Chapter Eight: Literature of the Rasika Tradition in Hindi

—with a vividness and elegance of language not found elsewhere. For this reason practitioners of sweet worship hold the work in special esteem and study and rehearse it with great reverence, devotion, and love. It contains approximately 273 songs.

For example:

Wearing lovely green garments at his waist, his beautiful body shines;
the moon of his face, reflected there, enchants lotus eyes and mind.
Dense gems set into walls of gold glitter exquisitely—
it seems the boundless palace has gained eyes with which to behold him.
Looking upon the Lord’s form through those eyes, the heart finds no satisfaction;
abandoning the blink, it assumes a thousand eyes and continues to gaze.
The gems seem filled with water and set with strings of pearls,
like tears rising in the eyes from the dawning bliss of love.
In gem after gem the reflected Couple’s beauty flashes,
as though the palace revealed upon its own limbs the delightful universal form.
There, in supreme radiance, stands an excellent jeweled throne;
upon it a thousand-petalled lotus destroys millions of masses of darkness.
Its beautiful petals shine on every side and its pericarp casts exquisite splendour;
there sits lovely Raghubira, crown jewel of Rasikas.
His excellent divine body is the root of pure existence, consciousness, and bliss;
no distinction between body and embodied one exists in him.
The radiance of that body is the Brahman seen pervading the universe,
condensed like the sun’s brilliance and dispersing all darkness.
His body is dark, and upon his head a brocade turban shines—
like the morning sun newly emerging from a fresh raincloud.
Genuine curling locks fall and glimmer upon his holy face,
encircling it like young bees intoxicated by the fragrance of a fresh lotus.
Whoever beholds them loses the heart to Hari; such beauty rests in the dark Lord,
as though collyrium had fallen above two eye-lamps.
A saffron tilaka lends singular splendour to the broad forehead,
like a fresh line of refined gold drawn upon a touchstone.