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Begin in the great circle of the night. The moon has poured its milk over the sands of the Yamunā, and the Rāsa-maṇḍala has formed: gopī and Kṛṣṇa, gopī and Kṛṣṇa, alternating around the ring like sapphire strung with gold on a single thread, and at the very center the Rasika of all rasa and His Rāseśvarī turn together, Kṛṣṇa the Rāsa-Rasika, Rādhikā the Rāseśvarī, the axis of the whole wheeling dance. Stand here as the kiṅkarī stands, a little to the side, and let your eyes travel around the shining circle. Every girl in that ring is a śyāmā-heroine, the rarest and best kind of all. The tradition fixes her qualities in a single verse: śīta-kāle bhaved uṣṇā grīṣme ca sukha-śītalā, padma-gandhi mukhaṁ yasyāḥ sā śyāmā parikīrtitā, "she is warm in the winter and cool in the summer, and from her face rises the scent of the lotus." Such are these daughters of Vraja, every one of them, and tonight they are all here, all dancing, all radiant in the festival of the Mahā-Rāsa.

And yet. Let your gaze come to rest where it always comes to rest. There, in the very midst of them, is Vṛṣabhānu's daughter, and beside Her the others are stars beside the moon. In luster, in tenderness, in beauty, in love, in the very art of the dance, She outshines them all. She is the maṇi, the single gem that crowns this whole circle of the loveliest girls in creation: śyāmā-maṇḍala-mauli-maṇḍana-maṇiḥ, the jewel set in the crown of all the śyāmā-girls. O the pride that swells in the maidservant's heart to see it. My Svāminī. The crown of the crowned. The jewel of the jewels.

Look closely now at Her body, O heart, and you will see what makes the kiṅkarī tremble. As Rādhā watches Her numberless sakhīs delighting Her Beloved in the great festival of the Rāsa, love rises in Her like a tide, śyāmānurāga, the passion for dark Śyāma, and every hair of Her stands erect, romodbheda, the goosepimples of ecstasy breaking through the whole of Her form. This is no ornament fastened on from outside. Her very ākṛti, Her shape itself, has become the incitement and the manifestation of love, vibhāvita: the body blossoming bodily into bhāva. And see the color of Her. The tradition teaches that when cloud-blue Kṛṣṇa's luster touches the gold of Rādhā and Her friends, He takes on the green of a fresh emerald; and just so, when golden Rādhā's luster touches the cloud-blue of Her Lover, Her gold deepens and reddens into the saffron-vermilion of kuṅkuma, kāśmīra-gaura, the glow of a bride. How sweet, O how unspeakably sweet, is the wonderful meeting that paints these two colors upon each other. The maidservant's whole being drowns in the looking.

The dance is done. Śyāmasundara sits down to rest among His heroines, and the kiṅkarī takes up the whisk and fans Them, glad to be of use. Then, when the short rest is over, the Lord does a thing only He can do. The sage Śuka sang of it long ago in the Śrīmad-Bhāgavata: kṛtvā tāvantam ātmānaṁ yāvatīr gopa-yoṣitaḥ, rarāma bhagavāṁs tābhir ātmārāmo'pi līlayā, "Although the Lord is Self-satisfied, needing nothing and no one, He expanded Himself into as many forms as there were cowherd maidens and sported with them all in play." The Vaiṣṇava-Toṣaṇī unfolds it tenderly: paunaruktam idaṁ viśrāma-samaya ekībhūtatvāt, that at the hour of rest He drew all His forms back and was One Kṛṣṇa again; and tad-ramaṇaṁ ca pṛthak pṛthak tatraiva nikaṭa-nikuñjādiṣu, that then, for love-play, He scattered Himself once more, a whole Kṛṣṇa for each beloved, each in her own nearby nikuñja on the bank of the river, so that not one was left without Him.

Now creep close, O heart, the way the blessed maidservant creeps, and look through the little gaps in the woven Kalpalatā-vines into the bower where Rādhā and Her Prāṇeśvara have gone. See how restless She has become, taralā, swaying and trembling, the sāttvika ecstasies rising in waves through the intoxication of love-play, sāttvika-unmada-kāma-keli. So consummate is She in this art, so deep and towering does Her feeling run, that the Lord of all the worlds stands inside Her bower like a beggar dazzled within a palace, overwhelmed, undone, flabbergasted by the great cresting wave of Her mādana-mahābhāva, that highest, maddest, most unbearable sweetness of love. And when She sees Him so bewildered, so wholly surrendered, a slow soft smile breaks over Her face, manda-smitā, and She resolves, gently, to become His teacher in all the arts of love. And our Hero, the master of the universe, lowers Himself and follows where She leads, submissive, learning. Read that again and let it astonish you: He follows Her.

The maidservant understands that her own hour has come, the hour her whole existence is bent toward. She slips into the arbor and serves. Cool scented water for Their thirst. Betel-leaves folded with camphor for Their pleasure. The whisk lifted and lowered, lifted and lowered, over the resting Pair. And then, when the play has had its fill, Svāminī passes into Her cottage-temple in the grove of wish-fulfilling Mandāra-trees, mandāra-druma-kuñja-mandira-gatā, and seats Herself upon a jeweled throne, Her tamed and tender Nāgara beside Her. In that moment She appears to the kiṅkarī as what She truly, eternally is: not merely the sweetheart of the bowers, but Govinda-paṭṭeśvarī, the consecrated, enthroned Queen of Govinda Himself, the one upon whose authority the whole sweetness of Vraja turns. O grove of Mandāra-trees that holds Her cottage, O wish-fulfilling boughs that roof Her throne, you have become a temple, mandira, and She is the deity within it.

And so the prayer rises, small and whole, from the servant kneeling at the foot of the throne: O Rādhe, Queen of Govinda, jewel that crowns the loveliest of girls, golden one gone saffron in Your Lover's embrace, soft-smiling sovereign of the bowers, may You protect me. Pātu mām. Keep this little servant. Let me never wander from the foot of Your throne. Protect me, protect me.