Chapter Two: The Nature and Scope of Madhura-rasa
- Pūrva-rāga. This is dormant love, love before meeting: the thirst of affection awakened by first seeing or hearing of the beloved, seeing him in a dream, or beholding his picture. It is of three kinds—mature, harmonious, and ordinary.
Mature pūrva-rāga has ten conditions: longing, agitation, wakefulness, emaciation or weakness, stupor or bodily numbness, restlessness, illness or pallor, madness, delusion or fainting, and death.
Harmonious pūrva-rāga also has ten conditions: desire, anxiety, recollection, praise of the beloved's virtues, agitation, lamentation, madness, illness, torpor, and death.
Ordinary pūrva-rāga has six conditions. They correspond exactly to the first six conditions of harmonious pūrva-rāga, beginning with desire and ending with lamentation.
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Māna. This is the semblance of anger that obstructs the fulfilment of love while heightening the delight of affection. The māna that arises upon seeing, hearing of, or inferring some act or “escapade” of the beloved has a cause. Its second kind is causeless, or attended only by the appearance of a cause. Māna is appeased by sweet words, gifts and the like, self-praise, or indifference.1
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Prema-vaicittya. This means apprehension of separation even in the beloved's presence.
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Pravāsa. This is mental anguish caused by absence from the beloved. The ten conditions of suffering born of absence are anxiety, wakefulness, agitation, emaciation, loss of bodily lustre, delirious speech, illness, madness, delusion, and death.
In the eternal līlā, Krishna is never separated in any way from the goddesses of Vraja, for their union is eternal. Only in the manifest līlā, when Krishna goes to Mathura, do the gopīs suffer the distress born of absence. In other words, Krishna's departure for Mathura occurs only as an outward appearance within the manifest līlā. In reality, “He does not go even one step after abandoning Vrindavan.” Eternal union prevails in the eternal līlā.
Conjugal union has two divisions: principal and secondary. Principal union is an actual, manifest meeting; secondary union is meeting in a dream and the like. Each of these is again of four kinds:2 (1) brief, (2)—
Footnotes
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Like rasa, the word māna carries a very extensive and profound meaning. In itself it is a mysterious combination of joy, sorrow, fear, uncertainty, pride, anger, love, aversion, and more—outward indifference joined to intense inward attachment. One may only imagine its manifest form; it cannot be depicted. ↩
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The Rasārṇava-sudhākara also recognises the four kinds of union listed here. Jiva Goswami recognises four kinds of union after pūrva-rāga: seeing, touching, conversation, and complete union. ↩