Having thus concluded the initiatory ceremonies in the lst Pallab, the
2nd Pallab begins the real "Kîrtan." It contains 26 hymns by masters
who are mostly of comparatively recent date. Of the old masters Gobind
Dâs and Cha.n.di Dâs alone appear in this Pallab. We now commence the
long and minutely described series of emotions and flirtations (if so
lowly a word may be used) between Râdhâ and K.rish.na, and this Pallab
and in fact the whole of the first Sâkhâ is on that phase called
"pûrbarâga" or first symptoms of love. In No. 2, Cha.n.di Dâs
represents two of Râdhâ's Sakhis, or girl-friends, whispering together
as they watch her from a distance (the punctuation {i.e. colon (:)}
refers to the cæsura, not to the sense):
"She stands outside the house, a hundred times restlessly she comes and
goes: depressed in mind, _with_ frequent sighs, she looks towards
the kadamba jungle. Why has Rai (Radhikâ) become thus? serious is her
error, she has no fear of men, where are her senses, or what god has
possessed her? Constantly restless, she does not cover herself with
the corner of her robe: she sits still for a while, then rises with a
start, her ornaments fall with a clang. Youthful in age, of royal
descent, and a chaste maiden to boot: what does she desire, (why) does
her longing increase? I cannot understand her motives: from her
conduct, this I conceive, she has raised her hand to the moon:
[Footnote: She has formed some extravagant desire.] Cha.n.di Dâs says
with respect she has fallen into the snare of the black one
(K.rish.na)."
This poem vividly expresses the first symptoms of love dawning in the
girl's heart, and from a religious point of view the first awakenings
of consciousness of divine love in the soul. It is difficult for the
European mind, trained to draw a broad distinction between the love of
God and love for another human being, to enter into a state of feeling
in which the earthly and sensual is made a type of the heavenly and
spiritual, but a large-souled charity may be perhaps able to admit that
by this process, strange though it be to its own habits and
experiences, there may have been some improvement wrought in the inner
life of men brought up in other schools of thought; and my own
experience, now of fourteen years standing, enables me to say that
Vaish.navism does, in spite of, or perhaps in virtue of, its peculiar
_modus operandi_, work a change for the better on those who come
under its influence.
Two more hymns on the same subject follow, and in No. 5 Râdhâ herself
breaks silence.
Public-domain text, read in full here on John Shaqi.
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