Rufus of Ephesus, two millennia ago, explained that there were 2 types of black bile- one which is natural and present as a sort of sediment in the blood and which only becomes harmful if stirred up- as by Spring, which is why April is the cruelest month- and another sort which is yellow bile which has either been burnt and which gives rise to a violent raving madness, or else yellow bile which has been frozen (afsurdagi) and which yields depression and abulia.
With the advent of Islam, this Greek doctrine of the humours was adopted by the Arabs who termed black bile 'sauda' and poetically linked it to the pupil of the beloved's eye- vide Mohr Siebeck's monograph.
the theory of black bile as causing madness.
Ghalib has a couplet linking the Sufi suvaida (a small black spot on the heart) with the pupil of the eye-
مت مردمکِ دیدہ میں سمجھو یہ نگاہیں
ہیں جمع سویداۓ دلِ چشم میں آہیں
ہیں جمع سویداۓ دلِ چشم میں آہیں
These are not enchantment's rays that enter my eyes
But smoke from my charred heart escaping as sighs.
Ironically, the Arabic word 'sauda'- which means both 'blessed', 'joyous', 'profitable' as well as 'black- may, because of its medical usage, have influenced the Portuguese 'Saudades' associated with melancholic yearning for every Sonnet's Shulamith or Kleinian 'dark lady' who yet is fair, & for such our Black Sun, all Despair, for all that has been loved & lost to sight, yet lies at the back of blind Belisarius' obol of Light.
Fuck me, I jus' realized this theme, or 'mazmun', is tailored made for Post Colonial pricks and Subaltern Studies shitheads & Eco Feminist fuckwits to vomit all over. Iyer, they will say, is a Hindutva fanatic. He is referencing the Chandogya Upanishad's Black Sun- the light beyond the heavens, beyond the realm of transmigration, that apocatastatic light behind Love's blighting light which illuminates how all things end. Why? Coz this worthless Mayavadi cunt wants to restore the Manuvadi caste system. As for Pascoaes' Saudosismo- fuck is it but a proto-Fascist Sebastanismo?- a harking back to a golden age when Christian Portugal was on an almost victorious warpath against Moors, Marranos, Malabaris and other such dusky what have you. Thus, in Arabic, the word 'black' also means 'happiness', 'joy', etc. because black people were a source of profit for slave traders. Similarly, Krishna means both 'black' and that God who takes on the sins of the 'ujali paraj' lighter colored oppressors.
Yet, there is another way to read Ghalib's sauda & Pascoaes' Saudosismo,-one that evokes Hindu/Buddhist 'antarabhava' (which carries an erotic charge) Tibetan 'baro thodol' (which is permeated with a mono no aware sentiment) & Ibn Arabi's barzakh (which is a philosophical solution to the problem of genidentity).
According to this reading, Love, as Jagganath Pundit realized, is in truth a Second Creation, but its God is Grief. Why? Because to fall in Love is to seek to create a World in which there is nothing but yourself and the beloved. Too late you see it is a gas-chamber to whose noxious vapors only you are immune.
1 comment:
nuqta-e-suvaida is linked to chashm-i-ghalib.
'The natural abode of the mind is behind the two eyes, which the Saints have named the third eye or single eye. The Sufi mystics have called it nuqta-i-suvaida (the black spot) or [Chashm – i- ghalib] (the hidden eye). The mind current flows continuously from this spot down the nine apertures of the body (the senses) and spreads into the whole world. This process has to be reversed. The mind current has to be brought back to the third eye through the practice of Simran/ Zikr/ Dhyan or Tasawwar. And it has to be retained there, so that it should not stray. With regular practice the mind learns to stay at the third eye and then begin to progress further on the spiritual path. Sultan Bahu describes the profound state of the Zikr and Tasawwar in which the seekers’ whole existence is merged in the Zikr of the lord and Tasawwar of Murshid. ' See www.mysufi.in/DIL-KUSHA-v10.docx
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