Chapter Seven: Literature of the Rasika Tradition

—are presented. Thus the entire work is an extraordinary account of Sri Jānaki and Raghava’s rāsa-vilāsa. Rasika worshippers revere it like the Veda and regard it as supremely secret.

This rare work became available only through the grace of Mahatma Ramkishore Sharan Maharaj of Hanumat Nivas—an exclusive worshipper devoted without interruption to the eight-period service of the Beloved Lady and her Beloved, a supreme Rasika of the sweet rasa, and a discerning knower of its mysteries.

8. Mādhurya-keli-kādambinī

As its name itself makes clear, this work composed by Swami Sri Madhuracharya is a highly revered text of the sweet rasa. A complete copy has not yet become available. In his Rasabodhinī commentary on the Śiva Saṃhitā, Pandit Ramvallabhasharan Maharaj quotes five of its verses.¹

Their purport is that if even insentient things become enchanted by Rama’s form, what need be said of beautiful women whose hearts have already been entered by the god of love?

Friend, upon seeing Sri Raghava, the foremost paramahansas and great ascetics became as women under the power of bewilderment; even the demons were enchanted. What then need be said of women and men before the embodied Sovereign of rasa?

Dark Rama possesses the beauty of ten million gods of love. He causes trees and birds alike to swoon. Trees and birds fall under the flower-arrow’s power; what then will Love not do, O connoisseur of rasa?

Seeing his own wondrous and exceedingly beautiful form reflected as a golden radiance upon a spotless slab of stone, Rama—the ornament of Raghu’s line—became enchanted, as though assuming Sita’s feeling of embracing him.

“Ah, this supremely captivating form brings delight and enchantment even to me. I consider my beloved extraordinarily fortunate, for she has attained the rare bliss of its embrace.”

If the mind-born god of beauty was at once bewildered by that lovely form, capable of enchanting even stones and other inert things, what need be said of the hosts of women whose hearts Love himself has entered?