Alexander, Tamberlane, Akbar, Shah Jahan and Alamgir, all became clay.

19:02 Oct 22, 2010 

सिकंदर, तिमुर, अकबर, शाहजहाँ और आलमगीर, सब मिट्टी हो गए

Thanks for the detailed context. In my opinion, the song is referring to the fact that all the greats have ultimately died and been buried (hence turned into clay). I feel the English translation may be slightly modified to 'turned into dust' as that reflects more appropriately the connotation of the Hindi words. I cannot point you to the original song or poem.

11:04 Oct 20, 2010 

The term Alamgir used in the poem suggests that it is an Urdu poem by some lesser known poet. It is not by any of the towering poets--Ghalib, Iqbal, Faiz, Jazbi, Majaz, Sahir. It might be Dag-Delhivi or somebody else that has composed this poem. It might even be some Persian poem.
It will be better to put it in Urdu Kudos as well. And if you don't get any response from Urdu translators as well, then it will be worth-while to place it in Persian as well.

06:47 Oct 20, 2010 

Thanks for the suggestion, but I am specifically looking for a Hindi song. In the book I am translating, the text is sung by a wandering singer in Bihar, so it may possibly be a song from the Urdu tradition, or perhaps even Maithili, though my German author only really has Hindi.

If I were to ask a general open question about the vanitas topos in song, I would get answers from everything from Parsi to French!

02:32 Oct 20, 2010 

This KudoZ section is for asking difficult language term by professional translators. Therefore please post your queries in the 'off topic' section in forum. You can get more answers from other language fields also.