*In the priyaṅgu creepers I keep seeing your body; in the glance of a startled doe the fall of your look; in the moon the light of your face; in the peacocks' heaped tail-feathers your hair; in the small ripples of rivers the play of your brows — and yet, fierce one, nowhere in any single thing is there a likeness of you.*
**Five places, five things, one verb, and the last line takes it all back.** Mallinātha says the verb carries the whole list — उत्पश्यामीति सर्वत्र सम्बध्यते — and he will not let it be plain seeing: **तर्कयामि**, I reason it out. From the likeness in softness and the rest, he glosses, *I conclude it is her limb*. Nothing here is stated as a comparison; every one of the five is a locative, so the stanza does not say the moon is like her face but that he goes on finding her face in the moon.
**The first word is a trap and the commentary springs it.** श्यामा read as an adjective would open the stanza on dark women; Mallinātha names the plant — श्यामासु प्रियङ्गुलतासु — and quotes Amara, whose line lists श्यामा among the names of the priyaṅgu vine and adds that it is *called by a woman's name*. The lexicon records the plant and the reason for the mistake in one breath.
**One adjective gets more comment than the other four pādas together.** प्रतनुषु, *very slight*, is defended against a fault of poetics: अनुक्तगुणग्रह, the flaw of an epithet dragging in a quality nobody asked for. There is no fault here, he says, because the epithet exists to remove one — भ्रूसाम्यनिर्वाहाय महत्त्वदोषनिराकरणार्थत्वात्, to carry the resemblance to the eyebrows through by getting rid of the fault of largeness. A big wave is not a brow. Then the **Rasaratnākara** for the rule: where an adjective produces suggestion, heightens a quality, states enjoyment or wards off a fault, the fault of the unstated quality does not arise. That is its third appearance in the canto, after 2.26 and 2.37.
**And he names a reading this text does not carry.** “भ्रूपताकाः” इति पाठे — if the reading is *brow-banners*, it is an उपमितसमास, the compound where the thing compared stands first, by Pāṇini 2.1.56. `verse('2.44').variants` is empty; the alternative is his edition's business and not this one's.
**The last pāda is an apology made in advance.** हन्त he takes in the sense of grief, with Amara's four senses quoted, though it is also the beginning of a sentence, which is another of the four. चण्डि, *fierce one*, he glosses कोपने with the affix named — गौरादित्वात् ङीष् — and reads as forestalling: उपमानकथनमात्रेण न कोपितव्यमिति भावः, she is not to be angry merely because comparisons are being made. Then न … अस्ति, and his own first person for it, अतो न निर्वृणोमीत्यर्थः, *and so I get no rest*. His closing remark is that this is how her beauty is conveyed to be beyond compare — **अनेनास्याः सौन्दर्यमनुपममिति व्यज्यते** — and it is suggestion he names, not a figure. **The stanza takes the first of the four consolations he listed at 2.43, सादृश्य, seeing a thing that resembles her, and spends four pādas taking it and one denying that it works.** No figure is named.
uncheckedthe reader's reading, following Mallinātha, Sañjīvinī's gloss. His are: प्रियङ्गुलतासु for श्यामासु with the Amara line, शरीरम् for अङ्गम् with सौकुमार्यादिसाम्यादङ्गमिति तर्कयामीत्यर्थः, चकितहरिणीनां प्रेक्षणे ते दृष्टिपातम्, चन्द्रे for शशिनि and मुखकान्तिम् for वक्त्रच्छायाम्, बर्हिणाम् for शिखिनाम् and बर्हसमूहेषु for बर्हभारेषु, स्वल्पासु for प्रतनुषु with the defence against अनुक्तगुणग्रह and the Rasaratnākara verse, the भ्रूपताकाः reading with उपमितसमास, उत्पश्यामीति सर्वत्र सम्बध्यते, हन्त विषादे with Amara, हे चण्डि कोपने with Amara and गौरादित्वात् ङीष् and उपमानकथनमात्रेण न कोपितव्यमिति भावः, क्वचिदपि कस्मिन्नपि एकस्मिन्वस्तुनि with वस्तुनि supplied, अतो न निर्वृणोमीत्यर्थः, and अनेनास्याः सौन्दर्यमनुपममिति व्यज्यते. That every one of the five is a locative and none is stated as a comparison, that the stanza is the first of the four consolations of 2.43, and that two of Amara's four senses of हन्त hold at once, are the reader's; Pāṇini 1.1.27, 2.1.56, 4.1.41 and 7.1.15 are by way of skt-data's sūtra corpus, only the last two of them implied by him. Neither Amara's nor the Rasaratnākara's text is in this repository and the quoted lines cannot be checked“atra vīcīnāṃ viśeṣaṇopādāne nānuktaguṇagraho doṣaḥ … taduktaṃ rasaratnākare — “dhvanyutpāde guṇotkarṣe bhogoktau doṣavāraṇe | viśeṣaṇādidoṣasya nāsty anuktaguṇagrahaḥ” iti”
In the priyaṅgu creepers I keep seeing your body; in the glance of a startled doe the fall of your look; in the moon the light of your face; in the peacocks' heaped tail-feathers your hair; in the small ripples of rivers the play of your brows — and yet, fierce one, nowhere in any single thing is there a likeness of you. Five places, five things, one verb, and the last line takes it all back. What the four pādas do is the poem's most famous stroke: the husband finds his wife scattered across the whole world and cannot rest in any of it, because a piece is not the person. Mallinātha does not name a figure for it — he calls the effect suggestion, अनेनास्याः सौन्दर्यमनुपममिति व्यज्यते, by this her beauty is conveyed to be beyond compare — and the stanza is the first of the four consolations he listed at 2.43, सादृश्य, seeing something that resembles her, taken up for four pādas and denied in the fifth breath.
- Mallinātha, Sañjīvinī — 2.44, whole-verse gloss; anenāsyāḥ saundaryam anupamam iti vyajyate