Or, gentle one, laying the vīṇā down on her lap in its soiled dress, wanting to sing out a song she has made the words of and worked my name into — and getting the string, wet with the water of her eyes, somehow to sound, and then losing, over and over, the run of notes she set to it herself.
**The stanza has no verb.** Not one finite form stands in it: two absolutives, a bahuvrīhi ending in काम, a past participle and a present one, and nothing to hang them on. Mallinātha closes his comment by saying where the sentence is — “आलोके ते निपतति” इति पूर्वेणान्वयः, the construction is with the stanza before. So 2.26 is the second limb of 2.25's *she will presently come into your sight*, and the three stanzas he announced at the end of 2.24 are joined by grammar and not only by subject. **That is the third cross-reference in his commentary that can be checked against this text and the third that holds** — 2.21 pointed backward by quoting, 2.24 forward by naming an opening word, and this one backward by quoting again; and it is the first that is about syntax rather than about content.
**Everything in the stanza is a thing that fails.** The dress is dirty — and Mallinātha will not read that as neglect: प्रोषिते मलिना कृशा इति शास्त्रात्, the rule says a wife whose husband is away goes unwashed and thin, so the dirt is observance. The string is wet with tears and a wet gut string will not ring, which is why सारयित्वा is not tuning or playing but **wiping**: आर्द्रत्वापहरणाय करेण प्रमृज्य, drawing it through her hand to dry it, अन्यथा क्वणनासम्भवात्, since otherwise no sound is possible. And when it will sound at last she cannot hold the tune.
**The song is hers twice over, and that is what makes the last line hurt.** विरचितपदम् says the words are composed; स्वयं कृताम् says the setting is hers too; and मद्गोत्राङ्कम् says his name is worked into it — गोत्र in the sense of नामन्, which Mallinātha settles out of Amara, “गोत्रं नाम्नि कुलेऽपि च”. So she wrote it, she set it, she signed it with him, and it is this that she keeps forgetting. He spells out the concession the अपि carries: विस्मरणानर्हाम्, a thing that does not deserve to be forgotten.
**And the word she forgets is the name of what makes her forget.** मूर्च्छना is the ordered rise and fall of the notes — he glosses स्वरारोहावरोहक्रमम् and quotes the Saṅgītaratnākara, मूर्च्छनाः सप्त सप्त हि, seven to each scale. मूर्च्छा is a swoon. And the cause he gives is the second: विस्मरणं चात्र दयितगुणस्मृतिजनितमूर्च्छावशादेव, the forgetting here is precisely from the faint that comes of remembering the beloved's qualities — with the Rasaratnākara produced to show that such a faint is a recognised state of separation. **The pun is not in the verse; it is in the commentary, and it is the reason he gives for the verse.**
**He also makes her a professional and a goddess in one line.** उद्गातुकामा he reads as उच्चैर्गातुं — to sing *aloud* — and then: देवयोनित्वाद्गान्धारग्रामेण गातुकामेत्यर्थः, being of divine birth she means to sing in the Gāndhāra scale, with a verse quoted to say that human beings get the Ṣaḍja and the Madhyama and that the Gāndhāra is had only by beings of divine birth. Nothing in the stanza says which scale. **The reading comes from her species**, and it is the same habit as the physiognomy at 2.22 and the śāstra on the dirty dress here: a manual is produced, and the woman in the poem turns out to have been following it.
No figure is named. What he names instead, in the last line of the comment, is suggestion again — मत्सादृश्यमित्यादिना मनःसङ्गानुवृत्तिः सूचिता, by मत्सादृश्यम् and what follows, the continuance of the mind's attachment is *indicated* — with सूचिता where 2.7 and 2.24 had व्यज्यते and 2.8 had ध्वनिः. **So he has now used three different words for the unsaid in this canto and an अलङ्कार for none of these stanzas**, and the run's rule holds: a figure is written only where the commentary names one.
uncheckedthe reader's reading, following Mallinātha, Sañjīvinī's gloss. His are: ऊरौ for उत्सङ्गे, the śāstra on the soiled dress, गोत्र as नामन् with Amara behind it, the lost म् of the infinitive, the Gāndhāra scale with its quoted verse, the tears as the cause of the wetness, सारयित्वा as wiping the string dry with अन्यथा क्वणनासम्भवात्, विस्मरणानर्हाम् for the force of अपि, the definition of मूर्च्छना from the Saṅgītaratnākara, the swoon from the Rasaratnākara, the statement that the syntax runs back into 2.25, and the closing सूचिता. That the stanza contains no finite verb at all, that everything in it is an attempt that fails, and that the word she forgets names the thing that makes her forget, are the reader's“vismaraṇaṃ cātra dayitaguṇasmṛtijanitamūrchāvaśād eva … matsādṛśyam ityādinā manaḥsaṅgānuvṛttiḥ sūcitā”
Or, gentle one, laying the vīṇā down on her lap in its soiled dress, wanting to sing out a song she has made the words of and worked my name into — and getting the string, wet with the water of her eyes, somehow to sound, and then losing, over and over, the run of notes she set to it herself. The stanza is a chain of things that fail: the dress is dirty (which Mallinātha reads as a wife's observance, not neglect), the string is wet and will not ring until she has wiped it dry, and when it sounds at last she cannot hold the tune. The song is hers twice over — words composed, setting made herself, his name signed into it — and that is what makes the last line hurt: what she keeps forgetting is her own work. And the word she forgets, मूर्च्छना, the run of notes, is all but the name of what makes her forget it, मूर्च्छा, the swoon that comes of remembering him.
- Mallinātha, Sañjīvinī — 2.26, whole-verse gloss