History of Bengali Language and Literature c10.s3.4

c10.s3.4

Though defective in so many ways—and from a superficial point of view the whole performance was marked by incongruity and want of all æsthetic perception,—yet the old yatras had the power to captivate the soul and keep men and women transfixed for hours at a time. The songs describing the scenes of Baikuntha, the heaven of Viṣṇu, of Amarāvati, the heaven of Indra, or of the Alakā, the heaven of Kuvera, couched in rich poetic words and set to pleasing modes of music, made up for all want of painted scenes. They suggested romantic situations, and carried the audience to heights of imagination where no painter's brush could have led them. The outward anomalies, the defective and even grotesque elements, were all forgiven and forgotten. These songs, thrilling with pathos, gave life to the performance, and the audience laughed and cried as though they fully believed in the joys and sorrows of the characters of the play. A very familiar personality in the old yatras was Rādhā; she would come with flowing tresses frenzied by Kṛṣṇa’s desertion, and address the flowers, Mālatī and Kunda, as if they were her friends, asking them where her Kṛṣṇa was. She would then recollect the great love which Kṛṣṇa bore to her; how he would play with her ringlets, saying “blessed am I in the touch of thy tresses”; how he would himself paint her feet with ālta, and bedeck her hair with flowers and garlands, how when looking at her face tears would start into his eyes without any cause, and he would call them tears of joy. He, who could not bear a moment’s parting, had now deserted her. The maids were calling him a knave, a hypocrete and faithless lover. But Rādhā could not bear that Kṛṣṇa should be reviled by others, though she was dying for love of him.