In ecstasy, man is beside himself: that this momentary escape from 'himself' is the greatest gift life offers, is a promise, as it were a foretaste, of Release, warranting us that Nirvāna is something more than annihilation. At the same time, be it well understood that such ecstasies are not rewarded to those who are followers of Pleasure, nor to those that cling to self-will. In Vaishnava literature this is again and again emphasized. It is not till the ear ceases to hear the outside world, that it is open to the music in the heart, the flute of Krishna. If the objection is still made that our poet sings rather of human than divine love,—and we do not deny that he worships physical beauty, albeit the critics have told us that Rabīndranath Tagore is the first Indian poet to do so,—we answer with him that Love is One, and we would also quote the very splendid passage of the Prema Sāgara where the doubt is resolved, "How could the love of a certain milk-maid have brought her salvation, notwithstanding that her love for Krishna was paramours, and she knew him not as God, but as man?" The answer is given as follows:
Shri Krishna sat one moonlit night at the edge of a deep forest, playing his flute with intent to lure the milk-maids from their homes. The Braj girls could not rest nor resist the call, and abandoning the illusion of family and the ties of duty, they hurried in confusion from their homes to the forest. But one was seen and detained by her husband; yet she, in the intensity of her absorption in the thought of Hari, abandoned her body and was the first to reach Him. Perceiving the love of her heart. He gave her final release.
The king to whom the story has been thus far related, remarks that the milk-maid did not worship Krishna knowing him to be God, but regarded him as an object of sensuous desire, and asks, 'How then was she saved by her love?' The answer is given that even they who worship Krishna unawares obtain emancipation; just as the water of life makes the drinker immortal, without question whether he knows or does not know its virtue.[5] Should anyone with any purpose worship, he will be emancipated. Shri Krishna was reverenced in many ways, and in each was salvation obtained. Thus, "Nand, Yashodā and others knew him as a child, the milk-maids as a lover, Kāns worshipped him by fear, the cowherds called him their friend, the Pāndavas knew him as an ally, Shishupāl worshipped him as a foe, the Yaduvamsīs thought him one of themselves, the Yogīs, Yatīs and Munis meditated upon Him as God; but at last everyone of these obtained deliverance. What wonder then if one milk-maid by devotion to Him, was able to cross the sea of life,—to reach the further shore?"[6]
This pure humanism is the Vaishnava equivalent for: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto these, ye have done it unto Me," and "The worship of God is . . . loving the greatest men best."
We may also give here the Indian answer to the objection sometimes raised respecting the morality of Krishna Himself,—much as the Pharisees questioned the right of Christ to pluck the ears of corn. The Bhāgavata Purāna in one place answers as Blake or Nietzsche might, that dharma is not the same for the great and the small. More than this, it is a fault in logic to subject to ethical criticism a Power Who is by hypothesis Infinite, beyond the Pairs of opposites. As Purnendu Narayan Sinha expresses it: "Nothing that we know, nothing that we are composed of, nothing that shapes our experiences, that causes our likes and dislikes, limits Krishna. He is the absolute, for the relatives we know of, or which we may even think of, have no place in Him."[7] And indeed, this ought to be obvious to anyone that understands the language of mythology; for the multiplication of Krishna's form in the circular dance, and at Dvārakā, and the fact already alluded to, of His accessibility in every form, are clear indications of His Infinity. It is nowhere suggested that the illusion of family and the ties of duty may be abandoned except in self-surrender to Him.
It must also be remembered that the Krishna Līlā is not a historical record (as Nīlakantha remarks, 'The narration is not the real point'); His Līlā in Brindāban is eternal, and Brindāban is the heart of man. We are thus concerned with ideas and symbols, and not with history. The most that an objector could then adduce, would be to suggest that the symbolism may be unwisely chosen, and may be misunderstood. I should treat this objection with respect, and would agree that it may be valid from the standpoint of the objector. But I do not think it is valid from the standpoint of the lover. I would not even say, Let those who are able to take this passionate literature only in a carnal sense (and we have admitted that much of it has a carnal as well as a spiritual sense), therefore ignore it; for if the worship of loveliness is not Love, it is none the less a step on the way to Love.
Again, however, it is not meant to imply that the pastoral and romantic conditions indicated in Vaishnava literature do not exist, and have never existed, anywhere in India. On the contrary, if India is the classic country of lyrical poetry, this is because she is also the classic country of love.[8] Love is certainly of more significance to the Indian consciousness than to the European, and the Western fear of voluptuousness is hardly known in the East. But just as beauty was never in India glorified as an end in itself, so romantic love never obtained there such hold and possession over life and art as it has in the West. To put the same conclusion in other words, the Indian culture is nowhere corrupted by sentimentality. The reason of this is to be found, I think, in a wide-spread and deep-rooted consciousness of the principle of Impermanence. It is just this consciousness of evanescence which gives to the voluptuous and passionate art of Ajantā the spiritual significance that is all the more impressive because of its sensuous setting. Non-attachment is a greater quality than non-participation. Where life is transparent, the enjoyment of life is never a spiritual bondage. One might almost believe that to the Ajantā painters and the Vaishnava poets had been granted the prayer of Socrates,—"O beloved Pan, and all ye other gods of this place, grant me to become beautiful in the inner man, and that whatever outward things I have may be at peace with those within."
A few words are needed to explain the method of translation. The rendering is line for line, and often word for word, but whenever a choice lay between expressing the letter and the spirit of the original, the latter has been considered of the first importance. Vidyāpati reflects a certain view of life: it is this, rather than the form of his utterance, however perfect, that touches us most nearly. A single word in the original is often rendered by two or three in the translation, for the terseness of the Bengālī could rarely be repeated. Notwithstanding that our translation does not pretend to be metrical, much care has been taken with the phrasing, to make it readable: for it would appear that alike in music and poetry, rasa is more closely bound up with phrasing than with a regular division into bars or feet.[9] At the same time, a few examples of the original text are quoted in the 'Notes,' in order to give the reader some idea of their form.
It should be noticed that the songs here translated are but a part of Vidyāpati's Bangīya Padābali. Two hundred and two songs are given in the edition of Kāliprasanna Kāvyābhisharad which we have chiefly used; and there are over nine hundred in that of Shrī Nagendranath Gupta published in Nāgarī character for H. H. the Mahārājah of Darbhangā,—to whom I am indebted for a copy of the edition. The order of our versions follows that of Kāliprasanna Kāvyābhisharad; the songs omitted are those which are almost repetitions of those translated, or of which we could not make a satisfactory rendering.
It has been very difficult to find such words as can express Vidyāpati's transparency. English since the Elizabethan age has grown poor in purely lyrical words and idioms, for modern literature, like modern plastic art or music, rarely deals with unmixed feelings. To present Vidyāpati in English in a form at all comparable with the original, would require all the facility and elegance of the Elizabethans joined to nearly all the seriousness of the earliest English lyrics. I say nearly all, for Vidyāpati is a very conscious artist, with a considerable sense of humour; and though he is certainly far more serious than the elegant Elizabethans, he is not in any sense a primitive.