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29
boda-suņao vivaņņo, attā mattā pai-vi aņņattho/ phaďahi-vi modiā mahisaeņa ko kassa sāheu //
*The earless dog has died, the mother-in-law is drunk, my husband has gone elsewhere, the cotton-field is destroyed by a buffalo. Who is here who can convey this and to whom ?
The commentator rightly interpretes this as spoken by an unchaste woman within the hearing of his lover, implying the facts that the cotton-field was not available as their rendezous and that her house was then quiet convenient for their meeting.
Here the desired situation of meeting in privacy without all possible interference is comparable to that expressed in the verse by Udbhata quoted above. In the light of all this, the criticism by NittiDolci and her interpretation of the verse based on the choice of the variant phaliha meaning 'iron-bar', 'bolt (Sk. parigha-) (p. 44-45) is to be rejected: Consequently it also looses value attributed to it for providing an improved interpretation of some of Hāla's gāthās.
1. Pk. pus- and its variation puṁs- are probably of Dravidian origin. Compare Kannada (pusu, Telugu püya, Tamil puya 'smlar, besmear' (Dravidian Etymological Dictionary).
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