History of Bengali Language and Literature c7.s2.37

c7.s2.37

of her hair fall loose behind, black as the clouds or as the bees, but soft and curling like the tender Çaibala (moss.) Her eye-brows are bent, in the graceful curves of a bow, and her forehead beams with the lustre of the moon. The playfulness of her eyes reminds one of the bird Khañjana; her beautiful nose is like the Tila flower; her lips have the hue of coral, and so on. Rādhā's lovely form glows with shy happiness at the thought of this first meeting. She goes out in the dark night to meet her lover, covering herself with a Sāḍi of dark silk. She trusts to her guides, but when brought to the bower made by the maidens for the interview, she hesitates; she fears to enter; her heart is full of tenderness and love, but a feeling of shyness and delicacy holds her back. The maidens lead her in, inspite of her gentle protests, and she finds herself face to face with Kṛṣṇa. Her eyes droop; she dares not lift them even to see that beautiful face at which she could never be weary of gazing. The tenderness of the meeting is indescribable. The delicate maiden cannot say one word in response to the many, with which she is greeted; and when she comes back she is overwhelmed with remorse at the recollection of her own failure. By degrees, however, all this is changed. In a subsequent canto she is found relating to her maidens the manœuvres adopted by Kṛṣṇa in order to meet her, such as at the moment when her sister-in-law was asleep, resting her head on her lap, and he came gently from behind her, to steal a kiss. In these descriptions, as I have said, there is an exuberance of sensuousness, and songs of Vidyāpati would never have passed for religious writings, if in the last canto he had not suddenly risen high above such sentiments and repeatedly given to the whole story a spiritual interpretation. Of this, I may give a few specimens. Rādhā describes Kṛṣṇa. He is, she says, a flower to be placed upon her head; he is the collyrium (অঞ্জন) that makes her eyes beautiful; he is a precious necklace clinging about the neck; she cannot, she says, conceive of life without him,—he is to her what water is to the fish, or wings to a bird—the very breath of her being and the only object of her life. By a torrent of such similes which arise spontaneously, but are bound to lose their beauty in translation, she describes herself as altogether merged and lost in the consciousness of her love. Alas, she has told all, but, though loving with all her might, she has failed to grasp him; giving all that her soul is capable of offering, she feels that Kṛṣṇa remains unrevealed to her, as ever. In the last line she turns suddenly, with the cry, ‘Tell me, O Kṛṣṇa, what art thou?’ This touching cry “তুঁহুঁ কৈছে মাধব কহবি মোয়” is wholly spiritual and mystic, it is the agonised expression of the infinitely little in presence of the infinitely Great.