Chapter Eight: Literature of the Rasika Tradition in Hindi

Steady moonlight crowns their diadems with the brilliance of innumerable moons and suns.
Their serpent-like braids seem to drink some hidden lunar nectar.

Bee-like curls, captivated by the swan-beauty of their faces, gather one after another.
The splendour of their curving eyebrows steals away a forest of ten million Kamadevas.

Their divine lotus eyes extend beautifully toward the ears.
Every good heart longs for the grace contained within their glance.

Ear-flowers and jewelled pendants are fashioned with a beauty beyond description.
Before each beauty-mark, the splendid sovereigns of day and night seem eclipsed.

The paired faces are abodes of beauty, radiant like millions of moons;
ruby and pearl seem to have been threaded together to produce their lustre.

Forehead marks, red lips, rows of teeth, and wondrous smiles shine forth,
like lightning flashing between cloud, sun, and newborn lotus.

Clear nose-rings and bulāq pendants sway lightly above the lips;
it is as though Jupiter and Venus in heaven yearned to enter their hearts.

Chins and priceless cheeks, necks and garlands of pearls—
Ramcharan says: only the companions beside them perceive that unmanifest beauty.

Supremely lovely armlets, bracelets, and excellent rings
make their beautiful hands the very home of ornamented splendour.

Amid the necklaces lies the Vaijayanti garland, while jewelled pendants rest upon their chests;
paired circles descend there like twin lunar discs.

The sari’s border and the immortal sacred thread appear together,
like flashes of lightning shining on either side within the Yamuna.

Divine cloth covers the waists of both bodies.
Their combined, unmanifest beauty is unique, and every comparison becomes trivial.

Their divine navels are lakes of nectar around which bees revolve;
even the immortal beauty of the Daughter of the Sun cannot rival the loveliness there.

The beauty of the three abdominal folds, the boundary cord, and the girdle
seems to arrest all supreme beauty and laugh at the splendour of the three worlds.

A single excellent cloth upon each waist produces a twofold radiance:
lightning upon an emerald mountain, and the full moon rising over it.