Early History of the Vaishnava Faith and Movement in Bengal, from Sanskrit and Bengali Sources c8.s3.1

c8.s3.1

Against this background of a complicated scheme is to be studied the next work, the *Ujjvala-nīlamaṇi*,¹ in which the Ujjvala, or Madhura, or Śṛṅgāra Bhakti-rasa, the Erotic Love of Kṛṣṇa, among the five primary Rasas, has been baptised into transcendence. The very importance of this Rasa is borne out by the fact that it required a separate and specialised enquiry in a supplementary work, which, if it did not exceed in volume the original treatise, did far outshine it in the complication of details and profusion of illustrations. As before, the entire theme is planned and modelled upon that of the Śṛṅgāra Rasa of Sanskrit Poetics, and the general terminology and main concepts belong to its current stock-in-trade. The fundamentals of the whole doctrine of the Erotic Rasa and its rhetorical psychology are worked out from the point of view of Kṛṣṇa as an ideal hero (*nāyaka-cūḍāmaṇi*); and as the hero and the heroine in their various moods, aspects and situations form the ground of this erotic sentiment, the work is really an exhaustive dissertation not only upon the sentiment itself, but also upon the *minutiae* of the hero and heroine, their adjuncts and associates, as well as an analysis of their various attributes and expressions of love.