Text 10.61

यथा वा,
तन्वि त्वन्-मुख-चन्द्रेण निर्जितो हन्त लज्जितः ।
विषाण्य् अङ्क-मिषाद् भुङ्क्ते प्राण-हानेच्छया विधुः ॥

yathā vā,
tanvi tvan-mukha-candreṇa nirjito hanta lajjitaḥ |
viṣāṇy aṅka-miṣād bhuṅkte prāṇa-hānecchayā vidhuḥ ||

tanvi—O slender woman; tvat-mukha-candreṇa—by your moon face; nirjitaḥ—defeated; hanta—alas; lajjitaḥ—ashamed; viṣāṇi—poisons; aṅka—of the mark; miṣāt—under the false appearance; bhuṅkte—eats; prāṇa—the life force; hāna—for the giving up; icchayā—with the desire; vidhuḥ—the moon.

Alas, slender girl, the moon feels embarrassed because he was defeated by your moon face, and now he ingests poison, under the guise of the mark, with the intent to give up his life.

evam ādi bhaṅgy-antarair anekadhā.

Apahnuti is expressed in many ways by means of various kinds of such wordings.

Commentary:

Here the existence of the well-known mark on the moon is expressly denied and is replaced with the existence of poison by means of the wording “under the guise of.” This is Mammaṭa’s other example:

amuṣmin lāvaṇyāmṛta-sarasi nūnaṃ mṛga-dṛśaḥ
  smaraḥ śarva-pluṣṭaḥ pṛthu-jaghana-bhāge nipatitaḥ |
yad aṅgāṅgārāṇāṃ praśama-piśunā nābhi-kuhare
  śikhā dhūmasyeyaṃ pariṇamati romāvali-vapuḥ ||

“For sure, Cupid, scorched by Śiva, fell on that part of the doe-eyed woman’s broad hips, a pond of the nectar of loveliness, because the line of smoke, which indicates that the embers of his body parts ceased to burn, has turned out as the row of hairs above the central hollow.”

The apahnuti is mixed with utprekṣā.

Mammaṭa elaborates:

atra na romāvaliḥ, dhūma-śikheyam iti pratipattiḥ,

“Here the perception is: “This is not a row of hairs; it is a line of smoke”” (Kāvya-prakāśa, verse 432 vṛtti).

According to Govinda Ṭhakkura, the key word here is the verb pariṇamati (it has transformed, i.e. turned out).^[1] However, Ruyyaka and Viśvanātha Kavirāja say the key word is vapuḥ (“the form of” in “it has turned out as the form of a row of hairs”),^[2] but that wording is akin to a metaphor.

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

atra dhūma-śikhā romāvali-vapuḥ pariṇamatīti pariṇāma-śabdārtha-vaśān neyaṃ romāvaliḥ kintu dhūma-śikheti pratīyate (Kāvya-pradīpa).

[2]:

kvacit punar asatyatvaṃ vastv-antara-rūpatābhidhāyi-vapuḥ-śabdādi-nibandhanam (Alaṅkāra-sarvasva). evaṃ “virājati vyoma-vapuḥ payodhis tārā-mayās tatra ca phena-bhaṅgāḥ” ity ādy-ākāreṇa ca prakṛta-niṣedho bodhyaḥ (Sāhitya-darpaṇa 10.38).