Bengali: দেখা হয় নাই চক্ষু মেলিয়া, ঘর হতে শুধু দুই পা ফেলিয়া

[aevynn]

Hello, friends!

Here's a (supposedly famous?) little poem that Rabindranath Tagore wrote for Satyajit Ray in an autograph book when the latter was a child.

বহু দিন ধ'রে বহু ক্রোশ দূরে
বহু ব্যয় করি বহু দেশ ঘুরে

দেখিতে গিয়েছি পর্বতমালা,

দেখিতে গিয়েছি সিন্ধু।​

দেখা হয় নাই চক্ষু মেলিয়া
ঘর হতে শুধু দুই পা ফেলিয়া

একটি ধানের শিষের উপরে

একটি শিশিরবিন্দু।​

I've seen an English translation so I know what the poem is trying to say, but I'm having some trouble making sense of lines 5-6 at a grammatical level, and I was hoping someone could help me make sense of them

• What's going on with the words মেলিয়া and ফেলিয়া? They look like they might be past participles for some verbs, but I'm having trouble locating the headwords in a dictionary. (Maybe মেলিয়া has something to do with Hindi मिलना...?)
  
• The translations of line 5 that I saw are roughly along the lines of "Yet I did not see," but it seems like there might be something slightly more going on in the original with the phrase চক্ষু মেলিয়া...? Is the idea something like "It met my eyes, but I did not see"...?

 

[Dib]

Yes, this is a very well-known poem. I didn't know that Tagore wrote it for a child Ray. Thanks for this interesting bit.

Now, coming to your questions:
মেলিয়া/melia and ফেলিয়া/phelia are sadhu bhasha forms of what wikipedia calls perfect participles:
Bengali grammar - Wikipedia
Corresponding cholit bhasha forms are মেলে/mele and ফেলে/phele. Both verbs follow the root vowel alteration pattern æ~e, like দেখা/dækha (to see/seeing). So, to look them up in the dictionary, you'll need to look up মেলা/mæla and ফেলা/phæla. The meanings are "to spread out" (e.g. clothes in the sun, wings, etc. and when used for eyes, it means "to open") and "to drop" ("pa phæla" is an idiom for "to step", "dui pa phæla" = "to take two steps", i.e. to go a very short distance), respectively.

Bengali also has a cognate of Hindi मिलना, but it follows an e~i root-vowel alternation pattern, e.g. মেলা/mela (to fit, etc.) and মিলবে/milbe (it will fit), etc.

 

[aevynn]

Awesome, thank you!

Is it correct to understand then that these perfect participles are being used conjunctively in this poem, similar to the Hindi inflection -कर/-के (ie, the lines in question are something like देखा नहीं आँखें खोलकर, घर से सिर्फ़ दो कदम चलकर)?

PS. I'm fairly amused that it's মেলা that means "to spread out" while it's ফেলা that sounds so much more like फैलना...

 

[Dib]

... similar to the Hindi inflection -कर/-के (ie, the lines in question are something like देखा नहीं आँखें खोलकर, घर से सिर्फ़ दो कदम चलकर)?

Yes, indeed. This is an accurate translation.

PS. I'm fairly amused that it's মেলা that means "to spread out" while it's ফেলা that sounds so much more like फैलना...

True. I never noticed this before.

 

[aevynn]

Thanks again! I appreciate your help.

 

[Dib]

You are welcome!