(Chandi Das)

  ix

  Listen, O lovely darling,
  Cease your anger. 
  I promise by the golden pitchers of your breasts
  And by your necklace-snake,
  Which now I gather in my hands,
  If ever I touch anyone but you
  May your necklace-snake bite me;
  And if my words do not ring true,
  Punish me as I deserve. 
  Bind me in your arms, hit me with your thighs,
  Choke my heart with your milk-swollen breasts,
  Lock me day and night in the prison of your heart.

  (Vidyapati)

  x

  Never have I seen such love nor heard of it. 
  Even the eyelids’ flutter
  Holds eternity. 
  Clasped to my breasts, you are far from me. 
  I would keep you as a veil close to my face. 
  I shudder with fright when you turn your eyes away,
  As one body, we spend the night,
  Sinking in the deeps of delight. 
  As dawn comes, we see with anxious hearts
  Life desert us. 
  The very thought breaks my heart. 
  Says Chandi Das: 
  O sweet girl, how I understand.

  (Chandi Das)

  xi

O friend, I cannot tell you Whether he was near or far, real or a dream.  Like a vine of lightning, As I chained the dark one, felt a river flooding in my heart.  Like a shining moon, I devoured that liquid face.  I felt stars shooting around me.  The sky fell with my dress Leaving my ravished breasts.  I was rocking like the earth.  In my storming breath I could hear my ankle-bells, Sounding like bees.  Drowned in the last-waters of dissolution I knew that this was not the end.  Says Vidyapati:  How can I possibly believe such nonsense?

  (Vidyapati)

[Footnote 60:  Plate 29.]

[Footnote 61:  Plate 35.]

[Footnote 62:  Note 20.]

[Footnote 63:  Note 20.]

(iv) The Rasika Priya

It is a third development, however, which reveals the insistent attractions of Krishna the divine lover.  From about the seventh century onwards Indian thinkers had been fascinated by the great variety of possible romantic experiences.  Writers had classified feminine beauty and codified the different situations which might arise in the course of a romance.  A woman, for example, would be catalogued according as she was ‘one’s own, another’s or anyone’s’ and whether she was young, adolescent or adult.  Beauties with adult physiques were divided into unmarried and married, while cutting across such divisions was yet another based on the particular circumstances in which a woman might find herself.  Such circumstances were normally eight in number—­when her husband or lover was on the point of coming and she was ready to receive him; when she was parted from him and was filled with longing; when he was constant and she was thus enjoying the calm happiness of stable love; when, for the time being, she was estranged due to some quarrel or tiff; when she had been deceived;