The weak thing has put off her ornaments; the body is soft and she is holding it up, laying it down on the lap of the bed again and again in a painful sort of way. She will make even you shed tears made of fresh rain, and no mistake — for the most part everyone with a wet inside is moved to pity.
**The stanza is where the grammar turns.** For seven verses she has been an accusative: 2.26 to 2.32 hang on the पश्य of 2.28, and every epithet in them describes a woman someone else is being told to look at. Here she is सा, a nominative, standing first in the pāda with a finite verb of her own, and the four-stanza unit Mallinātha announced at 2.28 is finished. Only one word has to be supplied for the whole verse, where the four before it needed three or four each.
**And it is the last of the eight states.** अनेनात्यन्ताशक्त्या मूर्च्छावस्था सूच्यते — by this, through utter helplessness, the state called मूर्च्छा, swooning, is indicated. That is the eighth in a row: मनःसङ्ग at 2.26, सङ्कल्प at 2.27, जागर at 2.28, कार्श्य at 2.29, विषयद्वेष at 2.30, लज्जात्याग at 2.31, चित्तविभ्रम at 2.32, and this.
**Then Mallinātha stops and explains the whole scheme, in answer to an objection.** *But why has the honoured poet passed over the first state, delight of the eyes, and taken up only the others?* — ननु किमिदमादिमां चक्षुःप्रीतिमुपेक्ष्यावस्थान्तराण्येव तत्रभवान्कविरादृतवान्. His answer is a long quoted passage in verse, and it does four things. It classifies the poem: love is of two kinds, union and separation; separation is of four kinds, of which this is प्रवास, being away; प्रवास is of three kinds, and in this poem it is शापज, born of a curse. **It lists the ten states in order** — दृङ्मनःसङ्गसङ्कल्पा जागरः कृशताऽरतिः, ह्रीत्यागोन्मादमूर्च्छान्ता इत्यनङ्गदशा दश: sight, attachment of mind, longing, sleeplessness, wasting, distaste, loss of shame, madness, swooning, and death. It says which two the poet dropped and why — वैयर्थ्यादादिमां हित्वा वैरस्यादन्तिमां तथा, the first as pointless, the last as unpalatable — and that **the poet here treats eight, beginning with हृत्सङ्ग**: हृत्सङ्गादीरिहाचष्ट कविरष्टाविति स्थितिः. And it argues why the first cannot apply: delight of the eyes needs something not seen before, as when Agnimitra saw Mālavikā's portrait, and a husband who has gone abroad is not a stranger.
**That last part is a refutation of a previous reading of a verse this corpus carries.** Somebody had held that चक्षुःप्रीति was set out in the stanza मत्सादृश्यं लिखन्ती — which is 2.26 — and the passage answers them and leaves them, in its own words, with nothing to say. **It is the first place in either canto where a named earlier interpretation of a numbered verse of this text is argued down**, and the verse it is about is the one the run analysed seven stanzas ago. The Mālavikāgnimitra is the second work of Kālidāsa's own the commentary sends the reader to, after the Raghuvaṃśa at 2.25, and the first that is a play.
**And the point of the whole digression is haste.** अस्मिन्नवसरे सर्वथा त्वया शीघ्रं गन्तव्यमनन्तरदशापरिहारायेति सन्दर्भाभिप्रायः — at this juncture you must go quickly, to ward off the state that comes next; that is the drift of the composition. The state that comes next is the tenth, which is death. So the poet stopped at eight in order that the ninth would be the reason for the cloud to hurry.
**Two grammatical remarks carry the rest.** दुःखदुःखेन is one word written twice, and he names the rule — “प्रकारे गुणवचनस्य” इति द्विर्भावः, Pāṇini 8.1.12 — and glosses it दुःखप्रकारेण, in a painful sort of way; it is the only doubled word in either canto. And मोचयिष्यति takes **two accusatives**, त्वाम् and अस्रम्, which he licenses by a supplementary line rather than a sūtra: “द्विकर्मसु पचादीनामुपसंख्यानम्”, √मुच् being of the पच् class.
No figure is named, and the stanza has the shape of one: a claim about one cloud propped on a rule about everybody, with प्रायः keeping the rule short of a law — which is what he called अर्थान्तरन्यास at 1.3, 1.10 and 2.27. What he does instead of naming it is gloss आर्द्रान्तरात्मा twice, मृदुहृदयः for people and मेघस्तु द्रवान्तःशरीरः for clouds. **The rule is true of the addressee in the physical sense**: he is being asked to feel something on the grounds that he is made of water.
uncheckedthe reader's reading, following Mallinātha, Sañjīvinī's gloss. His are: दुर्बला for अबला, कृशत्वात्परित्यक्ताभरणम्, अनेकशः for असकृत्, दुःखप्रकारेण with “प्रकारे गुणवचनस्य” इति द्विर्भावः, मृदुलम् for पेशलम् and शरीरम् for गात्रम्, वहन्ती for धारयन्ती, अनेनात्यन्ताशक्त्या मूर्च्छावस्था सूच्यते, सा त्वत्सखी, नवाम्बुरूपम् and बाष्पम्, सर्वथा for अवश्यम्, “द्विकर्मसु पचादीनामुपसंख्यानम्” for the two objects, प्रायेण for प्रायः, मृदुहृदयः and मेघस्तु द्रवान्तःशरीरः for आर्द्रान्तरात्मा, the whole quoted passage on the kinds of śṛṅgāra and the ten states, and अस्मिन्नवसरे … इति सन्दर्भाभिप्रायः. That this is the first nominative for her in eight stanzas, that the eight labels from 2.26 run in the order the quoted list gives, and that the refuted reading is of a verse this corpus carries, are the reader's; the labels are checked against `vendor/meghaduta-sanjivini.itx` and the identification of मत्सादृश्यं लिखन्ती as 2.26 against `text.md`. The quoted passage is corrupt in several places and is read only as far as its sense is legible; who is being refuted, and from what work the verses come, it does not say and the run does not guess“dṛṅmanaḥsaṅgasaṅkalpā jāgaraḥ kṛśatā 'ratiḥ | hrītyāgonmādamūrcchāntā ity anaṅgadaśā daśa … vaiyarthyād ādimāṃ hitvā vairasyād antimāṃ tathā | hṛtsaṅgādīr ihācaṣṭa kavir aṣṭāv iti sthitiḥ”
And it is the last of the eight states Mallinātha has been tracking. अनेनात्यन्ताशक्त्या मूर्च्छावस्था सूच्यते — by this, through utter helplessness, the state called मूर्च्छा, swooning, is indicated: the eighth in a row, after attachment of mind, longing, sleeplessness, wasting, distaste, loss of shame and disorder of mind. Then he stops and explains the whole scheme, in answer to an objection — but why has the honoured poet passed over the first state, delight of the eyes? His answer, quoted in verse, classifies the poem (love is of two kinds, union and separation; separation of four, of which this is प्रवास, being away; प्रवास of three, here शापज, curse-born), lists the ten states in order — दृङ्मनःसङ्गसङ्कल्पा जागरः कृशताऽरतिः, ह्रीत्यागोन्मादमूर्च्छान्ता इत्यनङ्गदशा दश — and says the poet dropped the first as pointless and the last, death, as unpalatable, treating the eight between. So the stanza is where the plan of the whole passage is finally laid bare.
- Mallinātha, Sañjīvinī — 2.33: anenātyantāśaktyā mūrchāvasthā sūcyate | dṛṅmanaḥsaṅgasaṅkalpā jāgaraḥ kṛśatā'ratiḥ | hrītyāgonmādamūrchāntā ityanaṅgadaśā daśa
The weak thing has put off her ornaments; the body is soft and she is holding it up, laying it down on the lap of the bed again and again in a painful sort of way. She will make even you shed tears made of fresh rain, and no mistake — for the most part everyone with a wet inside is moved to pity. The stanza closes the four-verse portrait by turning it outward: the woman who could not lift her own body will, at the sight of her, lift tears out of a cloud, and the yakṣa backs the prediction on a rule about all soft-hearted things — a rule the raincloud fits twice over, in its heart and in its body.
- Mallinātha, Sañjīvinī — 2.33, whole-verse gloss