MĀNA
Wilfulness
This affection of a heroine is something compound of pride, disdain, offense and coldness: a hardening of heart (cf. hṛdaya-granthih). The soul's contraction though the voice of God is heard,—she will not open her doors.
3. The Pairs of Opposites, cf. No. [XLVII], 4.
This is most typical Vaishnava poetry, in one breath blaming Krishna's wiles and proclaiming Him One without second. The note of blame is specially characteristic. In the Prema Sāgara:
'He forsakes goodness; He accepts badness: deceit is pleasing to Him!'
In Tagore's King of the Dark Chamber:
'Well, I tell you, your King's behaviour is—mean, brutal, shameful!'
In the Krishna of 'A.E.'
'I saw the King pass lightly from the beauty that he had betrayed.
I saw him pass from love to love; and yet the pure, allowed His claim
To be the purest of the pure, thrice holy, stainless, without blame.'
6. The golden jar is Krishna's body.
12, 13. All love is one, though you may reject it,—sacred or profane:
'Cowl of the monk and bowl of wine, how shall the twain by man be wed'?
Yet for the love I bear to thee, these to unite I dare for thee.'
Hafiz (translated by Walter Leaf).
Vidyāpati might have written (since Vaishnavas never used the Sufī symbol of wine), 'Lust of the flesh and love of Thee . . . these to unite I dare for Thee.'
7-9. Rādhā ignores a message from Krishna, sent through the priestess of a Sun-shrine, to meet him at the temple.
10, II. The nipple with its areola, compared to a Shiva-lingam with the digit of the moon that Shiva wears in his hair. Cf. [XVI], 10, 11.
6. Lakshmī, consort of Vishnu and goddess of beauty and fortune.
8, 9. This message implies, by the lock of hair that he would leave the world as a shaven monk if Rādhā would not yield. Flowers and pān (betel) are an 'olive-branch.' A blade of grass is sometimes held in the mouth to swear by, and here means sincerity.
6. The sandal is the best of trees, the shālmāl the worst.
10. Evidently a popular proverb—cf. 'The leopard cannot change its spots.'
3. Here the night-lily closing at dawn.
3. 'Jap-tap: prayers, personal office, daily ritual,—(japa or offerings of water, tapas or 'rule').
8. The moon is brother to the poison, since both were produced at the Churning of the Ocean: a thief because he stole Tārā, the wife of Brihaspati: vomited (unclean) because he escapes from Rāhu's jaws at each eclipse; cruel because his rays are scorching fires to divided lovers; slayer of lilies, because the day-lotus wilts at night; yet in spite of these enormities, some merit makes him bright.
13. Saba guṇa mula amula: A thought akin to that of [LXIII].
Rādhā is here the typical Khaṇḍitā Nāyikā who reproaches her lover when he returns in the morning and has spent the night with some other flame.
6. 'He takes another girl on his knee
And tells her what he dosen't tell me.'
8. Fickle, like the 'rootless' of [LXXIII], 13. Lit. 'His heart is the essence of lightning.'
9-12. Here the thought approaches the prevailing motif of the Gītā Govinda, where Rādhā is the higher self of man, and Krishna the self entangled in the world of sensation.
18. Rasa bujha'i rasamanta: a pregnant epigram, valid equally in love and art.