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Picture it. The autumn night has ripened over the white sand of the Yamunā's bank, and the moon has poured itself out until the whole grove is one trembling pool of silver. Begin with the sound, for the Rāsa announces itself first to the ear. From the swaying waists come the small bells of the jeweled girdle, runu runu runu, the bangles answering at the wrists, the anklebells striking the earth in time with the turning of the dance, jham jham, jhamak. Multiply that by all the daughters of Vraja and by Kṛṣṇa among them, and you have a tumult of sweetness, one ocean-roar made entirely of jewels. This is no ordinary music; it is the body's own bliss made audible, the festival-noise of love that has nowhere left to hide.

And why is there such a festival at all? Kṛṣṇa Himself has told us in the Purāṇas: "mad bhaktānāṁ vinodārthaṁ karomi vividha kriyāḥ": for My devotees' pleasure I perform My many pastimes. Śrī Jīva Gosvāmī fixes the heart of it, commenting on the opening verse of the Rāsa in the Bhāgavata, that the chief reason for Kṛṣṇa's dancing is nothing but to please and satisfy the beautiful girls of Vraja, who are His greatest lovers. The wonder of the Rāsa is just this: Kṛṣṇa and the gopīs are each wholly given over to pleasing the other, so that no self is left in the circle, only mutual offering turning under the moon. Even Śrī Śuka Muni, who could see it, could only point at the sound; he tells us in the Bhāgavata that the Rāsa-circle was filled with the tumultuous noise of the bangles, the anklebells, and the waistbells of the Vraja-girls and their beloved Kṛṣṇa.

Now look. Hand laced into hand, the circle wheels, and at its living heart turn the two who are the reason for everything: Nāgarī Rādhā and Nāgara-rāja Kṛṣṇa, dark raincloud and the lightning that has flung Her arms around him, so that you cannot tell where the storm ends and the brightness begins. The Padāmṛta Mādhurī sings it so: the gopīs decorate the circle dancing hand in hand with the two of them, countless instruments are played, melody upon melody is sung, the bangles and waistbells and anklebells flash and ring, and Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa dance wonderfully, a fresh raincloud embraced by a lightning-strike. Over all of it rides the jingle of Rādhikā's own ornaments, the bells at Her waist and Her wrists and Her feet keeping the rhythm of the dance. And here is the marvel the tradition will not pass over: even Mādhava's mind, the mind that enchants the three worlds, is itself enchanted by this jingling, and most of all by the music that rises from Her moving feet. Do you know what that does to the maidservants? It makes them proud, proud the way a servant is proud, fiercely, tenderly, of her own Īśvarī, whose smallest bell can capture the Captivator.

O Rādhe, hear what kind of sakhīs these are. They are praṇayinīs, lovers without hesitation. They can dance hand in hand with Mādhava and feel no gap, no awe that would hold them an inch apart; they see no difference between Kṛṣṇa's hands and feet and their own, and keep no reverential distance, as Candrāvalī does, and her friends Padmā and Saibyā, who feel a difference and stand back. For these girlfriends of Yours, Kṛṣṇa's nearness is theirs by right of love. And so picture now what is most astonishing of all. Kṛṣṇa, drunk on the fragrance of this whole sweetness, reaches out his long, strong arm and curls it around the neck of a sakhī, drawing her against him in the very center of the dance. Bṛhad-bhuja-gṛhīta-kaṇṭha: the great arm has taken the throat. Here is the embrace that gods would forfeit heaven to receive, given freely, in the Rāsa, to a handmaid of Rādhā.

And what does she do? She looks away. She looks down. Even there, O wind that carries this nectar, even folded inside the arm of the all-beautiful, her eyes will not stay on his face. They slip past his shoulder and fall to the ground, and they go searching across the camphor-soft white sand for something. For footprints. For the lakṣma, the auspicious marks, pressed into the earth by the soles of Śrī Rādhā. Though embraced, though held, though every desire seems already answered, only this remains the cry: paraṁ nija-raseśvarī-caraṇa-lakṣmīm avekṣāmahe, supremely, only, may we behold the footprint-treasure of our own Queen of rasa. And it is not one or two who lower their eyes so. The glances of all of them, the sakhīs turning in the circle and the mañjarīs standing at the rim with the fans, every glance is bent to the ground to find the marks in the sand.

Taste how deep that goes. The Caitanya-caritāmṛta confesses what overturns the world's whole idea of love: even when Rādhikā, by some sweet stratagem, by nānā chole, by various tricks, sends a sakhī forward to unite with Kṛṣṇa herself, that sakhī receives from her own union a happiness that is real, yes, but it is millions of times less than the happiness of bringing Rādhikā to Him. So when Kṛṣṇa's arm closes round her neck in the Rāsa, the embrace cannot hold her attention, because her attention was never on her own pleasure to begin with. It was always, only, on Rādhā. The handmaid's eyes obey her heart, and her heart lives at Rādhā's feet.

And the marks are there. The bliss of the kiṅkarīs knows no shore when they make them out: the nineteen specific footmarks the tradition treasures on the soles of Rādhikā's left foot and right, stamped soft and clear in the moon-pale, camphor-white sand of the Yamunā's edge. To read them is to read a scripture written by feet. For the maidservants understand what these footprints really are: the sweet nectarean prema-rasa is forever oozing from Śrīmatī's lotus-feet, and where those feet have pressed, that nectar has sprinkled and soaked the very dust, sanctifying the floor of the dance, turning the transcendental sand of the Rāsasthalī into treasure. The footprints are not empty shapes left behind. They are vessels still brimming.

This is why the Rāsa is the Rāsa: the aggregate and crown of all astonishing transcendental mellow. Every daughter of Vraja pours wonderful sweetness into that circle, every one a fountain of rasa. But Śrī Rādhikā is the Raseśvarī, the presiding goddess of all mellows, the one from whom every other sweetness borrows its taste. And the maidservants come to know this not as a doctrine but as a lived thing, right here, with Kṛṣṇa's own arm around their necks. They feel, in the very heart of union, that even union is not the summit. The summit is below, on the ground, where Her feet have walked. The Lord himself is the embrace; the Beloved's footprint is the worship. And the handmaid, given the embrace, spends it, every drop of it, on the footprint. This, the source says, is the very essence of the verse: that the aspirant fix the mind on the nineteen signs on Śrī Rādhikā's footsoles.

O Rādhe, Raseśvarī, whose feet have made the dust of Vraja holier than the gods, grant this poverty of ours, that even folded in the arms of Mādhava we would only ever be looking for You.