Pramāṇa · Search · About · API

Gita Govinda 1.4

English (machine translation) 1.4

Language
English

Contents

1.4.1

To Mādhava, who lingered quietly in a cane arbor on the bank of the Yamunā, bewildered by the weight of love, Rādhā's confidante spoke:

1.4.1.p1

|| Lyric Composition 8

1.4.1.p2

Sung in Karṇāṭa melodic mode and Ekatālī rhythmic meter.

1.4.2

She reviles sandalwood paste, and upon the moonbeams finds anxious distress; / through contact with the home of serpents, she reckons the breeze from the Malaya mountains to be like poison.

1.4.2.p1

O Mādhava, as if from fear of the arrows of mind-born love, she has dissolved in thought of you; / she is wretched in separation from you. || Refrain

1.4.3

As if to protect you from the incessantly falling arrows of Madana, / she makes a broad armor upon her heart's vital core with a screen of wet lotus leaves.

1.4.4

Her bed of flower-arrows, lovely with the abundant arts of erotic dalliance, / she makes into a flower bed as though practicing an ascetic vow for the bliss of your embrace.

1.4.5

And her noble lotus face bears streams of water from her trembling eyes, / like the moon bearing streams of nectar dripping from the tearing teeth of fierce Rāhu.

1.4.6

In secret, with musk, she paints you in the form of the Bodiless One with his uneven arrows; / placing a sea-monster beneath you and a fresh mango sprout as an arrow in your hand, she bows down.

1.4.7

Having conjured you before her through absorption in meditation, though exceedingly hard to attain, / she laments, she laughs, she desponds, she weeps, she trembles, she casts off torment.

1.4.8

At every step she declares this too: “O Mādhava, I have fallen at your feet; / when you are turned away from me, instantly even the storehouse of nectar creates a burning of my body.”

1.4.9

If this utterance of Śrī Jayadeva is to be performed intensely by the mind, / the speech of the cowherd maiden’s confidante, agitated by separation from Hari, should be recited.

1.4.10

Her dwelling behaves like a wilderness, even the circle of dear companions behaves like a snare, / and the heat [of passion], through her sighing, behaves like the mass of flames of a forest fire; / alas, through separation from you, she too behaves like a doe. Ah, why does even Kandarpa behave like Yama, playing the sport of a tiger?

1.4.10.p1

|| Lyric Composition 9

1.4.10.p2

Sung in Deśākhya melodic mode and Ekatālī rhythmic meter.

1.4.11

Even the magnificent necklace placed upon her breasts, / she, with her wasted body, deems to be a burden.

1.4.11.p1

O Keśava, Rādhikā [suffers] in separation from you! || Refrain

1.4.12

Even the wet and smooth sandalwood paste upon her body / she regards with apprehension, as though it were poison.

1.4.13

The breath of her sigh, matchless in extent, / she bears, full of burning, like the fire of Madana.

1.4.14

In every direction she scatters a shower of tear-drops, / as if casting out eye-lotuses with severed stalks.

1.4.15

She does not remove her cheek from the palm of her hand, / like the young crescent moon resting motionless at dusk.

1.4.16

A bed of sprouts, though falling within the range of her eyes, / she considers equivalent to a blazing fire.

1.4.17

“Hari! Hari!” she mutters passionately, / as if utterly brought to death by separation.

1.4.18

May this song uttered by Śrī Jayadeva, / offered at the feet of Keśava, bestow delight.

1.4.19

Her hair bristles, she makes whistling cries of pain, she laments, she trembles violently, she languishes, / she meditates, she wanders in confusion, she closes her eyes, she collapses, she rises up, and she even swoons. / In such intense fever of love, would that slender-bodied woman not live through your passion, / O you who resemble the physician of the gods, if you show grace? Otherwise, her hand has been abandoned [as dead]!

1.4.20

O you who are dear as the heavenly physician, if you do not free from affliction / Rādhā, sick with love and curable only by the nectar of contact with your limbs, / you are harsher even than the thunderbolt of Indra.

1.4.21

It is a wonder that, though her body is tormented by the burning fever of Kandarpa, / her heart languishes constantly in thoughts of sandalwood, the moon, and lotus ponds; / yet, overwhelmed by exhaustion, meditating in secret solely upon you, her cooling-bodied beloved, / the wasted maiden somehow breathes for a moment.

1.4.22

Formerly, distressed even by the closing of her eyes, she could not bear separation from you for even a moment; / how then can she breathe in prolonged separation, beholding the mango branch with flowering tips?

1.4.23

Lifting Govardhana out of passionate love for the forest of Gokula agitated by torrential rain, / kissed lingeringly out of boundless delight by the lovers of the cowherds, / and marked, as if with pride, by the red vermilion seals of their lower lips impressed upon it, / may the arm of the enemy of Kaṃsa in his cowherd form bestow welfare upon you!

1.4.23.p1

Thus ends the fourth sarga, entitled “Affectionate Madhusūdana,” in the glorious Gītagovinda. ||4

1.4.23.p2

(5)
Fifth Sarga
Longing Lotus-Eyed One

Translations (1)

Commentaries (4)

Linked texts (1)