ity ādibhiḥ priyaçatair anurudhya mugdhām
tām eva çāntam athavā kim ataḥ pareṇa.
‘ “Thou art my life, my second heart, thou the moonlight of my eyes, the ambrosia for my body thou”: with these and a hundred other endearments didst thou win her simple soul, and now alas—but what need to say more?’
Elsewhere we have less simplicity, but in these cases we must distinguish carefully between those instances in which the difficulty and complexity of expression serve to illustrate the thought, and those in which the words are made to stand in lieu of ideas. In many cases Bhavabhūti may justly claim to have achieved substantial success, even when he is not precisely simple. The effect of love on Mādhava is effectively expressed:[24]
paricchedātītaḥ sakalavacanānām aviṣayaḥ
punarjanmany asminn anubhavapathaṁ yo na gatavān
vivekapradhvaṅsād upacitamahāmohagahano
vikāraḥ ko ’py antar jaḍayati ca tāpaṁ ca kurute.
‘An emotion, evading determination, inexpressible by words, never before experienced in this birth of mine, wholly confusing [[201]]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: