Text 8.3

यथा,

yathā,

For example (here an ornament of sound assists the rasa):

lolāli-mālā militā lalitā mālatī-latā |
jaladākalite kāle karāle vilayāya me ||

lola—fickle; āli—of female friends; mālā—a multitude; militā—met; lalitā—charming (or Lalitā); mālatī—of jasmines; latā—a creeper; jalada—with clouds (“they give water”); ākalite—is endowed; kāle—when the time; karāle—frightful; vilayāya me—to cause me to merge.

I encountered Lalitā, a creeper of jasmines. She was with her friends. At this time, which is scary because the sky is filled with clouds, that makes Me gloomy.

atra komalānupṛasaḥ śabdam alaṅkurvan daurbalya-vyañjanayā vipralambhaṃ rasaṃ puṣṇāti.

Here the alliteration of soft phonemes adorns the sound and enhances vipralambha-śṛṅgāra-rasa by hinting at feebleness (in Rādhā).

Commentary:

According to the author of Kṛṣṇānandinī, the speaker is Rādhā.^[1] Rādhā became dispirited in that situation because She could not ask Lalitā to act as a messenger. A rainy day inflames the vipralambha.

The soft phonemes are included in the category of sweet phonemes (Commentary 8.21). Such an alliteration is technically called komalā vṛtti anuprāsa (alliteration of soft letters) (9.11). Practically speaking, it is a characteristic of mādhurya-guṇa (Commentary 8.21). Thus sometimes a guṇa takes the form of an alaṅkāra, specifically an ornament of sound: As such, a guṇa forms the body of the poetry. This echoes Vāmana’s statement that the guṇas are the attributes of the poetry (Commentary 7.115). Mammaṭa implicitly agrees with him in part by stating that sometimes a guṇa occurs without a rasa (8.27).

Another feature of the construction of softness is the style of compounding: Here the words are not compounded, or else a compound only consists of two words as in mādhurya-guṇa proper (8.21).

Footnotes and references:

[1]:

virahiṇī rādhāha, lolālīti (Kṛṣṇānandinī).