by the one that drives them — नेतृ is 'the leader', from √नी, to lead; Mallinātha glosses it प्रेरकेण, 'the impeller', and then says who: the wind. The instrumental is the agent of नीताः, so the wind carries the clouds in the way a man leads a horse. **The word is an agent noun and not a kinship noun, and the difference shows in the declension**: कर्तृ-type stems lengthen the vowel in the strong cases where पितृ-type stems do not, so the nominative plural is नेतारः and not नेतरः. It declines on the कर्तृ pattern

brought — the past participle of √नी, and Mallinātha glosses it प्रापिताः, 'made to arrive', which swaps a plain participle for a causative one and so puts the wind's agency into the verb where the verse leaves it in the instrumental. The participle is nominative and agrees with जलमुचः three pādas later; everything between is what happened after they arrived

going — गति is the noun of √गम्, a going, a gait, a course, and in the end a destination. It is feminine standing alone and takes the masculine endings here because the bahuvrīhi it ends describes the masculine wind: सततगतिना, where the feminine noun on its own would give सततगत्या. **This is the same question as नाभि at 1.28** — what decides an i-stem's endings is the use rather than the stem — and it comes out the other way, because here the generator's masculine table is the one that is wanted and it has it. गति is feminine as a noun and masculine here

the storeys — भूमि is the ground, and then any level surface, and then a floor of a building; Mallinātha's सप्तभूमिक, 'seven-floored', for विमान uses it in that last sense inside a word of his own. The accusative plural is where the wind takes the clouds, and it is the only accusative of place in the stanza. **The stem is the one skt-data mis-declined at 1.18** — भू, a monosyllable — but only in appearance: भूमि is a separate word with an ordinary i-stem declension, and the generator has this one right

of the paintings — आलेख्य is from आ + √लिख्, to scratch or draw, with the kṛtya affix: 'what is to be drawn', hence a picture. Mallinātha glosses it सचित्राणाम्, 'the ones that carry pictures' — so the genitive is of the painted walls rather than of the paintings themselves — and cites the Śabdārṇava on the difference between the two words: चित्रं लिखितरूपाढ्यं स्यादालेख्यं तु यत्नतः, a citra is any thing rich in drawn shapes and an ālekhya is one made with pains. The genitive hangs on दोषम्: the damage is theirs

drop — कण is a grain, a speck, the smallest piece a thing comes in; of water it is a drop and of rice a grain. The instrumental is the instrument of उत्पाद्य: the drops are what does the damage. Mallinātha reads the word as the text prints it, where DCS reads सलिलकणिका, a diminutive of a different word for water

damage — **and Mallinātha's gloss is what turns an abstraction into a picture.** दोष is a fault, a flaw, a blemish, and in a treatise it is the defect that makes an argument or a poem bad. He writes दोषं स्फोटनम्: a *blistering*. Water on paint lifts it in bubbles, and the word for a moral fault is being used of what the damp does to a wall. Which is also why the clouds can be said to look guilty a line later — दोष is the word that carries both, and the whole second meaning he finds in the stanza turns on it

having brought about — the absolutive of a causative: √पद् is to go or to fall, उद् + √पद् is to come into being, and the causative of that is to make a thing come into being. The affix is ल्यप् rather than क्त्वा because the root carries a prefix. Mallinātha carries the word over without a gloss, which he can afford to do because he has just explained the noun it governs. The absolutive is what makes the sequence: first the damage, then the escape

at once — the adverb for the same instant, formed from सम + द्यु, 'on the same day', and worn down to mean immediately. Mallinātha carries it over. It is doing the joke's timing: the damage and the bolting are one action, and the word between them says there was no pause to think

touched — √स्पृश् is the plain verb for physical touch, and the participle keeps that flatness: not overcome by fear, not filled with it, merely touched by it, the way a hand lands on a shoulder. Mallinātha's gloss goes further than the word does — भयाविष्टाः, 'entered into by fear' — and gives the reason the verse withholds: सापराधत्वात्, because they have done something wrong. The visarga falls before the vowel of इव and the page prints शङ्कास्पृष्टा

as if — **and here it is on the page rather than supplied.** Twice in the last four stanzas Mallinātha has written an इव into a compound that did not have one, at 2.5 and again at 2.7; this time Kālidāsa has printed it, and Mallinātha names the figure that goes with it. An इव standing openly and attributing a state nobody can verify — that the clouds are uneasy — is what makes an उत्प्रेक्षा rather than a comparison

the clouds — literally the water-releasers, and Mallinātha spends one word on it, मेघाः. This is the subject the whole stanza has been waiting for: नीताः in the first pāda agrees with it, and so do शङ्कास्पृष्टाः, त्वादृशाः, धूमोद्गारानुकृतिनिपुणाः and जर्जराः. Five nominative plurals hang on one word that arrives two thirds of the way through. The visarga becomes स् before the त् of त्वादृशाः and the two print as one run. The root itself stands as a noun, the affix क्विप् having left nothing behind

like you — the word is the second person pronoun with 'see' behind it and an affix that turns the pair into an adjective, and Mallinātha gives all three parts: the derivation त्वामेव दृश्यन्त इति, the plain sense त्वत्सदृशाः, and the rule, Pāṇini 3.2.60 त्यदादिषु दृशोऽनालोचने कञ् च. The sūtra's अनालोचने is worth stopping on — the affix is licensed only where no seeing is meant, so a word built out of the verb 'to see' is available exactly when nobody is looking

by the ways — मार्ग is a road, from मृग, a deer: the track a deer makes. The instrumental is the case of the route taken, which is a use of its own — one goes *by* a road as one cuts *with* a knife. Mallinātha replaces the road with a hole, रन्ध्र, and the choice of word is the whole difference between a cloud leaving and a cloud getting out

expert — निपुण is skilled in the sense of having got good at a thing by doing it, and Mallinātha glosses it कुशल, which is the same idea from a different metaphor: कुशल is said to have begun as the man who could cut kuśa grass without hurting himself. **The word governs a locative** — one is expert *in* something — which is why his vigraha puts अनुकृतौ in the seventh case although the compound gives no case at all

in tatters — जर्जर is what has been worn or broken into pieces without falling apart: a rotted cloth, a cracked drum, an old man. Mallinātha glosses it विशीर्णाः, 'come apart', **and supplies सन्तः after it** — the fourth stanza running in which he adds a form of 'being' to turn an epithet into a clause. A cloud forced through a screen comes out shredded, which is what the word is for and also what makes it look like smoke

they burst out — √पत् is to fly or to fall, and with निस्, 'out', it is to rush out of somewhere. Mallinātha glosses it निष्क्रामन्ति, 'they go out', which is the flat verb for leaving a room and drops the flying entirely. **His gloss is the tamer word and his second reading needs the tamer word**, because what the stanza is really describing, on his account, is men leaving quietly by a side door