Ujjvala-Nīlamaṇi

The women who love Krishna fall into three layers. There are the queens of Dvāraka, the eight named principal queens and the sixteen thousand others, who marry him in the polity of his later life. There are the gopis of Vraja, who love him in the parakīyā mood of the woman who already belongs elsewhere and yet cannot help giving herself to him. And among the gopis there is one who is named again and again until she becomes the inner subject of the whole work: Rādhā.

The queens love him as the husband of the household, in the svakīyā mood where love and propriety run together. Their love is steady, lawful, public. The Dvāraka palaces honor it. The texts that treat the later līlā honor it. But in the grammar of rasa it is one register, and not the deepest.

The gopis love him in another register entirely. They are married to other men of the village. They have households, husbands, in-laws. And yet when the flute sounds at evening they leave the cooking pot on the fire, the child on the floor, the husband mid-sentence, and they go. This love is parakīyā, the love that cannot point to its lawful place, the love that has nothing to lose because it has already lost the world's approval and gained nothing in exchange except the sound of the flute. The volume treats parakīyā-prema as the higher of the two registers, because it is willing to lose more.

Among the gopis the volume distinguishes those who lead, those who follow, those who are paired, those who serve. Lalitā stands at one shoulder, Viśākhā at the other, Citrā and Indulekhā beside them, Campakalatā and Raṅgadevī and Sudevī and Tuṅgavidyā around the eight directions. The handmaids, the mañjarīs, are at every elbow. And in the center of the gathering, recognizable not by ornament alone but by the way every other gopi turns slightly toward her without meaning to, is Rādhā.

By age the heroine is mugdhā, the just-awakening, or madhyā, the one whose love has matured, or pragalbhā, the bold one fully come into herself. By relation she is svakīyā, married to her lover, or parakīyā, married to another. By the mood of her present moment she is svādhīna-bhartṛkā, mistress of the lover who does not stir from her side, or vāsaka-sajjā, the one who has decorated the bed and is waiting, or virahotkaṇṭhitā, sick with the longing of separation, or khaṇḍitā, the one whose lover has come to her with another woman's perfume on his clothes, or vipralabdhā, the one whose lover did not come at all, or kalahāntaritā, the one who has just quarreled and now regrets, or proṣitabhartṛkā, the one whose lover has gone to a far country, or abhisārikā, the one who walks out at night to meet him.

The grid is fine-grained. It exists so that a poet writing about a heroine in a particular mood at a particular age in a particular relation has a vocabulary precise enough to work with. Rūpa Goswāmī takes each cell of the grid and shows what it looks like when filled with the gopis. He shows what it looks like when filled with Rādhā in particular. He shows the colors of her ornament in each mood, the particular trembling of her lower lip in each mood, the quality of her glance in each mood.

And then he says what the grid cannot say. Among heroines, mahābhāvavatī, the one in whom love has become its own infinity, is supreme. Of those, mādanākhya-bhāva-yuktā, the one in whom the rarest highest mood arises, is supreme. Of those, the one named Rādhā is supreme. The grid leads to her and breaks at her. The classification system is built so that it can name the place where classification stops.

The earlier ālaṅkārikas had not envisioned this use of their own apparatus. Rūpa Goswāmī accepts their categories, fills them with Vraja content, and then shows that the categories themselves have a maximum, and that the maximum has a name.

Sthāyibhāva is the mood that stays. The other moods, the transient ones and the bodily transformations and the stimulants, come and go across its surface; it underlies them as the riverbed underlies the river. For mādhurya-rasa this sthāyibhāva is called rati, and rati here is not desire in the ordinary sense. It is the settled love of one who has met the beloved and now cannot un-know him.

Rati develops in stages. It begins as prema, love that has stabilized. It grows into sneha, where the heart has melted around the lover and now changes its shape according to him. From sneha it deepens into māna, the proud sulk in which the lover refuses to look at the beloved precisely because she cannot bear how much she wants to. From māna it becomes praṇaya, the trust that survives the sulk. From praṇaya it ripens into rāga, where every breath of separation is felt as fire. From rāga it goes to anurāga, where every glance feels new even after a thousand glances. And from anurāga it ascends to bhāva and then to mahābhāva, the foundation expanded to its limit.

Each of these stages is technically defined. The lover at the stage of sneha will weep at the rumor of his arrival; the lover at the stage of rāga will weep at his actual arrival because the meeting is too much. Rūpa Goswāmī gives examples drawn from the gopis' speech. He gives examples drawn from Radha. The text is teaching the reader to recognize, in any line of poetry, which stage of rati the line is voicing, and therefore what register the poet is working in.

The whole structure exists to ground the later prakaraṇas. The eight bodily transformations, the thirty-three transient moods, the four stages of separation, the four stages of union: all are modifications of this one underlying rati. Without the standing mood there would be nothing for them to modify. The poet's art is the art of deepening the sthāyibhāva by allowing the modifications to play across its surface without ever displacing it.

Vibhāva has two parts. The ālambana-vibhāva is the support: the lover and the beloved themselves, without whom there would be no love to stimulate. For mādhurya-rasa the ālambana is Krishna on one side and the gopis, with Radha at their center, on the other. The uddīpana-vibhāva is the stimulant: everything that, when present, calls the standing mood up to the surface. Krishna's flute is uddīpana. The peacock feather in his hair is uddīpana. The yellow cloth around his waist is uddīpana. The full autumn moon is uddīpana. The fragrance of the kadamba flower is uddīpana. The sound of his footsteps in the courtyard at evening is uddīpana. The text gives long lists.

The point of the lists is not exhaustiveness. The point is that uddīpanas are everywhere once the standing mood is present. The whole forest of Vraja, every tree and every bird, every river and every cloud, becomes uddīpana for the one in whom rati has stabilized. The text is teaching the reader to read the sensory world of the līlā as a continuous awakening of the love that is already there.

Anubhāva is the answering sign. When the stimulant has done its work, the mood breaks the surface as outward behavior. The lover speaks more softly. The lover walks more slowly. The lover's eyes follow the sound of the flute even when the flute has gone silent. The lover laughs at nothing in particular. The lover's hand goes to the throat or to the hair without intent. The text classifies anubhāvas into many subtypes: speech, gait, gesture, gaze, sigh, smile, the quality of the head's slight tilt.

Together vibhāva and anubhāva form the visible architecture of the love-mood. The cause arises, the mood rises in response, the body shows. A poet describes the show; a contemplative reads, through the show, the mood; a theologian reads, through the mood, the standing love that all of it is the surface of.

The eight are stambha, paralysis, where the body goes still and the limb that was lifted does not lower; sveda, perspiration, the sudden dampness of the brow even in cool air; romāñca, the rising of the body's hair, what we call gooseflesh, in lines along the arm; svara-bheda, the breaking of the voice, where the word that was about to be spoken cracks at the throat; vepathu, trembling, where the hand that holds the flowers begins to shake without the wind; vaivarṇya, the change of complexion, the sudden pallor or the sudden flush; aśru, tears, that come without the eye's permission; and pralaya, the fainting away, the loss of consciousness in which the body slides to the ground.

These eight are involuntary. That is their precision. The lover who has reached the depth at which they arise cannot stop them. The face flushes. The voice breaks. The body cannot hold itself upright any longer. The text emphasizes that the sāttvikas are not theatrical. A poet may describe them, a kīrtana may name them, a singer may evoke them, but in the līlā itself they happen because the love has reached a certain pressure and the body has no other route through which to release it.

The text classifies their intensities. A sāttvika-bhāva can be dhūmāyita, smoking; jvalita, smoldering; dīpta, blazing; or mahā-dīpta, blazing at the limit. The same trembling can occur at four pressures. Romāñca, the rising of the body's hair, can be a slight ripple in one place or it can be a full-body wave. Pralaya, fainting, can be a momentary swoon recovered from in a breath or it can be a long unconsciousness from which the lover is brought back only with cool water and the chanting of the lover's name.

Among the gopis the sāttvikas are described as occurring more frequently and more intensely than among any other devotees in the tradition's literature. Among the gopis Rādhā experiences them at the maximum intensity, mahā-dīpta, at moments the other gopis themselves sit down to attend her through. The eight are listed in order so that the reader will recognize, in any later text, which of them is being named, and at what pressure.

Where the sthāyibhāva is the riverbed, the vyabhicārins are the eddies and currents that play across the water. They do not displace the standing mood. They modify it for a moment and then sink back into it. Their number is thirty-three. The volume names each.

The list runs through such moods as nirveda, self-disgust at one's own unworthiness; viṣāda, dejection; dainya, the sense of being small in front of the beloved; glāni, weariness of the body; śaṅkā, anxiety that something has gone wrong; asūyā, the mild jealousy of one beloved noticing another's nearness to him; mada, the intoxication of being looked at; śrama, fatigue from the long walk to the meeting place; ālasya, languor; jāḍya, the bewildered stupor in which the lover stops moving altogether; garva, the proud confidence of being chosen; smṛti, the sudden remembrance of an earlier meeting that interrupts the present one; mati, the hardening of resolve; vrīḍā, shame, especially the shame of having been seen too plainly by the lover; capalatā, restlessness; harṣa, the rising of joy; āvega, agitation; jaḍatā, dazed silence; cintā, anxious thought that turns the matter over and over; matiḥ, the settled determination; dhṛti, patient endurance; smaraṇa, the floating of memory; nidrā, the half-sleep into which the lover slips at the foot of the tree where she has been waiting; supti, deep sleep; bodha, the sudden wakening; amarṣa, indignation; avahittā, the concealment of the mood by an outer face that says nothing; ugratā, the fierce edge of love; mati again as fixed conviction; vyādhi, the sickness of separation; unmāda, the madness in which the lover speaks to trees as if they were the friend; moha, the swoon of bewilderment; and maraṇa, the death-like stillness in which life seems to leave the body.

The list is not memorized in order to count. It is enumerated so that the poet writing about a particular gopi at a particular moment, and the contemplative reading what the poet has written, will know which of the thirty-three is being voiced, and therefore what the surface of the standing love is doing in that line. A poem in which Rādhā is moving through unmāda, the speaking-to-trees madness of separation, is one register. A poem in which she is moving through mada, the intoxicated confidence of being looked at, is another register entirely. Without the list the reader has only impression. With the list the reader has precision.

The text places the list inside the larger architecture. The vyabhicārins arise as anubhāvas of the sthāyibhāva when the right vibhāva is present. The whole grammar interlocks. A particular flute-call (vibhāva) raises a particular tremor (sāttvika) and a particular passing thought (vyabhicāri) on the surface of the particular standing love (sthāyi) of the particular heroine (Rādhā at her stage of bhāva). Every word of every padāvalī sits at one such intersection.

The first stage is pūrva-rāga, the love-before-meeting. The lover has heard of the beloved, has perhaps caught a glimpse, has perhaps heard the flute from a distance, but has not yet met him face to face. The whole inner life now turns toward him. Sleep does not come. Food has no taste. The lover walks to the window without knowing she has stood up. Friends ask what is wrong and she cannot answer. Pūrva-rāga is the first arrival of the standing love, before the beloved himself has arrived.

The second stage is māna, the proud sulk. The lovers have met. They have known each other. And then a small thing happens, a glance toward another woman, a flute-call that came too late, an evening on which the meeting did not occur, and the lover withdraws. She will not look at him. She will not speak to him. He may approach; she will turn her face away. Māna is not absence of love. Māna is love so present that the smallest disturbance of it has become unbearable. The text classifies māna into many subtypes by what has caused it and by how the friends try to dissolve it.

The third stage is pravāsa, separation by distance, where the beloved has gone to a far place. Krishna has gone to Mathurā. The gopis are in Vraja. The roads are long. The years pass. The flute does not sound at evening any more. Pravāsa is the longest of the four stages, and the literature of separation, the bhramara-gītā, the gopi-gītā, the songs of waiting, all live inside it. The lover learns to live without the beloved present, while never ceasing to wait. The text describes the gopi who looks each morning at the road and whose looking is itself a form of devotion.

The fourth stage is karuṇa, the grief of permanent separation, the dread that the beloved will never return at all. Karuṇa is the deepest separation because in it hope is itself wounded. The volume is careful here. In Vraja-līlā karuṇa never has the last word. The Bhāgavata's Mathurā-departure section is read as the entry into karuṇa, but the gopis' love does not collapse into despair. It transforms. The deeper the separation cuts, the further into mahābhāva the love is pressed. Vipralambha has karuṇa as its last named stage because beyond karuṇa is no longer separation but the strange exalted condition in which presence and absence themselves are exceeded.

The first stage is saṅkṣipta, brief union, the meeting that is over before it has begun. A glance across the courtyard. A passing of hands at the well. A moment in which the lovers see each other and then must separate again because the world is watching. Saṅkṣipta is union as a single instant, a flash that the rest of the day will live by.

The second stage is saṅkīrṇa, mixed union, where union is real but is interrupted by anxiety, by the fear of being seen, by the awareness that the meeting cannot last long. The lovers are together; they are also alert. The mood of union is woven through with the mood of imminent separation. The text describes the trembling of Rādhā's hand on Krishna's shoulder when she hears a sound at the edge of the grove that may be a friend or may be a watching village woman.

The third stage is sampūrṇa, full union, where the meeting holds and the surrounding world quiets and the lovers are present to each other without interruption. The kunja closes. The evening lengthens. There is no sound to fear. The Govinda-Līlāmṛta and the Kelimāla and the eight-watch contemplations live in this stage. The conversation, the play, the songs, the games, the slow dawn after.

The fourth stage is samṛddhimat, abundant or perfected union, where the union has the further weight of having been preceded by long separation. The lovers have been apart. They have suffered the four stages of vipralambha. The meeting now has the depth of every absence stored in it. Samṛddhimat is the union that returns the four-stage architecture of separation into itself: union as the answer to longing, made more complete by the longing it answers. The text marks this as the fullest sambhoga, because in it both halves of the rasa are present at once.

Mahābhāva is the standing love expanded to its limit. It is the mood in which all eight sāttvikas blaze together at mahā-dīpta, in which the thirty-three vyabhicārins arise and pass without the standing mood being shaken, in which separation and union are no longer felt as opposites because each contains the other. Many of the gopis are described as reaching mahābhāva. The volume calls them mahābhāvavatī.

Within mahābhāva itself the volume names two further conditions that go beyond what mahābhāva ordinarily holds. The first is modana. In modana the love-mood is so concentrated that it makes Krishna's whole body still. He cannot move. The flute slips from his fingers without his noticing. He stands as if struck. The lover's mahābhāva has acted upon him, has made the unmover unmoving in another sense, has reached him not as feeling reaches another feeling but as gravitation reaches a body. Modana is mahābhāva felt as power.

The second is madana. In madana every other rasa is contained inside the love-mood as a smaller mood inside a larger one. Reverence is contained, and friendship is contained, and parental tenderness is contained, and the protective awe of the servant is contained, and the long longing of separation is contained, and the satisfied stillness of union is contained, and somewhere within them all the irreducible particular love of one chosen for one chosen is also contained, and is what they are all the variations of. Madana is mahābhāva felt as totality.

The volume says that of all the heroines in the līlā, only Rādhā reaches modana, and only Rādhā reaches madana. The other gopis attain mahābhāva. She alone goes the further distance into the conditions that the volume has had to name with separate words. The whole architecture of the work, the heroine grid and the standing mood and the cause and sign and the eight transformations and the thirty-three transients and the four-and-four of separation and union, has been built so that this final claim can be made with technical exactness rather than as enthusiasm. She alone. The grammar of mādhurya-rasa permits the volume to say what its earlier prakaraṇas have prepared it to say.