*Having comforted your friend that way, whose grief a first parting has made tall, and turned back quickly from the mountain whose peaks Śiva's bull has gouged, hold up my life too — slack as a jasmine flower at dawn — with words of hers, sent with a token.*
**The errand reverses here, and Mallinātha marks it before the stanza starts.** His transition reads इत्थं स्वकुशलं सन्दिश्य तत्कुशलसन्देशानयनमिदानीं याचते — *having thus sent word of his own well-being, he now begs for the bringing of a message of hers.* The corpus's own place caption changes at the same verse, from संदेश to प्रत्यागमन. Everything from 2.39 has been a man talking; from here he is asking for an answer.
**The last thing he says about his wife is that she is the cloud's friend.** सखीं ते — and those two words stood at the end of 2.28's second pāda, twenty-five stanzas back, when the description of her began. Mallinātha keeps it in his own prose too, तस्यास्त्वत्सख्याः, *of her, your friend*. A man has spent a hundred and eighteen stanzas turning a stranger into someone who can be trusted in his wife's bedroom, and the poem records the result in an enclitic pronoun.
**And what he asks for himself is one line long.** ममापि — *mine too*, hers having been held up already — and the verb is धारयेथाः, glossed स्थापय, *set it in place*. Not saved, not restored: propped. The life is कुन्दप्रसवशिथिलम्, slack as a jasmine blossom, with प्रातः doing the work — a kunda opens at night, so a kunda at dawn is one that has been open all night, and the figure is a thing that is still there and no longer holding.
**He names the mood's sense for the third time.** प्रार्थनायां लिङ्, the optative in the sense of a request, one of the seven Pāṇini 3.3.161 lists — after the same remark on उपनमेत् at 2.31 and प्रार्थनायां लोट् at 2.37. Three times the poem asks for something, and DCS's tag is the lakāra all three times and can be nothing more.
**The one place a witness is refuted by the metre alone is here.** DCS's surface column reads मे where the page prints मम, an enclitic for a full form; मेऽपि leaves the pāda a syllable short of seventeen. Every earlier error in that column — `ucCvi` at 2.24, `pakzman` at 2.30, `sAray` at 2.32, `spandin` and `akzAyAH` at 2.35, `svaram` at 2.51 — needed a grammar to catch. This one needs a count.
**The stanza is built out of other stanzas' words.** आश्वास्य is the root that stood at 2.38 as प्रत्याश्वस्ताम्, where the cloud's wind brought her round before it spoke; अभिज्ञान is 2.52's word, asked for now in the other direction, so that her answer can be known to be hers. The whole request is symmetrical with the errand, which is what makes it a request and not an afterthought. No figure is named.
uncheckedthe reader's reading, following Mallinātha, Sañjīvinī's gloss. His are: प्रथमविरहेणोदग्रशोकां तीव्रदुःखाम्, एवं पूर्वोक्तरीत्या, the whole unpacking of त्रिनयनवृषोत्खातकूटात् with the Amara line for कूट, शैलात्कैलासात्, निवृत्तः सन्प्रत्यावृत्तः सन्, साभिज्ञानं सलक्षणं यथातथा प्रहितं प्रेषितं कुशलं येषु तैः, तस्यास्त्वत्सख्या वचोभिः, प्रातः कुन्दप्रसवमिव शिथिलं दुर्बलम्, धारयेथाः स्थापय with प्रार्थनायां लिङ्, and the transition इत्थं स्वकुशलं सन्दिश्य तत्कुशलसन्देशानयनमिदानीं याचते. That सखीं ते closes 2.28's second pāda, that the metre refutes DCS's मे, that the root of आश्वास्य stood at 2.38 and that a kunda at dawn has been open all night are the reader's. Pāṇini 3.3.161, 2.1.30, 2.1.55, 2.2.28 and 6.3.82 are by way of skt-data's sūtra corpus, only 3.3.161 named by him. Amara's text is not in this repository and the line cannot be checked; his gloss उपजीव्य beside आश्वास्य does not construe in the transcription and is logged in `.autopilot/blocked.md`“itthaṃ svakuśalaṃ sandiśya tatkuśalasandeśānayanam idānīṃ yācate”
Having comforted your friend that way — whose grief a first parting has made tall — and turned back quickly from the mountain whose peaks Śiva's bull has gouged, hold up my life too, slack as a jasmine flower at dawn, with words of hers, sent with a token. The stanza is the poem turning round: after a hundred-odd verses of a man giving directions, he finally asks for something, and it is small. Not to be saved, but propped; not with a rescue, but with a sentence or two of hers, carried back with a token so he can be sure it is hers.
నీ స్నేహితురాలిని — ఎవరి దుఃఖాన్ని తొలి ఎడబాటు ఉన్నతం చేసిందో ఆమెను — ఆ విధంగా ఓదార్చి, శివుని ఎద్దు శిఖరాలను పెకలించిన కొండనుండి త్వరగా మఱలివచ్చి, తెల్లవారున మల్లెపూవులా వదులైన నా ప్రాణాన్ని కూడా, ఆమె మాటలతో, ఒక గుర్తుతో పంపబడినవాటితో, నిలుపు. ఈ శ్లోకం కావ్యం తిరిగిపోవడం: వందకుపైగా శ్లోకాల సూచనల తర్వాత, చివరకు అతడు ఏదో కోరతాడు, అది చిన్నది. కాపాడబడటం కాదు, ఆసరా; రక్షణతో కాదు, ఆమె రెండు వాక్యాలతో, అవి ఆమెవని నిశ్చయించుకోడానికి గుర్తుతో తేబడినవి.
- Mallinātha, Sañjīvinī — 2.53, whole-verse gloss