Chapter Seven: Literature of the Rasika Tradition

—and the narrative proceeds to the marriage of Dasharatha and Kaikeyi, Manthara’s previous birth, and Rama’s childhood play. Its latter half gives deeply relishable accounts of Sita’s svayaṃvara, the marriage of Rama and Sita, their water-play and forest excursions, Sita’s māna-līlā, the Holi festival, and other episodes.¹

It should be observed that just as studying the five chapters of the Śrīmad-Bhāgavata devoted to the rāsa is said to destroy the disease of the heart, so too the study of Rama and Sita’s loving recreation in the Satyopākhyāna destroys every sin and gives birth to stainless devotion. Rasikas and sensitive connoisseurs of rasa should therefore hear, contemplate, and study it repeatedly and with love.²

7. Bṛhat Kauśala-khaṇḍa

The Bṛhat Kauśala-khaṇḍa has only recently been published in two volumes with Pandit Ramvallabhasharan Maharaj’s Rasabodhinī commentary, by Seth Roshanlal Agrawal of Lahore and Rampriyasharan. It was issued solely for private circulation and is not generally available, because the public might otherwise misunderstand it.

The work is said to have been composed by Sri Vedavyasa as a dialogue between Suta and Shaunaka. Shaunaka asks Suta about the secret life of Sri Rama. In reply, Suta briefly discloses the mystery of the līlā of Sri Rama and Jānaki, the Beloved Lady and her Beloved.

Numerous verses meditate upon Bhagavan Rama and Bhagavati Sita together as the Divine Couple. After glimpses of their water-play, hunting excursions, and related pastimes, the work describes their rasa-vihāra with Rama’s male companions on the bank of the Sarayu; this concludes Chapter 1.

Chapters 2–5 describe Bhagavan’s rāsa-vihāra with cowherd maidens, daughters of the gods, serpent maidens, gandharva maidens, princesses, and others in deeply affecting language. Chapter 6 mentions Jānaki’s awakening love, and Chapter 7 relates the marriage. Chapters 9–15 then present, in exceptional detail and in language filled with devotional feeling and expressive power, rāsa episodes after the marriage with daughters of the gods, gandharva maidens, daughters of kinnaras, vidyadhara maidens, siddha maidens, princesses, daughters of the sadhyas, daughters of the guhyaka gods, yaksha maidens, naga maidens, and many others—