Chapter Eight: Literature of the Rasika Tradition in Hindi

Amara-rāmāyaṇa

This Sanskrit work contains approximately four thousand verses. It is regarded as a major text on the Golden Palace, the eight periods of daily worship, bhāvanā, and the discipline of rasa.

Rahasya-ratnamālā

A work by Rasik Vallabh Sharan on rasa, composed in dohās and caupāīs.

Siddhānta-cautīsī

Thirty-four dohās on doctrine.

Holikā-vinoda

Thirteen kavitts on Sita and Rama’s Holi play.

The page also carries an overlapping publisher’s notice. Its legible portion advertises such works as Kavitāvalī, Sri Jānaki-karuṇābharaṇa, Adhyāya-trayī, Dohāvalī, and a Sita-Rama title, and addresses the “discerning reader” with Kabir’s line about returning the woven cloth exactly as it was received.

From the Siddhānta-muktāvalī of Sri Rasik Ali

Abandoning the company of dry intellectuals and yogis, one keeps company with rasikas;
leaving a barren channel behind, one serves the purifying Ganga.

The person who takes refuge in knowledge and yoga while abandoning generous devotion
is a child who leaves the mango tree and sits in the shade of a thorny acacia.

Let the head bow to Sita-Rama, the tongue repeat Sita-Rama,
and the heart meditate upon Sita-Rama, having no business with anyone else.

When a woman’s beauty enchants an excellent man, or a man’s beauty enchants a woman,
there is nothing impossible in that, as thoughtful and learned poets declare.

When what is expected happens, no marvel is perceived;
only when something thought impossible occurs can an action be called wondrous.

Know this to be the impossible: a man beholds a treasury of masculine beauty,
becomes enchanted, and abandons his sense of manhood. Record that as truly wondrous.

The sages of the Dandaka forest attained a feminine destiny after beholding Raghubar.
Therefore the uniquely wondrous beauty is none other than Sri Rama’s.

Although Putana beheld Krishna’s marvellous form, her heart felt no tenderness;
she still made him drink from a breast smeared with poison.

Surpanakha was his enemy’s sister, a demoness whose food was human flesh,
yet she became absorbed on seeing Rama’s beauty and wished to choose him as her husband.