Sheldon Pollock > Quotes > Quote > Sunil shared it

“[Consider the following verse:
This used to loosen my belt and untie the knot holding up my skirt, and fondle
my heavy breasts and touch my navel and thighs and mound—this very hand.369
The wife of Bhurishravas addresses these words to her husband, lying dead on the battlefield, when she catches sight of his severed hand. Here, the recollection of a former state of affairs, though a component of the erotic rasa, does not conflict with the tragic but enhances it. An example of [2]:
The bites and nail wounds on your body,
left by the lioness in her lust for blood [or: in her passion for you]
and your hair everywhere stiffening with pleasure—
even the monks observe all this with longing.370
Here, the bites and the rest on the Buddha’s body are described as being as wonderful as those on a lover’s; and just as a susceptible bystander might observe the lover and long for such an experience himself, so do the monks when they see the Buddha’s wounds. Here a comparison is intended between the two rasas.”
― Sheldon Pollock, A Rasa Reader: Classical Indian Aesthetics