Chapter Eight: Literature of the Rasika Tradition in Hindi

Sri Yugala-vinoda-vilāsa

The Couple’s recreation

The Yugala-vinoda-vilāsa is a graceful poetic translation of the fifth chapter of the Saṃhitā. It is unique in its manner and is greatly honoured as a jewel of a text among Rasika worshippers.

The Couple perform a strange recreation, like an artistic swan and female swan laughing together;
or like a pair of intoxicated elephants whose beautiful movements call forth praise.
Perhaps they are woman and Love, or the night and its excellent moon;
perhaps rain-cloud and lightning taking delight within the water.
Or perhaps they have assumed the stainless embodied form of love, prince and sovereign of rasa,
while youthful prince and princess sport through the pretext of lovely adornment.

Dark-cloud Rama, fresh and beautiful, plays beside his companions.
With joyful heart he fulfils the rasikas’ sweet desires.
Taking the lotus hand of a fresh young lady and recognising her dignified virtues,
the supremely expert lover devises one wonder after another.
He throws one beloved into exceedingly deep water and laughs in delight.
Another excellent lady seizes his left arm and pulls away his garment.
The treasury of rasa catches a lady within the mechanism of his excellent arms;
both become absorbed as supreme light and beauty manifest, refined and radiant.
A remarkably clever heroine with lotus eyes
falls upon her beloved’s stainless body like a deer belonging to Love.
Another, newly wise and beautiful as Sachi’s lord, leaps high like a cloud
and falls with all her splendour, her heart free of anger and filled with joy.
A lovely golden creeper abandons the celestial tree of conventional attachment
and of her own accord embraces the matchless dark tamāla.
Another independent lady, an abode of arts, leaps into the water;
suddenly the Beloved reaches out and catches her lotus hand.
Revealing supreme love, the greatly discerning lover enters the intimate mystery
and submerges with the ladies in the fathomless water in wondrous ways.
The beautiful darling and Beloved, complete with companions, play against one another,
splashing fresh streams of water from their lotus hands in many strange directions.