Chapter Six: The Rasika Lineage of Rama Worship
Mahant Jivaram of Chiran, also known as Yugalapriya, writes of Madhuracharya in the Rasika-prakāśa Bhaktamāla:
Madhuracharya, sweet and graceful, worshipper of the amorous mystery,
inward maidservant in the palace of delight and groves of rasa-play.
Born in the Nimi line, magnanimous, bliss-giving, mighty through relationship;
Payahari’s rasika heir, whose grace spread sweetness everywhere.
For more than twelve years he enacted the rāsa-līlā and bestowed abundant joy;
composing vast works, he established the rasika method of Rama’s rāsa.
He is said to have written a 100,000-verse commentary on the Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa in the sweet mode, now unavailable. For twelve years he undertook Rama’s rāsa festival, personally caressing Ladlilal in the divine form of a female companion.
A kuṇḍaliyā by Agrasvami on the amorous rasa is cherished by this tradition. It describes both the glory and the discipline of the path:
The amorous rasa is incomparable; nothing can be weighed against it.
Nothing equals it. Only that person is qualified in the world
who, seeing gold and sensual beauty, knows them as poison within the body;
who has abandoned worldly pleasures as diseases and cast off conflict;
who remains forever immersed in the ocean of the Beloved Couple’s rasa, rejoicing.
In this world no saint is as simple-hearted as Agra.
The amorous rasa is incomparable; nothing can be weighed against it.
Viewed chronologically, explicit accounts of the sweet disposition in Rama worship begin to appear from the sixteenth century. Earlier literature has not yet become available. Scholars’ severe neglect or contempt for the tradition has left us largely with distorted forms of it. This does not mean that the discipline lacks a sound, strong, and accessible form. Its literature is complete in itself and filled with the light of experience and creative genius.
The practice and five initiatory sacraments of the Rasika Sampradaya will be presented in their proper place. For now, it is necessary to indicate:
- The tradition is called the Sri Sampradaya.
- Sri Lakshmi is its teacher.
- Sri Hanuman is its deity—