Dākṣiṇya and Rasa in the Vikramorvaśīya

This verse comes at the end of the 2nd Act of Kālidāsa's Vikramorvaśīya (hereafter V). It is spoken by the royal hero Purūravas moments after his wife Auśīnarī has left the scene in a jealous pique, refusing to accept his anunaya , his attempt at conciliation. Auśīnarī had confronted him with evidence of his affair with the apsaras Urvaśī, a love-verse that the nymph had inscribed on a piece of birch-bark. Urvaśī had by then already left the lovely palace garden where she had appeared to him beyond his hopes (for how can a mortal expect a liaison with a divinity?), called back to Indra's palace to act the principal role in a play called Lakṣmī's Svayaṃvara . The King had entrusted the piece of bark to the Vidūṣaka's safekeeping, but of course the latter—true to his name of “spoiler”—had dropped it, leaving it to be discovered by Auśīnarī and her maid. At first the hero tries to deny that the inscribed message has anything to do with him, but this is hardly convincing. Furthermore, the Vidūṣaka's attempts at camouflage only succeeded in underscoring his friend's guilt. But “No,” Ausmari responds, “you haven't transgressed. It is I who transgress with my disagreeable presence. I'll go!” With this she plays her trump card, and Purūravas can only play his. He admits his guilt, but only formulaically, only by invoking a gallant convention: he is and has always been her slave, and when the mistress is angry then surely the slave is guilty. Saying this, he falls at her feet, but she turns her back on him and leaves. The Vidūṣaka remarks that this is all to his favour since he will no longer have to camouflage his affair, but Purūravas rejects this callous notion. His respect ( bahumāna ) for Auśīnarī is genuine. He does not want to hurt her and regrets that his gallantry cannot soothe her. Thus he utters the lines I have quoted above

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