Trishasti Shalaka Purusa Caritra Part 1

Author(s): Hemchandracharya, Helen M Johnson
Publisher: Oriental Research Institute Vadodra

Page 210

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his neck was round and white like a drum; there was hair on his broad fore-quarters. His back-bone looked like a strung bow, his belly was lean, he was adorned with a circle of nails like the moon-circle; his breath was fragrant and deep; the end of his trunk quivering and long, his lip-buds long, his linga long, his tail long; he was marked with bells on his sides like Meru with the sun and moon; he wore a girth covered with flowers of the trees of heaven.
His faces, with their foreheads ornamented with golden frontlets, looked like pleasure-grounds of the Śris of the eight quarters. In each face eight tusks, curved, long, and turned upwards, massive, looked like peaks of a large mountain. In each tusk was a lotus-pond with sweet, spotless lotuses, like the lake on each zone-bounding mountain. In each pond were eight lotuses that were like faces put outside the water by the water-nymphs. In each lotus eight full-blown petals looked like islands for resting-places of goddesses at play. On each petal shone eight companies of actors, each endowed with the fourfold modes of conveying pleasure.286 In each company there were thirty-two actors, like cascades with a wealth of wayes of sweet emotions. Then Vāsava with his retinue mounted the best of elephants in the seat of honor, his nose concealed by the top of the protuberance. When Vāsava and his retinue were seated, the lord of
286 418. Abhinaya. “Mode of conveyance of the theatrical pleasure to the audience, which pleasure, called rasa, is pure and differs from the pleasure we derive from the actual contact with the objects of the world which is always mingled with pain." Natyaśāstra, GOS XXXVI, p. 7. The four are: sättvika, conveyed by effort of the mind; õngika, conveyed by the body; vācika, conveyed by expression ; āhārya, conveyed by dress, deportment and mise-en. scène. The Jain work, Nāțyadarpaşa, (pp. 188 ff.) gives the same. The Ava. (p. 1896) gives the 4 abhinayas as dārstāntika, prati
rutika, vinipātika, and lokamadhyāvasānika, but no explanation of the meaning of these terms in this connection.