Early History of the Vaishnava Faith and Movement in Bengal, from Sanskrit and Bengali Sources c11.s5.31

c11.s5.31

Hence, in his much praised *Vilāpa-kusumāñjali*, from which the verse quoted above is taken, his sorrow of separation from Rādhā and his intense longing for service and worship are expressed with great warmth and earnestness, the author conceiving himself as a handmaid of Rādhā,¹ and describing in detail how he would like to wait upon her, help her to dress and decorate her limbs and minister unto her love-affair. Rādhā and her divine lover are presented in these Stotras in a background of highly sensuous appeal; and the extreme asceticism of the author's personal life affords a strange contrast to the extreme eroticism of his devotional effusions. But the attitude is essentially one of pathetic supplication and surrender for being included in the divine entourage, for ecstatic vision of the erotic sports. The fervent prayers are addressed to Rādhā, more than to Kṛṣṇa, because without an adoration of Rādhā it is impossible, in the poet's view to attain Kṛṣṇa (*Sva-saṃkalpa-prakāśa*, verse 1):