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The moon hangs full above Vṛndāvana, and the grove has burst out in all its wonderful, natural beauty, until the very loveliness of the night awakens in the heart of Rāsa Vihārī a single desire: to dance the sweet Rāsa with the Vraja-sundarīs. And so, to call the gopīs to the circle, He lifts His flute. Out of the moonlike mouth of Śyāmasundara the muralī pours its nectar, and Rūpa Gosvāmī fixes it in the Ujjvala-nīlamaṇi, that "kṛṣṇa-vaktrendu-niṣṭhyutaṁ muralī-ninadāmṛtam, uddīpanānāṁ sarveṣāṁ madhye pravaram īryate": the nectarean flutesong from Kṛṣṇa's moon-like mouth is known to be the greatest of all the kindlers of love. It is not a tune. It is a hand laid on the heart of every gopī in Vraja, and the heart cannot refuse.

Hear what that flute does to the one who loves Him, for Caṇḍī Dāsa heard it and could not stop singing of it. Śyāma's flute plays in the broad daylight and takes everything away; it burns the heart and makes one mad. Why does He do this? And if He must, why not in secret, why so openly? Eating, she cannot think of it; sleeping, she cannot think of it; this flute has made her deaf to all the world but its one sound. It makes her give up everything, makes her count herself a maidservant if only she may go. The noose of Kāna's flute has caught her family traditions, her patience, her moral principles, and her very shame, and Caṇḍī Dāsa says all of it, all of it, is because of Kānu's flute. This is no small love. This is love that has let itself be stripped of everything it could lose, so that nothing remains but the going.

And so they come, hundreds of loving gopī-rivers, running toward the ocean that is Kṛṣṇa. The mañjarīs, the tender handmaids, gather up prema-pāgalinī Rāi, our Rādhā mad with love, and they dress Her, ornament Her, and lead Her toward Vaṁśīdhārī who waits. Mark this well, O heart: even when every beautiful daughter of Vraja has arrived, the Rāsa festival cannot commence. The dance has a sovereign, and without the auspicious arrival of Rāseśvarī Rāi the circle stands incomplete. So Rāsa-Rasika Kṛṣṇa passes the waiting in play, even cutting jokes with the gopīs, even speaking words that sound like dismissal. Sanātana Gosvāmī reads those words tenderly: this is Kṛṣṇa's upekṣā-vāṇī in the first chapter of the Rāsa in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavata, where He tested the gopīs' love by pretending to reject them, speaking unfavourable words of indifference (Bhāgavata 10.29.17-28). It broke their hearts and drew from them their humblest prayers (10.29.31-41). But all of this, every feigned cold word, belonged to the time before Rādhā had come.

And the tradition guards a secret in the very grammar of the line. When the Bhāgavata says "tābhiḥ sametābhir udāra-ceṣṭitaḥ" (10.29.43), that Kṛṣṇa, of generous deeds, was now with the gathered gopīs, Sanātana Gosvāmī in the Bṛhad-Vaiṣṇava-Toṣaṇī parts the single word sametābhiḥ into three: sā, mā, itābhiḥ. And mā, He explains, is the supreme goddess of beauty, the parama-sundarī Śrī Rādhā: so the line now reads that having attained Her, He commenced the Rāsa. Before the exchange of words and replies Rādhā had not been among them; but at the stirring of Kṛṣṇa's own concealed longing She came, and the moment She came He could not reject Her as He had teased the others. He smiled, He laughed, He gave up His feigned indifference, and only then did the dance begin.

Then it happens. Watch Śyāmasundara now, still joking with the gopīs as before. A great light begins to shine on the horizon, and at once the hairs of His body lift in an ecstasy He cannot govern. He understands before face or voice: "Here, Rāseśvarī is coming. This is the effulgence of Her crown." unmīlan-mukuṭa-cchaṭā parilasad-dik-cakravalam: Her manifest diadem unfolds its splendour until the whole beautiful circle of directions is illuminated, out to the very horizon, the horizon itself lit by the lady it was waiting for. He rises. The Lord of the Rāsa stands up to welcome the empress of the Rāsa-rasa, His eyes turned eagerly toward the quarter from which Her effulgence pours.

Now His gaze travels over Her ornaments as She nears, and ours travels with His. The armlets high on Her arms, the keyūra and the aṅgada; the necklaces resting at Her breast; the whole bright multitude of bangles ringing Her wrists. They blaze. And here the tradition opens the whole verse: these jewels do not shine by their own jewel-nature. They have lain against the body of Rādhā, who is mahābhāva personified, the highest love grown into a form, and the touch of that love has filled them with mahābhāva itself. So their lustre defeats the lustre of mere gems: nirdhūta-ratna-cchabi, not because the stones are finer, but because what they have touched is finer than any stone could be. And along with Śyāmasundara, the maidservant too relishes the lustre of Śrīmatī's ornaments; to behold them is already to be brushed by Her love.

Then comes the sound. Slowly, slowly, as She moves nearer, the soft jingling of the kiṅkiṇī, the bells girdling Her hips, becomes audible: kalarava, a delicate ringing chorus. And beneath it the mañjīra, the anklets on Her feet, add their own sweeter music: mañju-dhvani, the loveliest of murmurs. To the ears of Nāgara this is a stream of nectar; He floats in it; an ocean of rasa lifts Him and carries Him, and He has not yet so much as taken Her hand. O wind that carries that ringing across the grove, O moon that lights the path of those bell-strung feet, you serve before we are even worthy to.

And She is come. With deepest respect Śyāmasundara takes Her with Him into the circle, into the heart of the maṇḍala, and only now, only with Rādhā within it, can Her sweet Rāsa dancing truly begin. And where does the maidservant stand in all of this? She does not lift her eyes to the dance. She keeps them low and steady upon the lotus feet, the śrīmat-pada-saroja, those feet whose anklets are still singing, those feet the dust of Vṛndāvana is honoured to hold. That is the whole instruction of the verse, the Manobodha, the word spoken straight to the mind. Not the crown alone, dazzling as it is across the ten directions. Not the jewels alone, though they shame all gems. The feet. Worship the feet. And so the tradition, singing through Śrīpāda Prabodhānanda, lays the command down plain: heno rādhā nāma dhara, jyotike bhajana koro, worship that transcendental light, that mahaḥ, whose name is Rādhā. śrīmat-pada-sarojaṁ bhaja mano rādhābhidhānaṁ mahaḥ.