Chapter Eight: Literature of the Rasika Tradition in Hindi

Mahatma Banadas himself acknowledged that outwardly his devotion is one of service, but deep within it is sweet, amorous devotion. This is the secret of the practice of most Mahatmas of Awadh.

The Ubhaya-prabodhaka Rāmāyaṇa was printed in December 1892 by Munshi Naval Kishore’s press in Lucknow. In keeping with “Hari is infinite and Hari’s stories are infinite” and “the Ramayanas are boundless by the hundred crore,” Banadas’s divisions in this work differ entirely from Goswami Tulsidas’s seven kāṇḍas. The source calls them seven, though it enumerates eight: Mūla-khaṇḍa, Guṇa-khaṇḍa, Nāma-khaṇḍa, Ayodhyā-khaṇḍa, Vipina-khaṇḍa, Vihāra-khaṇḍa, Jñāna-khaṇḍa, and Śānti-khaṇḍa.

The work employs many graceful metres, including dohā, caupāī, soraṭhā, chand, and kavitt. Its language is pure, disciplined, and clean. Banadas was an accomplished saint, as his compositions make evident, and his style is exceptionally attractive and affecting. It captures the reader’s mind without effort; like Coleridge’s Ancient Mariner, its narrative exerts something like a spell.

For the most part, the story follows the Rāmacaritamānasa. In the Vihāra-khaṇḍa, however, Rama visits Janakpur once after returning from the forest and, on his return journey, becomes the honoured guest of the king of Kashi. This is an entirely new imaginative development. Devotees described whichever līlā of the Lord they directly encountered and in the manner they experienced it; there is no ground for doubt within that devotional framework.

As stated above, Banadas’s sweet worship is supremely secret and guarded. His works therefore chiefly establish devotion upon the foundations of knowledge and detachment. Yet here and there the concealed inner current emerges naturally and without announcement, as in the following passages:

She wanders here and there through grove and garden, looking upon deer, birds, and trees.
Remembrance has fixed itself upon Raghubir’s form and will not turn away even slightly.
Weeping, she asks the companions and questions every tree, creeper, and trunk by name.
She will not tolerate the least separation, so firmly devoted is she to the path of love.
Here and there the Lord appears and vanishes, like sun and moon behind cloud.
Banadas says: the vine-like lady shines upon the cloud-bank’s edge.

A flower slipped accidentally from Rama’s left hand and fell to the ground.
It was no longer suitable for worship, so he began gathering other petals.
The indwelling Lord forever protects Janaki’s every taste—
Sharada, Shesha, Ganesha, the Vedas, and Narada all say so.
In the three worlds and throughout the three times, who else understands love’s discipline so well?
Banadas says: no one anywhere is ever equal to Raghunath in this.