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"O you the courtesan, hear (me), oh well, are you remembering the time favourable to a paramour and a courtesan ? Well is the (meeting) place of a paramour and an unchaste lady, is there any paramour ?"
The assumption of the reading suṇāhi meaning śṛnu ('hear me') and ayade as independent words in Pischel's edition followed by other editions, gives us a sense that does not appear to be happy and consistant. But these two words when combined suṇāhi + ayaḍe = Skt. sunābhi-kūpa acting as a bahuvṛhi compound representing vocative singular form of a feminine base ending in a and referring to aḍaye as an attributive adjunct, will present us a good sense, because the comparison nabhikūpa, nābhigarta etc. is rather usual in Indian literature, and even Hemacandra uses this comparison more than once in the same book.
The next difficulty is with the root sarasi. The use of the Prakrit root sara as an equivalent to Sanskrit root smr 'to remember' is far less common than the Sanskrit root sy 'to go'. And it may be added here that of the root smr, the form sumara very often puts in appearance in Prakrit literature, and the form sara is extremely rare. Hence I suggest sarasi meaning 'go'. It is also suggested that aṇāḍa-aḍayaṇapie should be taken in a locative form qualifying the word kāle, i.e., 'the time pleasing to the paramours and courtesans' which no doubt yields a good sense, happy and consistent and sarasi in the sense of 'going', its object; being amdhamdhuma, when aviṇaya-varaha-vvāṭṭhāṇam will stand in opposition to it, i.e., the going of an uncaste lady to the well which is the meeting place of the paramours and courtesans.
The Prakrit word tam should stand for tad, meaning 'therefore'; so tam ittha anado kim should be translated as 'is there any paramour (waiting for you)?' So the translation of the improved reading should be as follows:
"Oh, you the courtesan whose naval cavity is like a well, are you going at this time pleasing to the paramour and the courtesan to (that) well which is the meeting place of the paramour and the courtesan. Why, is there any paramour (waiting for you)?"
It is very difficult to get a very good edition of Prakrit texts. Take, for example, the editions of Kalidasa's Sakuntala by two eminent scholars-Monier-Williams and Richard Pischel. Both have claimed
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