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It is the last hour of the night, and Vraja has gone so quiet that even the river seems to hold its breath inside the kuñja. The flowering creepers have drawn their curtain of leaves; the moon presses softly against the canopy and cannot get inside. Within that hidden chamber, on a bed of fresh petals, Śrī Vṛṣabhānu's beautiful daughter and Her ardent Mādhava are lost to each other, and the whole world has been emptied of everything except Them. And here, just outside, stands one small figure: a maidservant at the door. She is not inside. She does not ask to be inside. She has placed her whole heart upon a single thread of sound, the faint tremble of bells at Rādhā's waist, and she waits.

Hear what she says, and hear how fierce the tenderness in it is. Let them flourish, she says, all the affectionate elders of Vraja, the long lineage of those who love the prince of Gokula. Let them prosper, let them be victorious, all glory to them, only let them be far from this place. For to Nanda and Yaśodā, to the senior cowherds, Śyāma is forever the milk-mouthed child who still needs the breast. The tradition keeps a tender scene of this, out of His pūrva-rāga, the very beginnings of His love. Once, driving the cows home in the late afternoon, the uttara-goṣṭha hour, His eyes fell upon Rādhā's sweet face, and from that moment He grew eager beyond all rest. He could not sleep the whole night; He lay bathing His own form in tears, meditating on Her. In the morning mother Yaśodā came to wake her blue jewel. Get up, my child, eat some butter, the sun has risen, she said, and then, O Gopāla, why are Your eyes so reddish, why do tears trickle from them? Have You been swimming too long in the Yamunā with Your friends? She hurried into the house and fetched a yellow cloth to soothe His eyes, never dreaming that the yellow only made Him remember Rādhā's golden form and weep the more before her face. When Kundalatā, His niece-in-law, teased that no yellow cloth would cure this disease and the only remedy was to arrange His marriage, Yaśodā burst out laughing and paid the words no mind. Her Gopāla, married? He still wants my milk, she thought; Kundalatā does not know what she is saying; my Gopāla does not understand all this. She could not see that childhood had quietly ended and adolescence had come, that her boy now drank more joy from the Malayan breeze and the moonlight and the scent of flowers than from her lap. This is no fault in her. It is the very nature of the parental heart: the love that cradles cannot also be the love that is cradled in the bower. Śrīmat Jīva Gosvāmī fixes it plainly in the Bhakti Sandarbha, that the confidential rahasya-līlā cannot be approached by senses that feel masculine sensations, nor by those who worship in the mood of father, child, or servant, for those moods are at war with the very nature of this play. So the maidservant blesses the elders and asks them, lovingly, to stay away.

Let the friends, too, keep their distance, she says, the whole dear circle of Kṛṣṇa's companions. Rūpa Gosvāmī counts His friends in four widening rings of closeness: suhṛt, sakhā, priya-sakhā, and priya-narma-sakhā, each nearer than the last. And the suhṛn-maṇḍalī this maid sends away is the first three rings, the outer companions. Of them all, only the priya-narma-sakhās, the confidants like Subala and Madhumaṅgala, come anywhere near the secret play, for these alone are admitted to the most intimate of secrets, having taken on a special mood. The tradition explains the secret of it sweetly: their whole longing is only to help Śrī Kṛṣṇa and His beloveds meet one another, and that single selfless desire, the sakhī-bhāva, covers over their masculine feeling like a veil. Even they come only to the edge. There is a famous picture of Subala's good fortune that Rūpa Mañjarī once told her friend Bhaktimati: when Kṛṣṇa quarrels with His gopīs and they walk out on Him, it is Subala who coaxes them back with sweet words; it is Subala who prepares the play-bed in the bower-house and fans the lovers when, weary with love, They sink onto the flowers. And yet the tradition is exact about how he fans Them. He stands outside the bower and works a great fan by a cord, cooling the exhausted lovers without ever stepping before Their eyes. For all his nearness, a masculine awareness still clings to him, and so even Subala, the best of the priya-narma-sakhās, remains at the threshold. How much farther, then, the ordinary sakhās. Let them be far, the maidservant says.

And the servants, let them be farther still, vidūrataḥ, especially far. The servants of the Lord of Vraja are not like the awe-struck attendants of Dvārakā or Vaikuṇṭha. Jīva Gosvāmī marks the difference in the Prīti Sandarbha: Akrūra and his like are ruled by majestic reverence, aiśvarya-jñāna; Uddhava and his like taste sweetness though the awareness of prowess still threads through it; but the servants of Vraja love Him with a sweetness purely sweet, taking the beautiful prince to be their own and most worthy darling. Their devotion is real and high. And yet the serving mood that carries water and runs errands cannot pass into the love-bower either, for that reverent, useful, masculine nearness is still the wrong shape for this rasa. Far, then, the maidservant says. Farther still.

And if even these, who are dearest of the dear, must keep their distance, then what occasion could there ever be for anyone else, anyaḥ prasaṅgaḥ kutaḥ? By others she means even other devotees, for none but devotees may enter the kingdom of God and His service at all, and not one of them belongs here. The tradition keeps the proof of it in the dawn-waking līlā. When Rādhā and Mādhava lie asleep in the grove at early morning, it is only the parrots, Śuka and Śārikā, sent by Vṛndā, who dare wake Them, whispering that the elders will discover the tryst unless They hurry home. And Śyāmasundara, who has forgotten His mother entirely, can barely rise from that bed, can barely bring Himself to leave His Priyājī. Consider what that means. After the amorous rasa, the parental love is the greatest of all, and of all who love in the parental mood, mother Yaśodā is the greatest. If Kṛṣṇa can forget even Yaśodā for Rādhā's sake, the very summit of the parental world set aside, then truly there is no room here for elders, friends, servants, or any devotee from any other heaven. The bower keeps its own secret.

And now see who is left. Not the great. Not the near. Only this: a single dear handmaid at the door. She has cleared the whole field of every grander claimant, swept away parents and friends and servants and the very gods, and she has done it not to take the lovers' place but to take the lowest place of all, the place no one else even wants. The doorstep. The threshold. The outside of the outside. From there she asks for nothing she can see and nothing she can touch. She asks only to hear. O the sweetness of that smallness. When Śrī Vṛṣabhānujā within is swept into the play of love with Her ardent Kṛṣṇa, Her waist-sash trembles, and its little bells let fall a sound, the kāñci-dhvani, the faint silver jingle of Her girdle. That sound, and that sound alone, is the whole inheritance the maidservant begs for. To stand at the gate and hear it. To be made mad with bliss by it. To let that one thread of music be enough.

This is the place the verse has been climbing toward all along, for it stands upon the great rarity-ladder Mahāprabhu taught Śrī Rūpa Gosvāmī in the Caitanya-caritāmṛta. Out of the innumerable souls wandering through eight million four hundred thousand species, the human birth is few; among humans, few follow the Vedas, and half of those only with their lips; among the truly religious, most are fruitive workers, and of millions of these one is wise; of millions of the wise, one is liberated; and of millions of the liberated, the Lord says, rarely is one a devotee of Kṛṣṇa. And the ladder does not end there, for rarer than the Kṛṣṇa-bhakta is the devotee in the Vraja-mood; rarer still is one who attains the mood of the sakhīs; and rarest of all, the rarest treasure the tradition knows, is the mañjarī-bhāva, the personal service of Svāminī Rādhikā. The verse before this one showed that even Brahmā and Śiva, the great sages and demigods, can hardly touch the confidential truth of Śrī Rādhā; and this verse shows that even Kṛṣṇa's own people, His parents and friends and servants, cannot cross into His hidden bower. So the small maid at the door is standing at the very crown of that ladder, holding the one inheritance rarer than human birth, rarer than faith, rarer than wisdom, rarer than liberation, rarer than even the love of Kṛṣṇa: this mañjarī-heart that asks only to serve Rādhā's pleasure from the threshold, and counts the jingle of Her sash the highest of all sounds.

O Rādhe, beautiful daughter of Vṛṣabhānu, this is the love that wants nothing but Your nearness from below. O wind that loosens the leaves, do not betray the door where she stands; carry her only the sound and never her shadow inward. O small bells at the waist of the Queen, you are her scripture and her sustenance; tremble once at the hour of Their dalliance, and her whole night is fulfilled. Prabodhānanda's prayer rises plain at the end of it, the same prayer the tradition has set into a Bengali song: in that secret bower-house Rādhā is maddened in the love-play of lusty Kṛṣṇa, and I am Their dear maidservant; let me stay at the gate, made mad by these pastimes; when, oh when, will that bliss-giving kāñci-dhvani sound in my ears, as I stand a handmaid at the door? O Īśvarī, my Queen, this longing lives in me; let it be filled. Let me be the maid at Your door. Let me hear.