Chapter Five: Avatāra Doctrine and Rama Worship
—forms of Rama and Sita’s playful līlā. The Satyopākhyāna gives a richly sensuous account of Bhagavan sporting with Sita in the forest and water, and portrays their amorous Holi play followed by Sita’s līlā of jealous anger.1 The Vilāsa-kāṇḍa of the Ānanda Rāmāyaṇa likewise describes their water sports and forest wandering.2
That work also tells how Rama promised sixteen thousand desire-stricken goddesses that they would be born as gopīs and receive the touch of his body.3 When no spittoon was present, a maid offered her hand and drank his betel juice; Rama promised that in a later birth she would become Radha and drink the nectar of his lips.4 The Mahārāmāyaṇa similarly gives a sweet and enchanting account of Rama’s rāsa play.5
Camille Bulcke discusses a manuscript entitled Citrakūṭa-māhātmya. It describes a lake in Chitrakuta’s Santanaka forest, with a beautiful pavilion at its centre. There, upon an altar, Rama and Sita eternally perform the rāsa with their companions.6
The Bṛhat-kauśala-khaṇḍa: foundational text of amorous Rama-bhakti
The foundational text of amorous Rama-bhakti, the Bṛhat-kauśala-khaṇḍa, has only recently been published in two volumes for private circulation. Through the kindness of Mahatma Ramkishore Sharan of Sri Hanumat Nivas, Ayodhya, the author obtained a copy. Its study reveals many supremely guarded mysteries of sweet worship within Rama-bhakti.
Here Rama’s līlā appears wholly like Krishna’s. Before his marriage, Rama performs the rāsa-līlā first with his male companions, then with cowherd maidens, divine maidens, and princesses. This is followed by playful joking and loving reproach with the divine maidens. Then comes Maithili’s first awakening of love and separation, followed by the mystery of marriage.
After the wedding, rāsa is described with divine maidens, Gandharva maidens, princesses, daughters of the Sadhyas, daughters of the Guhyakas, Yaksha maidens, and Naga maidens. The entire work, completed in 3,072 verses, concerns the rāsa. Its many episodes are so captivating, and blend poetry with mystery in so beautiful a union, that such a joining of gold and jewel is rare elsewhere.
The Hanumat Saṃhitā and Bṛhat-kauśala-khaṇḍa visibly exercised special influence upon the amorous branch of the Ramavat devotional current—