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V. M. Kulkarni
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since the morning is to see her lover's departure.(50) The lover who is om travel bids the thunder and lightning do their worst on him, if they but spare his beloved at home.(61) A tender (hearted) wife rejoicing at her husband's return does not put on festal/gay dress lest she embitter the grief of her neighbour whose husband has not come home (52) One of the loveliest gathas, steeped in pathos, says : "When of two have long shared joy and sorrow together one dies, he alone is really alive, it is the other who dies."53) This beautiful sentiment has a distant parallel in Bhasa's line :
"Vāsavadattă (lit., Mahāsena's daughter) who is dead is not dead if the King (Udayana) has such a soft feeling for her" (59) and also in Bhavabh uti's line, 'He is not dead of whom a beloved thinks, in other words surely he is not dead who lives in the memory of a loved person.(56).
But absence may be a joy where the heart is false; "the faithless one bemoans her unprotected state, and begs her (neighbour-)friend to come to her home, merely to secure her safety. (56) Another gatha tells us of a naughty wife who pretends to be bitten by a scorpian in order to go to the house of the physician - her paramour (57) Another gātha brilliantly describes the removal of anger of the woman offended (manini) : The wife who is overpowered with sulky wrath at the offence of faithlessness of her husband (suddenly) laughs as their little boy crawls on his father's back, when he falls prostrate at her feet in penitence for his offence.68
Another gātha presents a graphic picture of a traveller and a maid (who distributes water to travellers) who fall in love at first sight : "Looking upwards and with his fingers thin (not close) the traveller drinks for long water and the water-maid makes thinner and thinner the already thin stream of water that she pours in the hollow of his hands."69
In another gatha the poet beautifully brings out Pārvati's 'untaught cleverness' in not allowing Siva to gaze at her unclothed or nude beauty :
"In the course of enjoying love's delights Pārvati has her garment stripped off; immediately she closes the pair of Siva's eyes with her tender arms, and closes the third eye of Siva by planting a kiss on it.”
This gātha strongly reminds us of Kālidāsa's famous verses from Kumarasambhava.(60) The poet of this gatha it would seem, has improved upon Kālidāsa's lovely description of the situation.
In another gatha the poet graphically describes how a cow in the cow-shed rubs her eye on the horn of a wicked bull. This description finds a parallel in Kalidasa's picture in Sakuntala wherein the desires to represent a dos rubbing her left eye on the horn of a black antelope.
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