235. 260 CHAPTER IV

260 CHAPTER IV

flying in a row. Peacocks begin cooing. Gentle breeze, surcharged with spray, begins blowing. The pang of separa- tion becomes more and more intense and the memory of Sita gets more and more vivid. He realises the unbearabi. lity of the existing condition, remembers the past vicissitudes of fortune and the effect that they had on his heart. He also realises the effect of the past experiences in developing an attitude of not taking such things too much to heart. Still he feels intensely the effect of the situation and patiently bearing it says :- "There are the clouds imparting a peculiar beauty to the sky by their charming darkness and the cranes are flying in them. There are the breezes surcharged with spray. And there are also the joyous cooings1 of peacocks. Let them all be. I am Rama, utterly devoid of feeling. I bear all."

Here the word Rama does not simply arouse the conventional meaning of a son of a certain king, but sudden- ly surrounds it with all the pictures of the past unhappy events such as being exiled just on the day when he was to be crowned, life in the forest, his devotion to Sita, his losing her and so on. But the skilful arrangement of words does not allow the other events, the happy ones, such as the winning of Sita, to rise in the consciousness, because that is prevented by the words, " utterly devoid of feeling" ( Drdham kathora hrdayah ). These pictures so fuse with one another that they form one whole, in which the conven- tional meaning pales to such insignificance that it is not clearly noticed. It is because of this process in the rise of the suggested meaning that this is called Arthantarasamkra- mitavācya, as explained above.

1. Dh. L., 61.