Text 10.67

उदाहरणम्,
क्वहं दैन्य-भराक्रान्तः क्वयं श्री-पतिर् अच्युतः ।
तृषार्तम् उपसंयातो निपातः सौर-सैन्धवः ॥

udāharaṇam,
kvahaṃ dainya-bharākrāntaḥ kvayaṃ śrī-patir acyutaḥ |
tṛṣārtam upasaṃyāto nipātaḥ saura-saindhavaḥ ||

kva—where?; aham—am I; dainya—of a miserable state; bhara—by the weight; ākrāntaḥ—overcome; kva—where?; ayam—He; śrī-patiḥ—Lakṣmī’s husband; acyutaḥ—Acyuta; tṛṣā—by thirst; ārtam—[someone] pained; upasaṃyātaḥ—has approached; nipātaḥ—the fall (the flow); saura-saindhavaḥ—related to the Ganges (sura-sindhu).

Where am I? I am overcome by a burden of affliction. And where is Acyuta? He is Lakṣmī’s husband. The flow of the Ganges has approached someone pained by thirst.

atra tṛṣṇākulasya gaṅgā-saṅgama iva dīnasya me śrī-kānta-sākṣātkāra ity upamā kalpyate.

Here this simile is imagined: “Being afflicted, my directly seeing Lakṣmī’s husband is like a parched individual’s contacting the Ganges.”

Commentary:

This is Mammaṭa’s example:

kva sūrya-prabhavo vaṃśaḥ kva cālpa-viṣayo matiḥ |
titīrṣur dustaraṃ mohād uḍupenāsmi sāgaram ||

“Where on one hand is the solar dynasty and where on the other is my intellect of little scope? Out of folly, I want to traverse the hard-to-cross ocean with a raft.” (Raghu-vaṃśa 1.2)

Mammaṭa elaborates: atra, uḍupena sāgara-taraṇam iva man-matyā sūrya-vaṃśa-varṇanam ity upamāyāṃ paryavasyati, “Here the statement culminates in a simile: “Describing the solar dynasty by means of my intellect is like crossing the ocean with a raft”” (Kāvya-prakāśa, verse 435 vṛtti).

However, in each verse, if there is no follow-up that implies a simile, that huge contrast by itself is classed as the first variety of the viṣama ornament (disparity) (10.203-204).

Nāgeśa Bhaṭṭa makes two categories of nidarśanā: śābdī (understood from the words) and ārthī (understood from the sense). He says Mammaṭa’s example illustrates the latter. He exemplifies the former: “One who colors the jewels of your nails with red nail-polish makes the moon whitish with off-white sandalwood paste.”^[1]

Footnotes and references:

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[1]:

uḍupena sāgara-taraṇa-vad iti. kalpanam. vyañjanam. pratīyamānābheda-rakṣaṇāyeti bhāvaḥ. evaṃ cātrārthī nidarśanā. “tvat-pāda-nakha-ratnāni yo rañjayati yāvakaiḥ, induṃ candana-lepena pāṇḍurī-kurute hi saḥ” ity-ādau tu śābdī bodhyā. vākyārtha-gā cobhayatrāpi (Uddyota on Kāvya-prakāśa verse 435).