Long-lived one: say this to her, on my word and to do yourself a good turn. — *He who goes at your side, weak one, is living among the hermitages of Rāmagiri; he has come to no harm, and, parted from you, he asks how you are. For creatures whose misfortunes cost nothing to come by, this is the thing that must be asked before anything else.*
**The message begins for the second time, and this time it does not stop.** 2.39 was one stanza and 2.40 closed the frame over it; here एवम् opens the quotation again, and inside a single verse the second person changes hands — त्वाम् in the first pāda would be the cloud, त्वाम् in the third is the woman, and nothing marks the turn but that the speech has started.
**Three stanzas running have said one thing three ways, and never once positively.** अविधवे at 2.39, सुहृत् at 2.40, and here अव्यापन्नः, *not come to harm* — which Mallinātha translates flat: **न मृत इत्यर्थः**, meaning, not dead. And then he reads the next word as an argument for it: अमरणे हेतुमाह, *he gives the reason for his not being dead* — वियुक्तः, merely parted. A man who is only separated is a man alive to be separated.
**Mallinātha spends more of this comment on one case ending than on anything else.** उपकर्तुम् acts on आत्मन्, so the accusative is what one expects, and the verse writes आत्मनः. He answers that where a mere relation is meant — as in तस्यापकरोति, *he does him a bad turn* — the genitive is not wrong; and then quotes **Bhāravi and Śrīharṣa** for it, two named poets used as grammatical evidence. With Bhoja at 2.38 that is three named authors in four stanzas, where the whole canto before them cited only titles.
**And two affixes are named.** आयुष्मन् is मतुप् in the sense of praise, not possession — प्रशंसायां मतुप् — so the vocative is a compliment, and he says which: परोपकारश्लाघ्यजीवितः, whose life is worth praising because he helps others. पूर्वाभाष्यम् is the kṛtya ण्यत् in the sense of obligation, by “कृत्याश्च”, so the last pāda is not a custom but a rule: welfare is the thing that *must* be asked about first. **That is the first य-ending kṛtya in the corpus whose affix a witness names**; three earlier ones had to be left bare.
**The two witnesses part over the person of the verb.** This text prints ब्रूया एवं, the second person; Mallinātha's stanza prints ब्रूयादेवं, the third, and his gloss supplies भवान्, *your honour*. Both scan. What changes is whether the yakṣa is instructing the cloud or asking it politely — and the first pāda's मम वचनात्, which he glosses प्रार्थनावचनम्, *a word of entreaty*, leans the same way his reading does. No figure is named.
uncheckedthe reader's reading, following Mallinātha, Sañjīvinī's gloss. His are: प्रशंसायां मतुप् with परोपकारश्लाघ्यजीवितः, प्रार्थनावचनम् for मम वचनम्, the defence of the genitive आत्मनः with the Bhāravi and Śrīharṣa citations, परोपकारेणात्मानं कृतार्थयितुम्, भवान् supplied with the third-person ब्रूयात्, भर्ता for सहचरः, चित्रकूटस्य for रामगिरेः, न मृत इत्यर्थः for अव्यापन्नः, अमरणे हेतुमाह with वियोगं प्राप्तो दुःखी सन्, दुह्यादित्वात्पृच्छतेर्द्विकर्मकत्वम्, अयत्नसिद्धविपत्तीनाम्, and “कृत्याश्च” इत्यावश्यकार्थे ण्यत्प्रत्ययः with प्रथममवश्यं प्रष्टव्यम्. That the second person changes hands inside the stanza, that three stanzas running say he is alive by negation, and that सहचर is gentler than the भर्ता it is glossed with, are the reader's; Pāṇini 1.4.51, 3.3.171, 5.2.94, 8.2.30 and 8.2.42 are by way of skt-data's sūtra corpus, where प्रशंसायां मतुप् is not found under its own words. Neither Bhāravi's nor Śrīharṣa's work is in this repository and neither citation can be checked“he āyuṣman || praśaṃsāyāṃ matup || paropakāraślāghyajīvita ityarthaḥ … sann avyāpannaḥ | na mṛta ityarthaḥ | amaraṇe hetum āha”
Long-lived one: say this to her, on my word and to do yourself a good turn. — He who goes at your side, weak one, is living among the hermitages of Rāmagiri; he has come to no harm, and, parted from you, he asks how you are. For creatures whose misfortunes cost nothing to come by, this is the thing that must be asked before anything else. The frame opens again after one stanza and holds to the end of the poem; the second person slides from cloud to woman inside the verse; and the message's first words are three ways of saying he is alive and one way of saying that health, for creatures so easily struck by disaster, is the first thing worth asking about.
- Mallinātha, Sañjīvinī — 2.41, whole-verse gloss