Mike Cross: Aśvaghoṣa's Gold

Saundarananda - 347
prasīda sīdāmi vimuñca mā mune vasundharā-dhairya na dhairyam asti me /
asūn vimokṣyāmi vimukta-mānasa prayaccha vā vāg-amṛtaṁ mumūrṣave // 10.54 //
Please, 1016 O Sage firm as the earth, 1017 I am sinking. Liberate me who am without firmness. / I
shall give up my life, O Man of Liberated Mind, 1018 unless you extend to a dying man the
deathless nectar of your words. 1019 // 10.54 //
anartha-bhogena vighāta-dṛṣṭinā pramāda-daṁṣṭreṇa tamo-viṣāgninā /
ahaṁ hi daṣṭo hṛdi manmathāhinā vidhatsva tasmād agadaṁ mahā-bhiṣak // 10.55 //
For a snake whose coils are calamity, whose eyes are destruction, 1020 whose fangs are madness,
whose fiery venom is dark ignorance: / The snake of love has bitten me in the heart. Therefore,
Great Healer, supply the antidote! 1021 // 10.55 //
anena daṣṭo madanāhinā hi nā na kaś-cid ātmany anavasthitaḥ sthitaḥ /
mumoha vodhyor hy acalātmano mano babhūva dhīmāṁś ca sa śantanus tanuḥ // 10.56
//
For nobody bitten by this snake of love remains anything but unsettled in himself / Bewildered
was the mind of Vodhyu, whose essence had been immovability, while ‘Good-Body’ Śan-tanu,
who had been a sensible man, grew gaunt. 1022 // 10.56 //
1016
Prasīda (be pleased to; please!) and sīdāmi (I am sinking) are both from the root √sad, to sit or sink
down, to settle.
1017
The 2 nd pāda, similarly, contains plays on words from the root √dhṛ, to bear or hold firm – thus the
earth is vasun-dharā (lit. “treasure-bearer") and firm is dhairya.
1018
Vimokṣyāmi (I shall give up) and vimukta (liberated) are both from vi-√muc.
1019
Amṛtam (deathless [nectar]) and mumūrṣave (to one about to die) are both from the root √mṛ. Even
though Nanda himself is evidently taking his own burning desire so deadly seriously, the plays on
words impart a certain subversive sense of levity.
1020
Vighāta, “a blow, destruction, ruin,” is as in the title of SN Canto 7, strī-vighātaḥ, A Tirade against
Women.
1021
Agada means medicine and especially an antidote. As a rule, the antidote to passion (rāga) is recorded
in suttas like the Long Discourse Giving Advice to Rāhula (DN22), as the unpleasant or unattractive
(aśubha; see e.g. SN16.60; SN17.38). Hence the striver's description of the repulsive aspects of the human
body in Cantos 7 and 8. The Buddha himself, however, in his administering of the medicine of dharma
to Nanda, evidently sees the wisdom in a less conventional and more indirect route.
1022
Śan-tanu is the king mentioned by Nanda in SN7.41 and 7.44. No reference to Vodhyu has been traced.
As in verse 54, Nanda's sense of the deadly seriousness of his situation is subverted by the latitude
Aśvaghoṣa exhibits in finding time for poetic wordplay, whereby the closing two syllables of each pāda
are repeated|: ...hi nā hi nā; ...sthi taḥ sthi taḥ; ...ma no ma no; ...ta nus ta nuḥ.