MĀNĀNTE MILNA
Reunion after Wilfulness
4. 'Might not bend,' lit. 'was like a stambha,' a monumental pillar.
The lovers are mixed like milk and water.
2. 'Spell,'—sādhanā.
8. Inasmuch as being a religious mendicant, he could not be refused.
4. Gañja-seeds (Abrus precatorius), used by jewellers as weights.
8, 10. Rādhā complains that she has cast her pearls before a monkey; but the poet retorts by the insinuation that Rādhā has given Krishna betel from her own mouth (as lovers do) and says that for betel to issue from a monkey's mouth is at least as strange as to see a necklace of pearls on a monkey's neck.
6. 'Phillis' closed eyes attracts you her to kiss,'
Francis Pilkington, 1605.
'She lay still and would not wake,'
Campion and Rosseter's Book of Airs, 1601.
9, 10. Such exchange of gear, when it amounts to a complete disguise of lover as belovèd, belovèd as lover, is known as Līlā-hāva. A familiar English parallel is the London coster lovers' habit of exchanging hats, when out for dalliance on Hampstead Heath; here also the original or sub-conscious motif is a sense of indentity.
Rādhā Hari Hari Rādhā-ke bani-āe sanketa—
The station of Rādhā becoming Hari and Hari Rādhā: is a not infrequent subject of Pahārī paintings.
10, Ratipati, the Lord of Rati, Madan, Love.
15. For this gesture, see 'Journal of Indian Art,' No. 128, fig. 3.
6. i.e. 'I could have sunk into the earth with shame.'
8. The poet overlooks that no snow settles on the southern hills.
2. The stain: see note to [XLVIII], 2.
6. Yaduvīra, Hero of the Yadus, Krishna.
14. The poet insinuates that Rādhā could have escaped from Krishna's gaze had she wished; just as the Kāshmīrī paṇḍitānīs bathing naked, slip from the river-bank into the water while the traveller's boat is passing.
1. Mother-in-law: see note to [XLVIII].
Even as a wife, such dalliance before a mother-in-law would be contrary to all decorum; thus the mother-in-law represents, as it were, the cares of this world, whereby the soul is prevented from yielding herself,—and hence Vidyāpati's disappointment.
2. Skirt, ghagari, not now a separate garment, but that part of the sārī which forms a skirt. But in Vidyāpati's day the costume of Bengali women seems to have been that of Western Hindustan (skirt, bodice and veil), familiar in Rājput paintings. In this case the nībībandha (see [Introduction] p. 11), is actually the skirt-string, and the translation as 'zone' or 'girdle' is not inappropriate, nor that of añcala as 'wimple' or 'veil.'
8. Like the 'neither within or without' of Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upanishad, IV, 3, 33: 'beyond the striving winds of love and hate'—Wilfrid Wilson Gibson.
10. With such a tempest, as when Jove of old
Fell down on Danäe in a storm of gold—
Carew.
4. Tilka, the vermilion brow-spot.
7. Hari-Hara, God as equally Vishnu and Shiva: see Prema Sāgara, Ch. LXXXIX, also Havell, Indian Sculpture and Painting, PI. XXVI.
14. Vidyāpati's Master: Krishna.
Rādhā presumptuously claims for herself alone the love that is given to all that seek it. This song would be more appropriately included under the heading 'Māna.'
3. Kadamba, (Anthocepalus cadamba, Mig.) the tree most associated with Krishna, beneath which he stands and plays his flute and dallies with the milk-maids.
Rādhā is here the typical Abhisandhitā Nāyikā "who repulses her lover just when he seeks to soften her pride, and suffers double grief when he is no longer beside her" (Keśava Dāsa).