The rendering of certain words in the original demands a brief explanation. Sakhī (the chetī of Mr. Bain's beautiful Sanskrit imitations), meaning a girl-friend and confidante of the heroine, usually used in the vocative, is translated as 'my dear.' _Dūtīka, the messenger or go-between, is a sakhī or any woman who carries messages between the lovers: but often, too, the poet himself is the messenger, and in this case there is perhaps a conscious reference to the artist as go-between God and the soul. The gopīs are the milk-maids of Gokula, of whom Rādhā is Krishna's beloved.
Añcala, meaning the upper part of the sārī, thrown across the breast and over the shoulder, also forming a head-veil, we have translated, not quite accurately, as 'wimple,' for want of a better word. Nībibanda, which means the knotting of the sārī round the waist, is rendered as 'zone' or 'girdle,' though it is not properly a separate garment.
The word rasa can never be adequately translated into English, and perhaps it should be adopted there as a loan-word, together with such others as karma, yoga, dharma, samsāra, nirvāna. Rasa, like the word 'essence,' has both a concrete and an abstract significance; it has, amongst others, such meanings as juice, nectar, essence, taste, flavour, savour, lust, and in an abstract sense, taste, appreciation, passion, ecstasy, love and so forth. Rasa is equally the essential element in love and in art. It would be defined from the Indian standpoint as an emotion provoked by the recognition of reality. From rasa are derived the two important words rasika (a connoisseur, lover), and rasavanta or rasamanta ('possessing rasa' said either of an individual or of a work of art).
It is a canon of Indian dramatic criticism, not only that rasa is unique, but that those only can experience rasa who are temperamentally qualified to do so by virtue acquired in a former life,—Poeta nascitur nonjit. All these associations give great weight to Vidyapati's splendid aphorism:
Rasa bujha, i rasamanta
'None knoweth love but the lover, none ecstasy save the ecstatic.'
If we apply this to life and art, it means what Blake meant when he said that enthusiasm is the first and last principle of criticism.
It should not be forgotten that Vidyāpati's songs, like those of all the Vaishnava poets—from Jayadeva to Rabīndranath Tagore—were meant to be sung; and as the latter says himself, "In a book of songs the main thing is left out: to set forth the music's vehicle, and leave out the music itself, is just like keeping the mouse and leaving out Ganapati himself" ('Jiban-smrti,' p. 148). The padas of Vidyāpati may still be heard on the lips of Bengali singers, albeit often in corrupt forms. It may also be noted that song was constantly illustrated by the conventional language of descriptive gesture. We are able to partly compensate the lack of this in reproducing the eleven illustrations from Indian sources; for although not designed directly to illustrate Vidyāpati's text, there is to be found in these an immediate expression of the same ideas. A further account of all the illustrations is appended to the 'Notes.'
Finally, in the matter of transliteration: since these versions are intended rather for the rasika than for the pandit, we have done no more that mark the long and short vowels of Indian names and words occurring in this Introduction or in the text. The reader will not go far wrong if he pronounces such words as if in Italian. C has the the sound of ch in church: for ś and ṣ we have used sh throughout.
It is by an inexcusable oversight that the poet's name has been printed as Vidhyāpati throughout the text. (Transcriber's note: This has been corrected).