Book Title: Makaranda Madhukar Anand Mahendale Festshrift
Author(s): M A Dhaky, Jitendra B Shah
Publisher: Shardaben Chimanbhai Educational Research Centre
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142
Minoru Hara
Makaranda
(1-4) We have a verse tinged with a pessimistic and deploring tone.
Asāre samsāre vişama-visa-pāke nrpa-sukhe krtāntenācānte praksti-capale jīvita-bale Ohruvāpāye kāye visaya-megatrsņāhata-hrdaḥ kşara-prāņaih prāņān ahaha parimusnanti kudhiyah ||
(MSS. 3744) “In this essenceless world of transmigration, where even the happiness of kings eventually develops into vehement poison, where life-power, fickle by nature, is sucked away by death, and where the body is subject to sure annihilation, fools, whose mind are carried away by the mirage of (the enjoyment of) sense-objects, hurt their life by flowing breaths."
(1-5) It is, then, a vain effort to look for happiness in this world. It simply ends in delusion :
Asāre khalu saṁsāre sukha-bhrāntiḥ śarīrināṁ | lālā-pānam ivāngusthe bālānām stanya-vibhramah ||
(MSS. 3742) “In this essenceless world of transmigration, people conceive a delusion of happiness, as babies falsely consider the playful sucking on their thumbs as sucking their mother's breasts."6
(1-6) An Epic passage, then, recommends a wise man to abandon it :
Janma-mrtyu-jarā-vyādhi-vedanābhir upadrutam | asāram imam asvantam saṁsāram tyajatah sukham ||
(MBh. 12.9.33=Hitopadeśa 4.87) "By abandoning this essenceless and unpleasant world of transmigration, which is beset by the anguish of birth, death, old age, and illness, one becomes happy."
(1-7) Thus, a certain idea came into the mind of a wealthy merchant Dhanana one day, which led him to renunciation :
evam sakala-sampadām āśrayasya tasya cetasi sarva-vastusv anityabuddhir utpannā : kim iti, saṁsāro yam asärah : sarvam api vastu-jātam anityam
