the rubayi in later posts. Today we 
present an assorted collection of Rubayis by 
various poets.

We start with a famous rubayi from Ghalib:

mushkil hai zabas kalaam mera ai dil 
sun sun ke ise suKhanvaraa.N-e-kaamil 
aasaan kahane ki karate hai.n faramaaish 
goim mushkil va gar naa goim mushkil 

A rough translation:

O heart! my writings are hard to grasp
The connoisseurs of art, on hearing it
Plead with me to write in a simpler style
It is difficult if I write and difficult if I don't

A sample of Meer's mastery:

jin jin ko thaa ye ishq kaa aazaar mar gaye
aksar hamaare saath ke biimaar mar gaye
sad kaaravaan-e-vafaa hai ko_ii puuchhataa nahii.n
goyaa mitaa-e-dil ke Kharidaar mar gaye

Those who suffered from the ague of love are dead
Most of my fellow patients have gone to their grave
Numerous hawkers of faithful love exhibit their wares
It is as if the heart has no buyer in the world 


In the field of rubayis, Khwaja Mir Dard is ranked 
higher than Meer Taqi Meer or Ghalib. He was 
mostly concerned with mystic and moral themes. 
Here is a rubayi by him:

Gam khaate hai.n aur aa.Nsuu roz piite hai.n
din raat hame.n ajab tarah biite hai.n
guzare hai jo kuchh ke guzare hai, kyaa kahiye
par tuhfagii ye ke ab talak jiite hai.n

Daily we drink our tears and survive on our sorrow
Strange is the way we spend our nights and days
What we go through is hard to describe
What is surprising, is that we are still alive


More about the rubayi and its masters in our next 
Mehfil-e-Gazal post.