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37THET-89 • 17 this is both ornament and weapon of woman."38
Obviously, BH presupposes a society in which the language of the eyes is pretty and is pretty well-developed.
Thus, I do not think that one can simply opt for a materialistic or sociolinguistic explanation and put aside the possibility of a philosophy of high culture or aesthetics. On the contrary, the way the poet presupposes the participation of his readers in the individual instances or examples of his way of looking at things leaves no doubt that such aesthetics was not just ideosyncretic or personal. It must have been a dominant way of thinking in the circles in which he was brought up and moved."
$3.7 There is another aspect of ornamentation in the Satakatraya that belongs to a different sphere and could even be considered paradoxical or contrary. While the author is grappling with very fundamental problems of human existence and is forthright and original, his stanzas frequently come out like well-chiselled idols.40 If a statement approaching the force of a slogan or a manifesto is to be made, the metres chosen remind us of cascades, as in
mātsaryam utsārya vicārya kāryam āryāḥ samaryādam idam vadantu / . sevya nitambāḥ kimu bhūdharāņām uta smara-smera-vilāsininām //84/1 “Cut off all envy, examine the matter, tell us decisively, you noble men. which we ought to attend upon: the sloping sides of wilderness mountains or the buttocks of women abounding in passin?”
(Miller 1967:65 = Miller 1990:61)"
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