Studies in the History of Sanskrit Poetics v2.c86.31

v2.c86.31

The *kṛṣṇa-rati* or the love of Kṛṣṇa forms the dominant feeling or *sthāyi-bhāva* of this sentiment, and the recipient here is not the literary *sahṛdaya* but the *bhakta*, or the faithful¹⁸. This *sthāyi-bhāva*, known as *madhurā rati*, which is the source of the particular *rasa*, is defined in terms of the love of Kṛṣṇa¹⁹; and the nature of *nāyaka* and the *nāyikā* is defined in the same manner and their feelings and emotions illustrated by adducing examples from poems dealing with the love-stories of Kṛṣṇa and Rādhā. The work is, therefore, essentially a Vaiṣṇava religious treatise presented in a literary garb, taking Kṛṣṇa as the ideal hero, with the caution, however, that what is true of Kṛṣṇa as the hero does not apply to the ordinary secular hero (i 18-21)²⁰