Rasa by Authorship: The Deer Verse
Your internal test carries a four-line prescribed Prakrit verse. A young deer drinks at a forest pool and does not see the arrow already loosed; the second couplet observes that the body is a bubble that bursts before the summer cloud has passed. Line 1 compares the deer to a child that has strayed from its mother, opening with 'jaha' and closing with 'taha'. Line 2 repeats the sibilant 'sa' five times. The last line uses the word 'bubbuya', bubble. You ask for the principal rasa, one subordinate rasa, and one device named and explained from the words of the verse. Thirty-one of forty students write 'shanta, because the poet is a Jain monk writing about impermanence'. Two write 'karuna'. Your head of department wants the scheme justified before moderation.
1. Is the principal rasa shanta or karuna? Argue from the verse, not from the poet.
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Karuna, with shanta subordinate.
The test is proportion and focus, not subject matter. Three of the four lines are occupied by the deer: it drinks, it does not see, it is likened to a child separated from its mother. The reader's attention is held on undeserved suffering, and that is the seat of karuna. The bubble line is a general reflection; it supplies vairagya, but it arrives as a comment on the deer rather than as the poem's centre. So it is an anga-rasa - subordinate, supporting - not the principal.
The authorship argument must be rejected explicitly. Rasa is a property of the composition, not of the person who wrote it; the same monk can write karuna, vira or hasya. Had the verse spent its lines on the bursting bubble and used the deer only as an illustration, shanta could have been principal - so the judgement is genuinely about proportion, and a student who argues that way with the text in front of them deserves credit even if they choose differently. What earns no credit is 'he was a monk, therefore shanta'.
2. Name the devices in lines 1 and 2 and show what a full-mark explanation adds to the name.
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Line 1: upama (simile), marked by the correlatives jaha ... taha. Name it, then state the point of similarity: the deer is helpless and unaware in the way a child is helpless and unaware when separated from its mother. That similarity is what makes the death pitiable, which is why the device and the rasa belong in the same answer - the simile is doing the work of karuna.
Line 2: anuprasa (alliteration) of the sibilant sa, five times in one line. The name alone is worth little. The explanation must connect sound to sense: the hissing repetition is the sound of the arrow and of the breath leaving the body, so the line hisses where the deer cannot cry out.
Marking rule to state on the scheme: name (half), locate in the words of the verse (quarter), effect on meaning or mood (quarter). This is also what stops a student from listing five devices and explaining none.
3. How will you mark the 31 shanta answers, and what one-line rule prevents the authorship shortcut next time?
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Mark them in parts, not as a block. The device mark is independently available - a shanta answer that names upama or anuprasa and explains it keeps those marks. The rasa mark is available only if the script argues from the verse's proportion: a student who writes 'the last line is a general reflection and could make the whole verse shanta' has made a defensible case and should be credited. A script that offers only 'the poet is a Jain monk' has offered no evidence about this poem and loses the rasa mark.
The one-line rule: the poet's religion is not evidence; quote the line that carries the mood. Put it on the board before the next verse and make each student underline their evidence line before writing a single word of the answer. That converts a vague appeal into a habit of locating mood in text.