Original · Devanagari
तीन ऊपर आठहु तई शर अवकाश की बात । खोलि कहव जनि पियव रस, आपु कहव विख्यात ॥२॥ पर भाषा को काटि कै अपने यशहि बढ़ाइ । रामचरण ते श्वान कवि कबहु न पेट अघाइ ॥३॥ श्रुति गिरि कन्दर में रहत, कहत अनूठी बात । रामचरण ते सिंह कवि नव गयंद नित खात ॥४॥ काव्य धर्म पुर्वोपरहि, अर्थोऽशय नहिं जान । ते शिशु दूषण देत हैं बिनु सत गुरु के ज्ञान ॥५॥ संवतं सत अष्टादशो, औ चालीस दिन सूर । शरद विजय दशमी विमल, रहस ग्रंथ भा पूर ॥६॥ इति श्री रस मालिकायां बोध शास्त्रे संवादस्थले सद् गुरु शब्द बोध संज्ञा वरणनो नाम पंचदशोऽवकाशः ॥१५॥
Fresh English translation
The account of the avakāśas gives the compressed number-words 'three above eight, up to the arrow.' Do not lay open for self-display the rasa that is to be drunk, making yourself renowned. One who cuts apart another's language to enlarge his own fame is, Rāmacaraṇa says, a dog-poet whose belly is never filled. Revelation dwells in a mountain cave and speaks a wondrous word; the poet who enters after Rāmacaraṇa is a lion that daily devours young elephants. Those childish critics who do not know poetry's relation of what comes before and after, nor its intended meaning, assign faults because they lack a true guru's knowledge. In Vikrama Saṃvat eighteen hundred and forty, on the radiant, stainless autumnal day of Vijayadaśamī, this secret book reached completion. The explicit terminal colophon reads in meaning: 'Thus, in Śrī Rasa Mālikā, in the treatise of awakening, at the setting of the dialogue, the fifteenth avakāśa—called Description of the Designation Awakening through the True Guru's Word—is complete, number 15.'