Or laying out on the floor, with the flowers heaped on the threshold, the months still left of the term that was fixed from the day they were parted — counting them, one, two — or tasting a union with me that has got no further than her heart. These, for the most part, are the diversions of women whose lovers are away.
**This is the third and last of the kulaka, and he says so in two words.** त्रिभिः कुलकम् — the three make a kulaka, a group of stanzas that are one sentence. So the unit announced at the end of 2.24, whose syntax he stated at 2.26 and states again here — “आलोके ते निपतति” इति पूर्वेण सम्बन्धः — is closed at 2.27 by being given its name as a form. **Four statements about the same three stanzas, in four places, and they agree.** For the corpus that is a fact with nowhere to live: nothing in the analysis can say *these three verses are one sentence*, and this is the second time the point has come up in two verses.
**And the fourth pāda is where the poem admits it is guessing.** Mallinātha stages the objection himself — ननु कथमयं निश्चय इति, but how can he be sure? — and answers it by naming a figure: अर्थान्तरन्यासेन परिहरति, he removes it by arthāntaranyāsa. The particular case is three stanzas of supposal; the general truth is one line about what women in separation do; and प्रायेण, which he glosses बाहुल्येन, keeps even the general truth from being a rule. **So the whole passage is licensed by an admission**: he does not know, and this is what people do. It is the third arthāntaranyāsa in the poem after 1.3 and 1.10, and the first where he sets up a doubt in order to have the figure remove it.
**The counting is done with real objects and he makes them real.** देहली is not a doorway but the beam under it, द्वारस्याधारदारु, with Amara produced for the word. दत्त is not *given* but *heaped*, राशीकृतत्वेन निहितानि. And the counting has a sound: एको द्वाविति, one, two. She takes flowers off the door-beam and puts them down on the floor of the house, one for each month still to run. **The poem's largest quantity — the year of the curse — is being handled as a small pile of flowers.**
**The third guess is the one that has left the world entirely.** At 2.25 she was drawing him; at 2.26 singing a song about him; here she is enjoying a union that has not occurred. Mallinātha reads हृदयनिहितारम्भम् two ways and the difference is how much of it is imaginary — either the beginning of it is only in her mind, or the first acts of it, the kissing and the rest, are. He prefers neither. **And he names the state**: एतेन सङ्कल्पावस्थोक्ता, by this the condition called saṅkalpa is stated, with a line quoted for it — सङ्कल्पो नाथविषये मनोरथ उदाहृतः, saṅkalpa is longing turned on the beloved. That is one of the ten states of love in separation, and मूर्च्छा at 2.26 was another from the same list. **Two stanzas running are labelled with items from one manual**, which is the same habit as the Sāmudrika at 2.22 and the śāstra on the soiled dress at 2.26: the woman in the poem keeps turning out to be doing what a handbook describes.
**And the last word answers the first.** शेषान् opens the stanza with what is left of the term; विनोदाः closes it, and he glosses it कालयापनोपायाः — means of making the time pass. Not amusements. The flowers, the drawing, the song and the imagined embrace are all ways of using up the very months the first pāda is counting.
uncheckedthe reader's reading, following Mallinātha, Sañjīvinī's gloss. His are: अवधि as अन्त, the term fixed from the day of parting, देहली as the door-beam with Amara behind it, दत्त as heaped, the one-two of the counting, the two readings of हृदयनिहितारम्भम्, मत्सङ्गम् for संभोगम् with मत्सम्भोगरतिम् for its gloss, the statement that the syntax runs back into 2.25, the objection and the naming of अर्थान्तरन्यास, बाहुल्येन for प्रायेण, the naming of सङ्कल्प with its quoted line, कालयापनोपायाः for विनोदाः, and त्रिभिः कुलकम्. That the three guesses grow steadily further from the world, that सङ्कल्प and मूर्च्छा come from the same list of ten, and that the stanza's last word answers its first, are the reader's“etena saṅkalpāvasthoktā | tad uktam — “saṅkalpo nāthaviṣaye manoratha udāhṛtaḥ” iti || tribhiḥ kulakam”
The fourth pāda is where the poem admits it is guessing. Mallinātha stages the objection himself — ननु कथमयं निश्चय इति, 'but how can he be sure?' — and answers it by naming a figure: अर्थान्तरन्यासेन परिहरति, he removes it by arthāntaranyāsa, a general truth set beside the particular case it explains. The particular case is three stanzas of supposal, everything the yakṣa has imagined her doing since 2.25; the general truth is the one line प्रायेणैते ... विनोदाः, these are, for the most part, the diversions of women whose lovers are away; and प्रायेण, which he glosses बाहुल्येन, keeps even the general truth from being a law. So the whole passage is licensed by an admission — he does not know, and this is what women in her position do. It is the third अर्थान्तरन्यास in the poem, after 1.3 and 1.10, and the first where he sets up a doubt in order to have the figure remove it. 1.10 is its twin: its fourth pāda is आशाबन्धः कुसुमसदृशं प्रायशो ह्यङ्गनानां, with the same genitive plural अङ्गनानाम् and the same generalising particle in the same place.
- Mallinātha, Sañjīvinī — 2.27: nanu katham ayaṃ niścaya ity āśaṅkām arthāntaranyāsena pariharati | prāyeṇa bāhulyena
Or laying out on the floor, with the flowers heaped on the threshold, the months still left of the term that was fixed from the day they were parted — counting them, one, two — or tasting a union with me that has got no further than her heart. These, for the most part, are the diversions of women whose lovers are away. The stanza is a chain of guesses that ends by owning itself as guesswork, and the counting is its cruelest image: the year of the curse, the poem's whole weight of time, reduced to a heap of flowers a woman moves one by one across a floor to watch the pile go down.
- Mallinātha, Sañjīvinī — 2.27, whole-verse gloss