because of the impossibility of examination, is at once numbing me within and filling me with a torment of fire.'
The poet's command of the philosophical conceptions of his day is shown in the verse following:
paricchedavyaktir bhavati na puraḥsthe 'pi viṣaye
bhavaty abhyaste 'pi smaraṇam atathābhāvavirasam
na saṁtāpacchedo himasarasi vā candramasi vā
mano niṣṭhāçūnyam bhramati ca kim apy ālikhati ca.
'Though an object be before one's gaze, determination is not easy; brought back, memory intervenes to introduce an element of falsity; neither in the cool lake nor in the moonbeams can passion be quenched; my mind, powerless to attain a fixed result, wanders, and yet records something.'
We have a further effective picture of the physical effect of love on Mādhava when he seeks to assuage his sorrows by depicting his beloved from memory:[1]
vāraṁ vāraṁ tirayati dṛçor udgamam bāṣpapūras
tatsaṁkalpopahitajaḍima stambham abhyeti gātram
sadyaḥ svidyann ayam aviratotkampalolān̄gulīkaḥ
pāṇir lekhāvidhiṣu nitarāṁ vartate kiṁ karomi.
'Time after time the tears that stream from my eyes blind my sight; my body is paralysed by the numbness born of the thought of her; when I seek to draw, my hand grows moist and trembles incessantly; ah, what is there that I can do?'
It is, however, easy to pass into exaggeration, as in:[2]
līneva pratibimbiteva likhitevotkirṇarūpeva ca
pratyupteva ca vajralepaghatitevāntarnikhāteva ca
sa naç cetasi kiliteva viçikhaiç cetobhuvaḥ pañcabhiç
cintāsaṁtatitantujālanibiḍasyūteva ca lagnā priyā.
'So have I grasped my dear one that she is as it were merged in me, reflected in me, depicted in me, her form mingled in me, cast into me, cemented with adamant to me, planted within me, pinned to my soul by the five arrows of love, firmly sewn into the fabric of my thought continuum.'
A stanza like this, whatever credit it may do to the ingenuity of its author, hardly gives any high opinion of his literary taste, but we are undoubtedly forced to assume that he believed deliberately in the merits of the style he adopted, which as
