The Author’s Submission
—must be regarded as indispensable virtues. If we look through the lens of our private convictions, the healthy and unclouded form of literature cannot appear before us. So much for that matter.
Approximately twenty or twenty-two years ago, my dear friend Dr. Rajbali Pandey, principal of the College of Indology at Banaras Hindu University, gave me a handwritten volume entitled Bhakti-rasāmṛtārṇava. It consists of approximately six hundred folio pages and was copied in the latter part of the seventeenth century. In it, an unnamed devotee compiled separate collections of songs concerning the eight-watch worship of Rama and Krishna. Because the script was difficult, reading the manuscript took about six months. The labour was not wasted. One point emerged very clearly: just as in Krishna devotion, the eight-watch worship of Rama devotion could also be presented in a systematic form.
With the passage of time, however, the thought seemed to become lost and I no longer felt inclined to pursue the subject. Yet Bhakti-rasāmṛtārṇava kept after me. I abandoned its company, but it did not abandon mine; wherever I travelled, it journeyed beside me in my trunk.
About four years ago, I went in Kashi to receive the darśana of the renowned Mahamahopadhyaya Pandit Gopinath Ji Kaviraj. I asked the revered Kaviraj Ji to direct me to write something, but no decision could be reached concerning a subject. The matter would have ended there had I not met that same day my childhood friend and pillar of Hindi literature, Pandit Hazari Prasad Dwivedi. Acharya Dwivedi suggested that sweet worship in Rama devotional literature had never been adequately considered and that much of this literature lay rejected and neglected. Something should therefore be written upon it. Together we went to Mahamahopadhyaya Pandit Gopinath Kaviraj, who graciously gave his approval.
At first I regarded the task as easy and straightforward, but the deeper I descended into it, the greater my difficulties became. There is no doubt that Sri Kaviraj Ji’s blessing hand rested upon my head and Brother Hazari Prasad Ji’s hand upon my back. Whenever I wandered or became confused, the help of both was always with me.
I must acknowledge without hesitation that every idea considered in this book, from beginning to end, bears the stamp of Sri Kaviraj Ji. Taking as my foundation what I heard from him, I have expressed these reflections according to what I received and understood. Sri Kaviraj Ji and Sri Dwivedi Ji had a hand in the making of this book from first to last. Yet my work would still have become exceedingly difficult—and perhaps I would have abandoned it midway—had I not received the support of Mahatma Ramkishor Sharan Ji of Sri Hanumat Nivas and Swami Paramanand Ji of Sri Pramod Rahasyavan in Ayodhya. These two compassionate saints—