Musk scent

Yes. The translator has captured an important point, but “divine light inside” is actually an interpretation of Rumi’s imagery, rather than what the Persian literally says.

The two lines you are asking about are Masnavi, Book II, 163–164:

چون که شُکر گام کرد و ره بُرید

لاجرم زان گام در کامی رسید

رفتنِ یک منزلی بر بویِ ناف

بهتر از صد منزلِ گام و طواف

A fairly literal rendering would be:

When he has given thanks for the tracks and traversed the road,

inevitably, through those steps, he reaches his desire.

To travel one stage by the scent of the musk-gland

is better than a hundred stages of footsteps and circumambulation.

The key word is

بوی ناف — bū-ye nāf

Literally:

• būy = smell, scent, fragrance

• nāf = navel, here specifically the musk-producing gland of the deer

So Rumi is making a very concrete distinction between following signs and being directly drawn by the presence of what you seek.

The preceding couplet makes the metaphor explicit:

چند گاهش گام آهو درخورست

بعد از آن خود ناف آهو رهبرست

“For a while the deer’s footprints are sufficient;

afterwards the deer’s own musk-gland becomes the guide.”

Imagine a hunter looking for a musk deer. At first he has only footprints. He follows one footprint, then another, then another. Eventually, however, he catches the scent of the musk itself. At that point he no longer needs to reconstruct the deer’s path from footprints. The thing itself is announcing its presence.

That is the extraordinary spiritual metaphor.

And this is why the translator says “divine light inside”

The Persian does not literally say “divine light inside.” But the translator is reading the musk as a metaphor for an interior spiritual perception.

And Rumi immediately reinforces that interpretation in the next couplet:

آن دلی کو مطلع مهتابهاست

بهر عارف فتحت ابوابهاست

“That heart which is the rising-place of moonlight

is, for the gnostic, the opening of the doors.”

So the progression is remarkably precise:

footprints → scent → heart → opening

The external signs eventually give way to an immediate inner perception.

“A hundred tours to holy places”

There is another important word here: طواف — ṭawāf.

Ṭawāf is the ritual circumambulation, especially the circling of the Kaaba in Mecca. Thus Rumi deliberately puts physical religious pilgrimage beside inner spiritual movement.

He is not simply saying:

“Don’t go to holy places.”

It is subtler:

One step taken under the direct fragrance of Reality is worth a hundred stages of religious movement if those stages remain merely external.

You can walk enormous distances, visit sacred places, perform rituals, read books, follow doctrines—and still be following footprints.

Conversely, one moment of genuine inward apprehension can put you directly on the trail.

This fits beautifully with the earlier lines on the same page:

زاد دانشمند آثار قلم

زاد صوفی چیست؟ آثار قدم

“The provision of the scholar is the traces of the pen;

what is the provision of the Sufi? The traces of the footsteps.”

The scholar has written traces.

The Sufi initially has the traces left by the saint/master.

But then even those traces are surpassed by the scent.

There is an especially beautiful paradox here

The musk is already inside the deer.

The deer is running through the world looking for something whose fragrance is actually emanating from itself.

That makes Rumi’s metaphor much deeper than simply “follow your spiritual teacher.”

The master gives you the footprints—the practices, teachings, example, words, path. You follow those long enough that eventually something changes: you begin to smell the Reality toward which the footprints point.

Then the relationship to the path changes.

You aren’t merely saying:

“My teacher says God is there, so I will follow the directions.”

You begin experiencing something like:

“I can sense the Presence itself.”

And that is why one منزل (manzil), one stage of travel, by the scent can surpass one hundred manzils of walking and ritual circumambulation.

The translator’s phrase “a journey with divine light inside” is therefore a poetic interpretation, not a literal translation—but it gets at something Rumi immediately develops in the next verse: the heart as the place where the moonlight of the divine becomes manifest and opens doors for the ’ārif, the knower.

In other words, Rumi is moving from religion as following external traces to spirituality as directly sensing the Reality to which those traces point. That is very close to the distinction you’ve been exploring in your reading between the outer cosmos/signs and the inner experience of the same sacred reality.