Any moment now she will come into your sight — taken up with the offerings, or drawing a likeness of me thin from a separation she has never watched, or asking the sweet-voiced myna in her cage: “Do you remember your master, you who have a taste for such things? You were the one he loved.” **The stanza is three guesses strung on three वā, and the third opens into speech.** It is the first of the three that Mallinātha announced at the end of 2.24, where he said the poet imagines the marks common to every woman in separation and speaks them in the three stanzas beginning आलोके.
**The tense is a trick and he catches it.** निपतति is present in form and future in sense: he writes सद्यो निपतिष्यतीत्यर्थः and names the rule, “यावत्पुरानिपातयोर्लट्”, Pāṇini 3.3.4, which puts the present-tense affix on a root that means the future when यावत् or पुरा stands with it. And पुरा itself he has to settle first, out of Amara, who gives it both for time past and for what is close and coming; he takes the second. **So one particle governs the tense of the verb and the mood of the stanza**, and neither shows on the verb. DCS tags लट् and says nothing, which is correct about the form and silent about the time.
**The picture inside the poem is made the way the poem is.** She draws him विरहतनु, thin from separation, and भावगम्यम्, to be got at by imagining — and Mallinātha explains why the second word is there: तत्कार्यस्यादृष्टचरत्वात्सम्प्रति सम्भावनयोत्प्रेक्ष्यम्, the effect has never been seen, so it has to be conjectured. She has not seen him thin. **The yakṣa is guessing at a woman who is guessing at him**, and the two guesses meet in a drawing neither of them can check.
**He argues with सादृश्य and then cites himself.** A likeness, he says, is properly a sameness of shape residing in some other thing already known — a relation, not an object, and so not a thing anyone could draw. Here it must mean a portrait, प्रतिकृति, इतरथा लेख्यत्वासम्भवात्; the Akṣayyakośa's “आलेख्येऽपि च सादृश्यम्” is produced to license it. Then: एतच्च कामशास्त्रसंवादेन सम्यग्विवेचितमस्माभी रघुवंशसञ्जीविन्याम् — we have gone into this fully in our Sañjīvinī on the Raghuvaṃśa, at सादृश्यप्रतिकृतिदर्शनैः प्रियायाः. **That is the first time in either canto that he refers a reader to another book of his own**, and it is the one cross-reference in the commentary so far that this repository cannot check, since the Raghuvaṃśa is not in it.
**The bird is made a person in three strokes, all of them his.** सारिका he calls स्त्रीपक्षिविशेषा, a female bird — so she can be addressed as रसिके and asked a woman's question. मधुरवचना he answers with मञ्जुभाषिणी and then joins to the next epithet with अत एव: she is caged *because* she sings sweetly, हिंस्रेभ्यः कृतसंरक्षणाम्, kept safe from what would eat her. The verse prints two adjectives in a row and he reads them as cause and effect, which turns the cage from a confinement into a kindness and the bird from a prop into a confidante.
**And the last pāda is an argument, not an endearment.** कच्चित् he takes from Amara as कामप्रवेदन, the particle for making a wish known, so the question announces what the asker hopes. भर्तुः is not a possessive but the object of स्मरसि, by “अधीगर्थदयेशां कर्मणि”, Pāṇini 2.3.52, which puts the sixth case on what a verb of remembering acts on. हि he stops to gloss — स्मरणे कारणमाह, he is giving the reason. And प्रिया he derives rather than translates: प्रीणातीति प्रिया, she who gives pleasure, by “इगुपधज्ञाप्रीकिरः कः”. **So the closing words come out as a chain**: you please him, therefore you are the object of his love, therefore you ought to remember — अतः प्रेमास्पदत्वात्स्मर्तुमर्हसीति भावः.
**No figure is written, and this is the stanza where that rule is hardest to keep.** He names no अलङ्कार anywhere in the comment. What he does is use the verb: सम्भावनयोत्प्रेक्ष्य at the end of 2.24, announcing these three, and सम्भावनयोत्प्रेक्ष्यम् here, glossing भावगम्यम्. उत्प्रेक्षा is the figure whose ground is सम्भावना, conjecture, so the word is the figure's own and is twice in two stanzas — but it is doing the work of a gloss both times, and the naming, if it is one, happened in the previous stanza rather than in this. The run's rule is that a figure is written only where the commentary names one, so none is written. **Whether a figure announced one stanza early and carried by a verb counts as named is the author's call**, and it is the same shape of question as the one already open about व्यङ्ग्य beside अलङ्कार at 2.7, 2.8 and 2.24.
uncheckedthe reader's reading, following Mallinātha, Sañjīvinī's gloss. His are: the two kinds of बलि, व्यापृता for व्याकुला, the सादृश्य-as-portrait argument with the Akṣayyakośa behind it and the reference to his own Raghuvaṃśa commentary, the sentence about conjecture that explains विरहतनु and भावगम्यम्, the female bird, अत एव joining the two epithets of the myna, the Amara citations on पुरा, वा and कच्चित्, the naming of Pāṇini 3.3.4, 2.3.52 and 3.1.135, the derivation of प्रिया, and the closing अतः प्रेमास्पदत्वात्स्मर्तुमर्हसीति भावः. That the yakṣa's guessing and the wife's guessing are the same act, that this is the first of the three stanzas he announced at 2.24, and that उत्प्रेक्ष्य falls twice in two stanzas without an अलङ्कार ever being named, are the reader's“tatkāryasyādṛṣṭacaratvāt samprati sambhāvanayotprekṣyam ity arthaḥ”
Any moment now she will come into your sight, O cloud — taken up with the offerings, or drawing a likeness of me thin from a separation she has never watched, only imagined, or asking the sweet-voiced myna in her cage: “Do you remember your master, you who have a taste for such things? You were the one he loved.” The stanza is three guesses strung on three वा — busy at worship, at her drawing, at her question — and no way to choose among them, and the third opens into the only direct speech in this run of the poem. It is the first of three stanzas Mallinātha announced at the end of 2.24, where he said the poet imagines the marks common to every woman in separation and speaks them in the three verses beginning आलोके. The last pāda comes out as an argument, not an endearment: कच्चित्, by Amara, is the particle for making a wish known, so the asker's hope is inside the question; भर्तुः is the object of स्मरसि, not a possessive; हि gives the reason; and प्रिया is derived, प्रीणातीति प्रिया — you please him, therefore you are dear to him, therefore you ought to remember, अतः प्रेमास्पदत्वात्स्मर्तुमर्हसीति भावः.
- వేదం వేంకటరాయశాస్త్రి, ఆంధ్ర మేఘసందేశము — 2.25 తాత్పర్యము; vendor/vedam-meghasandesam-telugu-ocr.txt
- Mallinātha, Sañjīvinī — 2.25, whole-verse gloss