Chapter Eight: Literature of the Rasika Tradition in Hindi

Perhaps honey has adorned their rounded ankles, where the anklets hum;
the sound resembles golden bees sporting upon lotus blossoms.

Moon-like nails, dear children of beauty, shine upon the lotus-petal toes.
Bees seem to drink their experience in reverent silence.

Sacrifice millions of stainless full moons upon every nail.
Their incomparable, spotless jāvaka glow is like the radiance of lightning.

The marked soles of their feet are an ocean of nectar.
The hearts of the companions are well-nourished fish drinking deeply from that rasa.

Hanumat, Shiva, Shuka, Sanaka, and I are the five companions.
We remain forever near the Lord, carrying out whatever command we perceive.

All the auspicious marks reside visibly there, sometimes singly and sometimes in pairs.
This service is the supreme dharma: to remain touching the lover’s heart.

Any comparison offered for the beauty of the darling and her Beloved
is defeated like the light of countless fireflies and lamps beside the sun.

How could a threaded necklace of rubies and pearls awaken anything like their radiance?
One grows ashamed to compare even ten million lakes of lotuses with them.

Their paired forms are two moving lotus-lakes held before the eyes.
Ramcharan asks: how could a miser of words describe the house of divine beauty?

Rows of jewels form their braids, like armies of female serpents tightly threaded with pearls;
like streams of rasa bending and flowing from reservoirs of power upon cloud-dark mountains.

Curving eyebrows are bees above lotus faces, while moonlike countenances bloom before their arrows.
Smiling lips and the splendour of teeth appear like a chain of lightning fashioned inside a cloud.

A golden pair seems to emerge and settle upon the bank of that lake,
while the nose-ring upon the lotus face shines like a white bee made conscious and still.

Who can describe this beauty? The intoxicated rasika becomes mute, filled entirely with rasa.
Sacrifice ten million worlds upon every limb—worlds created and preserved by those very hands.

Forest recreation

Having arranged every royal adornment, they wander in the forest and obtain its rasa.
Picking flowers of many colours, lover and beloved weave forest garlands.