the word, sadafiyah in place of latimiyyah, while comparing woman to
the pearl.
She is like the bright pearl whose sight pleases the diver, and whoever
sees her is filled with gladness and performs prostrations.
That is to say, people are filled with gladness at the sight of the pearl
which was hitherto concealed in a shell. The Qur'an also uses the word,
lu'lu. maknun (pearl concealed in the shell).
The shell (sadaf) is like the mother, and a mother is very kind to her
offspring, guarding it with meticulous care, but here Nabighah has employed the word, sadafiyah, not because the shell acts as a sentinel with
respect to its beauty and symmetry but in order to bring out the more
associative feature.
Abu ' Ali al-Isfahani has criticised the use of sadafiyah by Nabighah
in this verse. He says the use of this word here is superfluous and devoid
of any significance, since all pearls manifest themselves out of the
mother-of-pearl, and therefore, sadafiyah does not bring out any point of
significance nor any special effect.
But even this verse can be explained if we keep in view the fantasies
from India. The people of India believe that the superior kinds of elephants have pearls set in the middle of their foreheads. These elephants
are (according to them) brown in colour and have fragrance like the
Indian jasmine. Similarly, they claim that a special kind of bamboo has
pearls in its root. It is said by them that this bamboo is reddish, having
an excessive quantity of fibres underneath. The fibres are loose, soft
and humid. When it rains at the time the moon is in her sixteenth mansion with three stars in Libra, these bamboos ripen fully, and pearls are
produced inside them from drops. Tabasheer is made from them.
Would the coastal people see pearls in the bamboos yielding tabasheer, they would not have burnt them without splitting them, and the
knowledge that these plants possess pearls would have been publicised.
Even if pearls come out of elephants or bamboos, those of the Sea
would be called sadafi, and hence Abu 'Ali's censure would be wrong.
'Abd' al-Rahman bin Hassan says:
It has the brightness of the pearl of the diver. It has been taken out
of a concealed jewel,
if the poet means that the pearl has been taken out of the shell, then we
must remember that no one calls the shell a jewel, although it guards the
pearl. Sulayman bin Yazid al-'Adawi says:
As though it is a very white concealed pearl which the shell saves
from the buffets of waves,
if 'Abd al-Rahman wants to show that the pearl has been created from
noble matter, then he would be right.
The word tawa'miyah would imply pair as distinct from yatimah
