Chapter Eight: Literature of the Rasika Tradition in Hindi

Description of Sita’s power

Hold this meditation upon Sita’s feet within the heart: it brings joy to the lovely assembly.
She dwells within her Beloved’s very breath; love made manifest is devotion to her.
In the heart where Sita’s form abides, the broad-eyed beloved boy
comes and goes, moving like a dove within the breast.
Tell me, what other deity in the world equals Janaka’s Daughter?
Raghubira, crown of Brahma and Rudra, remains under her power.
Cast yoga, ritual diagrams, austerity, observances, vows, and renunciation far away;
become exclusive and serve the dust of Sri Jānaki’s feet.
Even the smallest act of service, performed in humility, brings affection;
every accumulated merit joins together and yields abundant fruit in the dust of Sita’s feet.
Uma, Rama, Sarasvati, and Shachi are forms of her splendour.
Victory to Sita, Āhlādinī Power, sovereign of every host of powers.
Companion, preserve these words of the Neha-prakāśikā within your heart.

Dhyāna-mañjarī

Bal Ali

General introduction

Jain Press, Lucknow, printed the work in 1908 CE, and Seth Chhote Lal Lakshmichand of Bombay published it. The following verse records that it was composed on Phalguna bright fifth, Vikrama year 1726:

In the year seventeen hundred and twenty-six, in the month of Phalguna,
on the immortal and auspicious fifth day of the bright fortnight,
this Dhyāna-mañjarī appeared—
supremely auspicious, describing the excellent and filled with delight.

Subject

From the standpoints of both poetry and practice, the Dhyāna-mañjarī is an exceptionally valuable work of Ramavat worship in the sweet disposition. Even as pure literature it is a distinguished composition of the first rank. Such clean, idiomatic language, such intensity of feeling, and such treatment of the subtlest dimensions of rasa-sādhanā are rare elsewhere.

It may be said without hesitation that no second work of meditation upon the sovereign Divine Couple Sri Sita-Rama equals it—none at all. It describes the form, colour, attire, and ornaments of Bhagavan Rama, indweller of Kanak Bhavan and beauty of the three worlds, together with Jānaki, sovereign of his life—