کاینجا = که اینجا | that here |
خندی کاینجا | you laugh, [wondering / saying] here...(/ke/ here performs the function of quotations marks without there being an explicit verb "to say" or "to wonder") |
ز چه می‌گرید = از چه می‌گرید | from what / why does he/she/it cry? |
گریند بر آن دیده کاینجا نشود گریان | They weep for that eye/those eyes that do(es) not weep here. (In line 7, /bar ... geristan/ may mean both literally "to cry tears upon, i.e., into" or "to cry for, i.e., for the sake of". Here in line 17, however, the literal meaning does not work. Pay attention to the various uses of /bar/ in this work.) |
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زال | albino; aged person with white hair, old
man, old woman |
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پیرزن = زنِ پیر | old woman |
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حجره | room, chamber, pronunciation: hojre |
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نی | no, not, classical, literary style, pronunciation: /ni/ |
نی حجره‌ٔ تنگ این کمتر ز تنور آن | The small cottage of this one [the former, at Madāen] is no less [significant] than the oven of the other one [the latter, at Kufah]. /in/ and /ān/ used to mean 'the former' and 'the latter'. |
تنور | The "oven" refers to Koran, Ch. 11:40, Hud,
"Noah": حَتَّىٰ إِذَا جَاءَ أَمْرُنَا وَفَارَ
التَّنُّورُ till when Our Command came and the oven gushed forth water like fountains from the earth اين وضع همچنان ادامه يافت تا آن زمان كه فرمان ما فرا رسيد، و تنور جوشيدن گرفت; Source |
دانی چه | You know what? |
برابر | face-to-face, opposite, juxtaposed, on the same level; equal |
برابر نه < برابر نهادن | (you) place [them] face-to-face (imperative) < to place face-to-face |
سینه | chest, breast |
تنور | earthen oven, oven built into the ground |
طوفان | storm |
از سینه تنوری کن | make an oven out of your chest |
وز دیده طلب طوفان = و از دیده طلب طوفان | and from your eye, request a flood |
طلب طوفان = یک طوفان را طلب کن | request a flood |
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نقش | impression, sketch, picture |
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رخ | face; (in chess: castle, rook), pronunciation: rokh |
مردم | people, the populous, the public |
در او | the door of it, its door(s), its gate |
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بودی = می‌بود | it was, it used to be, it would be. The poetic, classical suffix -i added to verbs is equivalent to functions of the contemporary imperfect tense. This -i is also sometimes added just to supply an extra syllable for the poetic meter. |
دیوار | wall |
نگارستان | picture gallery, painter's atelier. The suffix -stān denotes 'place'. |
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شه = شاه | king; shah is a poetical shortened form of shāh |
شهان = شاهان = شاه‌ها | kings |
از شهان بودی... | out of the kings, i.e., from among the [other] kings were servant so-and-so, and domestic so-and-so, meaning "so majestic was this court, that other kings, e.g., the two named in the second part, were mere servants there." |
کو را ز شهان بودی = که او را از شهان می‌بود... | that to it, in the way of kings were, which had among its kings [the following]... |
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دیلم | Daylam, a place in northern Iran; slave, servant, domestic |
ملک | king |
بابل | Babylon |
هندو | Hindu; Indian; slave, servant, domestic |
ترکستان | Turkestan, land of the Turks |
صفّه | chamber with a vaulted ceiling, pronunciation: soffe |
هیبت | fear and awe, trepidation, pronunciation: haybat |
شیر فلک | the lion of the heavens, Leo of the constellation |
حمله بردی =حمله می‌برد < حمله بردن | it attacked, it used to attack, it would attack < to attack. Classical, poetic suffix -i added to the Simple Past gives the verb certain functions of the contemporary Imperfect tense. The "win" sense of "bordan" is irrelevant here. This verb is used as an auxiliary verb to make the compound verb "hamle bordan" which simply means "attack". There is no sense of "winning" implied here. |
حمله بر ... بردی | it used to win the attack upon, it used to launch attacks upon |
تن | body |
شادروان | tent, large curtain, (obsolete), pronunciation: shāder-vān/, shādor-vān / shādar-vān. (Note this word has nothing to do with "shād-ravān" meaning "merry" nor with "happy/blessed spirit" when used as a synonym for /marhum/, "the deceased".) |
پندار < پنداشتن | (you) imagine! (imperative) < to imagine |
همان | that same, that very |
عهد | period, epic, age, era |
بصیرت | vision, insight, discernment |
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دید / دیده | sight, vision, view, outlook / eye; seen, that which has been observed eye |
بین < دیدن | (you) see! (imperative) < to see |
کوکبه | splendor, magnificence, imperial authority; (the royal) scepter that would be carried by the royal cortege, or placed over where the king would sit in the palace field, pronunciation: kawkabe |
میدان | field, square |
اسب = اسپ | horse |
پیاده شو < پیاده شدن | (you) get down! dismount! (imperative) < to get down, to dismount |
نطع | a leather table cloth; leather chess "board"; leather mat on which people were beheaded |
نطع زمین | the ground, i.e., think of the ground as one big nat` mat |
رخ نه < رخ نهادن | lay down your face < to lay one's face down |
پی = پا | foot |
شه مات شده | he was checkmated |
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مات | bewildered, astonished, frozen, incapacitated, unable to make a move. māt is believed to come from the verb "māndan", to remain [motionless], and gives us the term "checkmate" |
نعمان | No`mān III, king of the Lakhmids of al-Hira, was executed by Chosroes II, Parviz, grandson of Chosroes I |
پیل | elephant; bishop (chess piece) According to
Persian tradition, chess was brought to Iran from India by the prime
minister of Anushirvan, Buzurjmihr (Arabic), also known as Bozorgmehr
(Persian) and Burzoe (English). (In Western India, the chess piece known as
"bishop" is today called "unt", from Sanskrit /ushtra/ equivalent of
"oshtor" in Persian, meaning "camel", however, elsewhere, such as Bengal, it
is known as "elephant".) Taking the poet's "lesson" a step further, we see,
not only are the names of the chess pieces subject to change but the very
rules of the game! See how this "truth" is captured and how the British
"checkmated" the Indians by imposing their own rules of chess on them in the
film, "The Chess Players" by Satyajit Ray. |
نی نی که چو نعمان بین | nay, nay, [instead, now, this time] see / realize that the king who threw No`man is being trampled by the elephants, himself, as No`man, was trampled by the elephants of day and night. (Remember No`man himself used to be an "invincible" king." |
پیل‌افکن | elephant-thrower, elephant-throwing. While "pil-afkan" is a very common adjective used to describe the physical strength of warriors in classical works, here, the poet plays with this expression, turning it into "thrower of people under the elephants". |
بین پیل‌افکن شاهان را = شاهانِ پیل‌افکن را بین | See the [erstwhile] elephant-throwing kings [now being the ones trampled by elephants] |
به پی دوران | after the rotations of the ages, on the heels of the turning of time. The poet has carefully used /pā/ and /pay/ very artfully throughout this work to show the steady, step-like progression of time where each party has its turn as the trampler and the trampled. Remember, for this poet, things FOLLOW one another, they don't MORPH into one another as comes later in Persian literature. |
پیلان شب و روزش کشته = پیلان شب و روز او را کشته‌اند | The elephants, day and night have killed him. rā replaced by a personal suffix |
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بس | many, many a |
کافکند = که افْکنْد | that they threw, that they made fall in defeat, that were defeated |
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ماتگه = ماتگه | place of defeat, position in which one gets checkmated. Suffix -gāh, (or poetically shortened to -gah) meaning "place or time where". |
حرمان | frustration, disappointment, pronunciation: hermān |
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شطرنجی | related to chess but here:
chess-player, chess-master |
شطرنجی تقدیر | chess-master of fate. (It is crucial to understand that /shatranji-ye taqdir/ is one construct, if you group /shatranji/ with the previous construct, /shah-pili/, you will fail to understand this line. That is a trap to avoid in reading this qasida!) |
تقدیر | fate |
شه پیلی | "shah-pili" [king-elephant-ic] refers to a certain strategy or move in the game of chess involving the king, the bishop [elephant], and the rook. |
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مست | drunk, inebriated |
زمین | land, ground, earth, soil |
زیرا | because |
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خورده است < خوردن | it has drunk < to eat, to drink |
بجای = به‌جای | in place of, instead of, pronunciation: be-jā-ye |
می | wine |
کاس = کاسه | cup, bowl |
نوشروان = انوشیروان | Nushervān, poetic, short form of Anushirvān (Chosroes I or Khosraw I) |
هرمز | Hormoz, Hormizd IV, son of Chosroes I, was killed by supporters of Chosroes II, Khosraw Parviz, grandson of Chosroes I. |
کاس سر هرمز | cup made from the skull of Hormoz (Hormizd IV was executed by supporters of Chosroes II, Khosraw Parviz) |
نو است = نوست | new is. Some versions of this text elide the initial alef in the spelling (making it a bit harder to read). This is a matter of style and both are correct. |
آنگه = آنگاه | then, at that time |
تاج | crown |
پیدا | visible |
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پنهان | hidden |
مغز | brain, core, kernel |
کسریٰ = خشرو | kasrā, Arabicized version of "khosraw" , it was first the name of one Sassanian king, Chosroes I, or Khosraw Anushirvān and then it became the term for "Sassanian king" and then later, it was loosely used for "king", "lord", etc and the equivalent of "caesar, " Kaiser", "tsar". Note that the scholarly convention is to spell this word as /khosraw/, however, in modern-day Iran, the regions to the East tend to pronounce it as /khosrow/ while in Tehran, the diphthong has been lost completely: /khosro/. |
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ترنج | citron, pronunciation: toranj |
زر | gold |
زرین | golden |
به | quince, a kind of fruit, pronunciation: beh |
بر باد شده | gone with the wind, destroyed |
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یکسر | straight, completely, all |
یکسان | as one, identical, suffix -sān meaning "like", "as" |
به هر خوانی | to each feast, to whatever feast |
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خوان | table laid out with food, table with food for a feast |
تره | fresh fruit and vegetables; leek |
زرین تره | golden fruits |
آوردی = می‌آورد | He brought, he used to bring, he would bring. Poetic, classical -i suffix is added to the simple past giving the same funciton as the contemporary imperfect tense. |
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کردی = می‌کرد | He did, he used to do, he would do. Poetic, classical -i suffix is added to the simple past giving the same funciton as the contemporary imperfect tense. |
بساط | spread out cloth, area with items on display, items laid out, items on display |
بستان | garden, orchard |
دانی، خندی، رسد، دهد، بینی | you know, you laugh, it arrives, ...These may appear to be in the subjunctive mode (without the prefix -be) but in fact, they are present indicative, only missing the mi- as was the classical style. There are very few subjunctives in this qasida, the majority of verbs either being in present indicative or imperative. |
کردی | He did. Be careful that the suffix -i is a feature of classical style added to [here] the simple past tense to add a "continuous" aspect. Often it is added only to add an extra syllable for the sake of the poetic meter and does not really add to the meaning. |
بساط | spread out cloth, area with items on display, items laid out, items on display |