نانک

برہمن سرشار ہے اب تک مےء پندار میںشمع گوتم جل رہی ہے محفل اغیار میں

English translation

The Brahman is still intoxicated with the wine of arrogance; Gautam’s candle is alight in the assembly of strangers.*
* Allusion to the fact that on account of the atrocities perpetrated by Hindus on the Buddhists in the Indian Sub-continent. Buddhism all but disappeared from that region by about the commencement of the Christian era. However, the Buddhists migrated to the neighboring countries of Ceylon (present day Sri Lanka), Burma, Malaya, China and Japan, where it flourished and still exists.)

Translated by Dr M.A.K. Khalil

Word meanings

شمع گوتم: مراد ہے بدھ مت۔

About this couplet

This is couplet 6 of 8 in “⁨نانک⁩” (Nanak (reference to Guru Nanak, founder of Sikhism)) in the section Poems of Period - 1908-30, from Allama Muhammad Iqbal's Urdu book Bang-e-Dara (⁨بانگِ درا⁩), published in 1924.

Read it in the poem

۶ / ۸