We may illustrate this point by a comparison with poetry of Western Europe. Take for example a poem such as the following, with a purely secular significance (if any true art can be said to be secular):
Oh! the handsome lad frae Skye
That's lifted a' the cattle, a'oor kye.
He's t'aen the dun, the black, the white.
And I hae mickle fear
He's t'aen my heart forbye.
Had this been current in fifteenth century Bengal, every Vaishnava would have understood the song to speak as much of God and the Soul as of man and maid, and to many the former meaning would have been the more obvious. On the other hand, there are many early medieval Western hymns in which the language of human love is deliberately adapted to religious uses, for example:
When y se blosmes springe,
And here foules songe,
A suete love-longynge
Myn herte thourh out stong;
Al for a love newe,
That is so suete and trewe.
That gladieth al mi song.
Here the 'new love' is Christ.
Finally, there are other Western lyrics, and very exquisite ones, that could equally be claimed as religious or secular, for example:
Long ago to thee I gave
Body, soul and all I have—
Nothing in the world I keep. [[4]]
The Western critic who would enquire what such a poem meant to its maker and his hearers must be qualified by spiritual kinship with him and with them. Let us demand a similar qualification from those who propose to speak of Oriental poetry:
Wer den Dichter will verstehen.
Muss in Dichter's Lande gehen,—
if not in physical presence, at least in spirit.