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However, the next verse Vātāhāratayā etc. cited from the Bhallata Sataka (87) contains an Atiśayokti, hyperbole, which is employed to heighten the feeling of disgust (Nirveda) on the part of the poet who has observed hypocracy masquerading as piety. But the poet has failed to describe instances of hypocracy (that of the serpents, the peacocks and the hunters) in an ascend-- ing order of the austerity of their vows. In other words, among the three vows, viz., of subsistence on wind, subsistence on the drops of rain water alone and being clad in the rough (sacred) skin of camūru deer, the first is the most difficult of all, hence it should have been described last. This would have ensured a proper ascending order of the vows of austerity, resulting in the proper development of the sentiment of quietude, i.e., śāntarasa. Thus the figure Atiśayokti fails to agree with the principal sentiment; nay, it actually mars the effect by not maintaining the atmosphere of the śāntarasa, though it exhibits the three types of hypocrites causing disgust to grow. Hemachandra, criticises the poet in the gloss by remarking that in this verse, since 'subsistence on air' (Vātāhāratva), which should have been mentioned last, has been mentioned first, the hyperbole is employed at an inopportune moment. To wit, from the beginning itself, the hyperbole which is brought in by means of the figures Hetūtprekşā in the first line of the stanza, fails to serve to intensify or maintain the emotion of disgust which lies in the feeling of regret for the series of merits that are repressed by the power of rank hypocracy and which is relevant here. Indeed subsisting on drops of rainy water is not a greater hypocracy than subsistence on air, nor is being clad in a deer-skin a greater hypocracy than the second vow.
If timely acceptance of a figure is important for the heightening of a Rasa, the timely dropping of an Alamkāra is. equally important. As the Dhvanyaloka says, even the abandoning half-way of a figure already taken up for treatment in favour of some other figure more favourably disposed to reveal the principal element, viz., Rasa, is perfectly justified. An
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