Chapter Eight: Literature of the Rasika Tradition in Hindi

Siyārāma-paccīsī

This collection, prepared by Madari Lal Vaishya of Sahadatganj, Purana Chabutra, Lucknow, was printed at the Rama Printing Press in Faizabad and published in October 1906 CE by Seth Chhotelal Lakshmichand of Bombay.

It consists of twenty-five captivating and singable kavitts and savaiyās built upon the refrain, “Sita is a golden ring; Rama is the dark-blue sapphire set within it.” It appears that Sri Madari Lal himself composed these twenty-five stanzas as solutions to that poetic theme. All twenty-five treatments of the single image are exceptionally charming. The language is clean, fluent, and effective; meditation upon the Couple’s forms irresistibly draws the mind.

Examples:

Here is the moon with its deer-marked face; there the lion among heroes.
Here is the elephant’s stately gait; there the intoxicated fish.
Here are eyes like wagtail birds, and there too the finest of wagtail eyes;
Before them, every other wagtail is bereft of beauty.
Here love is complete, and there love is complete;
Beholding the two together, even the cloudlike force of Love is humbled.
Lakshmana, the sky, Saraswati, and every voice fall silent upon seeing Sita:
She is the golden ring, and Rama the sapphire gem.

Her darkly outlined eyes surpass deer and wagtail birds;
They are caskets of divine beauty, as though the whole world were contained within them.
Her neck is a conch and her teeth shame pomegranate seeds;
Her nose resembles a parrot’s beak and her voice the accomplished cuckoo.
Seeing her waist, the lion is ashamed; her arms appear to have stolen the splendour of the elephant’s trunk.
Madari praises her as one who has deprived every proud comparison of its claim.
Friend, hear and consider this within your heart:
Sita is the golden ring, and dark Rama the gem set within it.

Friend, listen—today I beheld the two princes.
They had come to gather flowers, and there I obtained their vision.
Since that hour I have not remembered myself for even a moment;
What am I to do, brave friend? They have stolen my heart.
Speech grows shy—friend, how can their beauty be described?
The singer’s heart leaps like a fish within water.