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Picture the forest path at the hour when the gopīs are abroad. A streak of dark blue moves among them, and there is no telling where He will alight next. Suddenly, with no warning at all, He has caught the hem of one girl's new garment and given it a tug, so that she turns half-laughing, half-scolding. Before she can answer He has slipped to another and laid the cool length of His Muralī-flute against the coiled braid at the nape of her neck, lifting the veil with the flute as though by accident. And a third He has simply taken by the hand, holding her fast in the middle of the lane. This is "mahā-lampaṭa-maṇiḥ": not one gallant among many, but the very jewel set at the crown of all great gallants, the king of every bold lover, Nāgararāja Himself.

Do not mistake the title for a slur. The tradition is precise here: He is named the jewel of all debauchees because His lāmpaṭya, His boldness in love, is the most attractive thing in all the worlds. The old teachers set beneath this scene the verse of the Prema-sampuṭa, the fifty-sixth, where Rādhā Herself, speaking to Kṛṣṇa disguised as a demigoddess, confesses what this love is: "lāmpaṭyato nava navaṁ viṣayaṁ prakurvān, āhlādayann amṛta-raśmir iva trilokīṁ, santāpayan pralaya-sūrya ivāvabhāti": by its very boldness this love makes My beloved new at every moment, its savour intoxicating beyond telling; it delights the three worlds like a stream of nectar, and it scorches like the sun on the day the universe dissolves. So the wandering is not carelessness. The hero stays forever blossoming with eagerness because He is forever meeting love afresh; and the heroine, for her part, passes through the wonderful fires of separation and the dreaming of union to come. As the moon pours ever-new sweetness into the three worlds with its nectar-rays, so prema gives the lover and beloved an ever-fresh savour of meeting; and as the sun burns the worlds at the great dissolution, so the burning of separation tears their two hearts apart. Yet even that burning is its own savour, the blending of nectar and poison in a single cup.

And there is a secret folded inside His hiding. Remember the Rāsa, where Śrī Śuka tells us Kṛṣṇa vanished from the gopīs in the very midst of the dance: "mayāparokṣaṁ bhajatāṁ tirohitam," He says in the Tenth Canto, that He withdrew Himself from those who were worshiping Him. Śrīdhara Svāmī unlocks the line: "I disappeared and stayed away from you only to hear your loving talk; in just this way I worshiped you." This is the heart of His play. When the maidservant cries out for Rasika-mauli, the crown of connoisseurs, He does not answer at once; He keeps Himself hidden and drinks in her loving eagerness, worshiping Śrī Rādhā by listening from His secret place to the loving lamentations of Her maidservants. Only when the dear servant's longing has climbed to its very zenith does He step from hiding and reveal Himself to her, so that she, brimming over, may lead Him home to her Svāminī.

So the scene completes itself. Rādhikā is wounded by His absence; Her girlfriends gather Her and take Her out along the forest path. And there, all at once, Nāgararāja comes upon them with the maidservant, and falls down at Śrīmatī's lotus-feet, praying for Her mercy. The sakhīs round on Him at once: "Out of the way! We are going home. Our sakhī wants nothing more to do with a jewel of great womanisers like You." He bears their scolding. He reads in the faces of Rādhā and Her friends that they are, in truth, pleased, and only then does He let His play loose along the lane, the tug at one girl's cloth, the flute laid against another's braid, the hand caught and held. And having played, He does the one thing that turns the whole picture over: He drops at the soles of Śrī Rādhā's lotus-feet the way a bumblebee drops upon a lotus, abandoning every other lesser flower as though it never bloomed. This is why the teachers headed the passage "A bee at the lotus-feet of Rādhā." The wide, restless wandering ends in one stillness; the king of gallants becomes the suppliant at one pair of feet.

Hear how Śrī Prabodhānanda, whom the tradition gives us as the voice of this poem, sings it in his own padas. In Vraja, he says, Śyāma the jewel of all good attributes, the great jewel of debauchees, Madana-mohana who enchants even Cupid, suddenly pulls some gopī's new cloth by a trick. Sometimes this lampaṭa is bold and shameless and full of clever, deceitful words, opening the girls' braids and veils by the mere touch of His flute. Sometimes He lays the flute against a young woman's hand, letting her know by that touch how He begs her to fulfill His longing; and thus the playful, color-drenched hero Hari wanders from bower to bower, kuñje kuñje. But then, Śrī Prabodhānanda says, see how humbly that connoisseur Śrī Govinda, the su-rasika, falls fallen at Rādhā's feet, praying to Her for the fulfillment of His every desire, and with what incomparable, passionate love for Rādhā alone, anupama rādhā-anurāge. The boldness and the surrender are not two scenes but one heart: the one who plays so freely with the many is the one who can rest nowhere but at the feet of the One.