Sur’s Ocean: Classic Hindi Poetry in Translation 9780674293212

Citation preview

murty classical library of ind ia

S URDAS S UR’ S OC EAN

005752_MCLI005_200_FM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:09 PM • i



murty classical library of india Sheldon Pollock, General Editor Editorial Board Whitney Cox Francesca Orsini Sheldon Pollock Archana Venkatesan

005752_MCLI005_200_FM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:09 PM • ii



surdas

SURʼS OCEAN

Classic Hindi Poetry in Translation Translated by

john stratton hawley

murty classical library of india harvard university press Cambridge, Massachusetts London, England 2023

005752_MCLI005_200_FM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:09 PM • iii



Copyright © 2015 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College All rights reserved Printed in the United States of America Jacket Designer: Gabriele Wilson Cover art: (Radha) Credit: Heritage Image Partnership Ltd / Alamy Stock Photo; (cow) Darshanam 9780674293205 (EPUB) 9780674293212 (PDF) First published in Murty Classical Library of India, Volume 5, Harvard University Press, 2015. series design by m9design The Library of Congress has cataloged the printed edition as follows: Suradasa, 1483?–1563? [Poems. Selections. English] Sur’s Ocean : poems from the early tradition / Surdas ; translated by John Stratton Hawley. p. cm. — (Murty Classical Library of India) Includes bibliographical references. ISBN 978-0-674-29017-4 (pbk.) 1. Suradasa, 1483?-1563? —Translations into English. 2. Krishna (Hindu deity) —Poetry. I. Hawley, John Stratton, 1941– translator. PK1967.9.S9A2 2014 891.4'312—dc23 2014015933

CONTENTS

introduction  vii Krishna Growing Up  1 The Pangs and Politics of Love  21 The Bee Messenger  73 Lordly Encounters—and Others  105 The Poetʼs Petition and Praise  121 abbreviations  145 notes to the translation  147 glossary  169 bibliography  173

005752_MCLI005_200_FM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:09 PM • v



005752_MCLI005_200_FM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:09 PM • vi



INTRODUCTION

Surdas—the exemplary poet of Krishna whose name means literally “servant (dās) of the sun (sūr)”—is considered the epitome of poetic artistry in Brajbhasha, one of the major literary strands of Hindi. The language is deeply associated with Braj, the region that stretches south from Delhi along the River Jamuna where the god Krishna is remembered as having spent his boyhood. In the following well-known couplet Sur emerges as the sun itself: The sun is Sur; Tulsi, the moon; Keshavdas, the stars. Today’s poets are little more than fireflies flickering here and there.1 Some critics have favored poets primarily associated with other literary streams of classical Hindi—notably Tulsidas and Kabir—but Sur’s claim to primacy can be traced back to the close of the sixteenth century, when Sur himself must have lived. Sometime around 1600 the hagiographer Nabhadas composed his influential Bhaktamāl (Garland of Lovers of God), and he singled out Surdas for a special sort of praise. Other poet-saints might be lauded as exemplars of intense devotion (bhakti)—like Mirabai for personal fearlessness or like Kabir for defiance of the rules of caste and class—but when the subject was poetry itself, Surdas had no peer:

vii

005752_MCLI005_200_FM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:09 PM • vii



introduction

What poet, hearing the poems Sur has made, will not nod his head in pleasure? Turns of phrase, epigrams, assonance, description— in each regard his standing is immense: Speech and loving sentiment he sustains, conveying their meaning in wondrous rhyme. In words he expresses Hari's playful acts, which are mirrored in his heart by divine vision: Birth, deeds, virtues, and beautiful form— all are brought to light by his tongue. Others cleanse their virtues and powers of insight by tuning their ears to his fame. What poet, hearing the poems Sur has made, will not nod his head in pleasure? 2 Nabhadas tells us that Sur was able to put into words “Hari’s playful acts.” The name Hari can designate any of the aspects of divinity associated with the god Vishnu, whether or not we think of these as being formally Vishnu’s avatars. In the sixteenth century, Hari was also frequently used as a designation for God in an even more general sense—the sort of God who loved to help those who loved him, and who had designed the world as a theater in which just such activities could be performed. So Hari can mean many things, but when Nabhadas speaks of Hari in connection with Surdas, he is clearly thinking of Krishna, the deity whose trademark is his līlās, his “playful acts.” To be sure, Sur addressed a series of lovely compositions to Ram and his consort Sita, and he also explored other aspects of the Ramayana, yet his

viii

005752_MCLI005_200_FM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:09 PM • viii



introduction

primary narrative métier was the world of Krishna—from his childhood and amorous youth through to his role in the epic Mahabharata. In this selection we feature that alone— except for poems of vinaya (humility), so strikingly personal in tone, which come at the end.

The Blind Poet For many generations it has been understood that Surdas was blind, and to that is attributed the clarity of his spiritual vision. We do not know exactly when it became popular to regard Surdas in this way, but we know that the story was told in a number of forms. In one version, Sur is granted a vision of Krishna and then requests the deity to remove his faculty of sight so that nothing he might see subsequently could dilute the splendor of what he had witnessed.3 In another version, however, Sur is blind from birth. This is the form the story takes when told by the religious community that has positioned itself at least since the mid-seventeenth century as Sur’s most influential interpreter: the Vallabh Sampraday (Tradition of Vallabh) or Pushtimarg (Path of Fulfillment). The group’s worship is focused entirely on Krishna and members revere the theologian Vallabh (or more formally, Vallabhacharya—Master Vallabh) as their founder. One of Vallabh’s grandsons, Gokulnath, is traditionally believed to have been the author of an interconnected series of religious biographies called Caurāsī Vaiṣṇavan kī Vārtā (Accounts of Eighty-four Vaishnavas), which includes the Surdas biography that everyone

ix

005752_MCLI005_200_FM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:09 PM • ix



introduction

knows. The singing of Sur’s poetry—along with that of other poets regarded as constituting the “eight seals” initiated by Vallabh into the sectarian fold—is one of the central acts of Vallabhite worship.4 In his late seventeenth-century commentary on the “Accounts of Eighty-four Vaishnavas,” Hariray, the nephew of Gokulnath, makes clear that Sur was blind from birth, but a series of internal considerations argues against regarding this deeply theological text as a simple report of historical fact. Equally to the point, the corpus of poetry that circulated in Surdas’s name in the sixteenth century (rather than the later inflated corpus described below) alludes clearly to the poet’s blindness on only a single occasion, and even then, without implying he was blind from birth.5 In this poem, in fact, it is not entirely certain that a physical malady is meant rather than a spiritual one, but what is clear is that poems of this sort—poetry of petition and protest typically labeled vinaya—were distasteful to the Vallabhites. In their view, Sur could have uttered such poems only early in life, before Vallabh gave him a direct apprehension of Krishna’s līlās by channeling toward Sur, in a mystic initiatory instant, the true meaning of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, the great tenth-century “Lore of the Blessed One” revered by Vaishnavas everywhere. As a document of faith this encounter between Surdas and Vallabh makes for a beautiful story, but at the level of fact there are multiple difficulties.6 For one thing, none of the Surdas poems that circulated in the sixteenth century— unlike several that were added to the corpus later on—makes

x

005752_MCLI005_200_FM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:09 PM • x



introduction

any reference to Vallabh. It takes a good bit of footwork on the part of Vallabhite hagiographers to make the record look otherwise. Another important fact is that no early manuscript of the Sur corpus—what by 1640 would come to be called the Sūrsāgar, or “Sur’s Ocean”—places the vinaya poems at the beginning; several, in fact, do the opposite. Furthermore, none of the earliest manuscripts containing Sur’s poems is formatted according to the twelve-book plan of the Bhāgavata. Sur was far from translating the Bhāgavata into Brajbhasha, so the thought that Vallabh was the midwife of a Sanskrit-to-vernacular transformation is out of kilter in the first place.7 Finally, one must factor in the reality that the authorial identity called Surdas actually describes a literary tradition that was many decades, even centuries, in the making. Manuscripts that collected poems attributed to Surdas tended to expand over the years as ever more poems were added. All these carry the Sur signature in one of its several forms, but very probably they were composed by a great many poets. The story of Vallabh meeting Surdas radically foreshortens this textual reality in the course of giving it biographical form. By the same token, any attempt to assign birth and death dates to Surdas is doomed to fail. Such dates rest ultimately on Sur’s presumed connections with Vallabh and his son Vitthalnath, and those connections are hypothetical at best. The name Surdas does appear among musicians whom Abu’l-Fazl says performed at the court of Akbar (r. 1556– 1605), but it is highly unlikely that “our” Surdas is meant.

xi

005752_MCLI005_200_FM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:09 PM • xi



introduction

Biographically speaking, all we can know is that this great poet lived somewhere in north India in the course of the sixteenth century. Literarily, however, we know more.

Surdas and the Sur Tradition The oldest extant dated manuscript that contains poems attributed to Sur comes from the year 1582. It was written in Fatehpur, some 70 miles north of Jaipur (or rather, Amer, its predecessor—Jaipur did not yet exist), and it comprises 239 poems attributed to Sur, along with a number credited to other poets.8 239 is a smallish number. Only later do collections of Sur’s poems assume the oceanic dimensions appropriate to the designation Sūrsāgar, as in the 1640 manuscript mentioned above, which contains 795 poems.9 Once applied, though, the title became very popular. Later manuscripts often adopt it, and they tend to expand this ocean of poems further and further with the passing of years. By the nineteenth century, there was a manuscript containing almost 10,000 poems.10 Who then “composed” this ocean? We can answer the question in one of three ways. The traditional response is to say that a single individual was responsible for generating the entire corpus: Surdas composed the Sūrsāgar. This position forces us to explain the varying sizes of different anthologies, especially the smallest among them, as the result of insufficient efforts at collecting the vast number of poems that were actually available. In the Vallabhite tradition, this number is pegged at 125,000. It may well be that each of the earliest manuscripts, written in different places xii

005752_MCLI005_200_FM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:09 PM • xii



introduction

and at different times, captured only a portion of the Surdas poetry circulating in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. But the conviction that a single poet produced an oeuvre so massive that even today we are still trying to recover its full extent makes little sense of the fact that anthologies of poetry attributed to Sur increased in size at a more or less regular rate through the years. Moreover, why would it have been harder to remember the poet’s utterances early on, when they were fresh, than in later years? A far simpler explanation would be that as the years passed and the reputation of Sur’s Ocean grew, poets wishing to be well received or otherwise to contribute to the Surdas genre added new poems to the preexisting sea. When they did so, they spoke in the voice of Surdas, as attested in each poem’s final verse, where the poet’s oral signature (chāp, seal, or bhaṇitā, utterance) typically appears. This makes sense. The signature was intended more to attest to the genre and authority of a composition—to align it with Surdas—than to designate the historical person who gave the genre its particular shape.11 Suppose we grant, then, that Sur’s Ocean is not a static thing produced by a single poet, but rather a “Sur tradition,” as Kenneth Bryant was the first to say.12 What does this make us conclude about the nature of its authorship? One approach would be to abandon any sort of language that would imply the agency of a single, original Surdas—the sort of person Nabhadas had in mind. Instead, we would adhere strictly to the conditions of our knowledge, admitting that nothing like an autograph copy can exist in a body of poetry that was largely the precipitate of oral performance. Plainly a multiplicity of Surdases must have been involved in xiii

005752_MCLI005_200_FM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:09 PM • xiii



introduction

generating this multiparticulate opus, so why not cut to the chase and be satisfied with the notion of collective authorship, as Vinay Dharwadker has done for Kabir?13 This would be the second answer to the question “Who composed Sur’s Ocean?”—exactly opposite to the first. This solution to the authorship problem is attractive in purely formal terms, and it comes close to describing what must have been the case for the vast majority of poems that were contributed to the Sūrsāgar as it expanded from its relatively modest sixteenth-century size to the ocean it is today. But it is not, in the end, satisfactory.14 It does not explain how the name Surdas came to be associated with a particular poetical style and expertise in the first place. Nor does it register the fact that, on the whole, poems that appear only in later iterations of the Sūrsāgar are less intricate, less dramatic, less convincing artistically than those whose manuscript pedigrees are more venerable. For this reason we must retain a sense of a single excellent poet standing at the headwaters of the Sur tradition. Perhaps, in this sense, the Sūrsāgar might better be thought of as a river than as an ocean—gathering strength in the course of time, but gradually growing more sluggish and losing a good bit of the purity that could be tasted farther upstream. This is the third and best solution to the authorship problem, even if it forces us to speak in approximations. True, we do not know anything biographically reliable about the “original” Surdas. Yet by speaking about him as if we did, we can affirm the tradition’s own sense—from early on—that a poet of special merit first sang the Brajbhasha songs that

xiv

005752_MCLI005_200_FM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:09 PM • xiv



introduction

bear the signature Surdas and its metrical alternatives: Sur, Surij, and so forth. The true reference of the terms “Sur” and “Surdas” is to the special logic and poetic art that are displayed in early poems collected in Surdas’s name. All we have is text—no person—and no single text at that, but a series of anthologies whose contents overlap in complex ways. Still, as a group they seem to radiate a particular poetic personality: someone tirelessly imaginative, and yet so scrupulous that he avoided repeating any word in the course of a single composition unless he intended the emphasis or irony that repetition would command. It is a pleasure to follow tradition and call this person, or persona, Surdas.

Krishna’s Story A. K. Ramanujan once famously observed that no one ever hears the Ramayana (or was it the Mahabharata?) for the first time, and the same is surely true for narratives of Krishna. People learn tales of Krishna in multiple ways, first as children, then as adults, and they learn different tales. Part of the joy of listening to Sur’s poems is to tap into that ongoing stream—to appreciate how every moment of performance, every newly articulated point of view, reshapes the master narrative and makes its mastery live and grow as a plural entity.15 No one hears the Krishna story for the first time, then, and rarely is there an attempt to tell it in its totality. Still, poems attributed to Surdas expect a certain narrative competence on the part of their audiences, and those out­

xv

005752_MCLI005_200_FM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:09 PM • xv



introduction

side the Indian orbit are apt to need some help in coming up to speed. The following is an attempt to lay out some of the basics, and a glossary of names appears at the back of the book for reference. The scene opens on a very dark monsoon night, the eighth in the waning half of the lunar month of Bhadon, which overlaps with August and September. Krishna is about to be born to his mother, Devaki, and father, Vasudev, who are members of the royal family of Mathura, that ancient city on the right bank of the Jamuna at the heart of the Braj country. It is not a simple birth. Kams, a tyrant normally regarded as Devaki’s brother, has imprisoned the rightful ruler of Mathura and usurped the throne from Ugrasen, a member of Krishna’s Vrsni clan. Having heard a prediction that Devaki is to be the mother of a child who will depose and kill him, Kams has imprisoned not only Ugrasen but also Krishna’s parents: the birth will take place in jail. Guards are on duty, of course. As the crucial moment approaches, a cloud of soporific magic (māyā) spreads throughout the palace, and the newborn son reveals himself to his parents for an incandescent instant as the deity he is. Krishna retreats to his quotidian form and escapes across the Jamuna to safety before Kams’s minions realize that anything has happened. His father bears him above the rain-swollen waters. Once arrived in rural Braj, Krishna is exchanged for a girl child (also secretly divine) who has just been born to a herder chieftain named Nanda and his wife, Yashoda. They too are afflicted by māyā, however, and afterward do not recall that any transposition has occurred. So far as they know, the babe is theirs. xvi

005752_MCLI005_200_FM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:09 PM • xvi



introduction

In the first poem that appears in the current selection, Sur celebrates the joy that the entire cowherd encampment feels as news of the blessed birth is heard. That is a very public moment, and Sur enables his listeners to join the throng, just as they might in Hindu temples throughout the world. The festival of Krishna’s birth is called Krishnajanmastami, and its most sacred moment is the midnight hour when the child was born and safely rescued despite all efforts by Kams to prevent it. But such dangers are entirely unknown in the cowherding hamlet where Nanda and Yashoda gaze enraptured on their newborn son. There the mood is all gaity, and that is what people nowadays reenact in the morning-after celebration called Nandotsav (Nanda’s festival). Once launched into life, Krishna grows up as a well-born cowherd boy in rural Gokul, or as it is sometimes called, Brindavan. His older brother, Balaram, whose light skin contrasts to Krishna’s much darker complexion, accompanies him in the many playful games that punctuate their daily cowherding routine. Krishna thrives, despite a legion of demons that Kams periodically dispatches from Mathura— everything from a bird who transforms herself into a wet nurse with poisoned breasts to a frenzied horse to murderous ogres disguised as cowherd boys attempting to infiltrate Krishna’s happy circle. Krishna kills them all, restoring Braj each time to its pristine, pastoral safety. The two greatest threats, though, are not associated with Kams, but have a more primordial status.16 First comes the great black serpent Kaliya, who infests the Jamuna with a heat so intense that birds flying overhead tumble lifeless from the sky. Krishna tames him effortlessly, dancing on the xvii

005752_MCLI005_200_FM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:09 PM • xvii



introduction

cobra’s head (or heads) and dispatching him to the edge of the known world. Then comes the Vedic storm god Indra, who is frantic to reassert his right to be worshiped by the denizens of Braj after Krishna persuades them to adopt a new form of worship instead, focusing their attention not on any sky-born deity but on this-worldly Mount Govardhan (meaning “Increase of Cattle”), which stands at the center of Braj. Indra protests. He rains nonstop. But when the cowherds wail to Krishna, the cowherd lad lifts Govardhan above their collective heads as a great umbrella until Indra calms down and accepts Krishna’s primacy. In the end, there is nothing else the storm god can do. Although this moment of miraculous protection is celebrated in its own right in a few Surdas poems that circulated in the sixteenth century, it is far more important as a point of reference in compositions about Krishna’s return to Mathura, leaving his cowherd friends behind. His departure is particularly grievous to the women. In this very different bhakti mood, where lovers are separated from one another (viraha), the herder girls (called gopīs) beg to know why the Mountain Lifter has deserted them. Now they need his protection as never before—this time against his own absence. To no avail: Krishna has heroic work to do. At Kams’s invitation, Krishna and Balaram leave rural Braj to compete in a royal tournament at Mathura. There, Kams forces them to fight two unscrupulous master wrestlers, Mushtik and Chanur. They are quickly defeated, and Kams, who watches from the stands, comes next. Krishna jumps up, grabs him by the hair, and drags him around the ring until he is dead. xviii

005752_MCLI005_200_FM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:09 PM • xviii



introduction

Vasudev and Devaki are freed from jail, Ugrasen returns to the throne, and a long series of further battles commences in which Jarasandh, king of Magadh and father-in-law to Kams, plays the leading role. As the story proceeds, Sur’s interest focuses most intensely on moments of personal interaction with Krishna. These feature, for example, the irrepressible ardor of Sulabha, wife of the sagely Vidur (Poem 198); Kunti’s prayer for a life of continual adversity that would keep her in touch with Krishna even as an enemy (Poem 199); and the despair of faithful Udho when Krishna dispatches him to the Himalayas while the god heads the opposite way.17 In Poem 186, we find the story of Krishna’s boyhood friend Sudama, reduced to abject poverty, who finally responds to his wife’s nagging and goes to Dvaraka with the only gift he has to give—a few grains of rice—prepared to beg for help from a now munificent Krishna. Krishna welcomes him as a long-lost friend in the truest sense.

Special Emphases Beyond the narrative Krishna poems, other themes and forms are on display in Sur’s Ocean: poems celebrating the beauties of cities in the time-honored kāvya style familiar in Sanskrit literature; poems that take their charter from the “head-to-toe” or “toe-to-head” conventions that we find in both Indic and Persian poetry; puzzle poems waiting to be solved (kūṭa kāvya); poems that celebrate the Ramayana; poems that retell great myths such as the churning of the primordial milk ocean, often in humorous ways; and finally xix

005752_MCLI005_200_FM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:09 PM • xix



introduction

the vinaya poems, in which the poet speaks to his god in a first-person voice. These vinaya compositions invite us to let down our guard and imagine that finally we are hearing the real Surdas, the man who sings out his heart in the absence of any poetic persona—until we realize that here, too, he is making use of a set of topoi no less conventional than those that figure in the other genres we have surveyed. Still, they remain especially moving. Some of these poems derive their force from elevated language and subtle modulation, satisfying the expectations of seasoned, well-educated hearers—and perhaps confounding them at the same time. Other poems are far more widely accessible. These are the poems of Krishna’s childhood, for example, or the simple, spirited “bee songs” (bhramargīt), in which the gopīs (cowherd women) reject the high-toned advice that Krishna sends them from Mathura through his messenger Udho. He asks them to recognize that he is with them still in a pervasively nondual divine way, if only they would develop the capacity to receive him: perhaps a regimen of yoga would be just the thing. Famously, the gopīs will have none of it. This genre has roots in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, but Sur developed it at length, bequeathing to other Braj poets, especially his younger contemporary Nandadas, something truly worthy of imitation or rivalry.18 Why are there so many bhramargīt poems in the early Sūrsāgar manuscripts? Perhaps Sur’s audiences really did demand that he come up with a new one every time he performed, or perhaps the Surdas poems that have come down to us from the sixteenth century also contain bhramargīt songs composed by other Surs who were eager to jump on xx

005752_MCLI005_200_FM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:09 PM • xx



introduction

the bandwagon that the original had so lavishly created. In any case, Sur’s “songs of the bee” became quite distinctively songs to the bee. Udho can scarcely get a word in edgewise as the gopīs rebuff his high-handed pretensions in the name of a distinctly Braj-based “natural religion.” Then there are the endless permutations on the beauties and frustrations of love, adumbrated in poems that would have been as successful in a court, home, or bazaar as in a temple. It is perhaps significant that Radha, with the religious overtones that she carried in various Vaishnava traditions, is named far less frequently in Surdas’s poems than one might expect. If his heroine was invariably Radha, as modern scholars tend to assume, Surdas certainly does not always say so. Typically he leaves her unnamed, giving us only the female lover par excellence; and Krishna, by implication, often emerges in an amorous role rather than a specifically religious one. Indeed, the distinction between secular and religious—or court and temple—can be hard to make, and that is true, as Allison Busch has shown, in many corners of Brajbhasha literature.19 In this regard, as in others, then, Sur remains patron saint of Brajbhasha literature as a whole. If Radha’s name is mostly absent from the early Sūrsāgar, the opposite is true for Krishna, whose omnipresence in Sur’s landscape requires that he have not one name but many. When such terms as “cowherd,” “dark one,” and “Nanda’s delight” appear in the text, they are not just descriptions of Krishna but actual names whose meanings are so integral to the poem that to leave them untranslated would slight their power. Hence when Sur calls Krishna manmohan, for instance, I sometimes prefer the literal meaning—“beguiler xxi

005752_MCLI005_200_FM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:09 PM • xxi



introduction

(mohan) of the mind (man)”—to the proper noun Manmohan. I capitalize “Master” and “Lord,” following the English convention, but in Brajbhasha the distinction between God (god?) and lover (Lover?) is often hard to draw. Theologically, it is sometimes explicitly resisted, and the original Devanagari script facilitates this by making no distinction between upper- and lower-case letters. The ubiquitous presence of Krishna does not, however, imply that poems bearing Sur’s name emerged exclusively from a temple environment or its Vallabhite equivalent, the gurus’ mansions called havelīs. Courts, streetside gatherings of singers, and ordinary homes were also performance spaces, just as they are today, and on at least one occasion Surdas is specifically remembered as a court poet. The Afghan writer Muhammad Kabir, writing at the beginning of the eighteenth century, locates him retrospectively in the entourage of Islam Shah (r. 1545–1555), and Sur’s own references to himself as a dancer or even acrobat in some of his vinaya poems suggest that nontemple settings were indeed plausible. “Danced, I have danced before you,” he says in Poem 219, and nothing requires that he did so in a temple setting.20

Other Patterns, Other Moods Early manuscripts containing poems attributed to Surdas do not always follow the pattern set by the story of Krishna’s life and the drama of his loves and deeds. Some manuscripts, for example, group the poems according to raga—its

xxii

005752_MCLI005_200_FM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:09 PM • xxii



introduction

musical mode or scale—as if to make the anthology convenient for a performer to use. And sure enough, a given poem may be associated with more than one raga, as if individual performers “heard” its mood in more than one way. All this serves as a caution to us in the present day. While it will be natural to read these poems in a sequence, following the Krishna story that structures this collection, they are independent. We have no idea in what order they were originally performed in the sixteenth century, or whether more than one Surdas poem would ever have been performed in narrative sequence. Let’s think of them, rather, as distinct moments in time. It would have been the listener’s job—and is now the reader’s—to imagine the moment being evoked in any individual poem. Each poem is a project of discovery. And what about the poet? In the last group of poems presented here, “The Poet’s Petition and Praise” (vinaya in the original manuscripts), we often find the poet at an angle to his god. He questions himself, he questions Krishna, he questions God under many names. In poems like this he floats free of Krishna’s life and examines his own instead. Sometimes he feels embraced, sometimes confident in his judgments, sometimes utterly alone. “Why has Krishna forgotten me?” he cries at the end of the last poem in this selection. Poetry can be the means of envisioning all that is beautiful—the ideal—but it is also a salve for our wounds, the sense we’ve been forgotten. Here, in Sur’s Ocean, we have both. And the greatness of the poet is that we do.

xxiii

005752_MCLI005_200_FM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:09 PM • xxiii



introduction

Translator’s Note The poems that follow have been drawn from the 2015 Murty Classical Library edition of Sur’s Ocean, a collection of 433 lyrics critically reconstructed from early dated manuscripts by Kenneth E. Bryant. For a detailed explanation of principles governing the critical edition and the manuscripts upon which it rests, please see the introductory materials that Bryant provides in Sur’s Ocean. For individual essays on each poem and an explanation of the literary dynamics and multiple meanings of the full collection, see Into Sūr’s Ocean: Poetry, Context, and Commentary.21 The original Brajbhasha poems are almost always sung, and so, famously, a great deal is lost in translation—not just between languages, but between voice and page. One way to compensate is to be aware that the first line of each poem is apt to come across to Hindi listeners as a sort of title. As the poem progresses, the singer typically makes that line return in whole or in part as a refrain, inviting the audience to remember the poignancy of these first words and perhaps to sing along.

Acknowledgments To Vidyut Aklujkar, Shrivatsa Goswami, and Monika Horstmann I am grateful for insights that deepened and corrected the way I’ve understood these poems, and to Mark Juergensmeyer for help with the English verse. Laura Shapiro, guardian angel, watched benevolently over the prose.

xxiv

005752_MCLI005_200_FM_TXT_EngOnly_US_APP • 10/13/22 10:22:35 AM • xxiv



introduction

1 2 3 4 5 6 7

8 9 10

11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21

notes Widely quoted Brajbhasha dohā of uncertain date and provenance. Jhā 1978, pt. 2: 27; Rūpkalā 1961: 557. Compare Bikhārīdās in Busch 2011: 230; Prakāś 2006: 56. Abbott and Godbole 1982, vol. 2: 18. Parikh 1970: 400–442; Hawley 1984: 3–14. Poem 399 in the critical reconstruction of early poetry attributed to Surdas that appears in the Murty Classical Library of India edition published in 2015. Hawley 1984: 14–22; Hawley 2012: 181–193. It was only around the turn of the nineteenth century that collections of Sur’s poetry called “Sur’s Ocean” came to be formatted according to the plan of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa. Hawley 1984: 39–40. Bahura and Bryant 1982. Hawley 1984: 47–48. The 2015 MCLI Sur’s Ocean edition of Kenneth Bryant, upon which the present selection is based, does not take account of a considerable group of compositions attributed to Surdas that were recorded within the Dādū Panth. The earliest manuscript included in this group bears the dates 1614-1621 and is to be found in the Sanjay Sharma Sangrahālaya in Jaipur; a total of seven such manuscripts predate 1700. These poems have a strongly vinaya orientation. See Zrnic forthcoming. Hawley 2012: 21–47. Bryant 1978: ix–x. Dharwadker 2003: 60; Hawley 2012: 337–338. Inden, Walters, and Ali 2000: 11–12, 48–51. Bryant 1978: 21–71. Hawley 1979: 201–221. For Udho’s story, see Poems 359-360 in the 2015 MCLI edition. Shrivastav 1958: 172–309; McGregor 1973: 47–54. Busch 2011: 65–101; compare Pauwels 2005: 55–78. See also Poems 400 and 412 in the 2015 MCLI edition. Behl and Weightman 2000: xii–xiii; compare Askari 1965: 194, Gupta 1967: 39. Hawley 2016.

xxv

005752_MCLI005_200_FM_TXT_EngOnly_US_APP • 10/13/22 10:22:38 AM • xxv



005752_MCLI005_200_FM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:09 PM • xxvi



Krishna Growing Up

005752_MCLI005_210_Krishna_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:10 PM • 1



005752_MCLI005_210_Krishna_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:10 PM • 2



1 “No one go to the woods today! Instead, bring all your cows and calves and gaily adorn them, for in Nanda’s house a child has been born”— they say it over and over, dancing and singing and causing an uproar, hearts simply bursting with joy. Why do you linger there for no reason? Hurry! Rise up and run! Anything any of you imagined you might see— now see it with your very own eyes! Someone is marking heads with dūb grass and curd,1 another keeps clasping his feet, another gives clothes and cows to celebrate the day, another hops up and laughs and sings. Children and elders, women and men— everyone’s wish has come four times true. They’re so overcome with the love of Surdas’s Lord that they give no thought to the king.2 2 “O Gopal, my little tiny child, why can’t you grow any faster? When will your mouth smile and shape sweet words? When will you call me Mother? And my great wish—the one that comes each day, the one I want the Lord to realize—is this: that these eyes of mine will be watching, friend, when Madhav plants his two feet firmly on firm ground. 3

005752_MCLI005_210_Krishna_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:10 PM • 3



sur’s ocean

Let me rejoice to hear the sound of footsteps as he plays in this Braj courtyard with Balaram. Let me see him moment by moment become famished, and let me laugh and call to feed him milk.” That Being whom the Vedas laud by always saying “Not this!” and whom Shiva could never, ever fathom— Surdas says, Yashoda’s loving thoughts of him serve to magnify the longings of the mind. 3 My dear little one, your face is the altar where I’ve poured myself out, a sacrifice. Little boy Krishna, let disease or misfortune leave you and rest upon my eyes, which cannot advance beyond your loveliness when a mother sees your features and form. Their wonder grows to even greater wonder and joy if you laugh and emit even a little cry. Those little baby teeth and that babbling baby talk— they challenge what a brain can conceive: Sur says, My thoughts and my mind are now lost as a tiny little drop in that sea. 4 I’ve sacrificed all to that face of yours. Above your eyebrow I’ve made an eyeblack mark to guard you against an evil eye—even mine! Long ago I gave you everything I own when I saw those first two tiny, tiny teeth.

4

005752_MCLI005_210_Krishna_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:10 PM • 4



krishna growing up

Listen, Sur, what’s left now to surrender to your lovely, triply supple form?1 5 Yashoda, may your Gopal live long! May he grow fast, grow quickly to a man, this boy with the luxuriant curls, this child you’ve borne because of past good deeds as a seashell spawns a pearl. For all of Gokul he’s life breath and wealth; for his foes, a thorn at the heart. Sur says, Oh what joy I find in seeing that tamāl-dark Shyam! I’d take upon these eyes the dust of his pains— illness, defect, even death. 6 What radiance my dark one radiates! I sacrifice myself. I freely concede the game of trying to find anything to match his charming face. Let poets grope around for some sort of metaphor to honor such a moment—for what? Nimi in the eyelids tires from never closing;1 myriads of Love Gods go wild, my friend; and the Fate God, after squeezing drops from many moons to make that face, has to hide in sidelong glances. Surdas says, Even sages have to sacrifice their poor bewildered minds, faced with beauty such as this.

5

005752_MCLI005_210_Krishna_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:10 PM • 5



sur’s ocean

7 “Look—curd enters the son of curd!1 Yes, friend, look—a marvel: foe is reconciled to foe. On the curd, a parrot; on the parrot, a lotus; and the lotus has two leaves.” Looking on this marvel, the herder folk themselves burst into flower, burst bodies too small. Nanda, beholding Mohan’s* lovely face, gazing on it, yielded to a smile, and to one who meditates on Hari in this way Surdas sacrifices all. 8 Sons of the sea gather at Nanda’s door.1 Thus Yashoda’s orders, issued in Gokul, blossomed and bore fruit in no time at all. With lotus-petal hands her son grabs for the pearls, mumbling, babbling happily all the while. Then they come. Merchants plead poverty, helpless, tricked by his wiles; heavenly musicians fail to find the price; Brahma consults the Vedas in vain; and Surdas says, “I give my all to the dark one” who wears the women of Braj as a necklace on his heart. 9 “Come here, Hari, take hold of the moon,” Yashoda says again and again. * Krishna.

6

005752_MCLI005_210_Krishna_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:10 PM • 6



krishna growing up

“Look down a little, look down: from the sky I brought it close and put it in this water pitcher—quite some task. Look, Damodar,* the nectar-bearing moon is lying in this little dish! All the way from the hard-to-reach heavens it’s come—I sent a bird to bring it here— so whenever you like, let your lotus hands take it and give it to whomever you wish. Listen, my pretty son, is the moon the reason why you’ve fallen into such a nasty mood? Sur’s Lord, my dear, how could such a trifling thing make you act in such a trying way?” 10 Nanda arose at the break of dawn. He gazed at the face of his sleeping son and was so overcome he couldn’t stay still, though his eyes still battled away the night. That face shone forth from its clean, pure bed: the darkness disappeared, the lethargy fled as if the gods were churning the Ocean of Milk1 and the moon emerged, parting the foam. Sur says, All the cowherds and herder girls heard and ran to the spot—clever, willful cakor birds, who forgot their bodies as their minds held fast to the drinking of moonbeam pollen.

* Krishna

7

005752_MCLI005_210_Krishna_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:10 PM • 7



sur’s ocean

11

Nanda is calling you, Gopal. Come running, son—and let me keep any evil from those large and lovely eyes. The dish is served, and we’re waiting for you to come. And listen, cloud-dark Shyam, dark as a tamāl tree, your rice—it’s getting cold. Your daddy—getting sad, so hurry to him, my dear. What wouldn’t I give for your tiny feet? Show me how fast they can race— enough of this lazy gander’s gait, this winsome waddling around. You know who’s a king? Here’s what Sur says: the one who hurries home before the rest. If, with a rush, Balaram gets there first, how his cowherd crowd will laugh! 12 My darling little one, don’t you stray for even a second from these eyes. Please, oh please! Unless they see your face the pupils will wither with longing. Don’t go away: call the others here to play— here in your own courtyard, my child, so I can keep watching you, lovely Dark One, in your fun—the gem in a cobra’s hood.1 Milk, curd, butter, honey, dried fruits, snacks, sweet things, sour things, salty: Lord of Surdas, anything you want— ask me and it’s yours, my love. 8

005752_MCLI005_210_Krishna_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:10 PM • 8



krishna growing up

13 Why, why go off to somebody else? They’re all such rascals, so butter-smug; they ought to shush and hold their tongues. Dearest son: this thing, that thing, anything at any time is yours if you ask me, for each word pouring deathless nectar from your mouth brings joy when I hear it, inside. But they: whatever has possessed these herder girls to come around pretending, complaining each dawn? How can they insist on blaming him, says Sur, when he never even touches his butter here at home? 14 The eyes of the lad have filled, filled with tears. Look at your little boy’s face, Yashoda— why are you so senselessly enraged? Loose from his belly that painful rope! Release from your hand that cruel stick! And tell me how you can feel such black emotions toward the one who is your very own son. The tears in his face and the little drops of butter on his breast bring joy to the eyes as if the moon had brought forth pearls of nectar to complement a necklace of stars. Sacrifice yourself in every way, every day, for that son, the Dark One of Sur. Who knows whose merit has caused him to appear here in Braj and here in Nanda’s house!

9

005752_MCLI005_210_Krishna_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:10 PM • 9



sur’s ocean

15 Wife of Nanda, behold that beautiful face: it steals the brilliance of an autumn-night full moon with all its numberless beams. Tremulous tears spill from the eyes of your lovely Master Gopal as dewdrops might spatter from a trembling lotus torn by an enemy from its roots. Golden earrings in crocodile shapes glisten, jewel-studded, from his ears— they seem to be twin suns, hurtling from heaven to rescue a friend. His twisted curls are like a swarm of bees gathered in hopes of waging a battle against one who invades the beauty of his face: how can Surij capture it in words? 16 Look toward the boy who is Nanda’s joy: his body is fevered with heat as he peers from the corners of his eyes toward your face. Over and over he shudders with fear, some syllables escape his lips, and the color drains from its rightful place: his face mirrors the harsh, round sun1 so that every passing minute squanders that much more of his charm. His pupils, cakor birds that make the dark their home, are faced with a moon that has entered some new house.

10

005752_MCLI005_210_Krishna_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:10 PM • 10



krishna growing up

They dart about like bumblebees buzzing inside a lotus filled at dawn with new nectar, and frighten at the sight of your stick, which so alarmed him that his eyes turned red, like blood. Ah, the Lord of Sur is such a treasury of beauty— though a butter thief he may be. 17 “Enchanting! Tasteful! Who can bear to listen to the Dark One’s lovely sound? Gentle in flavor, yet it pierces to the core— maidens’ morals, family honor: Hari looks, and takes all. I was walking a lovely path in the depths of the woods when suddenly, there he was. I stopped, embarrassed, tried to retreat, but couldn’t once his eyes had met mine. Who could approach him? Who could really touch? A look from him steals one’s peace of mind. Every interest gone, my eyes burn for want of him. The joys of sleep and food are forgotten.” Who can understand the way love flows? Just to hear his name makes a girl of Braj submit to the power of passion: she sent off an envoy to that reservoir of love, reminding him, as Surdas says, of a secret assignation.

11

005752_MCLI005_210_Krishna_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:10 PM • 11



sur’s ocean

18 Hail, hail the deeds of Gokul’s king! He managed to quaff down a forest fire,1 but his milk must be cooled before he drinks. He sucked out the life breath from Putana by clinging, clinging to her breast, but when his mother says, “You’ve spilled the milk,” he sulks and refuses to eat. He could lift a great mountain, but if he tries to hold a pail of milk, his arm begins to hurt. His feet could break a bullock cart apart, but a pair of breasts—too sharp to bear. He forced Trinavart, the whirlwind, from the sky, dashing him down on a cliff below, But the dear little thing gets scared in a swing and would rather swing others instead. If he sees a cobra drawn in charcoal on a door, Shyam, the Dark One, feels fear, but on the hood of Kaliya the cobra he dances, clapping out the rhythm with his hands. His heart was so filled with love for Yamal and Arjun that he felled the two trees that had trapped them, but when he sees a flame-of-the-forest leaf he wants, he has to ask his brother to twist it off for him. He battered Vrishabh the bull, churned Keshi the horse to nothing, whirled Vatsa the calf around his head till he was dead, but now when a calving cow butts him with her horns, he flees with his cowherd friends. The crane demon’s beaks were like peaks of a mountain— 12

005752_MCLI005_210_Krishna_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:10 PM • 12



krishna growing up

even so, he wrenched them apart, but let his finger stray into a parrot’s cage: if the parrot pecks, the darling runs away. Without a lamp, he refuses to set foot in any darkened house—the very one who, venturing into the serpent demon’s mouth, brought back calves and children alive. Those stolen calves and kids—he simply made new ones and their mothers came running with love,2 but when his own cows bolted for the forest, he had to run and chase them among the trees. Mohan, the Beguiling One, danced his amorous dance with the women of his herdsman village, but let his mother mention marriage to him and he shyly laughs, he turns his head away. How could I describe him, even with a thousand tongues? Where could I summon the cleverness of mind? For the Lord of Sur, that finest, finest lover, has innumerable pleasurable sides. 19 Peacock-feather moons adorn his head and a string of guñjā berries, his breast. He’s cinched his yellow dhotī and painted his limbs with blossoms, petals, and the forest’s ochre dust. When twilight comes in the month of Shravan the clouds turn every hue, and Indra lifts his bow. Sur says, That moon! That star! The lightning! It’s as if they’ve come to shower what they’ve drunk of love’s elixir. 13

005752_MCLI005_210_Krishna_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:10 PM • 13



sur’s ocean

20 This is the moment! He’s coming from the forest. Far, far away he lifts his sweet flute to his lips. Over and over he plays. Sometimes that clever one, in some special way, sings out the highest note on the scale; sometimes he sounds out name after name as he summons his lovely white cows, and under that guise, cloud-dark Shyam frames words that waken fainted minds. The joy of his returning at the end of the day is medicine to cancel the fever of being away: little by little, in increments of pleasure, his eyes restore the strength of eyes parched with desire. Sur says, He’s a reservoir brimming with emotion, a lovely full moon, opening again the fortnight we call his own.1 21 Look, just look at Nandanandan’s face1— Each of its parts as lovely as a rising sun, shaming the moon and the God of Love; wagtails, water lilies, deer, bees on lotuses2— even more appealing than these. Earrings dally in the hollow below his ear, adorning their abode with pearls. His neck is a dove, and a parrot pecks pomegranate seeds from a coral base. Mounted on two elephants, in rides Murali, sounding an alarm that serves to delude 14

005752_MCLI005_210_Krishna_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:10 PM • 14



krishna growing up

all things fixed and moving, forests and birds, causing the gods’ chariots to halt in the sky and shower his face with streams of flowers. Surdas says, I see, I succumb. 22 Look, what an ocean of beauty! Cultivated, citified minds are drowned, for no force of intellect can reach the other shore. Shyam’s thundercloud body is a fathomless body of water; its waves, the billowing yellow garment at his waist. He speaks, he laughs, he looks around, he moves, and the charm of it roils the whole surface with whirlpools. His eyes are the fish. His earrings, crocodiles. Arms that are serpents glisten their charms and strings of pearls entwine with one another like the two streams that meet to make the Ganges.1 There’s a crown on his forehead, and on his wrists are bracelets: what pleasure to see them make it seem that the sea has managed to churn up two moons to accompany Shri and the nectar of endless life. What are we cowherder girls supposed to do? We weary ourselves with thinking and thinking, but Sur, there’s no way for us to ford such splendor. We can only stand here and gaze. 23 Beneath the banyan Kanh is playing his flute. Come listen to his sweet, auspicious sounds as he marshals the full range of ragas. 15

005752_MCLI005_210_Krishna_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:10 PM • 15



sur’s ocean

His tones and microtones in finely measured melismas make a scale of three octaves: past, present, future. A pair of peerless branches seems to be churning ambrosia from the ocean of his face, with the flute as its mountain-churning stick. And Murali, taking the guise of Mohini on earth, seems to be ladling out the honey from Mohan’s mouth to overpower gods, men, and sages with love’s flavor and waken Passion to life with his lips’ elixir.1 All things mobile and immobile are wooed by that sound, which is wondrous, a mystery to the mind, says Sur. It’s like the deaf-mute who, after eating a sweet, speaks only with a happy roll of the head. 24 Why not meet us at least as travelers might? We feel we have the right to ask this of you as the son of Yashoda and Nanda, and your love for us, and our desire to serve you— why won’t you consider that? How could you forget, on seeing our beauty, that we became friends among the forest leaves? Lovely, cloud-dark Shyam, with you far away, we helpless women feel pierced by arrows, and what are we to do if the oil of love remains even when the wind has snuffed the flame your form once made— that time when you appeared, demanding a gift,1 clinging to our bodies all the while?

16

005752_MCLI005_210_Krishna_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:10 PM • 16



krishna growing up

Lord of Surdas, who is the forceful foe who’s come between us somewhere along the way? 25 Madhav must be on his way. The edges of the sari fly, the heart is buoyed, eyes flutter, a twitch appears in the shoulder— the one who controls the body must have seen and considered and sent omens.1 Vines on the trees flower in spring, sending out new leaves: somewhere inside they’re so certain of the time that they burst forth in finery. Lord of Surdas, come—please come. The days set for waiting have now gone by. 26 Don’t worry, Hari will soon come. You who have a face as fine as the moon and eyes washed by tears shed only for him, take pen and ink in hand and, abandoning reserve, write a few simple words. Why, says Sur, should you broadcast your longing? Love is an enemy too scurrilous, too mean. 27 Go to her quickly, dear lad, Kanhai! The woman for whose sake you’ve settled in these woods has been bitten by the snake of love.

17

005752_MCLI005_210_Krishna_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:10 PM • 17



sur’s ocean

Her eyes are dilated, her nostrils are cold, her body is hot, her memory gone. Shivering in garments drenched with sweat, she rises, she writhes. Her body twists and yawns. Senselessly she rushes to find any root that anyone has said will bring a cure, and when there’s no relief, she wrings her hands and stands there thinking, regretting. You are one of Ashvini’s fine lads, the gods’ physicians,1 and one lone girl, a friend, has written this prescription: Lord of Sur, the sun, if you want to see her live, then show yourself to her in the flesh. 28 Let me go, dear, let me go:1 the Cowherd is calling me. My love is desperate. Even in the face of my greed for life, I cannot hide it. I’ll tell you the truth that’s in my heart— in mind and acts and words: even if I must cast away my body, I’ll meet Hari. Why hold me back from the wilds? Should this chance pass, says Surij, what then? What shall I do with this frame of mine? Parted from him, I meet only spears of longing. Every other love is just a lie. 29 In yearning to see Hari, I have died. You kept me away from beautiful Shyam— 18

005752_MCLI005_210_Krishna_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:10 PM • 18



krishna growing up

master, how brutish and mean. You held me back to save the family’s pride, but something else was really on your mind— your rituals of sacrifice. And what have they gained? They’ve lost you the Father of the World! Now the time for meeting Sur’s Lord is almost gone— how long must I explain? Dear one, take this body. Do what you will. The life in it is spent and lost. Only dross remains. 30 Why keep me from meeting Hari? Let me go and see Shri’s Master’s face. If you do, I’ll always be your slave. I’m touching your feet—I’m pleading with you: all my friends have already gone. What evil deeds must I have done in past lives that my dear love has turned to shackles on my feet! Let me go to the Lord of Surdas and offer my all, let me go to the one to whom I belong, or else, dear, take my body and batter it on your head— the body of which you’ve said, my sweet, “It’s mine!”1 31 Mother, look at the onslaught of clouds. The Lotus-Eyed One is lifting a mountain’s weight and overbearing Indra is sending torrents of rain— the fool! He’s demanding punishment from Nanda 19

005752_MCLI005_210_Krishna_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:10 PM • 19



sur’s ocean

as if his family pride had been washed away. It’s a servant holding himself equal to his master— that’s what makes his own honor vanish. And what could exceed the range of someone whose arm can do whatever his voice commands? Therefore, says Surdas, why tremble in the jungle when the lion living there is little Kanh?

20

005752_MCLI005_210_Krishna_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:10 PM • 20



The Pangs and Politics of Love

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 21



005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 22



32 Separation, Lord of Braj, makes us women despair. Lord, oh Lord, don’t make us lordless orphans— that is our cry as we stretch forth our arms, for the love of Hari and our youthful pride have made us unable to bridle our tongues. What’s to be done? What fault there is, is ours. Murari is scarcely to blame. The lanes, the bathing places, mountains and their caves— our eyes have searched and dimmed, succumbed to floods of tears. Surdas says, Out of arrogance of body our everything is stolen away. 33 The water tumbles, tumbles down the face1 as if before one’s eyes one saw the Ganges fall on the head of Shiva, who then showers the earth. That fearsome lion’s waist, the beggar’s tangled hair— yet still, a pillar of beauty: A necklace of pearls decorates breasts held tight by a slender bodice, and curls scattered about the face radiate an amazing cloud of bees. Surdas says, In the Mountain Lifter’s presence, any shred of pretense disappears. 34 Nanda’s Joy is playing in the waters of the Jamuna: on all four sides, a lovely band of cowherd girls, 23

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 23



sur’s ocean

and in the center, the Destroyer of Disaster.1 Their hands, how they sparkle as they splash one another; their arms too, as the sandal paste dissolves. It’s as if the girls were worshiping the lord of snakes by daubing vermilion on his limbs. Tiny beads of water form on the tips of his hair, thick with curls, and set loose languid drops as if joyful bees had gathered lotus pollen— so much that it sprays in little volleys from their mouths. Like a hunter snaring birds, his embraces lure the girls into faraway fathomless waters, and sages sing the virtues of the husband of Shri, the master of Surdas, with their verse. 35 When Radha takes the water’s child in her hand,1 a deep red beauty springs into being and all the ganders flee. Cakors come and gather at that face but hesitate and stand some distance away. Then Brishabhanu’s daughter gives a smile and the two begin to quarrel: the sun and the moon, set in a single chariot, face each other stubbornly, but Surdas’s Lord relaxes in the groves and is filled with bounding joy. 36 The beauty of Lord Hari’s eyes: when I think of it in my mind, they make it seem 24

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 24



the pangs and politics of love

the lotus is worshiping the sun. As if wagtails’ darting motions were for naught, as if deer should hide in the forest, and fish should hide in the water— something like this is what bad poets say in searching for metaphors. For those eyes are only like those eyes, my friend, and I’m lost: nothing else sheds light. Every simile I’ve found, says Sur, is just another offering for the fire. 37 Why did we store away the honey of those lips, gather it and hoard it—foolish us!—like bees and never allow ourselves a taste? Why did we suffer the frigid waters of the Jamuna, daily mounting our pitiful petitions, praying Uma’s Lord* to send us a bridegroom and satisfy the longings of our hearts? Now it’s Murali who drinks that nectar, pushing everyone else aside. Listen, Sur, she’s absconded with him fearlessly and kicked the cow dust in our eyes. 38 Murali has become Mohini.1 You know what she did to the gods and antigods: now she’s done it again. * Shiva.

25

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 25



sur’s ocean

They churned the milk sea; we, a sea of vows, and obtained a new immortal nectar: an oceanic liquid, held in Hari’s lunar face, that she stealthily snatches away and quaffs down, making us drink octaves of sound that pour from her victory tour. One single vessel—then it held elixir, but now, says Sur, intoxicating liquor. 39 Why do you cowherd women slander me so? You ought to ask Shyam how much pain it took, how much pain to earn his love. From the moment I was born, I’ve set aside the world— my town, my skills, my home: I practiced the penance of standing on one foot through winter, summer, and throughout the rains; I did without roots and branches and leaves. With worries my body was parched and dried, then pierced by that fiery rod: those holes! Dreadful though it was, I never cringed. So why keep saying, “She’s just some bamboo stick,” murmuring with rage? Do what it takes to please Surdas’s Lord and you too can take the liquid from his lips. 40 This is how things have settled in my mind: if I left Gopal and turned my thoughts to someone else,

26

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 26



the pangs and politics of love

I’d be my mother’s disgrace. What would I gain by amassing a heap of glass and throwing away a precious jewel? Is it better to have a whole Mount Meru of poison than a drop of the liquid that gives life? My mind and words and acts—purified, all three: Shyam is the master of my then and yet to be. Surdas’s Lord, for the sake of singing your praise I’ve even given up my caste.1 41 “Kanh, you’ve been badgering me since dawn. Why single me out for your stubbornness— raising a ruckus in broad daylight, blocking off the path? Well, you can’t have a thing until the first sale, or else you might as well take it all. Day after day I go to Mathura to sell: Who said you could take a share? Show me the paper where it’s written! First you kiss my face, then embrace my breast, and after that you’re so intent you spill everything else.” Surdas says, The milkmaid’s love began to show. Even though he’d let her go, she wouldn’t budge from the road. 42 “Why not simply take that ‘gift’ of yours? Dispense with any more of this absurd behavior, 27

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 27



sur’s ocean

and Nanda’s son, drop that threatening stick. You’ve pounced on me and grabbed my sari, blocked the road so as not to let me pass, and all the while there’s something you’re not saying. What’s made you act this way?” “Today I’m not letting you go home, cowherd girl. I’ve had this in mind for a very long time.” Thus the Lord of Surdas took her to his bower and gave a gift of nail marks to her breast. 43

Sold for a smile on his face! I’ve fallen into a single, simple habit: I roam day and night in someone else’s power. My eyes, seeing him, have made themselves his envoys, and my mind dissolves in him like water in milk while Passion’s Lord* has seized my modesty from its fort and offered it to Hari as tribute. Listen, my reason is enslaved to handsome Shyam— this it knows, friend, for all time. Everything he tells me to do, I do. I’ve taken his command on my brow. No more body vanity, fancies, frenzies, no more husband or family or friends— he’s an ocean, says Sur, and I’m a brimming stream who’s lost her last yearning drop to the sea.

* Kama, husband of “Passion,” or Rati.

28

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 28



the pangs and politics of love

44

What can anyone do to me? The world can deride me all it likes, but I’ll never swerve from my resolve. Let them huddle and talk behind my back, let them scream it out before my face— I don’t care. I’m not so weak of brain that I’d turn away from Hari and go off with someone else. From here on out my life is as it is: I’ve settled myself in Shyam’s dark home, And Sur, my heart is dyed a color so deep that it will never turn white again. 45 Living in a single town as we do, how can I hold myself back? Try though I may, my eyes, like bees, refuse to accept constraint. On this very road he comes to herd his cows as I set out to sell my curds, and my body hairs bristle, my voice begins to choke, I can’t contain my excitement. Once he’s out of sight, an instant seems an era as I burn in the fire of separation. How many days can I keep this up, says Surdas, and keep to the straight and narrow path? 46 Even then he wouldn’t let go of the curd, grasped it as if it held the four fruits of life1 29

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 29



sur’s ocean

until the Enemy of Night2 turned to a deer-faced new moon: relishing the pleasures of ambrosial words, he stuck to his stubborn, cajoling debate. The lotuses of night began to bloom and I wilted as the horses of the sun sank to earth; I watched as he, knowing it was night, took on a lunar form: adolescent, newfound youth. The Lord of Surdas: why has he left me now— now that he’s claimed my heart? 47 Radha, how you’ve burst into bloom! The fathomless love you exude tells a tale of Madhav’s tight embrace. Madan’s arrows strain their bows, your brows, to triangles half expanded; with winsome looks and twisted glances they tap a rhythm that forces Love himself to dance. The experience that drew Shuk, Sanak, and the sages, the object of Shiva’s daily regimen— that’s the experience Sur’s Lord has given you, the prayer even Shri does not attain. 48

Radha, how fine your face: when you appear, cast your glance here and there, it makes the lord of the night* turn pale. * The moon.

30

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 30



the pangs and politics of love

You pull back your bow, those fully arched eyebrows, and aim your sandalwood brow-mark arrow such that it seems the hunter, Passion’s Lord, has crouched behind your garments and veil. You walk with the stride of an elephant in rut— I swear it, I won’t be moved. In varied and manifold ways you’ve seduced the heart of Sur’s Master, Hari, whom you love. 49 He’s opened wide his lotus-petal eyes and the fascinating glances that emanate there send secret, coded messages, friend. His face is the lotus, and his curls gather around like honey-drinking bees in search of honey. His tilak mark is shaped like a youthful moon and he speaks as if to laugh— in a bewitching, honeyed tongue. King Kama’s land is an intoxicating place— strength of mind cannot dwell there, nor peace of heart. Surdas’s Lord sends that king out day by day, a messenger to bring his women’s character to the test. 50 I’ve found something the Creator failed to do. I looked at Govind today—I looked and then I knew what was wrong, and lamented.1 31

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 31



sur’s ocean

He had dressed my frame in a dazzling way, he’d given brilliance to my intellect, and yet he neglected to give eyes to each tiny body hair, and to that extent he failed in his art. What am I to do? These poor strained eyes are overwhelmed each instant, and overflow their lids. How, says Sur, can Mount Meru be fit into this worn-out little cup of a brain? 51 Beautiful glances: their restless, constant motion cannot be described—it fascinates the mind— generating something like a vortex. He plays on Murali and sings, sweet as honey, fingers glide and earrings sway, and all this loveliness is gathered and reflected in the sapphire mirror of the cheeks. Curling locks of hair are like swarms of honeybees drawn by the power of great fragrance. Sur says: fine eyebrows, nose, glinting teeth— to set the mind on these is a love beyond all price. 52 At the sight of Hari’s face, my eyes lose their way: they’re love-struck bees who are mired in the mud beneath a charming lotus, powerless then to fly. His crocodile earrings on the banks of his cheeks seem suns emerging from the night, and his agile eyebrows move with such deftness

32

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 32



the pangs and politics of love

that wagtails and fish, at the sight, are moved to shame. His lips are red flags and his diamond teeth, dewdrops resembling a moon among clouds, while his tangled locks of hair swarm like bees who have finally reached the nectar they seek. A tilak marks his forehead, pearls are at his neck, and his other adornments are studded with jewels. Surdas says, The yellow of his garment and the darkness of Shyam—how can that fineness fashion itself into words? 53 “Oh, those eyes’ beguiling ways!— strong enough, it seems, to surpass by far the orbit of autumn lotuses. Every quality and species has been vanquished— indīvar, rājīv, kuśeśay*— in an epic contest of happy, loving moods that the eyes have won by blooming day and night.” Wagtails, fish, deer—when she considers such metaphors as these, she despairs: “Charming to behold,” “Quick their darting looks”— No. No thought fits. “Let the eyelids drop for a moment’s blink and an instant passes like an age….” So does Radha, taster of Sur’s Lord’s moods, rail at his eyes’ propensity to close. * Blue lotuses.

33

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 33



sur’s ocean

54 Coming to know the Dark One—to what end? One minute this beauty; the next, that charm— if you do fall in love, beware! Your eyes may behold him constantly, night and day, you may marshal your thoughts, your brains, your mind, yet not for a single second will your heart attain the boundary of his brilliance. Even when he’s present and you can touch him, to test, you’ll never fathom that mine of every bliss. What is it, friend? Separation? Union? Both? Is it joy or sorrow? Detriment or gain? You can’t douse a fire, says Sur, by pouring on ghee, and that’s what it’s like with his lovely eyes: on the one hand there’s brilliance; on the other, yet more charm; and neither keeps to its side of the line. 55 What am I to do? I can’t seem to have a clear view of Hari’s handsome form— and that, though I stay with him night and day and never blink an eye. I chase after him as if bound to his sight like a kite tied to a string, But when I draw near, my own reflection confounds me: it interferes. I strain to see him all, head to toe, the image that so satisfies the mind, but somehow—how?—each and every part of him 34

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 34



the pangs and politics of love

becomes infused with my charms. This body of mine has become my greatest foe: though I’d hide it, it’s not hidden. No, it makes him hide, and the liquid of my unabated love, says Surdas, mounts inside—a tide. 56 My drive to see Hari has died, flown off to the winds, gone wandering with my eyes, like the cotton that explodes from the swallow-wort pod. Is he saying something? I answer something else. Hairs erect, drops of sweat drip with the labor of love. Where has it come from—I just don’t know— this image that has grown up in my mind? For a lonely woman like me, the pain of not seeing is such feverish heat that any touch is hard to bear. I’m wilted, says Sur, like a little sprout of grain, as a root would wither without rain. 57 Ever since the day the Dark One appeared and I was filled with love’s nectar for that lad, the cowherd with the beguiling form— ever since that day these eyes have forgotten all other joys and pains: they’ve settled over there on the basis of a smile, and busied themselves setting up house. Body, mind, and intellect were sent to intercede, but they’ve stubbornly persisted, night and day: 35

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 35



sur’s ocean

the more these emissaries asked them to return, the more they were determined to stay, so the envoys tired of all this thinking and explaining and moved farther and farther away. How can I describe, says Sur, the wealth these eyes survey? So much, they never blink. Their gaze never strays. 58 What in the world has Hari done to me, my friend? My mind understands, but my mouth can’t find the words: my eyes must have drunk some kind of potion, friend. I was standing there, alone in my courtyard, when suddenly he appeared, my friend. I looked at him and found my faculties gone: my mind had exchanged them all for him, my friend. From excess of happiness, a pain I cannot bear, burning, burning my heart cool, my friend. Sur says, Every joy has come into my breast— I can’t find any other way to say it, my friend. 59 Nanda’s Darling has made off with my mind. Early in the morning I was threading a string of pearls when he tossed a pebble my way, my friend. His sidelong glances and the charming way he moves make Nanda’s lad a connoisseurs’ best jewel. Who could keep her mind in tow, I’d like to know, on hearing Murali’s tasteful, honeyed sound? Govind’s face, which is the moon, has made my eyes, which are cakor birds, burn, 36

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 36



the pangs and politics of love

and so, to win a meeting with Surdas’s Lord I’ve sold my coconut breasts for a pittance— sold them for nothing at all.1 60 Many the ways I’ve tried to reason with my mind, but somehow it’s so mired in the juice of endless love that now it can no longer emerge. The secrets of these eyes and the beauty they store have worked their way inside my heart and made it sleep complacently while they escaped back to him. Fearlessly it’s jettisoned modesty and family, doing only what it itself desires: like an owl dazzled by a brilliant light, it’s gotten itself stubbornly entrapped. He may be far away, he may be deep in the woods, but it hurries to lose itself in his power. Listen, Surij, what an upside-down affair: Kama, from his coma, revived! 61 So you think this is like stealing butter! When I’d recognize your face back then, I’d be glad, I’d let you go. After all, the loss was small. In those days I was just a simple girl, so innocent I thought you were just a little boy. You were the son of the greatest man in Braj, and I didn’t want butter to blacken the family name. Now you’ve grown—to a deft and budding youth, 37

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 37



sur’s ocean

and I’ve grown too, wise in worldly ways. So where do you think you’re going, wrenching away your arm after stealing all the treasures of my soul? Head to toe, you’re a heart thief—every part. I’ve found you out: why try to squirm away? Here’s something strange, says Sur, upside down: you’ve gone and robbed my all, but still I trail around in your thrall. 62 “How great your power! Oh I know, Yadav King:* You’ve taken those arms and snapped yourself away from a powerless woman like me! They say you’re clever in every way and versed in every technique, but I’ll only believe it when you can take a step that takes you from my heart.” The Master of Surdas, husband of Shri, feels what is felt inside. He couldn’t stand such love: he turned back, smiled, and folded her in an embrace. 63 Shyam, just drop that look you have and wipe away that grin: one little dose of your easy ways—theirs— * Krishna.

38

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 38



the pangs and politics of love

and I’ve lost everything. Triumph and Victory: Destiny has ordained1 that the two of them behave exactly as they please: all they have to do is scan the scene before them, and suddenly it’s all within their power. Then there’s me. How can I describe the way I’ve served as traitor to myself? Whatever wealth I’d squirreled away in my little purse— I’ve squandered, says Sur. I went berserk. 64 (The heroine) “Friends, unite, find something that can be done! The killer god* has come at me, a love-forlorn woman, brandishing flowerbuds of desire; the offering eater† has raised his banner, and the wind blows from Hari’s‡ domain. He who bears the son of the foe of the best-bowed one§ shouts out, shouts out its joyful song; and as the son of the son of the waters** reels in circles, I find there is nothing to be done. Bring me now the beloved of my soul, the one who made his friend bear Victory’s†† name.”

* Mar, or Kama. † Agni, fire. ‡ Here Indra, not Krishna or Vishnu. § Kama. ** The moon, whose son is intelligence. †† Arjuna, whose friend is Krishna.

39

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 39



sur’s ocean

(Her friend) “Consider the season. Cast aside your pride.1 Why not let it float off where it will? Let yourself dwell in the shelter of Sur’s Lord, who is monarch of all three worlds.” 65 From seeing the Dark One, it seems I cannot see. What am I to do? My eyes are battle-weary. They’ve not blinked once—passed the night awake. On this side of the fray, a charm Kama loves to see; on that side, a radiance untraceable, unreached. Like Arjun and Karna, these two have grown to be rivals,1 and neither will consider retreat—never! I am poised for battle, in finery arrayed, and he is opposed, his limbs like glistening mail. My eyes, says Sur, are so filled with pride that they’ll only take the pleasure of the Dark One as their prize. 66 To see it, it seems two egos arrayed: on that side Hari’s handsomeness, on this side my eyes— both of them forces unyielding in war. His charm and visage are great joys to the God of Love, and on this side they blend into one. On that side his many different kinds of adornments seem bows that are variously slung across his frame. On this side a wrathless passion for him showers quiverfuls of arrows with each blink of the eye. 40

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 40



the pangs and politics of love

On that side, in silent pain, his hairs stand on end like arrows moving over every limb. There, beauty incarnate; and love for Sur’s Lord here: both gain in force with every passing moment as if two vast oceans were filled with deathless nectar and so greatly wished to meet, they overflowed. 67 Radha entwines herself limb for limb with Shyam. Krishna, a black tamāl tree with tremulous branches— she drapes herself around him like a girdle, a garland. Mountain Lifter, now he holds the finest of mountains; leader among lovers, he’s won the battle of love. Sur says, these two—both of them are warriors. What enemy of love could intervene? 68 This friend of yours, lotuslike: where has she been hiding?1 This one—until just now I’ve never seen her. Where did she come from today? Robbing every virtue, the splendor of all three worlds, the Creator has fashioned a single being: you. So where did you travel—to what city, tell me, Radha— to find another cache of such unbearably fine form? Searching my faculties, I’ve tried to imagine how any other body could rival yours in beauty for it’s Brishabhanu’s daughter—the one here before us— who brings her companions every joy. The Lord of Sur has thrilled to your refinements, observing the excellence of your eyes, 41

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 41



sur’s ocean

and I have marked it, so go to your forest bower and abandon all this cleverness of mind. 69 My eyes, once they looked, could never turn away. Greedy for the juice cupped in Hari’s lotus mouth, like honeybees they sank into drunkenness for honey. They languished, my friend, behind bars—eyelid spears. Day and night they stubbornly persevered, but they were victims of deception, duped by a black snake that sheds its slough like a bodice, making them float, it seems, down love-swollen rivers that course through mountain canyons— cascades of sweat— until every single drop was merged with Sur’s Lord. I wonder where they’ll ever come ashore. 70 My eyes have fallen into evil ways: only if I focus on Hari’s store of beauties do they give me any satisfaction. They’re vultures, my friend. There’s no way to snare them. They’ve left behind every ounce of shame as they gaze with lust at the moon of his lustrous face like adoring cakor birds, utterly unmoored, washed away in tears, unable to live if that vision disappears. What could I do? I gathered them up myself and surrendered them, Sur, to Shyam’s hands.

42

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 42



the pangs and politics of love

71 I’ve tried and tried to reason with my eyes but they pay no mind to what anyone says. What evil way of being has seized them? Heedless, they gaze at the charm of his face, suffer a spear that pierces them straight on, and sink in the ocean of Shyam’s dark body, never to measure its full depth. They watch his beauty and feel thrill after thrill. Surges of happiness bear them away until joy and sadness are the same to them, says Sur, and the dikes of family honor, breached. 72 My eyes—that’s where all the blame should go. Waylaid looking at the Dark One’s winsome face, they can’t be herded home. Even though I did what I could to shield them, hid them in the safety of a veil, they’ve taken flight—falcons to a falconer, bursting from their eyelid cage, but first they stole my cleverness in words and the force of my acuity of mind, so now, grown dependent, I too lurch back and forth like a kite that’s tied to a string. Why should Hari choose this moment to turn again to me and flash his smile? Surdas says, It makes two seas of ambrosia seem to surge and meet, breaking through their shores.1 43

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 43



sur’s ocean

73 It won’t go away, the addiction of these eyes— what am I to do? Even as I scold them, they rise up restless and run away. If I meet that charming lad on a riverbank or road, my head demurely hides behind the veil, but those avaricious eyes, like thieves before gold, rush headlong to steal the beauty they find. My eyes are honeybees who, replacing vines, discover the lotus of Hari’s face, or they seem like wasted fish that my veil has cast ashore: they thrash about desperate to revive. They’re shameless in the face of any family decorum, so what can I do to control them? Surdas’s Lord, it’s that beautiful cowherd— nothing but his sight can satisfy. 74 So impudent, these eyes of mine! I shade them in a veil, but they don’t remain, coveting Hari’s countenance. I’ve tried to keep them safe in their round eyeball houses, I’ve tried to close them behind eyelid doors, but they always insist on breaking out, those two. Eyelid edges let them edge free. So restless: they cannot stand to be restrained. They see his face and body and they’re good as new again. The Beguiler of Surdas has so beguiled the world that these greedy eyes seem to dwell not here but there—with him. 44

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 44



the pangs and politics of love

75 Listen, wise friend, how my eyes behave: night and day they smolder—no cooling, no pleasure— even though my eyelids overflow. So in my heart I ponder endless remedies now that modesty and family honor are enemies. Nothing seems to satisfy. Hot burns the fire of gazing at his lotus face—his faint, sly smile. Unashamed, I’ve cast aside the staff of beauty and the clothes of pride: let the world deride! Intellect, power of discretion, wit— it seems they’ve rebelled and slipped in with the eyes. I’ve left the proper path. I’ve hid my teachers’ wisdom. Desperate, I’ve failed to heed my body’s needs. Sur says, I beg for balm for my eyes— dark Shyam. Alone his image can calm my restless mind. 76

My eyes still yearn: they gaze on the face of Nanda’s Joy and are lost, never gratified. Their hankering for him has led me to defeat— its dimensions cannot be told. I’ve let my body lapse, squandered my modesty, suffered the derision of the world, and even at that, they’ve refused to be content— boundaries mean nothing to them. Surdas says, with such greedy comrades as these, how far have I wandered from the way? 45

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 45



sur’s ocean

77

Eyes heavy with greed— to satisfy them, I’ve lost to Hari all this body’s modesty. Parents, children, and relatives forbade me, people have ridiculed my family, but without Nanda’s Joy I couldn’t survive. My nature now is heavy, fixed. The Beautiful Dark One, handsome head to toe, delights every part of me, my friend. Surdas says, not to be bewitched of mind— what woman could be so dumb? 78 These two eyes are very nimble thieves: they robbed me of everything and gave it to Madhav— body, mind, intellect, strength, and speech. My unknowing ears were lulled by his flute’s sweet sound, my eyes were fixed, intent on him, and all it took was a smile on Mohan’s face as a tiny bribe, and my secret was gone. Why, my friend, blame Hari for it all? What my eyes did then was just a hint of more to come. Surdas says, I slept, I let down my guard, and found the hidden truth—that I had lost him— at dawn. 79 My eyes: how greedy they’ve become. No enemy of light—no veil—can stop them, 46

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 46



the pangs and politics of love

keen as vultures for the sight of Hari. I placed them under a lock of mascara, I closed them behind gates of eyelids, but led by a messenger, the mind, they escaped and off they went to the Dark One again. Ever in a stupor, red with love’s color, schooled by stupefying Kama, the foe, to clever, guilesome Surdas’s Lord without any payment they are sold. 80 My eyes are vanquished but refuse to know defeat: however weakened they become as warriors, they still imagine victory is theirs. Arching their eyebrows across the forehead like bows, they aim at their prey and loose their angry arrows—crooked, leering glances— till the bowstring snaps from the strain of the stare. Never do they dart behind their veils to hide or even let an eyelid block their view, for girded about with body, mind, and speech, says Sur, they never countenance the thought they might be weak. 81 My eyes have fallen prey to that addiction. What am I to do? They’re acting like bees that hover over the lotus of his face. They train themselves on his dusk-toned body and never for an instant look away. 47

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 47



sur’s ocean

I’ve tried and tried to bridle them, but they stubbornly stand their ground: piercing the water-bearing cloud of his form, they fill with the nectar of his love. Sur says, the juice of his jewel limbs’ touch they pillage—all its wealth. 82 “Madhav, the one who’s in your heart hardly hides! Brazen she is—to me that’s known. And who has made her so? You, Kanh. She sees me square in front of her and yet is unafraid. Or let me bow modestly: she also bows, contorting your forehead with crooked brows. If I am enraged, then she is enraged. If I laugh, she laughs too. All the while she strikes in just one way: whatever I may look at, she looks back at me. From your heart, she never shrinks or wavers. Any place my eye may hover, that’s the place she wields her power. Head to toe, she has my entire body in her grasp. Whoever it is that has you so enthralled, she’s the one behind it all, just as the color of water is fixed by the color of the glass that’s in its vial.” The Cowherd answered with a certain glee, “Girl of Braj, just listen to me:

48

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 48



the pangs and politics of love

why, when I’d embrace you, do you flee? Your very own shadow is what you’ve seen— that’s why you’ve been so stiff with me.” Sur says, “A better test for yourself would be to touch the touchstone of love.” 83 To Hari they go and wail, oh Radhika— creatures whose entire possessions your body has stolen away. The moon says: “Her face has devastated me”; the company of bees, “Her hair…”; the deer, “Her eyes have looted”; the cuckoo, “Her words….” Thus they moan to Hari. The lotus, the parrot, the lion, the dove, the elephant’s temples, the plantain, coral, jasmine, snakes—all stricken, they flock to him for succor in their pain.1 The Lord of Sur has felt this great injustice and sent me to you in righteous anger to deliver these words from the Master of Braj: “Arise! Be quick! Come answer! Explain!” 84 Because of your brilliance—Beauty, you must listen!— all other brilliances have scattered and hidden.

49

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 49



sur’s ocean

Armies of bees depart, dejected. In defeat, they hover near the forests, where eternal poison has settled in their breasts, stashed deep inside. The offspring of the ocean, Rohini’s darling,1 allowed his face to meddle with the king of sages, and that son of the father of all that is sprang on him. He recoiled in pain. The lord of beasts: your waist so shamed him that he ran and hid in the hills, and your tree-monarch thighs have shone so bright2 that every other radiance is dimmed. Surdas says, It’s unjust what you have done. You’ve pirated the redness of the sun. 85 Radha, your treasury of loveliness glows with a great store of beauty displayed by your body. What other woman can compare? The vermilion on your forehead, the pearls in the part of your hair, and your alluring coiffure make your moonlike face seem a target for the rage of strong, intransigent Rahu. Earrings shaped like forehead marks swing from your ears and cast their reflection on your cheeks in such a way as to make it seem a pair of suns in full array have come to give succor to your moon as it struggles with an enemy bent on opposing a lamp with a flame that shines too bright.

50

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 50



the pangs and politics of love

Where is the poet who would say about your breasts, “These are like pomegranate fruits”? The two are not the same. The fruit retreats in shame, for these don’t break apart: they’ve broken Hari’s heart. The thin row of hairs on the three folds of your belly glistens with proud beauty, as if it formed the spot where the Creator decided to support your narrow waist by resting it on a solid staff. Every element shimmers with glittering jewels— how can I describe the scene? Your body is aroused, crippled by love’s power, knowing you’ll encounter Sur’s Lord. 86 Today, my friend, Shyam’s dark body shimmers as if Nanda’s Delight had been victor in battle against the god who’s born of the mind.* His hair’s luxuriant foliage spills from his crown, his eyes display an angry red, and his teeth-torn lips shine forth in splendor even when they cannot shape a sound. The scratches of nails and the sweat of his exertions have pushed aside some sandal from his limbs as if the lovely arrows of that warrior, the Beguiler, had burst through his armored clothes and struck. Here and there are seen betel-nut stains, wounds that he suffered as head-on blows, * Manasij, or Kama.

51

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 51



sur’s ocean

for Surdas’s Lord is the greatest of heroes— Nanda’s son, the one I know. 87 Look, my friend: four moons in a single scene.1 Each of the lovers follows the other in peering into the daughter of the sun, which makes two sets of dark blue clouds and two of a brilliant light hue. Across their faces four parrots glisten; also two fruits and eight cakors; and my heart is entangled in a moon-moon sea thick with coral, jasmine, and bees. Surdas’s Lord is a fund of double beauty: I offer, offer myself to the youthful pair. 88 Away! Go back to where you spent the night! Manmohan,* what clues are you trying to erase? Signs of tight embraces are not so quickly hid. A necklace, now stringless, is etched into your chest. What clever girl slept pressed against your heart? Your garments, hair, and jewels are all askew— tangled from a bout with her lust-hardened breasts. Teeth marks, nail marks—oh, what you’ve endured to have your fill of passion in that other woman’s lair! Surdas says, Your honey lips have lost their sheen and your sleepless eyes bear the weight of lethargy. * Beguiler of the mind; Krishna.

52

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 52



the pangs and politics of love

89 (To Krishna)

Madhav, what a fine appearance! Your eyes droop with sleep, your turban is askew, your hair flies beautifully wild, and someone’s nail marks embellish your chest like newly risen slivers of moons. Your lips have lost their color: the coral spark has paled. They seem pasted to your lotus-blue face. Your clothes are all undone, and your feet— how they stumble and sway in a lionlike gait. Lord of Surij, you’re in another’s thrall, but still my heart responds to your appeal. (To herself or a friend)

Madhav—what a fine appearance!1 His eyes droop with sleep, his turban is askew, his hair flies beautifully wild, And someone’s nail marks embellish his chest like newly risen slivers of moons. His lips have lost their color: the coral spark has paled. They seem pasted to his lotus-blue face. His clothes are all undone, and his feet—how they stumble and sway in a lionlike gait. The Lord of Surij is in another’s thrall, but still my heart responds to his appeal. 90 With justice they call you the lotus-eyed one: you’ve lotus feet and hands, a lovely lotus face, 53

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 53



sur’s ocean

and the words we hear from you are lotus-honey-sweet. In the morning you announce your passion to the sun, opening yourself to a sumptuous embrace; then at night, after closing your petal-shuttered doors, you languidly parcel out your honey to the bees. You offer encounters, but your inner love is elsewhere; you always stand aloof from the water that surrounds. Someday, says Sur, your deceit will bear its fruit. Desire will burn you, an offering, to ash. 91 It’s you your lover loves, and no one else. You are the one that treasury of love sports so desires to touch, so overcome with love. He meditates on you, so when he sees you angered that anger leaves him utterly distraught. He pleads with you. He’s reduced to saying, “Give me the gift of an embrace!” Ever since the two of you first met, your mind has known how very manifold his passions are for you. So dive now, Surdas says, into your heart. Let his glory resound in your ears. 92 Your mind will only fill with remorse— listen, my beauty—if you let this time go by. The spear of pain will exceed what you can bear, for you will be letting desire’s vermilion dye— the color of love—simply float away, leaving Hari’s garments their cherry-plum yellow1 54

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 54



the pangs and politics of love

and ready to respond to lust by taking another’s hue. Why does someone have to spell it out for you, my friend? It’s such a simple secret. You’re digging a well to get down to water to service a house that the passion for Sur’s Lord has already set aflame. 93 Radha, your pride has gone too far. In his heart Hari repents the sin he committed in some past life, for this is what he says: “Once I spun out a story about myself— how way back then I took the guise of a woman1 and used my incomparable beauty, wise one, to steal the hearts of all three worlds. The antigods were duped, drunk with lust’s liquor, while the gods drank deep of the nectar of deathless life. Shiva and his minions, the adepts, the great sages— who of them hewed to his yogi’s vow? Says Sur, When they laid eyes on the charms of that body, all their wisdom melted like ghee.” It was Madhav who burned the world with passion then, but now your willful stubbornness is burning him instead. 94 (His)

Seeing it, he stops in his tracks:1 your footprint. Its touch engulfs him in emotion. He babbles half-formed words. Honeyed dew, fragile sprouts, blossoms, and pollen 55

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 55



sur’s ocean

make him froth—ambrosia!— yet the butter-soft earth seems harsh to him, causing him great pain. Every lotus has a tender part inside— the sheaf that flows with fresh new love, cooling, beautiful, and gentle, says Surdas— but even such softness he can’t bear. (Hers)

Seeing it, she stops in her tracks: your footprint. Its touch engulfs her in emotion; she babbles half-formed words. Honeyed dew, fragile sprouts, blossoms, and pollen make her froth—ambrosia!— yet the butter-soft earth seems harsh to her, causing her great pain. Every lotus has a tender part inside— the sheaf that flows with fresh new love, cooling, beautiful, and gentle, says Surdas— but even such softness she can’t bear. 95 Listen, cowherd girl, don’t be too stubborn. I’m telling you, as far as this body goes, you’ll never have another chance. There was only one time the great gander* could be fooled into pecking at millet grains, thinking he had pearls— and this is that time, for you. Sacrifice your all * The haṃs bird.

56

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 56



the pangs and politics of love

to every tiny hair of the Lotus-eyed One. This youth you have is like a river in the rains— how it overflows its banks! So let yourself meet Sur’s Lord, your shore. This life lasts only a matter of days. 96 The qualities you have: I know them well— why hide them? No! I’m all admiration for whoever it was that made you pour yourself out. Those eyes are brilliant crimson from your all-night vigil, but such lethargy in your face and all your limbs, and that forehead mark of sandal—why so vermilion? Or those scratches from naked nails and passion’s upcurved breasts— Nanda’s son! What a fine, strapping lad! Tell me, whose is the heart you’ve stolen now? And how can you stand there, knowing what I do, and swear, Sur’s Lord, it isn’t true? 97 Today, friend, why so little joy? You seem beset by a contrary mood— a day-blooming lotus in the presence of the moon.1 Hari is always the master of burning— a moon to the passion of the cakor— but despite his ocean home, he’s no match for you, who are water-born yet flower at dawn: you shiver with fear, panting great sighs like a deer wide-eyed before a lion. 57

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 57



sur’s ocean

Surdas’s Lord, ever clever as a lover, steals both heart and mind—yes, mine. 98 Look, my friend, at the nail mark on your breast. What beauty when the border of your sari flutters— like the rising of a lustrous fine second-day moon! How can one find words to describe the splendor that brings such fulfillment to the eyes? When you touch people’s feet, your sari billows and causes your friends to sing praises to that moon. My ears hear the sound. I then conjecture, and seeing the mark itself, I deduce that the moon has feared eclipse by Rahu, my friend, and come for protection to you. Craving liberation, your necklace pearls as prayer beads, it chants a chant to Hari and Har* in its heart, as if by invoking those two gods and doing penance it hoped to avoid the curse of Daksha the sage.1 Throw off your shyness. Tell me the truth— I’m the sort who knows what hides in others’ hearts. Your meeting with Surdas’s Lord has come to light. How can you hide your lover’s touch? 99 Not to be hidden, the touch of Hari’s love1 shows itself in a heart overjoyed, * Vishnu and Shiva.

58

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 58



the pangs and politics of love

in the color of the lips, the languor of the eyes. The sari flutters, revealing great beauty, a spray of nail marks on the breast: the brilliance of sliver-moons seen between the waves— from time to time they bashfully give glimpses of themselves. Lovely tresses loosened from their places come to view. A tiny drop of sweat makes a liquid forehead mark. Surdas says: When asked, you don’t concede. What is this cool anger, tell me? What is there to fear? 100 Her wagtail eyes—elongated, drunk with feeling, eyes surpassingly lovely, flawless, restless, that cannot be contained in any cloth-covered cage— they ramble off, almost to the ears, then hesitate. They fear getting trapped in the chains of tāṭaṅk earrings,1 yet if it were not for being held in tow by kohl— the kohl-black traits of Surdas’s Lord,2 Nandanandan, whom they love— they’d surely fly away. 101 Hari, your eyes—what a vivid red, as if they’d been dyed in the juice of lust. Love play has made them forget how to blink. In the midst of those eyes shine captivating stars that slowly, languidly sway with misgiving

59

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 59



sur’s ocean

and appear to be a swarm of restless baby bees caught in a closed lotus sheath. Even when awake, their twinkle speaks of night, and as they sharply dart about, scattering the juice of lust, it seems as if the God of Love were honing his arrows for a campaign to conquer the world. Lazily they stumble around in their sockets, sometimes closing, sometimes open wide, like a pair of skittish wagtails playing in a courtyard of emeralds and pearls, drunk with what they see. Time and again, as they look with sidelong glances, their crooked ways of love steal my mind. What joy I find in the sight of Sur’s Dark Lord: they lift away my pain, those gemlike, love-red eyes. 102 Not to be hidden, such blood-red eyes resemble great wide bandhūk blossoms, and the pupils, beautiful dark bees. Those curls in your hair make treacherous snares when you try so hard to focus on me, and your eyebrow bows are slack: they’ve lost the force of lust, and their lotus-red arrows lie forgotten. The eyelids droop beneath so matchless a power that even tugs and pulls can’t pry them open. Tell me, Lord of Surdas, this woman—who is she? Who has made you lose the battle of passion?

60

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 60



the pangs and politics of love

103

“As long as I remain alive I’ll never even sip the water on a road where that maddening cowherd lad might roam! I’ll wear no more mascara, no more emeralds,1 no more musk daubed upon my limbs. I won’t wear bangles or garments colored black, black beads no longer will hang from my neck; no more listening to koel birds or bees, no more gazing at dark thunderclouds. I’ll never hold a blue lotus in my hand or look upon the beauty of anything black.” As soon as he heard these words, Mohan came running, taking the messenger girl with him, and where did her friend’s pique and stubborn anger flee when she saw the body of that connoisseur of love? Surveying his fine form, she found nothing to say. With her hand, she grasped his, and as the Lord of Surdas savored an embrace, she offered him the nectar of her lips. 104 Listen, my friend, I’ve one more thing to tell. Early this morning I arose to find that the one with the lotus eyes had come: groggy from a night with someone else, Mohan had tried to go home, but there was Nanda standing at the door— he couldn’t very well go there—

61

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 61



sur’s ocean

so he staggered over here in the other direction, yawning his lazy yawn, as if some cop had beaten him with a cane and left his body battered. “Mohan, how did you get in this condition?” I asked him with a smile. “And what would you do if I spread this news about?” At that, at last, Sur’s Shyam showed some shame. 105 Being too stubborn isn’t good, my friend. Radiant Braj woman, listen to what I say: yield to your lover’s polished appeals, for the woman of great beauty, wisdom, and fortune is the one whose lover—her heart’s desire—is pleased. Lovely one, acting when the time to act has passed is bringing in the sauce when the meal is done: you’ll be giving up your arrogance too late, radiant one— after the sun’s rays have dried the fruit of love. If it’s now that a man is dying of thirst and has no water, what’s the use of oceans of nectar later on? Sur says, You’re taking the pride of beautiful youth and treating it as a mark to crown your brow, but why should a moon that brings light to so much else be worried if one lotus fails to bloom? 106 A glance from the corners of those agile eyes, and mind-churning Kama’s sharp-pointed arrows

62

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 62



the pangs and politics of love

have burst through his heart from one side to the other. Utterly shaken, he slumps to the ground like a young tamāl tree felled in a windstorm— here lies his flute, his wondrous staff, his clothes; here, his peacock plumes crowned with all their moons. His eyelids are closed; his sight remains sheathed like a lotus whose morning didn’t dawn; and the waters of love have so drenched your dear one that he’s shredded his garments’ edges in an effort to wring them dry. One moment he sinks in the sea of separation; the next, he swells with the waves. Sur says, Sprinkle on him your lips’ elixir and take away the swoon of Nanda’s youthful son. 107 A lithe young woman with well-curved brows, hair and forehead mark and ornamented ears as lovely as if a painter had placed them there: how can I possibly put your beauty into words, the very seal of artfulness? A lovely row of tiny hairs spills down to your navel; your waist recalls the enemy of the deer;* your eyes are fine warriors, sharp and unafraid in the face of foes who lift great mountains. Sur says, when this fine tale, this challenge, spreads, Love himself feels fear—once king, now poor. * The lion.

63

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 63



sur’s ocean

108 Go, my friend. Shyam is calling from the forest. The lotus-eyed one loves you more than life. He remembers you with a desperate desire. Woman, he loves you even more than Murali. Now he’s set her down on the ground. He’s plucked for you blossoms with his delicate hands and readied his bed for you, lovely one. He never forgets your name, in mind, word, or deed— this I swear by your feet. So go, lovely woman, flee to Surdas’s Lord if ever you want to recover your calm. 109 Radha, Nanda’s youthful son is calling. Lovely as dark clouds in his triply curved pose, he dances like a peacock in the woods, and yet you’ve passed these moments sitting inside, nursing a broken heart. He’s the root of all pleasure, the moon of Brindavan, and you should make your eyes cakors. What can I say to measure your good fortune? The measureless merit it must have taken to earn! So go to the Lord of Surdas, lovely one, and offer him your life as a bribe. 110 Radhika, wise one, listen with care to what Hari has sent me to tell you: “I’ve angered you, so you’ve lifted the edge of your sari 64

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 64



the pangs and politics of love

and hidden your face—your face, but not your pain— and harder still to bear, in the middle of all this, is to see what else has arisen: the autumn’s nectar moon. It has a bright new reputation. I’ve heard it with my very own ears. And not only that: fish, wagtails, cuckoos, parrots, and deer are newly inspired in their songs; coral, bandhūk flowers, and bimba fruit offer the poets their charms; pomegranates, lightning, and oleander have all enhanced their fame. Surdas says, A simile: they shine as bright as stars when night removes the brilliance of the sun.”1 111 She’s hidden her face in the folds of her veil as if once again to install Anger on the ramparts1 of the angular fortress of mind-churning Love. With nail marks as nails for fine-crafted panels, she’s fashioned its sturdy, unbreachable doors, while in the inner sector, once saved for King Krishna, she guards a cache of honey from her lips. She stations her weapons, great and small, as barricades— mascara, forehead mark, the pearl in her nose ring— and grasps her eyebrow with her hand to string her bow, says Sur: She wounds him with a cutting glance. 112 “Here in Brindavan, this garden of yours, on the branch of the kadamb tree, Radha,1 65

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 65



sur’s ocean

the fruit of immortality has grown— black and yellow and a little bit red, with measureless beauty, untellable aspects, and so very ripe that when touched by the flute it bursts with juice, the music of love. The women of Braj comprise a fine golden dike to guard its immortal liquid from serpents and gods: nothing can touch your radiance, my lovely one— parrots, muni birds, monkeys, cuckoos, crows.2 I am the gardener. I’ve watered with such care that callouses have covered my once lovely hands.” Sur says, When Radha saw such labor, she rose. Her eyes filled with the nectar of love, blessing the earth below. 113 I muttered your many virtues, Shyam, in the shade of the kadamb tree and sent you my entreaties. Only silence came. A vision and no body— a picture lodged in my eyes. Gone the winsome speech of Surdas’s Lord. What remains? Only my refrain. 114 Radha, that liquid is beyond all description— the liquid that made poor Rahu lose his head, and when he did, he still couldn’t drink enough. All of us cowherds have failed in the same cause: 66

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 66



the pangs and politics of love

no one can make that moon stand still. Driven even today by exactly that thirst, we roam around mindless of any rest from chair or bed— headless torsos so parched for Mohan’s liquid beauty we’ve forgotten the body’s been severed from the head. Even now, says Sur, the mouth of a cuckoo bird— how can it accommodate an ocean? 115 That face is saddened that resembles the weapon of the water’s son’s lover’s son’s enemy’s friend.1 It flashes with an anger a thousand times brighter than what dwells on the forehead of the ocean’s son’s lord. It refuses what is enjoyed by the vehicle of the father of the one who lived in the wind’s son’s lord’s foe’s town. That body is burned, as if by fire, when touched by the one who loves the food of the vehicle of Shiva’s son. How can I dispel another vehicle—the one that is the vehicle of the vehicle of the ocean’s daughter’s lord? It acts as the avatar of the foe of the son of what’s right. For the sake of the Master of Surdas, I’d wash it away. 116 “Radha, rise and go. The Dark One is calling. The Joy of the Yadus is longing for you. Forget your pride. Why make me pull you by the arm? Taking all his friends with their snake-charmer’s flutes, he plays his own bamboo on Kalindi’s banks.” Bending closer, the messenger girl says this: “You’re waging a war of wasted words! 67

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 67



sur’s ocean

Sākh, javādi, kumkum, saffron, sandal1— why not make a paste and deck your limbs with these? Why not go to Hari with the sixteen marks of beauty that will give delight to Surdas’s Lord?” 117 I’ve never had to labor so hard— Radha, listen—as I have been laboring simply to disperse your anger. I’ve borne up the earth; saved Brahma and the Vedas; I’ve routed such foes as Madhu;1 I’ve churned up Agh, Bak, Vatsa, Arishta, and Keshi; and drunk a forest fire. At Sita’s husband-choosing rite I broke the bow, then I beat the unbeatable Ravan, yet never have I known a single emotion that could make me bow my head—and with such ease. When I came to know that my teacher’s son had died, I searched the very ocean to bring him back alive— some strength I owned! But now it’s spent appeasing you, says Sur. I’ve lost it all. 118 Know, my friend, that this is no new engagement. Radha, listen, your love for Madhav has always existed, eternally, and every time you aim your angry pride at Mohan you cause him great distress: the fire of longing burns the entire world and he resorts to water, where he rests.1 68

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 68



the pangs and politics of love

Thus he churned the ocean. Thus he harnessed the sea in a drive to best his enemies in battle. But now the Three Worlds’ Lord is so mired in love that he wanders the woods playing a bamboo flute. He was Male to Primal Female, husband to Shri, to Sita— step by step his story has been told to me. For Shyam, says Sur, the canons of affection are so great, and you—you come to Braj and you forget! 119 Give what you’ve been given to another, my friend. Artful Radhika, hear what I have to teach. Follow its justice in your mind, my friend. All the immortals drink from the moon, each on the day appointed, my friend— Hari, Shiva, and the rest. So consider: how could the Lord drink that, my friend? It’s used, that moon. Polluted! Hence the Creator made this other lunar face, my friend, entrusting it to you expressly for the purpose of loving Shyam. So why be miserly, my friend? Sur says, Only to someone worthy of trust would you entrust whatever you have, my friend. That’s why you’ve been offered your ocean fund of nectar, so offer it, or fate won’t knock again, my friend. 120

“Ho, ho, ho, Holi!” They joyfully play and their love comes clear— Hari there, here fair Radha. 69

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 69



sur’s ocean

Long drums, round drums, cymbals, and tambourines pound—and through it faintly, the flute— as Kanh and Brishabhanu’s daughter sing open insults at each other. Musk, sākh, javādi, kumkum, saffron, sandal— these they take and churn to a liquid and let passion’s ocean brim with love’s color and surge with a force to flood its shores. Long gone, modesty and concern for the family name. They hardly care what teachers or cowherds might say, like thieves drunk on deeds who regale the gang at dawn with tales of what they stole the night before. His once-yellow garments—now dyed red; her bodice—it’s drenched in yellow; with all that happiness, there’s no holding back, so a friend jumps in and finishes the act by knotting their clothes together.1 No words can describe the delight of what’s fashioned: the beauty of their sparring tug-of-war. Surdas says, This performance leaves the lucid-minded Goddess of Learning* stunned—stupefied! 121 He swings along the ways and byways of Braj, that winning Cowherd with his cowherd friends, shouting with a “Ho, ho, ho!” Clapping to mṛdaṅg drums, cymbals, and tambourines, he’s playing his flute and singing his songs * Sharada, or Sarasvati.

70

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 70



the pangs and politics of love

and wearing clothes that color his body with reds and yellows and whites and blues. All the women hear. They stand in their doorways decked with the sixteen adornments of beauty; they let their faces flower as, in the month of Kuār,* lotuses open on ponds. Their nimble eyes, ever clever, move to his handsome body with a fretful, fretful gait, for the sight of Nandanandan is their highest fascination: they gather like a swarm of bees. They hold him tight; they guard him in their arms in a restless darkness that builds on every side as if the bees were deep in a lotus sheath, groping through a night that’s not yet dawn. Only when they’ve satisfied their wants do they depart, their whole bodies shining with a radiant glow, flying away like a crowd of bees slathered about with pollen. In that moment nothing remains in their hearts except an enervating joy. It’s as if, says Sur, a sea of love had surged with happiness and flooded the shore.

* September–October.

71

005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 71



005752_MCLI005_220_Love_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:11 PM • 72



The Bee Messenger

005752_MCLI005_230_BeeMessenger_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 73



005752_MCLI005_230_BeeMessenger_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 74



122 Mother Yashoda, rest assured— We’ll both be home in five or seven days, brother Haladhar and I. Meantime, now and then, check on my flute, check on my staff and the horn I blow. Don’t let Radhika pilfer away any of my favorite playthings. Ever since the day you and I parted, no one’s called me Little Kanh. No one rises early to make me breakfast or gives me fresh milk at night. No news ever comes from your direction to tell me how my mother suffers. And now Vasudev and Devaki say that really I was born to them. What can be said about Father Nanda? How cruel-hearted he has been to bring me here to Mathura, says Sur, and never seek me out again! 123 “From Mathura a letter has come, written and sent by that handsome, dark Kanh. Come and listen, my friend.” They ran and ran, from every house they ran; they held the letter to their breast. Their eyes were all tears, the flow never faltered, their thirst for love never died: “And what are we to do? Without our Hari 75

005752_MCLI005_230_BeeMessenger_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 75



sur’s ocean

this cowherd town is so bereft, so bare. What did we neglect to do for Surdas’s Lord that made the Dark One forget?” 124 No one in Braj knows how to read a letter. Why does Nandanandan send us such a thing— that knife of sharp separation? Such fragile paper! Our eyes are full of tears and the fingers of our hands are hot, so it’s burned if it is touched, soaked if we see it, and either way our hearts will hurt. How can we comprehend the strokes of Sur’s Lord’s pen, those killer-sharp arrows of Kama? No message from the mouth can keep our bodies moist. It’s the liquid of his feet we need to dye us back to life.1 125 Where have you come from, bee? Tell us where. We think we know: the chances are good that the Lord of the Yadavs sent you— your color is like his, your skin and clothes, and those are the ornaments he wears.1 So go where you’re welcome: to that petulant, beguiling woman of Mathura, the honey-grove town.* Listen, honeybee, we all have just one heart: better buzz around it where it’s gone—over there. * Madhuban, “honey forest.”

76

005752_MCLI005_230_BeeMessenger_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 76



the bee messenger

Your friend has departed with everything we have, and now he’s dressed you up in his clothes. What’s the special ruse that’s brought you to Braj? Why have you rushed over here? This much we’ll say: As for blackness of body, says Sur, you really know your way around! 126 The Lord of Braj is an ambrosial treasure that we bees have labored, labored to gather and guard. Facing him, we’ve filled and filled our eyes’ hives, stuffed and stuffed our many lotus-sheath hearts wherever we fastened, fastened our gaze on his lovely, flowerlike, nectar-formed frame. We took the juice of Mohan Madan’s famous nature and turned it somehow to the secret juice of love. Then, says Surdas, the king sent for that elixir, sent someone who went stealthily, stealthily away: the son of Suphalak. Now he’s stolen our honey and left our bodies to burn, burn in a terrible flame. 127 Honeybees—whose friends are they? They make a connection for two or three days, take the nectar, and head away, always on the move to serve their own needs. Their motto: “Hypocrisy first!” And when their wants are met, they simply forget— on to some new love.

77

005752_MCLI005_230_BeeMessenger_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 77



sur’s ocean

They make your head ache. They drive you insane, preying on hearts Hari’s stolen away. The envoy of Surdas’s Lord cheats the right, sowing seeds of sadness. 128 Out! Out! Get out of here, Udho! I say this to save your reputation. Why do you insist on kindling my rage? The sight of you sets my eyes on fire. You say Govind has become a gentleman, but we hear a hunchback girl has got him in her clutches. Well, they deserve each other. They’re birds of a feather: he’s an Ahir lad, she’s Kams’s servant girl. And how can he be as clever as you say if he sends out an agent like you? I suppose he’s forgotten, says Sur, the early days when he spent his time with the other herder boys bellowing after the cows. 129 Who hasn’t by now rejoiced in the strength of the Cowherd’s reign? For, Udho, the accomplishments he’s won today were achieved for the sake of all. He’s snapped the bow, struck the elephant dead, battered the wrestlers, vanquished the Yadavs’ fear, and cheered the sages and gods by grabbing Kams by the hair. To a hunchback he’s given her fondest wish; 78

005752_MCLI005_230_BeeMessenger_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 78



the bee messenger

to a Brahman, a son; to a gardener, his heart’s desire;1 Ugrasen and Vasudev he’s freed from fetters— he’s led them to their rightful home. Daily he is lord. Daily he shows mercy. Daily he gives, yet daily we wish that Hari would be Hari the deliverer, says Sur, delivering these eyes from their thirst.2 130 How can the mind accept these words? For, honeybee, it knows all the traits of those whose bodies are dark. When first it feels love, the bee will never leave even at night—it’s his color— though the lotus enclose him; but when the nectar dries, the bee stays away, seeing that the petals have aged. A story is told of the crow and the cuckoo— nights of love and deception: the crow slaved daily with singleness of mind to hatch the cuckoo’s young,1 but the babies flew off to their own. The flute that plays at Hari’s lips, bearing nectar, sounds through the woods in the middle of the night: it thirsts for that liquid, can’t stand to be without it; in the morning, still it won’t be sent away. And him! He murdered Vali, he set a trap for Bali— these are a hunter’s deadly wiles. 79

005752_MCLI005_230_BeeMessenger_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 79



sur’s ocean

Surij, tell us: who could ever trust in someone whose brothers thrive on lies?2 131 How much am I to blame, Udho, if with that Cowherd gone I haven’t died of a heart split in two? Home, mind, body, wealth, and youth have all become like the hissing of an asp, and my soul is scorched like stumps in a forest fire— the vicious blaze of separation. What can a wordless cobra do if the jewel is pulled from its hood? Surdas says, Life in Braj is like having the planet Venus on your right— it’s gone awry.1 132 My eyes are parched for the sight of Hari. Dyed in the liquid of his handsome form, how can they stand such coarse, arid words? They stare down the road unflinching, unbowed, counting the days till he returns. Just believe this: these new yogic teachings cause a yet more desperate pain, For how, says Sur, can a boat be steered down a heart that’s a stream gone dry? Show his face again—show the face that drinks fresh milk from a cup of leaves.

80

005752_MCLI005_230_BeeMessenger_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 80



the bee messenger

133 Udho, these eyes have adopted a rule. You have brought them flowers of knowledge, but these eyes, these bees, are unaroused. They’ve vowed to have only Nandanandan as husband; they refuse to look at anyone else. As the heart of the cakor is bound to the moon and the heart of the cātak to the raincloud, so have these eyes given to the Cowherd undivided love. Surij says, Only Hari’s lotus face has the deathless nectar they’ll imbibe. 134 Udho, how can I control these eyes? They listen as you talk and they remember his virtues— remember, and burn even more than before: they greet the moon of his mind-beguiling face with honor, like the lotus and cakor; they thirst for the thick, dark, water-bearing cloud of his body as do cuckoos and peacocks; they are bees and geese to the lotus of his feet;1 fish to the waters of his playful ways; sheldrakes to the brilliant jewel that brings the day;2 deer that cannot live without his flute. The world is all an empty, lonely place unless it sees that form. Head to toe, they are matchless, the contours of Nanda’s Delight, Sur’s Lord.

81

005752_MCLI005_230_BeeMessenger_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 81



sur’s ocean

135 Udho, of all the parts of my body, it’s my eyes that suffer the keenest pain: they hurt and hurt with a heat that will not cool, hard as I might try. They stare down the road. They never waver. Nothing deflects their gaze. Filled with madness for Madhav, they go naked: they’re open night and day. This heavy guru wisdom you’ve brought to cure our eyes— how can we endure the rod that applies it?1 Sur says, bring us his liquid beauty— a proper, other balm, and the only way to salve the ache they feel. 136 These eyes have been fulfilled by his fullness. You talk and talk and my ears hear on, but my eyes keep crying, dying with the pain, for my heart knows Hari as the one who rules within, though my mind is still preoccupied with words. He’s a jewel of emotion in a sea of beauty, so why try to find him by rummaging through the trash? You bees—it’s honey that crazes you, propels you, so don’t try to sell us this cruel, bitter message. What, to Braj folk, is sage meditation? Can granite be crushed with bare hands? A cuckoo watches over cool, flowing streams, sees their moist essence, feels their luscious taste,

82

005752_MCLI005_230_BeeMessenger_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 82



the bee messenger

but once a drop of svāti water lodges in its breast, it decides, says Sur, that all the rest is dry.1 137 Friend, how can I speak of the power of Hari’s beauty to cling so brilliantly to me, for this body of mine has many kinds of chasms: a tongue that doesn’t know what the eyes can taste. Time and again this has made me feel remorse, but what am I to do? I don’t control fate. In the absence of words now, my eyes gush painful tears, remembering, remembering his features, his postures, and just as the eyes cannot say what they behold, the mouth, where there is speech, cannot see. This recitation of many body parts, says Sur— how to convey it to a six-legged bee? 138 Trust the people of Honey-Grove Town? Their faces are one thing; what’s inside, another. That’s why they’d rather communicate by letter. Like the koel: it hoodwinks the crow to raise its young with all that emotion, devotion, provision— then comes spring, comes the koel’s cry, and in the end the little bird heads for its own kind. Or the honeybee: it sets up house in a flower and afterward never even asks about the place. Surdas’s Lord: If the body is black, you’d better not engage another time.1

83

005752_MCLI005_230_BeeMessenger_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 83



sur’s ocean

139 This is simply the way bees behave: when they know there’s no nectar, their love for nectar sends them in an instant to some new flower. Why then believe what is said by someone who consorts with cheating hearts like these? He’s left us behind and bedded with that hunchback— conquered the enemy, yes, but failed to return. So don’t pay heed when you hear sweet words that are uttered merely to please. Surdas says, With the Dark One, you’re dealing with walls being built on straw. 140 Honeybee, don’t urge on us something alien. Now that the Passion of Braj has been stolen, no one here can talk or hear or think. We know the news, and we’re happy to learn that his family’s anguish is forgotten. It’s good he has good company, good his mind’s improved, good he’s introduced to the best society, but to us the sweetness of his story is bitter, and your counsel is a stab at our hearts. Sur says, It all turns justice upside down— exacting a ferry tax from victims swept downstream! 141 Udho, many are the days now spent bereft of his lotus feet.

84

005752_MCLI005_230_BeeMessenger_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 84



the bee messenger

Bereft of the sight of him, we’re greatly bereaved— every moment is a moment of grief. Nights, the torture of love is so intense that no heart can rest, in house or forest; days, our eyes watch intently down the road, sending streams of tears down the breast. Even now we harbor the hope the pain will ease, but our stock of sighs is vanishing as we count the days of the awful separation that will cause us longing women to leave behind our bodies, Surdas says. 142 Tell us a tale of Hari, and as for that ballad of wisdom you’ve brought, go sing it in Mathura, you bee. If you’re a true friend of handsome Shyam, pure in your heart’s intent, then make these tortured eyes behold Hari’s face again. Hundreds of thousands of approaches there may be— physical force, wisdom, business enterprise— but Surdas says, I plead with you: for fish like these only water satisfies. 143 Udho, the foes of Braj have come to life again— the very ones you watched Nandanandan beat and beat, then send away defeated.

85

005752_MCLI005_230_BeeMessenger_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 85



sur’s ocean

Putana the crane woman is back in the guise of night, making our hearts pound with utter fright, and all day long the sun torments our bodies, burning off any life-breath left. The forests have taken the form of the demon crane, our houses, that of the snake—where can the mind escape? Kalindi is tantamount to masses of Kaliyas, her water too poisonous to drink or even touch, and our great, heaving sighs are Trinavart, the whirlwind who blows away whatever joy we had. Keshav is gone, and our karma is all Keshi.1 Where, says Sur, to seek relief? 144 What kind of love is this love of ours? For our bodies still remain, though Hari has gone. Our hearts refuse to break at your words. They’re hard as diamonds, as we see with our lowered eyes. They’re pierced and pierced by the arrows of separation as they fill and fill, thinking of the time he said he’d come. Life and death have become two heavy burdens. Speak of it, says Sur, and our dignity is gone.

86

005752_MCLI005_230_BeeMessenger_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 86



the bee messenger

145 Udho, why have we been blessed with this love? Hari lives in our hearts, so you say, but day and night our eyes burn for him— our eyelids never rest: we scan the four directions, scorched by the fire of separation. So much suffering! If it’s true that Kanh is here, why have we not yet found him? Touching your feet, we beg you: let us plumb the depths of the waters of hoping for him. Don’t make us drown in your attributeless sea— we’ll never fulfill our desire. If something begins—with someone, by some means— that’s the means to use to make it thrive. After all, says Sur, what’s a cuckoo to do with multitudes of lakes and streams?1 146 Who is this you’re talking about here? Unless we see, we don’t believe— that’s why we’re asking again. Who’s become a king? Who’s killed Kams? Who’s this son of Vasudev? Here it’s only Yashoda’s captivating son whose face we live to see: the one who daily went to graze the herd in the company of his cowherd friends, and when the day was done, at twilight, would come and cripple the gait of our eyes.

87

005752_MCLI005_230_BeeMessenger_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 87



sur’s ocean

Who is complete, supernal, eternal? Who exceeds Brahma and the Vedas? Sur says, Your babbling answers are useless. Here in Braj, it’s Nanda’s son. 147 Honeybee, travelers are strange sorts of beings: they stay a few days, do the work they want to do, and without a word to anyone, they’re gone. Sending you to us was the first stage in Hari’s regimen of spiritual mastery. The next was fully to know. So we get the discipline, Hunchback gets the fun1— how perfect for this traveling clan! Oh, we understand Nandanandan’s kind of knowledge, but who of us can possibly gain it now? Our bodies are already offered to Surdas’s Lord, so what does it matter whether still we breathe or go? 148 How can I forget how the Mountain Lifter was? My mind lives on, oh bee, staying with my body in hopes of once more seeing such a time. Udho, I’m spent in longing for my lord, wounded by a double pain: my carnal foe is lust, and my mental foe, play1— together they’ve set wisdom beyond my reach. But my ears still yearn to hear of Hari’s traits— the ones that fill the old tales— and my eyes day and night are fixed on his form: is either better than the other? 88

005752_MCLI005_230_BeeMessenger_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 88



the bee messenger

I’m like the dying king who crowned his son king2 and grew weary of life with him away: Sur says, My good sense will only revive when Hari comes from Mathura again. 149 My mind has remained there in Mathura. Friend, believe me, it hasn’t returned. Gopal has captured it too well. Once he didn’t know the secret of these eyes: Who is the spy who’s let him know how I stole his handsome shape and stashed it in my thoughts? Hari’s found the whole thing out. Udho says he’s come to make us meet again: “Give away the jewel,” he says, “have a little whey!” But who would want to take this Nirgun—“No Form”— in trade for Govind? Who could stand the pain? It’s only by leaning on him that so far somehow my body has managed to survive, and now, says Sur, he wants to pry away that crutch and leave me here with nothing— immolate my heart. 150 What’s happened to Hari since going to Mathura? Honeybee, how can he be happy now with a body pulled in two directions— here, to the bonds by which old loves claim his body; there, every day, to new attractions? There Shyam appears in the raiment of kings; 89

005752_MCLI005_230_BeeMessenger_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 89



sur’s ocean

here he appears with a flute. Was he forced into the hands of Akrur? Was he duped into this pompous show? And how can Kanh endure without Gokul, whatever people tell him over there? To each his own dwelling—the pauper and the prince who has a parasol to shade his brow. Long may he live, says Sur—Nanda’s son! His is the face we live to see. 151 My mind’s not here, oh honeybee, it’s gone with Nandanandan—gone and hasn’t yet returned. These eyes of mine have sold it for a smile, made it another’s slave, and the one into whose power it was surrendered has made it forget house and home. Who, says Surij, can teach it now? It’s ruled by the power of another’s moods. The market’s fallen through, so go somewhere else with that no-trait doctrine of yours. 152 No more room in my mind! Nandanandan being in my breast, how can I fit anything else? Walking, looking, waking to the day, dreaming as I sleep at night— not for an instant does that fascinating image 90

005752_MCLI005_230_BeeMessenger_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 90



the bee messenger

budge from within my heart. Udho, you’ve so often lectured me, showing me what the world craves, but what am I to do? My head is filled with love, and a jar can’t hold the sea. A body that is dark, a face like a lotus, the lovely honeyed way he smiles and laughs— Sur says, My eyes are dying of thirst, a thirst for beauty such as this. 153 We only believe in the things that once were said. Listen, Udho, we know nothing of the ways and customs of your town, but the one we love, the one you took away— he said he’d best his enemies, then return. Who will believe the words you say? It would be like building a wall on straw. Hari said there’d be a time when he would come, but now that time has passed— Lord of Surdas, have mercy! Meet us! Remember our long-lived love. 154 Black beings, friend—they’re all of one ilk. Their words are sweet, and so attractively they speak, but on the inside, what they cause is fire. Bumblebees, black bucks, crows, and koels— a regular school of deception— and Madan Gopal: he hangs back in Honey City, 91

005752_MCLI005_230_BeeMessenger_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 91



sur’s ocean

singing out such auspicious blessings! Thunderclouds roll up in all four directions signaling a love so wide it has no shore. Yes, says Surdas, they nurture all the rivers— but the cātak bird is left to cry for more. 155 “It doesn’t go away—the stab of Hari’s leaving— for I’ve turned myself over to the beautiful Dark One. His image occupies my mind. Once in Brindavan, just in play, he grabbed my sari, and my modesty was snatched away. Sometimes in secret he’d give me an embrace; sometimes he’d run off to lead home the cows; and Udho, I’ll never forget the day on the riverbank when he stole away our clothes.” Thus Radha recalls the times she’s seen Sur’s Lord— calls them to mind with remorse. 156 If it’s here in our hearts that Hari dwells, how can he remain so utterly unconcerned at what we’re having to endure? Once there was a time he kept fire from burning trees, but now, how our bodies blaze: why hasn’t Nanda’s Joy burst from our breasts and cooled us with one of his smiles? Without a second’s slackening, unceasingly, our eyes rain a torrent worthy of Indra and our bodies shiver in a fearsome chill. 92

005752_MCLI005_230_BeeMessenger_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 92



the bee messenger

Why doesn’t his hand hold the mountain aloft again? Hands! It takes a mirror to see they’ve got bangles?1 We’re dead from the vexation of it all. How can we live, says Surij, listening to all this yoga? We’re women adrift in love’s longing. 157 All that matters to us is this: how can you, by what power can you send the lotus-eyed one back to Braj today? As for all the rest—your countless maneuvers— use them to keep the kingdom running. How can weak, delicate women such as we bear the harsh armor of yoga? Only the sight of that fine, dark body, toe to head, will take away our pain. Surdas says, How can the mind stay alive, deprived of the chance to see that face again? 158 How can there be love between Hari and us, oh bee, now that he’s joined the lordly class? And if there is, it can only be the sort of love one has for water or for water clouds or sun: the fish and lotuses and cuckoos who love these spend their lives in just this way— flailing about, being burned, shouting out. There isn’t any justice in that. The heart is hard to stop. Like a warrior beheaded, it acts, when it’s lost, as though it’s really won; 93

005752_MCLI005_230_BeeMessenger_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 93



sur’s ocean

for the power of an ocean of love, says Sur, can’t be contained by walls of sand. 159 This Gopal: who is he, and where does he live? How can he be recognized? Who sent you to come to us and bring your message here? It’s fine if bees, knowing about nectar, suddenly fly off where they will: what do they care what then befalls the flower vine— whether it withers or thrives? The hunter at first beguiles the deer1 by playing tune after tune, but then he wrecks this simple trust: he shoots his fearsome arrow and kills. Putana was adamant in offering her milk, and like Bali, she was snared because she gave; Shurpanakha and Tataka were torn apart, says Sur.2 It’s always the same old tale. 160 Honeybee, whom can you possibly persuade? Your utterly unreachable, imperishable one— what does he know of the liquid taste of love? Teach your yogic concentration instead to those who are obsessed with wisdom, but as for us, we’ll stay in Braj, maddened by the winds of estrangement. Sleeping, waking, dreaming, night and day 94

005752_MCLI005_230_BeeMessenger_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 94



the bee messenger

we’ll revel in the beauty of his form and slip ourselves into an ocean of elixir— the adolescent games that girls and boys play. Anyone whose body and soul and mind get sold for a faceful of Sur’s Lord’s smiles becomes like a little drop that’s fallen into the sea. Can anyone perceive it ever again? 161 Hari’s become someone different now, even though he lives just a little way away. Clever one, he’s sent us a message by a bee— cleverness in finely powdered form.1 Shyam’s a mound of beauty, the sum of every trait, the life-giving root of the sañjīvanī plant, and we’re told we should be able to see him in our minds since everything that is, he pervades. But listen, says Sur, I still have this body even if I quake with separation, and now this six-legged insect has come to turn these charred remains to dust. 162 How can anyone know someone else’s pain— especially, my friend, how my body suffers, absent from his lotus eyes? That honeybee keeps talking, talking, explaining how I ought to be patient and steady my mind, but how can happiness come to these fishlike eyes when seeing him is the sea that keeps them alive? 95

005752_MCLI005_230_BeeMessenger_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 95



sur’s ocean

Yoga and trance—what can such things mean to cowherding women of Braj like me? Do instead what will make me meet Sur’s Lord on the riverbank once again. 163 This is what it’s like in Braj with Hari gone. We’re telling you, Udho, because we know how deeply others’ troubles weigh on you, poor soul. Sandalwood and moonbeams seem like fire to us when they mix: the body burns. Awake, each watch of the night passes like an age1— only with effort do we manage to withstand— and when day comes too, still this sea of separation! How are we to find the other shore? Over and over we’d cling to the hope of his coming, like drowning men who grasp for straw; for only by hoping we’d again see Hari could suffering like this be endured. Surij, we swear by mind, act, and word: there’s nothing else we want in all the world. 164 What can one do with greatness such as this? Not to be fathomed, inaccessible to the mind, unknown to the senses, beyond the reach of will, no shape or outline or color or body and no companion to stand at its side— how, my friend, could you keep alive a love for such a no-trait being as this? 96

005752_MCLI005_230_BeeMessenger_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 96



the bee messenger

Water without waves, a wall without a picture: it’s cleverness without a mind! That’s the new fashion Udho’s come to spread in this cowherd village of ours, but my thoughts have pierced that mind-stealing image— hair by hair they’re entangled there— where beauty is suffused from toe to head, says Sur, radiating every happiness. 165 You’re a most clever man, Udho, and wise, so tell me this: if something’s colored black, how can it become another color? The Vedas intone verses telling how the world contains two similar, equal eyes,1 but the cakor bird sees a difference: the moon is the beloved while the sun is nothing but a foe. Wise one, I beg you to sing the same sort of difference as it pertains to separation. The secret is simply this: a frog can leave the water and live on air, but a fish who leaves the water leaves its life. When will my eyes, oh bee, like bees, find honey in his water-lily face? We milkmaids cannot follow you. Surdas, here’s our rule: never touch another person’s yoga. 166 So Hari has studied statecraft, has he! Udho, we fully comprehend what you’re saying— yes, we’ve heard all the news— 97

005752_MCLI005_230_BeeMessenger_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 97



sur’s ocean

but to start with, he was perfectly crafty long before his teacher started showing him books. It’s really because he understands a girl’s deep love that he’s sending out this message of yoga. The great are great, it’s rightly said, because they hasten to serve the needs of others: what we need now is to have back our hearts, the ones he stole when he went. How could someone who’s saved others from bad ways behave so disgracefully himself? Listen, says Sur, what makes a king righteous is shielding his subjects from harm. 167 One little meeting—what harm could that do? Why is he so proud to have found for himself that hunchback? A genuine rhinestone!1 Such a tiny distance, yet he’s changed to someone else and utterly forgotten his Gokul clan. How can Shyam remain there, lovely as a raincloud, and make us suffer this pure longing? And how can you, foisting yoga on weak women, lay a bull’s yoke on the shoulders of cows? We’ll only come to life in the Lord of Surdas when we see again the brilliance of his face. 168 Tell me, honeybee, how could anyone abandon a childhood love? What to do? The deeds of the Lord of Braj 98

005752_MCLI005_230_BeeMessenger_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 98



the bee messenger

have looted me of everything inside— those looks he gave, that mind-stealing gait, that smile, the gentle lull of his singing, the fine dancer’s clothes Nandanandan wore, his jests, and his look as he emerged from the woods. I swear this to you by his lotus feet: this message you bring burns like poison! The fascinating image of Surdas’s Master I can’t stop recalling, asleep or awake. 169 Make him show us some mercy, some love. Go tell Hari everything—tell him how things are moving along in Braj these days. Go and tell him what your eyes have seen— the burning of this forest fire— for how can we ourselves describe the pain our hearts are bearing? It brings us too much shame. Once, long ago, we wanted to end it all, but then we’d get the wish to see him again, and now if our bodies are still not dead from burning, it’s only thanks to tears we’ve shed for Sur’s Lord. 170 His memories of us—he should hold them in his mind. Udho, if you find the proper time, tell the Dark One one little thing: if ever we did anything wrong when he lived in our cowherding town, he should forgive us, for the Lord of the Yadavs, so peerless in wisdom, 99

005752_MCLI005_230_BeeMessenger_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 99



sur’s ocean

can surely stand the foibles of our female race. Right now, in fact, if he’d show his face, our multitude of ills would burn away. How much more must I say to Sur’s Master? I’ll float away in shame if I frame another word. 171 Tell me, friend, how can I shape a message to send to the Yadus’ Lord? How can I speak? And if I do not speak, how can I withstand this stabbing pain inside? I spend my time rehearsing everything that courses through my heart; the thoughts rise to my lips, but then I see Udho and all my fine ideas disappear. Please, then, teach me something, my friend— something that will give me the steadiness of mind to make a request of the servant of Surdas’s Lord, something that will give me some release. 172 Give him the message in this letter with your hand and tell him, at the same time, by mouth. Find the right occasion to bring up the topic, with some general news of Braj as a diversion, Then tell him: “I believed you. I gave all. I counted neither day nor night, and Nandanandan, it simply isn’t right to betray a trust this way.

100

005752_MCLI005_230_BeeMessenger_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 100



the bee messenger

If, long ago, you’d given us any sign, why would I be plaintive now? Surdas’s Lord, if I’d known you’d break your word, I’d have stayed at your side and made you return.” 173 Say this much to Nandanandan: “Though you’ve left and orphaned me, just once come back and care. Don’t just snap a piece of straw and drop me. Let your honor demonstrate that once we lived as one. Wipe away whatever my faults and vices. Suffer this much from a slave of slaves— for if I’m without you, I’ll jettison my life. Let me have you one more time, if just in dream.” Surdas’s Master, what’s the point in writing us letters? What’s yoga compared with the burn of love? 174 Go to Balaram and Krishna with the words that will make them return to Gokul: “Ten or twelve days should have satisfied you— don’t let the time drag on, for without you nothing appeals, day or night, nothing in the forest or at home. Distressed about you boys, the cows refuse to graze. Calves no longer run to the woods.” Udho, all you have to do is open your eyes.

101

005752_MCLI005_230_BeeMessenger_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 101



sur’s ocean

What’s the point in our explaining? In the absence of Sur’s Dark Lord our bodies burn. Only meeting him will make them right. 175 We’ve been bitten, my friend, by a dark, black snake and no one—no one but the Lord of the Yadus— can take the poison away. Udho, it’s a good thing you’ve come to bind us with a tourniquet before you leave, but when will you send us Surdas’s Lord to pour his mantras on our heads?1 176 Pay heed, accomplished Shyam, and hear what I’ve seen of Radha, kept apart from you: Hari, she’s wasted away. The moment I delivered the message you sent, that beautiful girl approached me and her thinness caused her girdle of tiny bells to tangle at her feet and make her fall, yet she rose again and composed herself like the most courageous soldier. Lotus Lord of Sur, you are her welfare. Immersed in hopes of you, she lives. 177 Her two vast eyes began to overflow as she listened to your message, raincloud-dark Shyam, and remembered how you are, Gopal. 102

005752_MCLI005_230_BeeMessenger_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 102



the bee messenger

Then brilliant streams of tears flowed down from her face to the space between her breasts as if a pair of lotuses with roots in Sumeru’s peaks had sent stalks so high they met the moon.1 As the cloth covering these two mountains turned damp, they and the necklace of pearls resting there shone as if the moon were gazing down on lotus-lily buds whose petals were embellished with a nectar-dewdrop net. How can Radha display a love like that, and you act so otherwise, like this? Sur’s Shyam, how can that desperate, lonely woman survive now on the crooked things you’ve said? 178 Clouds cover our eyes, and not just for a moment. They will not disperse—it’s always the monsoon. Braj is caught in a constant downpour. The Indra of our estrangement pelts us with rain both night and day to such a degree that the winds of our sighs speed the flow, and it floods the earth of our chests. It soaks the skies and trees— our clothes, the tiny hairs on our arms— and even the high ground, our breasts. Travelers who travel there tire in their journeys as their feet sink deep in sandal-paste mire. Now all the seasons have merged into one— that’s our upside-down fate. Being left behind by the Master of Surdas has broken the bounds of what should be. 103

005752_MCLI005_230_BeeMessenger_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 103



sur’s ocean

179 How can one speak of what is happening in Braj? Listen, Shyam, how they pass their days, the people who live there without you. Cowherd girls and cows, cowherds and calves with grimy faces and emaciated limbs— they’re utterly bereft, like lotuses whose petals have been lost to the assault of winter snows. Wherever I would go, they’d all come out to see me, wanting to know how you are, and love has made them so sick at heart that they’d cling to my feet to keep me from leaving. Cuckoos and cātak birds refuse to dwell in the woods; crows, although they’re fed, won’t touch their food;1 and the fear of being used to carry messages, Sur’s Shyam, makes travelers avoid that road. 180 Night and day they mutter and mutter “Hari . . . Hari . . . Hari,” and stare down the road with the cakor’s fixed gaze, oh clever acrobat, since you went away. Their eyes fill, fill, and drip with tears that flood the bodices on their breasts as if the frenzied fire of separation had made them vow to pour a thousand pots of water over Shiva’s head.1 Like dewdrops poised on barley tassles, their lives rest perilously on the bank of time— the time you said you’d go to meet them, Sur’s Lord. Hurry, that day is at hand. 104

005752_MCLI005_230_BeeMessenger_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 104



Lordly Encounters— and Others

005752_MCLI005_240_LordlyEncounters_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 105



005752_MCLI005_240_LordlyEncounters_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 106



181 Here’s what you must tell the Yadavs’ Lord:1 “This city of Kundanpur has turned against the Veda. Crows have usurped the role of swans. You mustn’t stop to think about my virtues and faults— that a virgin writes this letter against her teachers and elders: it’s because such customs and canons and decorum have so eroded that I’m sending to you this Brahman. Hari, it’s to you that I’ve given body and mind, confirming a connection that began some time ago, so Krishna, be a lion! A restless jackal is after the sacrifice that’s yours. If you have any pity, mount your chariot quickly: the wedding time is near. It’s set for dawn. Surdas says, If Shishupal takes my hand, I’ll walk into the fire and strike this body down.” 182 The townsfolk saw how handsome he was And over and over blessed Destiny: “Such a worthy groom is joined to Rukmini! If the Creator has acumen, if he knows this world—how feelings flow— then Hari will conquer Shishupal today and become the princess’s lord.” The kings who had come for the spectacle of it all looked upon his face and said, “As cakor birds fix their gaze on the moon, our eyes look and look, unfulfilled. 107

005752_MCLI005_240_LordlyEncounters_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 107



sur’s ocean

He grants every wish, he’s the life of the world— this beautiful and great one, Vasudev’s son.” Surdas says, “Whatever one hopes at heart has become, because of Hari, real.” 183 Come, my friend, let’s gather and sing blessings. Hari is coming and bringing Rukmini—what joy! Let’s tell it to the whole Yadu clan. Fill a golden plate with powder and curds. Strike up a rhythm on drums and kettle drums. Sprinkle out turmeric, dūb grass, saffron, honey. Make a golden pot brim with fresh-drawn water. Take flawless banana stalks and saffron-colored leaves and spread a colorful canopy woven of flowers. Decorate the doors with graceful strings of leaves, draw a sandal altar space on the courtyard floor, and welcome the victor: lift offerings of water to the one who killed Jarasandh and Shishupal. He’s come with Balaram—Sur’s skilled, charmed Lord: Hari has come. Prepare the āratī plate!* 184 What can I say to insult you, Yadus’ Joy?1 Whose father should I say you’re son of, Yadus’ Joy? Whose father should I say you’re son of? His caste and lineage, no one knows. * A welcome offering.

108

005752_MCLI005_240_LordlyEncounters_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 108



lordly encounters—and others

Your nature and features seem someone else’s— but why should I say it and cause you pain? We all search for him: so far, nothing. Unless you listen, what can we do? Yadus’ Master, I bow to you: what insult is good enough to give? Your Maya mother’s wasted your whole clan, Yadus’ Joy. Whose strength hasn’t she sapped, Yadus’ Joy? Whose strength hasn’t she taken away, roaming about night and day— her head in white, a blue skirt at her waist, and her loosely fastened bodice, red? That come-hither face and smile of hers have brought gods, men, and serpents to her arms. Master of the Yadus, I bow to you: your mother bore you clanless, out of wedlock! There’s scarcely a way to describe her moves, Yadus’ Joy— Seething always with passion and pride, Yadus’ Joy. Always seething with mind-churning passion— shameless, she never even covers her breasts. Playboys hear her and see her, get aroused, and witlessly chase around behind her. They trip, get up, get caught in many tangles as the stupor she exudes claims their minds. Thus has she spawned so many stories— more than can be told. 109

005752_MCLI005_240_LordlyEncounters_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 109



sur’s ocean

Daily she adopts new lovers, Yadus’ Joy, Steals their minds with her glances, Yadus’ Joy. With comely glances she steals away their minds, moves so they lose their bearings, then suddenly she’s seized by some restless new desire that her body has hidden deep inside. Who wouldn’t swerve from his resolution when his eyes see the charms of those eyebrows? Thus that clever, savvy mother-in-law summons her powers and beds with everyone. All the good-time guys are lost to her, Yadus’ Joy, And she’s also conquered Brahmans and yogis, Yadus’ Joy. She’s conquered Brahmans and lots of yogis, and who knows how many kings?— souls the world over, on land and sea. Moneylenders forget to charge interest! They’re all undone, wasted with lust from daily seeing new seductions. Thus night and day they wander away to lose themselves to that mother-in-law again. Now you pose as being smart, Yadus’ Joy— A lord, the world supposes, Yadus’ Joy. You’re lord of every being, Fund of Mercy. They sing your praises everywhere on earth.

110

005752_MCLI005_240_LordlyEncounters_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 110



lordly encounters—and others

So gather the ridicule that people heap on you and end it. Wipe it away. Say something, Madhav! Come on, let her have it! Don’t shrink from the task. Listen, Sur’s wise Shyam, in our sort of clan we shouldn’t have to put up with this. 185 A royal woman is singing Hari’s praise. Her little boy is crying, so she explains, putting drops of life-giving nectar in his ear: “Don’t let fear touch your heart, my child. Shelter yourself always in that Ocean of Mercy. Clear your mind of any worry for yourself. Trust, my dear. Be unafraid at heart, and smile. The one who kept his word to the daughter of Janak,* severing all the heads of Ravan, the foe— he’s the one who’s ready to give aid, says Sur, as he rescued the cowherds and Gajendra,1 that great beast.” 186 Who else is there who knows me as he does? Who, my dear, but that kinsman to the wretched would even admit to being my friend? * Sita.

111

005752_MCLI005_240_LordlyEncounters_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 111



sur’s ocean

Here I am lowly, ragged, ugly, and there he is the Yadav king, yet he raised me up as he did with Arjun and took me to his chest in an embrace. He rose from his throne, seated me there in honor, washed my feet with his very own hands, and asked how things are going for me at home, banishing any embarrassment. Then he loosened the knot in the cloth, put the rice grains in his palm, and tossed them all into his mouth as he thought, Sur’s Lord, of the love he had for me when we lived away from home in our teacher’s house. 187 Never again has Braj crossed his mind— Not once since the time that lotus-eyed one pressed a little letter into Udho’s hand. Traveler, I touch your feet: I ask you to go to Mathura, to the one garlanded with wildflowers and cry before his door that Kaliya, the black snake, has returned to the River Kalindi. Once there was a time when Nandanandan showed mercy, tending and guarding the loves of those who loved him: a girl would spy a blossom high in a tree, and he’d hoist her to his breast so she could have it. Now when recollections of him enter the heart

112

005752_MCLI005_240_LordlyEncounters_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 112



lordly encounters—and others

they feel like the point of Kama’s arrow. The memory of the love that used to move Sur’s Lord is a torture to the heart, a spear. 188 Traveler, go to Madhav and let him know these eyes of mine have hobbled my mind. Make this charge, raise this complaint: “Since I saw your face, my eyelids will not close.” And still they want to see him for just a few hours if fate, that is, has written all those lines. Won’t you tell him this when you speak? Since seeing him, there’s not been a single blink. I struggle night and day to make the minutes meet— they’ve shaped themselves into a strange string of eons— And I cannot free my thoughts from this tangle until I see the visage of Surdas’s Lord. 189 What? Our Dark One is planning to move far away? When he was in Mathura, my friend, there was hope, but now we’ll die of distress. Who was it who told you? Where did you hear? The dust from his chariot wheels— which way does it say he’s gone? Let’s all gather and go to Madhav; otherwise we’ll wither and die. There is, in the west, a city called Dvaraka,

113

005752_MCLI005_240_LordlyEncounters_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 113



sur’s ocean

surrounded by the waters of the sea. . . . Oh how could we live without Surdas’s Lord— our sañjīvanī gone, our life-giving root? 190 These eyes of ours have been orphaned. People say, my friend, that Madan Gopal has left and gone afar. We’re the poor fish and he is the pond, so how can we exist apart from him? We’re cātaks, cakors, and he’s the thick dark cloud, the face that holds the nectar we love. When he was in Mathura we’d gaze down the road— any road, hoping to see him, and here’s what Sur’s Dark One now has done: he’s taken what was dead and murdered it again.1 191 How can we cause Hari to return here, to Braj? For they say, my friend, that Kanh has departed, gone from Mathura somewhere else. What mindless fools we were when he lived nearby— we didn’t leave home and join him— and now he’s taken his whole Yadav clan, fought Kalayavan, and gone far away.1 It’s an impassible highway to the far distant west, where they say, my friend, the sea is salt. Surdas says, Our hearts are pining night and day. Who will take us to meet our Yadav Lord?

114

005752_MCLI005_240_LordlyEncounters_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 114



lordly encounters—and others

192 It seems the Creator made a slip with me. Otherwise, friend, I cannot comprehend why I neither wash away nor burn: I’ve been neither drowned by the liquid of my eyes nor consumed by the flame of love, and between that surge of water and the fire of separation, how could I survive? They’ve taken the light that illumines all the world and ensconced it in Dvaraka, and from Dvaraka’s far ocean that submarine fire1 has engulfed my body here. Friend, he’s the brother of Sankarshan. Where has his glory not spread? His is the magic that’s enthralled the world, says Sur, the face whose sight has made me dance. 193 “Now it’s out, how foreigners love!1 You all prattled on about ‘Kanh, Kanh,’ puffing up your hearts—now take what comes. Why surrender everything you had into a stranger’s hands? What a great swindler! Now he’s left Mathura and made himself a home by the sea.” “What to do? The body won’t obey, and the heart’s love simply seems to grow.” Surdas says, The cowherd girl broke down. Like clouds, her eyes began to rain.

115

005752_MCLI005_240_LordlyEncounters_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 115



sur’s ocean

194 Ocean-born moon, you’re traveling to that land where the beautiful Dark One, in Dvaraka, reigns over all the earth. You so very cool, you who rain nectar, do as I advise, if you would. Take a message to the lotus-eyed one from a woman who is parted from him: “Joy of Nanda, the one the world adores, you who have donned the fine dancer’s clothes, you’ve finished your work here, master, and gone off someplace else. You’re famed for caring for those who love you, but of this I have the greatest doubt. Come see me now,” says Sur. “Show mercy. This my special request.” 195 When Hari is absent, my mind fears the night. Time and again, when night comes, it goes, desperately fleeing this frame. My body is visited with heat when first, looking east, I sight the full moon, and it seems as if Love has turned his face a fiery red, angered at this lonely woman. His beauty is blemished as he twists his brows, aiming impassioning arrows— moonbeams that seem to fan out in a loop to snare a woman in stubborn longing. Fool, listen! The lord of my life 116

005752_MCLI005_240_LordlyEncounters_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 116



lordly encounters—and others

is the one renowned throughout the world. Sur says, He rescued you from being submerged at sea, and still you do not value what he’s done.1 196 Rukmini asks, “Which, my dear,1 is Brishabhanu’s child? Come, let me know which one she is, your childhood sweetheart from long ago, who made you so cleverly wise, my Mohan, and that at such a tender age. She taught you the art of deceit—of thieving— and to live by the power of your wits, so you number her virtues and string them like beads that never abandon your breast. You remember her on your tongue. You meditate on her beauty with a gaze that will not stray . . . Look there—that girl!—standing with the others, outstandingly fair and clad all in blue. My mind has been caught by her,” Surdas says, “tethered with the rope of the eye.” 197 Wait—it’s the Cowherd I’ve come to meet. Of course, you’re his ocean wife, but still it isn’t right to cause a girl from Braj such sorrow. What am I to do? The body’s dark, the clothes are yellow, but now he has not two arms but four! How can you have the sorts of joys I used to fantasize 117

005752_MCLI005_240_LordlyEncounters_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 117



sur’s ocean

on meeting dark Murari? You’re always with him, says Sur, as your husband, so you must know what he finds appealing, but why not put on the kind of garb that makes release come easy?1 198 Enthroned in his chariot, he halted at the door.1 “Daruk, go and ask whether my devoted friend is at home or gone to the palace.” So Daruk, smiling, framed these words: “Lovely woman, has the Kauravs’ scion summoned him for something?” “Yes, we hear the Yadus’ master is coming to the house— the lotus-eyed one, a well-wisher of ours.” “The one that your husband went off to meet— the lord whom you know so well, why, he’s . . .” Hearing this, says Sur, she started, rose, and ran, so absorbed in love that she forgot what she had on. 199 Such disaster it was—but if only it could stay!1 For then, wherever my thoughts would move, Hari, I would always see you. At home, in the forest, before the courtyard, you were everywhere— there for the sake of a needy servant, always hovering near. Treasury of Mercy, whenever trials came we would always remember you, 118

005752_MCLI005_240_LordlyEncounters_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 118



lordly encounters—and others

and then, like the orb guarded in the west, you would shelter us from all our foes. How can the story of your oceanic mercy be recounted by a single mouth? And how, says Sur, can there be happiness and wealth where the lord of the Yadavs is not? 200 “I’ve chased here and there, my strength is gone,1 and I’m terrified, merciful one. What to do? The pride I had in all those austere acts is past. I’ve raced over mountains, lakes, rocks, to every compass point and corner, wherever, however, that disc might want, and begged for help from Shiva, Brahma, Indra, but none of them could give me rest. Driven by my fears, I lurched from world to world like a wizened leaf battered by the wind.” Then the Lord of Surdas, knowing the sage’s need, set him face to face with someone he counted as one of his own.

119

005752_MCLI005_240_LordlyEncounters_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 119



005752_MCLI005_240_LordlyEncounters_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:13 PM • 120



The Poet’s Petition and Praise

005752_MCLI005_250_PoetsPetition_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 121



005752_MCLI005_250_PoetsPetition_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 122



201 That ocean of mercy: the deeds he has done simply cannot be described. Even for touching him with falsified love the bird woman* won a mother’s prize. The Vedas and Upanishads have sung his praise, calling him the Formless One, yet he’s taken form as Nanda’s boy and allowed himself to be roped down. In an instant he rescued the master of Braj from being caught in Varun’s realm, just as he hurried to the elephant king when he learned what pain he bore. When he heard of Ugrasen’s sad state, he too felt the pain, and made him king by killing Kams. Then he himself bowed before him. When Namdev appeared in the present world age, he covered his hut with thatch,1 but what of the appeal that Surdas makes? Who will make him listen to that? 202 I’ll never see another friend like Hari— simply recall him in times of distress and he’s there in the twinkling of an eye. Defending the honor of Ambarish, he dispersed Durvasa’s curse, * Putana.

123

005752_MCLI005_250_PoetsPetition_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 123



sur’s ocean

and sent him scurrying to Brahma and Indra, as witnessed by sages and gods. From the crocodile’s grasp he freed the elephant lord, raced to him with disc in hand: Shri’s Lord left Vaikunth mounted on Garud and came to his servant’s side.1 Cleverly that guardian saved the sons of Pandu from the burning house of lac.2 Thus has the Master of Surdas managed to disperse his subjects’ many fears. 203 Others of his followers know no pain. Whenever they’ve suffered, Balaram’s heroic brother has brought them his swift and tender aid. The elephant, sapped of strength, looked around in all ten directions before receiving shelter from the Ocean of Compassion, who mercifully came to view and took away his heated anguish. He crushed the Magadh king,* freed the kings he’d bound, turned to a son the corpse his Brahman teacher mourned, and for seven days he held a mountain aloft to help cowherd girls and cows, cowherds and their calves. Taking on his lauded man-and-lion body, he killed the demon foe to keep his devotee’s word, and when Drupad’s daughter called his name to mind,1 he wrapped her frame in an ocean of cloth. * Jarasandh.

124

005752_MCLI005_250_PoetsPetition_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 124



the poet’s petition and praise

The sage’s vow he broke; his servant’s vow he kept— Ambarish was the one he chose to aid— and he rescued the Pandavs from the trials they bore: the house of lac, the wilderness, their enemies’ armies. The headman of Braj he released from Varun’s snare; he turned aside the forest fire, the suffering it could cause; he brought home Vasudev and Devaki from prison when he struck down the great villain, Kams. From age to age this is remembered of Shri’s Lord. The Vedas, which are flawless, sing his praise. Yet shelterless Sur still begs for shelter: Who will make the Shelterer recall? 204 Shyam is solely the patron of the poor. Our Lord is the one who fends for the wretched, brings fulfillment to those whose love is pure. What storehouse of wealth did Sudama possess? Why was Hari drawn to a hunchback’s charms? What sort of lordliness did the Pandav clan claim?— Still he volunteered as Arjun’s charioteer. What were Vidur’s name, birth, and clan? No matter to Hari—he was moved by love. Surdas’s Lord is this kind of lord: he burns away the trials of the true. 205 Hari’s humble subjects reign over all. Brahma and Shiva—what greatness is that?

125

005752_MCLI005_250_PoetsPetition_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 125



sur’s ocean

Their servants have to wander and beg, and beggars who beg from other beggars beg forever, till their tongues fairly waste away. Sons of whores! They’ll never find favor, for who do they have to call father? Hiranyakashipu’s fate witnesses to one of those gods, and Ravan’s to the other—his family disgorged him,1 while humble Prahlad saw the promise to him fulfilled, and Vibhishan is still a king today. The Lord who made Dhruv a fixed abode in the stars— the sun and moon waste themselves circling around2— that Hari, says Surdas: unless you worship him, what point was there in burdening your mother’s womb? 206 Over and over they do it, always the same— like moths, who burn with love of the fire and never feel any fear. The lamp of knowledge lights up the well containing life’s pleasures. They look— and still fall in. That poisonous flame of lust and sloth breathed by the snake of time: how many dumb creatures have burned? Unavailing tastes and a mind full of debates: for these they don their finery and roam and roam till their days are gone and nothing at all has been won. They make their bodies boats on life’s endless ocean, then stubbornly weigh them down with deeds, 126

005752_MCLI005_250_PoetsPetition_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 126



the poet’s petition and praise

but Surdas makes this vow: to sing of Hari— and thus to cross life’s sea. 207 My soul, abandon the blandishments of flesh. Why yearn like a parrot for some silk cotton fruit?1 You won’t escape the grasp of death. Waves of elusive passion—for gold and women and such— leave only remorse in your hands. Fool, dispense with pride and pretension and before you roast in the flames, say the name of Ram.2 The True Guru said it, and I say it too: Ram is the jewel, the wealth you should amass. Unless you reflect on Hari, the Lord of Sur, you’ll be like those yogis—like monkeys they are— you’ll wriggle on a leash, and dance. 208 Now the dread of birth and death has fled: remembering and singing and surrounded by the saints, I’m sheltered by the Dark One’s cloud. I’ve lost all cares about what anyone might say, now that I know what the body is for. Singing of the spotless jewel that’s set in the cobra’s hood, I’ve surrendered to the True Guru’s grace. Like a man parched for water, I want that ambrosia and won’t go back to the poison of the wilderness. Come to me quickly, Surdas’s Lord. I’ve become a slave to each of your slaves.

127

005752_MCLI005_250_PoetsPetition_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 127



sur’s ocean

209 Don’t give thought to my virtues and vices. Tend to the shame of one who’s fled to you, and take away my dread at facing Death, for even if the Mountain God should ink the ocean black, take the tree of heaven in his hand as a pen,1 and use the whole earth as a place to write my sins, Lord, there would not be enough room. Mean-minded, miserly, unkempt, unsightly, oafish, and offensive—that’s how I have been. No one else can possibly be so worthless, and who else could I come to in prayer? Whenever I wandered into some new womb’s disaster, I would always earn myself the same: lust, rage, sloth, and greed would grab me, and the senses’ finest poisons were my fare. I’ve done no yoga, no sacrifice, prayer, or penance, I’ve chanted no untarnished Veda; like a dog obsessed by leftover food scraps, my mind could never cling to anything else. Unbroken and unending one, compassionate, godly, sage, destroyer of what is base, and an abundance of joy, I never knew what glory it could be to sing of you, bound as I was in the snare of Time.* You know what I’ve done, and there’s nothing you can’t do; you shelter the shelterless, Murari. Treasury of mercy, Surdas is drowning. Rescue him—stretch out your arm. * Time, or Kal, is also Death, or Yam.

128

005752_MCLI005_250_PoetsPetition_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 128



the poet’s petition and praise

210 Your kindness, Govind Gosai, my ignorance has caused me to ignore, as the owl, unaware of the weakness of his eyes, stays blind to the strength of the sun. A jewel, Hari’s name: it’s a storehouse of pleasures and I had it, but I never knew, as with brilliant stupidity I yearned for the trivial, sifting the dust of the road for some small coin. To Shiva it is riches; to the saints, the summation; the scriptures sing its praise; but despite all that honor, this Sur—great fool!— would trade that gem and take the senses’ fodder in its place. 211 Much I was able to grasp on my own, but Hari, my master, the act of loving you was something I could never understand. I traveled great distances to have a glimpse of you, forgetting that you reign everywhere inaccessible to thoughts, words, and deeds: that was the image I never thought to see. Its traits are no traits; its form, no form; its no-name name they call Ram Hari. Ocean of mercy, pardon the unbounded impertinence that’s made Sur spoil it all.

129

005752_MCLI005_250_PoetsPetition_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 129



sur’s ocean

212 Oh my master, bearer of the bow, show forth your mercy to the needy, the lowly; give your protection to one of your own who is terrified of death. Half-uttered prayers, half-done penance, half-hearted efforts at worship, remembrance— yet cover the shame of one who comes for shelter, such as me. Creature after creature, land and sea— I’ve clothed myself in as many as there be and erected an immovable mountain of error capped with a fortress full of fear. The envoys of justice, messengers of death, have battered me down with their pestles and clubs and numbered to nothing my three claims for mercy1— now they’re simply sick of me. The demon bull, the demon ass, demon Pralamba, the demon horse,2 Putana, Chanur, demonic Kams— all these ogres you saved, along with Ajamil, the whore, and the elephant: what have I neglected that made them worth more? Tell me, oh Shyam, what reason could you have for still ignoring Sur? 213

Never once has he delayed. His nature is ever to be easily reached

130

005752_MCLI005_250_PoetsPetition_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 130



the poet’s petition and praise

through the power of recall. He takes away all fear. For elephants and herdsmen and herdswomen and cows he lifted the mountain, he took his disc in hand. Agh, Arishta, Keshi, and Kaliya he subdued, and drank down the forest fire. He killed the family of Kams, slew Jarasandh, returned his guru’s dead son to life, and when Drupad’s daughter was dragged through court it was he himself who touched her garment. Sur’s Dark Lord is all-knowing, a fund of mercy. His heart is compassion through and through. Where then, Lord of the Yadus, can I go for shelter? There simply is no one else but you. 214 “Purifier of the Fallen” they call you, Hari, but who could have given you such a name? For I am an aching waif, caught in the worldly round, mumbling your name before your door. Time and again I’ve been cooked in the womb, born through the torture of water and blood, and though you were near then, Hari, I left: I fled to feed on a hundred sins instead. Elephant, prostitute, monarch, Brahman, hunter1— what makes me count for any less than they? Now here I am again, suffering the spear of life, the merciless axe of time: those hordes of scoundrels on whom you’ve showered pity— what have I accomplished less than they?

131

005752_MCLI005_250_PoetsPetition_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 131



sur’s ocean

I just don’t know, says Sur the magnificent fool: what failing have I possibly forgotten? 215 It’s gone on like this for life after life, and still no peace of mind. Day after day, however despairing, I’d clutch false hope and again take on the world. They’d tell me and tell me I could find a cooling balm in heaven or hell, so I’d rush off there, only to find that nothing could extinguish the lust, the rage, the pride, the greed, the fire that burned throughout my frame. Happy diversions—flowers, sandalwood, women— fools would tell me, “There’s the water you need.” How stupid I was, how utterly deranged: I was only pouring oil on the flames. Wandering, wandering, I see I’m surrounded: the winds of the world have merely spread the blaze. Surdas says: Lord, away from your mercy every ounce of effort simply fails. 216 Merciful One, what good is mercy later on? Here, now, your servant suffers in this world— and you they call “The Lord Who Pities the Poor”! This whole life I’ve mumbled miserably at the door for a handful of rice, and I’ve still an empty hand; and once the body goes, it doesn’t make much sense to be recompensed with wealth, even rubies. 132

005752_MCLI005_250_PoetsPetition_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 132



the poet’s petition and praise

You “The Giver”? How?—if in this crippled Kali age the sight of one who needs you fails to melt you? Why should I plead with you for help, Sur’s Shyam, if you simply march to what the scriptures say? 217 Ram, even they rely upon your grace who wield control over countless bands of unblinking followers who do their commands: thus the wind keeps blowing, thus the sun makes day, thus the Serpent holds his head erect;1 fire is kept from losing the power to burn and the sea is stopped from breaching its shore. Shiva, Brahma, and the captain of the gods all acknowledge and serve you as lord— whatever you tell them to do, they do, even if it causes great strain. Beginningless, impassable, and endless in virtue, you constitute the height of joy. Surdas’s Lord, you grace your every part as a cloud touches blades of grass with rain. 218 Our love for you is the life inside us. If we lose it, how can we, your servants, survive? It’s like being alive without life. It’s like deer being mesmerized by a sound— the hunter kills without shooting an arrow— or like the cakor bird who stares at the moon: the very act of looking is his joy. 133

005752_MCLI005_250_PoetsPetition_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 133



sur’s ocean

So do the sweet traits of Hari, Surdas’s Lord, always resound in our ears. 219 Danced, I have danced before you. Once I heard you were Pitier of the Poor, Damodar, I took on many impressive forms— every role known on sea or land. I slighted not a single one. I searched every nuance hidden deep within, brought it forth to show it off, and Govind the Master, you were was not amused. My sleights and tricks you shunned. Why? All you have to say is “Sur, that’s enough”— why kill me by driving me on? 220 Madhav, even the utterly worthless can be embarrassed to ask you for aid; even though they lack all trace of strength or grandeur, still they may shrink from your grace. Grasping for straws? That dead twig can save someone swept down a river—just reach out a hand— so what to say of someone who has roots on the bank, and leaves that clan, that love, to thrash about alone? You, Lord, you’re unconquered, the orphan’s protector, and I, I’m unlettered, unwise; but drift to your shore and nothing bad can happen— there wretched souls drown in you! Night and day I bear the barbs of ridicule, 134

005752_MCLI005_250_PoetsPetition_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 134



the poet’s petition and praise

and that’s what brings me here to say as Surdas: Worship the Cowherd’s feet in song. Who can do that and not arrive? 221 “Purifier of the fallen,” “pitier of the piteous,” “guardian of those who have no guard”: such are the phrases they always use to praise you— scriptures, universes, gods. Yet no one has fallen further than have I, no one is more guardless, more piteous. Why do you not give me deliverance? Is anyone more crippled than I? You granted happiness to the Brahman and harlot,1 freed the elephant from his curse, and took away the terror of Arjun’s seed, the target of a thousandfold heat.2 Nothing has ever been said or enacted in word or in deed or in thought that you didn’t see occur, says Sur. You know it all inside out. 222 Left to myself, I’d burn to death In rage, craving, lust, drunken pride, and selfishness. Why should I, who will not think, survive— any more than the moth who thirsts for the flame and flies confused, in random waves, around the fire? But from the gathering of the good before Surdas’s Lord and the grace of my guru, I’ll be saved. 135

005752_MCLI005_250_PoetsPetition_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 135



sur’s ocean

223 If in this world I could find someone else, Why would I time and again come to you uttering the same old prayer? I’ve begged from them all—from Shiva and Brahma, the gods and antigods, the sages, the snakes; I’ve chased mirages like a thirst-driven deer. Was there any effort I spared? Fool that I was, I left your feet—the shore— to flounder in the fathomless waters of being till Death came along and silently grabbed me, as a wolf stealthily grabs a goat. Frenzied, I wanted to travel down every road— roads that were no roads—mindless fool that I was, and was lost, exhausted, like a wheel without its cart when I saw I was trapped in what I’d done. I abandoned my manliness to the tug of untamed senses like an elephant mired in the mud or a monkey strung to its acrobat mistress: whatever she says, it does. Owing to the weakness of its eyes, an owl refuses to believe in the sun, and I, pervaded instantly and utterly by sin, could only ardently, vainly sift the filth. Listen, merciful one, you who ever pity the poor, you who remove the world’s three searing pains,1 take this perverted Sur into your care in this desperate, tortured age.

136

005752_MCLI005_250_PoetsPetition_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 136



the poet’s petition and praise

224 All this comes from my faulty way of thinking— My failings, my pride: these are the things that have brought me such great pain. I’m like the lion who peers down a well and sees himself inside, and not knowing why, flies into a rage and plunges down. So do I. Or an elephant mirrored in a slab of quartz: in the rush of victory, he shatters his tusk. These are the pleasures Sur so desires, these are the joys of the flesh. 225 Fix your thoughts on Nandanandan, oh my mind. Refrain from drinking the liquor of the senses and bow before his cooling lotus feet. His legs, beautifully flexed at the knee, appear like lovely staffs of gold, and the shining yellow garment cinched around his waist seems the saffron-colored core of a lotus. Its bells make a sound like the happy clatter of little goslings, newly born, and from his navel to his chest a row of tiny hairs marches forth like a regiment of bees. A jewel is at his neck, and a necklace of pearls; sandal on his limbs; wildflowers garland his breast; so it seems as if the Ganges, in passion, borders the moon and vines enfold a dark tamāl tree.

137

005752_MCLI005_250_PoetsPetition_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 137



sur’s ocean

His hands and arms are lotuses—petals and stems; his mouth shapes sweet-sounding words; and so radiant his face! It’s a peerless moon on a fragrant, brilliant night. His lips, his teeth, his cheeks, his nose, his surpassingly beautiful eyes— and earrings dangle in the hollow behind his cheeks as if Kama, the entrancing one, were dancing there. His hair is all curls beneath his peacock-feather crown, and his forehead mark and eyebrows make a line, as if Kama, seeing clouds and a rainbow in the sky, were poised to release a pair of arrows. Sur says, let your eyes fill and fill with the beauty of the blessed Cowherd. Gaze at the splendor of that lord of life so intensely that your eyes can’t bear to close. 226 Today as he hears the name Hari, “Remover of Ills,”1 Hari, Lord of Hari, takes his royal seat. Hari the bee, the remover of honey, moves drunkenly, his hurry removed. Hari the lion, remover of the prey, roars powerfully to his lion herd, Hari the deer, who moves so quickly, practices his darting gait, and to speak of Hari, the Remover, removes the sadness of parting: it adorns it. Seize this moment, sing to the Lord of Surdas, 138

005752_MCLI005_250_PoetsPetition_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 138



the poet’s petition and praise

and watch the body’s threefold pain be singed away. 227 Hari’s name is now the foundation. In this Kali generation, every other rightful way has disappeared. Narad and the seers and Shuk and the sages arrived, every one, at this conclusion when they churned all the curd of Vedic revelation and turned up only this much essence—the ghee. Aspect and action, in all ten directions, bind us like a fish in a net, but sing the sweet fame of the Lord of Sur and the burdens of earth disappear. 228 Oh my mind, Madhav’s name is the foundation. In this Kali generation, it’s escape from sinful filth, the boat across the sea of births, quintessential joy. Think on the lotus feet of him, Delight of the Yadus, and cast aside the love of what the senses offer: garlands, sandalwood, women, the joys of ownership, relatives, friends, sons, home. Fool, in the thrall of delusion you still don’t know the secret of touching the magic stone: seize every joy, burn sin and sadness, serve those lotus feet, spurn evil company, praise good company, spurn the poison, drink the elixir of life, 139

005752_MCLI005_250_PoetsPetition_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 139



sur’s ocean

and remember him. Remembering him will melt him— that treasury of mercy, that lustrous Cowherd, says Sur, that sum of every joy. 229 What makes a tongue a tongue? If it sings Hari’s praises. Eyes? If their clever charm is marked by meditating on Mukund’s flower nectar. An unstained heart? If even in this body it yearns for nothing other than Ram. Ears? If they excel in this: drinking Mukund’s flower nectar. These are hands—if they do the work of worship. Feet—if they run toward Brindavan. Surdas the servant says, I bow before the One who makes close friends of saints. 230 If only you simply give Hari a try, if only you refuse to worship anything else, in mind, deed, and word letting truth fill your heart, if only you sound his name and praise him night and day, drowning your doubts in the liquid of his love— if you resolve to live in the world this way, who can turn your gold to glass? You won’t be touched by hot or cold, by joy or pain; you won’t feel grief at whatever comes or goes. Sur says, enter his treasury—go

140

005752_MCLI005_250_PoetsPetition_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 140



the poet’s petition and praise

and you’ll never have to return and dance to this world’s tune. 231 Whatever one’s birth, whatever the age, whatever place a servant may go, if love is firm for those lotus feet, whatever the place or time, it’s the same: ears attuned to his fine fame, like a deer’s; mouth like a cātak bird’s, chanting his name; eyes on the saints, as the cakor bird eyes the moon; hands busied with the pleasures of prayer; intellect, a honeybee collecting his essence from a heart that is a lotus of affection— it resonates ever with the mind-delighting buzz of being covered with the pollen of love— and with every other fine deed done for the master of Shri, devotion stays steady and sure. Otherwise—if not—it’s hell, the joy and pain. Sur’s Lord, reassure me. Give me your arm. 232 Days never stay the same, so remember Hari, devote yourself to him while your body still has its health. There have been times when you’d find fickle Fortune1 and let yourself get twisted with conceit; then other times disaster would strike and you’d howl to have a simple meal.

141

005752_MCLI005_250_PoetsPetition_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 141



sur’s ocean

Youth you squandered in nothing but play— devotion made you drowsy— but it’s only in serving Surdas’s Lord that you’ll find, my dear, life’s finest state. 233 Madhav freed the elephant from the crocodile’s jaw, revealing a nature that remained inscrutable even in the Vedas’ thoughts and words. Shiva, Brahma, Indra—all had seen the victim, who had passed many days in pain, but since he could not offer interest in exchange, he got a miser’s beneficence. No one came. Yet the instant he called to mind the Jewel of Thought, that Treasury of Mercy took discus in hand and ran. Knowing what great torment was being endured, he leapt from his Garud bird throne. His is a fame that is heard from age to age: he has never delayed when a person was in need. So, says Sur, on this present occasion cannot think why he has forgotten— me.

142

005752_MCLI005_250_PoetsPetition_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 142



005752_MCLI005_250_PoetsPetition_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 143



005752_MCLI005_250_PoetsPetition_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 144



ABBREVIATIONS

BhP Bhāgavata Purāṇa Mbh Mahābhārata NPS Nāgarīpracāriṇī Sabhā (i.e., Kāśī Nāgarīpracāriṇī Sabhā), especially with regard to its widely used edition of the Sūrsāgar. Skt. Sanskrit V.S. Vikram Saṃvat, a lunar calendrical system that provides a date usually corresponding to C.E. + 57

145

005752_MCLI005_260_EM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 145



005752_MCLI005_260_EM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 146



NOTES TO THE TRANSLATION

1 2

1

1

1 1

1

1

1 Dūb grass, a common species, and curd have long been paired in ritual contexts, a blade of the former serving as an applicator for a drop of the latter. In the immediate context of the poem, Nanda may be meant—he is often portrayed as rural royalty—but Kams looms not far away. 4 The iconic flute-playing pose in which Krishna appears with bent neck, hips, and knees. 6 Nimi can designate either the eyelids or the blink that they make possible, but also the mythological king Nimi who stands behind the eyelids. He was cursed by Vasishtha to be bodiless (hence his semisomatic form as eyelids), a fate he shares with Kama. 7 This is a puzzle poem: see Hawley 2016. 8 Another puzzle poem. The “sons of the sea” turn out to be the gopī pearls who adore the child Krishna and cluster at Yashoda’s door to catch a glimpse of him. Surrounding him thus, they are his necklace of adoration. 10 The moon was produced when gods and demons churned the ocean to extract the liquid of immortality from the primeval milk ocean. The moon is the vessel of this liquid, which explains its beautiful glow. 12 The cobra has a jewel in its hood that lights the snake’s way and serves as its balancing mechanism. Human beings who spot it are said to be spellbound, unable to look away.

147

005752_MCLI005_260_EM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 147



notes to the translation

1

1 2

1

1 2

1

16 As Krishna’s face responds to Yashoda’s ugly anger, it is in danger of losing its lunar pigment and becoming like the sun. This is the “new house” into which the moon seems to have passed—a disaster for cakor birds, since they are said to draw their entire subsistence from moonbeams. 18 Krishna swallowed a forest fire, one of the demonic forces unleashed on him by Kams. Brahma once stole away a whole group of cowherds and cattle in Krishna’s absence, but Krishna, discovering them gone, simply manifested substitutes, to Brahma’s amazement (BhP 10.13.1464). 20 Throughout the waxing “white” fortnight the moon fills gradually with luminous divine nectar; in the waning “black” fortnight the process is reversed. The latter fortnight bears Krishna’s name. 21 In the original the term of address “mother” (māī) makes it clear that one gopī is addressing another. Similarly, as in Poems 12 and 36, rī indicates a female friend. Each element in the cluster that extends from wagtails to bees serves as a standard term of comparison for the eyes, and with these begins the poem’s steady downward descent according to the śikhnakh (head-to-toe) paradigm until the mention of Krishna’s neck (dove) before his nose (parrot), hovering above his pomegranate teeth and coral lips, signals that something disruptive is about to occur. At that point Murali the flute rides in on “two elephants”— Krishna’s arms—“sounding an alarm” that disrupts the silent visual flow. This, however, heralds the gods, who compensate for the interruption of the śikh-nakh momentum with their own motif of descent: a shower of heavenly flowers recognizing the magic of the moment. 22 The two streams are presumably the Jamuna and Ganga before they meet at Allahabad.

148

005752_MCLI005_260_EM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 148



notes to the translation

1

1

1

1

1

23 In this version of the milk ocean story Krishna’s arms, described as “a pair of peerless branches” or roots, serve as the two halves of the snake Vasuki, who acts as a rope; his flute (reading beṇa > veṇu, as against the critical edition’s beṣa) is Mount Mandar, which the gods and asuras used as a churning stick; and the music of his flute is the immortal liquid that emerges when Vasuki’s rope causes Mandar’s churning stick to swivel. Mohini is the feminine emanation of Vishnu/Krishna who lured away the demons so that they would not succeed in capturing the immortal ambrosia from the gods. Passion is Kama. 24 The episode ironically called “the gift” (dān līlā), in which Krishna stops the gopīs as they take their milk products to market in Mathura and demands a tax—to be paid in their products or, metaphorically, more. See Poems 41, 42, and 46. 25 The omens she mentions are portents of love. All of them involve fluttering sensations: the moment when the wind lifts the upper portion of the sari, the feeling of palpitation in the heart, and a twitching in the muscles of the eyelids or shoulder. In a woman, these twitches are thought to be good omens if they occur on the left side of the body and bad omens if they occur on the right. In a man, it is the reverse. 27 The Ashvin twins begotten by Surya, the sun, when he became a horse to mate with his wife, Sanjna, who had concealed herself in the form of a mare (aśvinī). They are renowned for their eternally luminous youth. 28 A Brahman woman has prepared food to take to Krishna, but her angry husband refuses to allow it. In response, “she held fast in her heart to the Lord as she had heard of him, and renounced her body, which was governed by the bonds of karma” (BhP 10.23.34). Compare Poems 29-30.

149

005752_MCLI005_260_EM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 149



notes to the translation

1

1

30 Defiantly and colloquially, she bids her husband kill her by thrashing her body against the hardest surface imaginable—the one that most clearly signifies his honor: his head. 33 Double entendre: as nouns, giri and parat mean not “fall” but “mountain.” It is in such a landscape that the ascetic Shiva sits as he shields the earth from the more-than-mountainous weight of the Ganges as she descends from heaven, where she is the Milky Way.

1

34 Krishna defeated the bull demon Arishta, whose name means evil, calamity, or disaster.

1

35 Lotus? Pearls? This is the first challenge of many in this puzzle poem. See Hawley 2016.

1

1

38 As Krishna’s female manifestation, the flute Murali is compared to Mohini (Poem 23), and the liquor of immortality is likened either to the overall brilliance of Krishna’s face or specifically to the wetness of his lips. The waxing and waning moon is a vessel alternately filled with and emptied of the translucent divine liquid of immortality, called amṛt (deathless). Hence when Krishna’s face is compared to a full moon, it is natural to think of it as endowed with this amṛt. The gopīs protest that Krishna’s flute has first access to this moonbeam-saliva juice, while they, despite their many efforts to obtain him through austere vows (compare Poem 37), must accept Murali’s leftovers transmitted to them as her music. 40 Perhaps she has in mind the complete absence of concern for social conventions that a renunciant adopts, since she speaks of having undertaken a purificatory discipline of “mind and words and acts.”

150

005752_MCLI005_260_EM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 150



notes to the translation

46 Pleasure, gain, righteousness, and release (kāma, artha, dharma, mokṣa). 2 The dān līlā begins as a morning adventure, but Krishna is so successful in trapping the gopī in a quarrel full of “ambrosial words” that evening is soon at hand. The poet plays with the opposition between night and day by identifying the sun as “the enemy of night” (sārang ripu). This he contrasts to the moon, whose face is marked by shadows that are thought to resemble deer (mrig cand). 1

50 1 The gopī faults Brahma (“the Creator”) for not giving her enough eyes to take in the sight of Govind, i.e., Krishna (compare Poem 192). 1

1

1

1

1

59 A closely related version of this poem appears under the signature of Hit Harivamsh (Snell 1991: 194). 63 Triumph and Victory (ajay and vijay) are the gatekeepers of Vaikunth, Vishnu’s heavenly realm, and are renowned not only for this act of eternal cooperation but also for the demonic forms these demiurges assume as history develops—this, in response to a curse leveled against them by Sanak. 64 When one untangles the intricate knot of references that structure this puzzle poem, it comes clear that this is the rainy season. The heroine’s confidante is admonishing her to abandon her pique and accept her lover once again. 65 The confrontation between Arjun and Karna in the Mahabharata ended in the latter’s death and was particularly poignant because the warring protagonists were sons of a common mother, Kunti. 68 Since Radha’s beauty is incomparable in “all three worlds” (heaven, atmosphere, and earth), who can this new beauty be? It must be

151

005752_MCLI005_260_EM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 151



notes to the translation

Krishna dressed as a woman; being male, he does challenge Radha’s title. In concluding, the gopī who speaks urges the two of them to repair to their trysting place, abandoning their “cleverness”— including, presumably, their clothes. 1

1

1 2

1

72 This sounds like tides, and the moon that makes tides rise is Krishna’s face. It is less clear, however, whether the “two seas of ambrosia” are to be interpreted as the gopī’s eyes, filling with tears of joy; Krishna’s eyes, opening wide in response to his smile; or the two faces that meet in this exchange of glances. 83 In order of appearance, the creatures (or parts thereof ) listed are outshone by Radha’s eyes, nose, waist, neck, cheeks, thighs, lips, teeth, and braid. For details, see Hawley 2016. 84 As usual, the reference is to the milk ocean. “Rohini’s darling” is Rohini’s namesake, the lunar asterism called “the red one” (rohiṇī) because its most brilliant star is the reddish Aldebaran. “Tree-monarch” probably refers to the palmyra. See Hawley 2016a for explanations relating to other aspects of the natural world mentioned in this intentionally obscure puzzle poem. By virtue of her beauty, the young woman being addressed relegates the particular “brilliance” that each of them radiates to second-class status. The most brilliant of all, the sun, loses its pride of place to the red-hot anger the heroine evidently emits. Krishna must have misbehaved very badly, lavishing his attentions on someone else. 87 Krishna and Radha look at their reflections in the Jamuna, which is called “daughter of the sun” because Surya is held to be its, or her, father. Thus, indirectly—by means of his daughter—the sun reflects the moon, or rather, two moons at the same time. The two fruits probably refer to the pearl that hangs from Radha’s nose ring and its reflection. The eight cakors are the couple’s four eyes—each longing for the moon in the beloved’s face—doubled by their reflection.

152

005752_MCLI005_260_EM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 152



notes to the translation

1

1

1

1

1

1

89 Two translations are possible. In the first—which draws from a classic aesthetic trope of the distraught heroine—the gopī who speaks, offended by the bedraggled appearance of her lover after a night he has spent with someone else, addresses her observations to Krishna directly. In the second, she takes counsel with herself. 92 The heroine’s friend contrasts the brilliant red color of the madder vine (“desire’s vermilion dye”) with the somewhat more subdued yellow of the cherry plum or myrobalan plant. Yellow is in fact the color of the garment Krishna wears, so the confidante is warning that if he were to be excited (“reddened”) by the love of another woman, he would certainly be ready to take on her “color,” a new and different emotional hue. 93 On Vishnu (or as Surdas understands things, Krishna) as Mohini, “the temptress,” see the note to Poem 23. 94 This poem can be read either as a description of the lover’s longing for the beloved from whom he is parted, or conversely, as her longing for him. It is a sort of Rorschach test, hence two translations. 97 The term biparīti (Skt. vaiparītya) is a technical one, indicating the feeling on the part of one of the partners that his/her lover is simultaneously present and absent. The heroine’s confidante chalks up the problem to the fact that her friend, whom she compares to a day-blooming lotus, is mismatched to a lover who rules the night. Only a night-blooming lotus thrives in the presence of the moon, and she is not that sort. Because the moon was churned from milk ocean, it can be said to have an “ocean home.” 98 Chandra, the moon, wedded twenty-seven daughters of Daksha but particularly favored one of them: the fourth of the lunar asterisms, Rohini. This caused the others to protest to Daksha, who cursed Chandra to grow ill with consumption. As his health faded,

153

005752_MCLI005_260_EM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 153



notes to the translation

other aspects of nature dependent upon the moon went into crisis. This alarmed the gods, who appealed to Daksha for a reprieve. Daksha responded by shortening the curse so that the moon would wane only for a fortnight, then grow again to full strength—only to be afflicted with another attack of the disease, and so on. Daksha’s curse thus supplements Rahu’s appetite as a second explanation for the periodic slimness of the moon. 1

99 This exact phrase also introduces Poem 102, which has a very different plot.

2

100 The pendant portion of the tāṭank earring is suspended from the ear by a delicate chain that loops around the entire ear—a snare for errant eyes, as it were. The word gun (Skt. guṇa) has two major meanings. Familiarly it designates a person’s virtues, so the fact that Krishna’s traits are “kohl-black” (añjan gun) ought to cause a certain restraint. But gun can inhibit movement in a second sense too, since it also means line, cord, or rope—the “collyrium rope” that keeps the eyes “in tow.”

1

103 Emeralds are included in a long list of dark-colored items that might remind the heroine of Krishna. Musk powder is black.

1

1

110 Implicitly, the entire poem has been about similes—features of the natural world that have habitually suffered by comparison to various aspects of Radha’s beauty—but here the master simile becomes clear: the red-hot light of Radha’s face when angry, eclipsed by the “night” of her sari.

1

111 The poem depicts the heroine’s face in profile, half hidden by the veil she draws to shield herself from contact with the outside world.

1

112 This richly fragrant tree has specific connections with Krishna, starting with the color of its black branches and yellow-red flow-

154

005752_MCLI005_260_EM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 154



notes to the translation

2

1

1

1

ers. Krishna once sat in the kadamb after spiriting away the gopīs’ saris and even claimed that the saris with which he festooned its branches were its flowers. The poet follows this impulse by naming the tree’s fruit “immortality” (amī phal), whose identity as love emerges in the final verse. The appearance of a sage (muni) in this series is difficult, since all the others are animals. The key may be provided by the word suk, which in this context would seem most naturally to mean “parrot,” yet may also designate Śuk the sage, whose dedication to the life of renunciation was so total that he became known as foremost among ascetics (see Poem 47). On this reading, the first words in the series (suk muni, meaning literally “the parrot sage”) would denote “the sage Śuk”—or perhaps one could take the momentum in the opposite direction, imagining muni birds, little sages, to pair with the parrots. The remaining animals in the set also suggest references beyond themselves. The monkey (marakaṭ) would be Hanuman; the crow (kāg), Bhushundi (both are celebrated devoees of Ram); and the cuckoo (kokil) would stand in for the company of poets, whose sweet words are often compared to that bird’s melodious call. None of these malleable creatures, however, approaches the heights commanded by Radha. 115 This puzzle poem trades on the ability of Sanskrit-based languages to combine individual words into long compound entities typically glued together by case relations that are understood but not expressed. See Hawley 2016. 116 Compare Poem 120, also relating to Holi. Sākh is mysterious; kumkum (colored powder) contributes to various beauty markings; javādi, probably a perfume derived from a substance exuded by the civet cat, and aromatic saffron accentuate a woman’s attractions. “The sixteen marks of beauty” are the adornments that a fully attired young woman should display—everything from earrings and a forehead mark to red dye on the bottoms of the feet. 117 As a boar Vishnu tunneled down to rescue the earth; as a fish he swallowed the demon Hayagriv, who had stolen the Vedas from

155

005752_MCLI005_260_EM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 155



notes to the translation

Brahma’s mouth; and as Vishnu himself he had defeated Madhu and his twin brother Kaitabh. For the rest, see Poem 18, the Glossary, and Hawley 2016. 1

1

1

1

1

118 The go-between warns Radha that the intense suffering Krishna experiences—or so she says—in being separated from her could incinerate the world and restart the cosmic cycle from its watery beginnings, when Vishnu was recumbent. After that, he churned the ocean to reconnect with Lakshmi/Shri, and Ram, “harnessed the sea” to be reunited with Sita. Wounding the ocean with arrows, Ram threatened it with dessication, then caused a bridge of stones and other materials to be built through it to Lanka. 120 Again, a reference to the fact that in a Hindu wedding ceremony the garments of bride and groom are knotted together before they circumambulate the Vedic fire and solemnize their union. 124 An allusion to what other poems (such as Poem 44) explain in greater detail: once one is dyed with the color of Krishna—the word means “black”—one cannot return to a lighter shade. Nothing short of Krishna’s actual, sensual presence can sustain these gopīs. 125 The bee’s body resembles Krishna’s in its color, and his brilliant highlights (Udho’s jewelry—the markings on a bee’s snout and tail) are reminiscent of the bright yellow pītāmbar Krishna wears. 129 Krishna revivified the son of his Brahman teacher Sandipani and granted a range of beneficences to the lowly gardener Sudama, who offered garlands to him and Balaram before they entered the wrestling ring to fight Chanur and Mushtik (BhP 10.41.43–53). This Sudama is not to be confused with the penurious Brahman who became a friend of Krishna when they were pupils of Sandipani in Ujjain and was later the recipient of great boons from Krishna (See Poems 338-42 in the 2015 MCLI edition).

156

005752_MCLI005_260_EM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 156



notes to the translation

2

The name Hari is often interpreted as meaning “deliverer,” the one who removes obstacles that face his devotees.

130 The Indian cuckoo is the koel. Perhaps the women see themselves in the crow, having been forsaken by Krishna after nurturing him to manhood and incubating his amorous sensibilities. 2 The gopīs confirm Krishna’s “blackness” by calling to mind two unethical acts he committed in his past—when he was Ram and when he was a dwarf, “brothers,” so to speak, to his present incarnation. Ram killed the monkey king Vali by engaging him in combat and then ambushing him from a location where he himself could not be seen. In his dwarf avatar, Vishnu hoodwinked King Bali, whose hegemony had begun to eclipse his own (compare Poem 159). These avatars of Vishnu are figured as Krishna’s brothers. He is thus a cheat in a clan of cheats.

1

1

1

2 1

131 Venus is auspicious for every horoscope when faced head-on, but here it appears to the right (dāhinai). Perhaps a second meaning of dāhinai is involved: south. Mathura, to which Krishna has repaired, is south of present-day Brindavan. In India as in the West, Venus is the heavenly body most closely associated with love. 134 Haṃs birds, translated here as “geese,” are known for drinking the pure waters of Lake Mansarovar, high in the Himalayas. Its waters are said to be collected from streams that trickle down from the toes of Vishnu, hence their association with Krishna’s feet. This jewel is the sun, dinakara, literally “day maker.” 135 A small rod is used to apply mascara and certain kinds of medicated ointments to the edges of the eyes. Such unguents smart when they are introduced. They typically contain a light irritant such as camphor, which stimulates the eye to clean itself. The gopī suggests that Udho is using the wrong rod entirely, however—some huge, ungainly, blunt variety.

157

005752_MCLI005_260_EM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 157



notes to the translation

136 1 The cātak (cuckoo) is said to drink only water that falls during the svāti asterism, which comes at the very end of the rainy season. 1

1

1

1

138 Here as elsewhere (such as in Poem 118) the word “engagement” (sagāi) has two levels of meaning: on the one hand, a simple encounter; on the other, the sort that leads to marriage—or ought to. 143 Keshav, a name of Krishna, invariably denotes a person who has ample or beautiful hair; Keshi, the name of the horse demon who charged him, tends to mean “hairy” in a wilder sense and specifically designates the bearer of a horse’s mane. It is possible that specific reference is being made to manner in which Keshi met his demise. Krishna elbowed his jaw in two—death by separation. 145 As often (compare Poem 136), the cuckoo (papīhā) is praised for enduring in the face of its own strict insistence that its thirst be satisfied only with rainwater produced in the presence of the lunar asterism svāti. 147 The contrast is between yoga (jog) and enjoyment (bhog), and the gopīs interpret the latter as being specifically sexual (sañjog, Skt. saṃyoga). They say they have been denied this esoteric yoga in favor of the exoteric sort Udho spreads.

148 1 This līlā may refer not only to a general lapse of concentration but also to the specific, beguiling acts of play for which Krishna is famous. 2 The dying king is Dasharath, king of Ayodhya and father of Ram and his brothers. 1

156 The chance mention of Krishna’s hands in the preceding verse brings to mind a common expression that begins with that word—

158

005752_MCLI005_260_EM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 158



notes to the translation

in modern Hindi, hāth kangan ko ārasī kyā. Though it may take a mirror to see what one’s face looks like, one hardly needs a mirror to see if there is a bangle on one’s wrist. 1 2

1

1

1

1

159 The reference is to rāg sārang, with sārang meaning “deer” (Compare Poem 134). Shurpanakha fell in love with Ram, who ultimately cut off her nose. Ram killed the demoness Tataka with a single arrow. Perhaps the poet wants us to recall that it was Tataka’s devotion to her husband, Sund, that caused her the misfortune of becoming a demon in the first place. There too, then, the Lord would be depicted as requiting love with destructive anger. 161 The special conceit of this composition is announced in a striking alliteration that concludes this verse: catur cāturī cūri. Individually, these words mean “clever,” “cleverness,” and “powdered,” but their proximity to one another suggests a level of intimate connection. It seems the clever one, Krishna, has pulverized himself into cleverness, as an Ayurvedic doctor might grind an herbal remedy to powdered form so that it could be taken by a patient. 163 The four watches of night are congruent with the four yugs, the great ages through which the world passes before disintegrating altogether and reappearing in another form. 165 Probably we are meant to think of the puruṣa sūkta (Rig Veda 10.90.13a): candramā manaso jātaś / cakṣoḥ sūryo ajāyata, “The moon was born from his mind; from his eye the sun was born” (Doniger 1981: 31). 167 The original says paripota, that is, high-quality glass, and the reference is to the hunchback woman of Mathura whose deformity Krishna removed.

159

005752_MCLI005_260_EM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 159



notes to the translation

1

1

175 Here the gāruḍī is invoked, the physician whose mantras (gāḍū) cure snakebite. This healer intones various mantras in the name of the eagle who is Vishnu’s mount—Garud is legendary for preying on snakes—and throws cowries or black lentils in the direction where the snakes are thought to be, hitting the cobras’ hoods and bidding them remove the poison by whatever method they used to inject it in the first place. Thus the cure reverses the direction of the affliction, which is especially appropriate if, as in this case, the doctor himself is the cause of the disease. 177 Radha’s face. Lotuses grow in low-lying rivers and ponds, so it is startling to imagine them sprouting from the tops of the world’s highest mountains, like upside-down rivers forming from the Himalayan snows of her breasts and flowing to the “plains” above.

179 1 The gopīs hope that by feeding the crows they can induce them to call out, thereby producing an omen that the person for whom they have been waiting is about to appear. But the crows refuse to eat, and the following verse confirms that the long-awaited person has not come. 1

1

180 The offering of a thousand pots of water (Skt. sahasraghaṭābhiṣekha) over the liṅga, the emblem of Shiva, is a celebrated form of piety, intended to reduce the intense store of heat Shiva has accumulated through his rigorous ascetic practices. 181 Rukmini, daughter of the king of Vidarbh, sends a message to Krishna from her capital, Kundanpur (Kundinpur), via a Brahman messenger. When Rukmini and Krishna had heard descriptions of each other, they had separately determined that they should marry. Rukmini’s aged parents concurred, but her brother Rukmin, wishing to marry the sister of another monarch, Shishupal, promised Rukmini to the latter in return. Rukmini evidently refers to this contravention of her own wishes and those of her parents when

160

005752_MCLI005_260_EM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 160



notes to the translation

she says that “customs and canons and decorum have . . . eroded”. As to the “crows [who] have “usurped the role of swans,” i.e., haṃs birds, she is probably thinking of Shishupal himself, to whom she returns in the second half of the poem. There she employs the traditional metaphor likening him to a jackal and Krishna to a lion. 1

1

1

1

1

184 This insult poem alleges that Krishna’s Yadu clan is descended from Maya, the female cause of cosmic chaos. Only one manuscript (J4) gives the poem a definitive narrative context, positioning it as if it had been sung at the wedding of Krishna and Rukmini. 185 The elephant king Gajendra was attacked by a crocodile (Poems 201, 202, and 216). 190 Either this is equivalent to “beating a dead horse”—or the gopī means it more literally. The moment Krishna deserted Braj and left for Mathura he committed his first act of murder against the gopīs’ love; his departure for Dvaraka is the second (compare charcoal, Poems 126 and 161). 191 Kalayavan, “the black Greek,” is a king who allied himself with Jarasandh to mount an offensive against Krishna when he was ruler of Mathura. To deflect that attack and spare Mathura any damage, Krishna led his forces away from the city toward the west, where he built the fortified city of Dvaraka either in the ocean (BhP 10.50.50) or close to it. 192 The idea of the “submarine fire” (baḍavānal) explains why sea level does not rise although the ocean is constantly being fed by rivers and rain. The gopī imagines it as a force Krishna has harnessed at Dvaraka and directed against her. She seems to link his power to do so with the fact that he is brother to Sankarshan (Balaram), who has strong affinities, through his snake associations, with whatever is subterranean or submarine.

161

005752_MCLI005_260_EM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 161



notes to the translation

1

1

1

1

193 This poem is interpreted here as a dialogue. In the first four verses one person—probably an older woman of Braj—berates her younger friends for yielding to Krishna’s charms, labeling him a foreigner in the process. One of the gopīs responds (“What to do?”), and the poet describes her appearance. 195 Vishnu/Krishna gave life to the moon in the first place, allowing it to be churned from the milk ocean and causing the world’s first moonrise. Hence from this woman’s perspective it is the highest ingratitude for the moon to repeat the act in such a fiendish way. It plays the role of an adversarial Kama, turning against the absent Krishna by attacking his stand-ins—those who love him. 196 This poem is most plausibly interpreted as describing the moment when Krishna and Radha met for one last time on the occasion of a solar eclipse. Both repaired to Kurukshetra, the most auspicious place for observing such an event, and there met after a long interval of separation (BhP 10.82.40–43, but Radha’s name is not used). Rukmini was present as part of the entourage that accompanied Krishna from Dvaraka. 197 Given that Krishna is portrayed as having four arms, his wife cannot very well be Rukmini, as the NPS editors apparently thought when they placed the poem in the section describing the gopīs’ encounter with Rukmini at Kurukshetra (Poem 196). It is true that Rukmini has an association with the ocean, but the tie between Lakshmi (or Shri) and the ocean is more direct on several counts, and only she qualifies as consort of the four-armed Vishnu. That feature becomes crucial as the poem progresses. At the end, is the gopī recommending her own simple cowherder’s dress and unencumbered mien or is she asking for Lakshmi to arrange for Krishna himself to return to his two-armed form? The operative term, release, is the theologically loaded word mukti, which familiarly connotes liberation from the cycle of births and deaths. Here, though, it would be a release from the heavy and formal encumbrances of divinity. It’s god who needs releasing, the gopī implies,

162

005752_MCLI005_260_EM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 162



notes to the translation

not ordinary, loving humans like herself, ready to open their two arms to an embrace. 1

1

1

198 Krishna has been invited to Dhritarashtra’s palace by the evil Duryodhan (“the Kauravs’ scion” and Dhritarashtra’s first son ) so that he may witness the majesty in which the Kauravs live, now that they have sent their Pandav cousins away (see Poem 203). Krishna, however, as a partisan of the Pandavs, prefers to go instead to the modest hut of Vidur, who is the son of Vyas by a slave girl and therefore Dhritarashtra’s half-brother. Vidur, who has consistently advised Dhritarashtra of the folly of Duryodhan’s offenses against the Pandavs, has remained a loyal devotee of Krishna even though he belongs, albeit as a halfbreed, to the Kaurav clan. When Krishna arrives at Vidur’s hut, he asks Daruk, his charioteer, to find out whether Vidur is to be found there or elsewhere. Vidur’s wife, who has been left at home, does not even let Daruk finish his sentence before she rushes out the door to greet her much anticipated visitor—in an amiable state of domestic dishevelment. 199 As reported in a well-known śloka from the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Kunti prays that perennial catastrophes may befall her family so that they may continue to lay claim to Krishna’s help and therefore keep him within view (BhP 1.8.25). 200 Durvasa, an ascetic famed for his stubborn, angry temperament, addresses Vishnu, and a third figure is in the wings—King Ambarish, a man so enveloped in the service of Vishnu that he came to be seen as a signal exemplar of bhakti (Poem 229). The legendarily righteous Ambarish had for a year been observing the dedicated fast that occurs on the eleventh day of each lunar fortnight, a fundamental aspect of Vaishnava devotion. As practiced by Ambarish, its power so alarmed the rival deity Indra that he dispatched Durvasa to interfere, but when he did, Vishnu in turn instructed his sudarśan cakra, the “beautiful disc” that is his primary battle weapon, to pursue Durvasa to the ends of the earth. Durvasa, desperate, turned to Shiva for help; Shiva referred him to Vishnu; and Vishnu sent him to Ambarish—the moment at which

163

005752_MCLI005_260_EM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 163



notes to the translation

this poem occurs. In its aftermath Ambarish will plead for Durvasa, and Vishnu cannot ignore his devotee’s wish. 1

1 2

1

1

2

201 The renowned fourteenth-century Maharashtrian poet-saint Namdev benefited from Krishna’s mercy as an old man. When a drenching rain washed away the thatched roof from his poor hut, Krishna appeared in the form of an able-bodied youth and restored it. 202 To save Gajendra from the jaws of a crocodile, Vishnu hurried from his heavenly home on the back of the bird Garud. The Kauravs invited their Pandav cousins to feast with them and then had them spend the night in a guesthouse made of lac, a highly flammable material. After the Pandavs went to sleep, the Kauravs set fire to the house, but to no avail. Krishna, learning of their evil intentions, had had a tunnel built so that the Pandavs could escape without the Kauravs becoming aware that their plan had gone awry. 203 Draupadi was the wife of the five Pandav brothers, whom Duhshasan, Duryodhan’s younger brother, sought to disrobe. 205 Hiranyakashipu earned his unearthly power by standing with hands aloft for ten thousand years as an act of piety aimed at winning Brahma’s favor; Ravan took similar steps to sway Shiva. Father to Prahlad, Hiranyakashipu regards his fatherhood as competing with the fatherhood of Vishnu, and tries to kill his son for responding to that greater parent. Vishnu intervenes in his man-lion avatar, tearing apart Hiranyakashipu instead. Ravan, who as Vibhishan’s older brother ought to be his protector, turns against his sibling and reaps a similar death at the hands of Ram. As with Prahlad and Vibhishan, it was thanks to Vishnu’s loyalty that Dhruv became a long-reigning monarch upon the demise of the senior family member who had turned against him. In his case it was his father, Uttanapad. Vishnu makes him the North Star, which reintroduces the motif of wandering beggars in the persons of the

164

005752_MCLI005_260_EM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 164



notes to the translation

sun and moon, who constantly circle him as if they “beg forever” while Dhruv reposes in Hari’s confidence. 207 1 The semar tree produces a beautiful green fruit, attractive to the parrot because it so closely resembles the mango in color and shape. The skin is firm, as if shielding some luscious fruit, and the bird must peck hard to break it. When it does, however, it discovers only an inedible white cottony substance that wafts away in the breeze. 2 The concept of the name of Ram (rām nām) has a broad, nonsectarian range, as does the term “Hari.” “The True Guru” (satguru) is similarly nonsectarian, indicating the divine principle within each soul or mind (man) that serves to instruct it in the path to enlightenment. The identification of this interior teacher as a priceless jewel is quite common (compare Poem 208). 1

1

2

209 Shiva’s home in the Himalayas and nature as a savant make it appropriate for him to take up the “tree of heaven” (literally “tree of the gods,” surataru; elsewhere kalpavṛkṣ, “wishing tree”) and use it as a pen. When employed to record what the poet has done, however, this wishing tree has the opposite effect from what it ought. Sur’s vices weigh so heavily in comparison with his virtues that they obliterate any hope for the fulfillment of wishes whose objects could have been justly deserved. 212 Perhaps the poet intends to conjure up the familiar tripartite division of human activity into thought, speech, and action (man, vacan, karma), seeing these as potential recipients of the Lord’s mercy, or he may have in mind the somewhat larger trio of outerworldly, other-worldly, and inner-worldly spheres (ādhibhautik, ādhidaivik, ādhyātmik). The bull, ass, and horse demons mentioned here —Ṛṣabh, Dhenuk, and Keśī — all displayed a fierceness that created havoc in the forest where Krishna and Balaram played as boys. Krishna killed them all, sometimes with Balaram’s help, and all were granted salvation in the moment of death by virtue both of his touch and of the unmediated (even if hateful) attention they had focused on him.

165

005752_MCLI005_260_EM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 165



notes to the translation

1

1

1 2

1

1

214 The elephant is Gajendra, whom Vishnu saved from being eaten by a crocodile; the prostitute is Pingala, who considered how much more would be gained by waiting expectantly for Vishnu after waiting anxiously half the night for a customer, or Ganika; the monarch is Nrig, a king cursed by Brahmans to undergo many rebirths until, born a chameleon, he was fished out of a well in Dvaraka by Krishna and restored to his royal status; the Brahman is Ajamil; and the hunter is perhaps Jar, whose arrow was responsible for Krishna’s death. 217 The Serpent, Shesh, is the, the “remainder” of Vishnu. He sup­ ports on his fangs the seven worlds that comprise the universe. To perform this feat he must keep his cobra’s hood erect. If he so much as sighs under the weight of it all, the result is an earthquake. 221 “Brahman,” i.e., Ajamil, as specified in several manuscripts (J2). Parikshit, Arjun’s grandson through Abhimanyu and his wife Uttara, faced the awesome capabilities of the brahmāstra or brahmaśiras weapon, initially fashioned by Shiva himself. It was in the possession of Ashvatthama, who got it from his father, Dron. Ashvatthama used the intense heat of the brahmāstra to kill Parikshit while he lay unborn in the womb of Uttara, but Krishna miraculously canceled its effect after the fact, restoring Parikshit to life (Mbh 10.16.1ff.). Parikshit was the sole remaining heir in the Pandav line, hence the entire purpose of the Mahabharata war hinged on his being saved. Much of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa is addressed to him. 223 The pains are experienced in the material, bodily, and divine realms (compare Poems 212 and 226). 226 The word hari appears eight times in this poem, and the poet construes it differently each time. Without some gloss it would be impossible to convey the relation between these disparate usages,

166

005752_MCLI005_260_EM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 166



notes to the translation so the root meaning “remover” has been inserted as an anchor for translation. To do so, unfortunately, is to remove the pleasure that hearers of the original find in identifying and discriminating between various meanings of hari. 1

232 Fortune is Kamala (“she of the lotus”), or Lakshmi.

167

005752_MCLI005_260_EM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 167



005752_MCLI005_260_EM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 168



GLOSSARY

agh [agh]  snake demon who attempted to swallow Krishna and his boyhood friends as they played, by swelling to such an enormous size that his mouth appeared to be a cave Ahir [ahīr]  pastoral clan in the Mathura region Ajamil [ajāmil] dissolute Brahman who at death cried out for his son Narayan but was answered instead by Vishnu/ Krishna, who also bears the name Narayan Akrur [akrūr]  messenger of Kams from Mathura to Braj Ambarish [ambarīṣ] righteous devotee of Vishnu who came into conflict with the sage Durvasa, who had vowed that no one should surpass his own achievement as a powerful ascetic Arjun [arjun]  third among the Pandav brothers, whom Krishna served as charioteer Bak [bak]  heron who attacked the boy Krishna with his huge beak Balaram [balarām] Krishna’s older brother Bali [bali] righteous asura king whom Krishna opposes in his dwarf avatar Bali [bāli]  see Vali

bandhūk  small tree or bush bearing a bright red flower bimba  fruit likened to the lips because of its red color, oblong shape, and size: it grows to be about two inches long when ripe Brahma [brahmā]  creator god, master of fate Braj [braj]  region surrounding Mathura, encompassing Govardhan, Brindavan, Gokul, and the Jamuna Brindavan [bṛndāvan, vṛndāvan] “Basil Tree (or Wildflower) Wilderness,” Krishna’s home in Braj Brishabhanu [bṛṣabhānu]  father of Radha cakor  bird said to subsist on a diet of moonbeams or glowing coals Chanur [cānur]  wrestler deputed by Kams to fight Krishna and Balaram Damodar [dāmodar] “Rope Belly,” title of Krishna referring to the moment when Yashoda tethered him to a heavy mortar to prevent him from stealing milk products Daruk [dāruk] Krishna’s charioteer Devaki [devakī]  biological mother of Krishna Dhruv [dhruv]  the polestar

169

005752_MCLI005_260_EM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 169



glossary

Draupadi [draupadī]  wife of the five Pandav brothers Dvaraka [dvārakā]  capital of Krishna on the Arabian Sea Gajendra [gajendra] elephant whom Vishnu saved from being eaten by a crocodile, who had grasped his foot Garud [garuḍ]  Vishnu’s eagle mount, enemy of snakes Gokul [gokul]  literally “herd of cattle,” the area near the Jamuna inhabited by Nanda, Yashoda, and their pastoral clan Gopal [gopāl]  “Cowherd,” title of Krishna Gopi [gopī]  cowherd woman or girl Gosai [gosāīṅ, Skt. gosvāmī]  “Master of Cows” or of the senses, i.e., Krishna Govind [govind]  “Master of Cows,” name of Krishna guñjā  bush bearing pods of tiny, bright red berries Haladhar [haladhar]  “Bearer of the Plow”; Balaram haṃs  extremely high-flying bird, probably the bar-headed goose (Anser indicus), renowned in story for its association with Lake Mansarovar, for being able to separate milk from water, and for subsisting only on pearls Hari [hari]  “Remover” (of distress or sin), title of Vishnu, Krishna, or Ram Hiranyakashipu[hiraṇyakaśipu] evil king who was granted a boon

that made him invulnerable to men and animals and who was therefore slain by Vishnu in his man-lion form, a combination of the two Holi [holī]  boisterous spring festival involving the throwing of color Indra [indra]  head of the Vedic pantheon, associated with water and storms Jamuna [jamunā, Skt. yamunā]  river that flows through Braj Janak [janak]  father of Sita Jarasandh [jarāsandh]  king of Magadh, ruling from Girivraj; enemy of Krishna Kalindi [kālindī, kālindrī]  Jamuna as “daughter” of the mountain Kalind, where she originates Kaliya [kāliya]  great black cobra vanquished by Krishna, who danced on his head Kama [kām]  god of love Kams [kaṃs]  usurper king of Mathura; usually regarded as brother of Devaki and maternal uncle of Krishna Kanh [kānh, also kanhāī, kanhaiyā] affectionate vernacular forms of the name Krishna Kundanpur [kuṇḍinpur] city from which Krishna abducted Rukmini Madan [madan]  “The Beguiler,” or Kama; by extension, Krishna

170

005752_MCLI005_260_EM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 170



glossary

Madhav [mādhav] “Descendent of Madhu,” thus belonging to the Yadav lineage: a title of Krishna Mathura [mathurā] ancient capital of the Braj region, located on the Jamuna Maya [māyā]  force of illusion in the world, often personified as female Meru [meru]  mountain at the center of the universe, said to be 84,000 yojanas high Mohan [mohan]  “The Enchanting One,” a title of Krishna Murali [muralī] Krishna’s bamboo flute, personified as female Murari [murāri] Vishnu/Krishna as enemy of the demon Mur Nanda [nanda]  headman of Braj, husband of Yashoda, adoptive father of Krishna Nandanandan [nandanandan]  Nanda’s Delight, a title of Krishna Nanda’s Joy  Nandanandan, a title of Krishna Narad [nārad]  sagely celibate son of Brahma who frequently serves as a divine messenger Pandu [paṇḍu]  patriarch of the Pandavs Prahlad [prahlād]  son of the evil king Hiranyakashipu, whom he defied out of devotion to Vishnu and who was saved from Hiranyakashipu’s wrath when

Vishnu assumed his man-lion avatar to rescue him Pralamba [pralamba] demon who inserted himself into a jumping game with Krishna and his cowherd friends, hoping to abduct Krishna Purana [purāṇa]  one of a series of narrative texts—classically eighteen in number—that report on “old things” Putana [pūtanā]  demoness who flew into Braj as a heron, then metamorphosed into a woman and attempted to poison Krishna as she suckled him Radha [rādhā, rādhikā]  gopi who is supremely beloved by Krishna Rahu [rāhu]  torsoless demon who, along with his torso-brother Ketu, chases the sun and moon, causing eclipses Ram [rām] Rama Ravan [rāvaṇ]  king of Lanka, enemy of Ram Rukmini [rukmiṇī] Krishna’s chief wife at Dvaraka Sanak [sanak, śanak]  oldest son of Brahma, who was the world’s first ascetic sañjīvanī  Himalayan medicinal herb responsible for restoring Lakshman to life in the Ramayana Shesh [śeṣ]  serpentine “remnant” of Vishnu, upon whom he reclines at the moment of cosmic creation

171

005752_MCLI005_260_EM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 171



glossary

Shishupal [śiśupāl]  warrior who spoke demeaningly of Krishna at ceremonies marking the coronation of Yudhishthir Shravan [śrāvaṇ]  lunar month corresponding to July–August Shri [śrī]  Lakshmi, consort of Vishnu Shuk [śuk, śukdev]  son of Vyas, who delayed his birth twelve years so that he could live a life of meditation Shurpanakha [śūrpanakhā] ​ sister of Ravan, whose nose Ram cut off Shyam [śyām]  “Dark, Dusky,” a title of Krishna Sumeru [sumeru]  Mount Meru Suphalak [suphalak]  father of Akrur tamāl  tree with exceedingly dark and glossy bark Tataka [tāṭakā]  demoness who attacked Ram and Lakshman near Karush Trinavart [tṛṇāvart] storm demon who attempted to kill the cowherd Krishna by sucking him into the vortex of a tornado

Udho [ūdho, Skt. uddhava]  messenger of Krishna to Braj Uma [umā]  Parvati, Shiva’s consort Vali [vāli, vālī. bāli, bālī] monkey king who was killed by Ram; brother of Sugriv Vasudev [vasudev] biological father of Krishna Vatsa [vatsa]  calf demon whom Krishna grabbed by the legs and whirled in the air before flinging him against a tree Veda [ved]  “Wisdom,” ancient Hindu scripture Vibhishan [vibhīṣaṇ] brother of Ravan, devotee of Ram, successor to the throne of Lanka Vrishabh [vṛṣabh]  bull demon (also called Arishta) who attacked Krishna in his youth Yadav [yādav]  or Yadus. Clan descended from Yadu, including Krishna Yashoda [yaśodā]  wife of Nanda and adoptive mother of Krishna

172

005752_MCLI005_260_EM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 172



BIBLIOGRAPHY Editions and Translations Sūrdās. 1882. Sūr sāgar. 5th ed. Lucknow: Newal Kishore Press. ———. 1899. Sūr śatak pūrbārdh. Ed. Bhāratendu Hariścandra. Patna and Bankipur: Khaḍgabilās Press. ———. 1936. Sūrsāgar. Ed. Jagannāthdās “Ratnākar” et al. 1st ed., vol. 2 [but vol. 1 never appeared]. Banaras: Kāśī Nāgarīpracāriṇī Sabhā. ———. 1957. [Sūrsāgar] Śrīsūrsāgar. Ed. Rādhākṛṣṇadās. Bombay: Khemrāj Śrīkṛṣṇadās. ———. 1962. Sūrsāgar ke sau ratna. Ed. with a commentary by Prabhudayāl Mītal. Mathura: Sāhitya Saṃsthān. ———. 1965. Sūr-sāgar. Ed. Javāharlāl Caturvedī. Calcutta: Śrīnand Mīnānī. ———. 1970. Sūrsāgar. Ed. Bālmukund Caturvedī. Mathura: Śrī Gopāl Pustakālay. ———. 1972 and 1976 [1948]. Sūrsāgar. Ed. Jagannāthdās “Ratnākar,” Nandadulāre Vājpeyī, et al. 2 vols. Varanasi: Kāśī Nāgarīpracāriṇī Sabhā. ———. 1974–1978. Sūr-granthāvalī. 4 vols. Ed. Sītārām Caturvedī. Varanasi: Akhil Bhāratīya Vikram Pariṣad. ———. 1976. Sūr-pañcaśatak. Ed. with a commentary by Manmohan Gautam. Delhi: Sūrya-Prakāśan. ———. 1979. Sūrsāgar. Ed. Mātāprasād Gupta and prepared for publication by Udayśaṅkar Śāstrī. Agra: Agra University. ———. 1982. Pad Sūrdāsjī kā/The Padas of Surdas. Ed. Gopal Narayan Bahura and Kenneth E. Bryant. Jaipur: Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II Museum. ———. 1988. Sūrsāgar. Ed. Vrajeśvar Varmā. Varanasi: Jñān Maṇḍal. ———. 1991 [1974]. Sūrsāgar saṭīk. Ed. with a paraphrase by Hardev Bāharī and Rājendra Kumār. 2 vols. Allahabad: Lokbhāratī Prakāśan. ———. 2005. Sūrsāgar (Śrīkṛṣṇsa līlātmak and dvādaś skandhātmak). Ed. with a commentary by Kiśorī Lāl Gupta. 5 vols. Allahabad: Lok Bhāratī. Alston, A. J. 1993. The Divine Sports of Krishna: Poems of Sūr Dāsa. London: Shanti Sadan.

173

005752_MCLI005_260_EM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 173



bibliography

Bahadur, Krishna P. 1999. The Poems of Sūradāsa. New Delhi: Abhinav. Bryant, Kenneth E. 1978. Poems to the Child-God: Structures and Strategies in the Poetry of Sūrdās. Berkeley: University of California Press. Hawley, John Stratton. 2009. The Memory of Love: Sūrdās Sings to Krishna. New York: Oxford University Press. Nilsson, Usha. 1982. Surdas. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi. Sadani, Jaikishandas, trans. 1991. Rosary of Hymns (Selected Poems) of Surdas. New Delhi: Wiley Eastern. Sharma, K. C., K. C. Yadav, and Pushpendra Sharma. 1997. Sūradāsa: A Critical Study of His Life and Work. Delhi: Eastern Books. Vaudeville, Charlotte. 1971. Pastorales par Soûr-Dâs. Paris: Gallimard. Other Sources Abbott, Justin E., and Narhar R. Godbole. 1982 [1933-34]. Stories of Indian Saints: Translation of Mahipati’s Marathi Bhaktavijaya. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1982. Askari, Syed Hasan. 1965. “Historical Value of the Afsana-i-Badshahan or Tarikh-i-Afghani.” Journal of Indian History 43: 183–200. Behl, Aditya, and Simon Weightman, with S. N. Pandey. 2000. Mañjhan: Madhumālatī, an Indian Sufi Romance. Oxford: Oxford University Press. Bhāradvāj, Jagdīś. 1972. Kṛṣṇa kāvya meṅ līlā-varṇan. New Delhi: Nirmalkīrti Prakāśan. Bryant, Kenneth E. 1980. “Toward a Critical Edition of the Sursagar.” In Early Hindi Devotional Literature in Current Research, ed. Winand M. Callewaert. Leuven: Departement Oriëntalistiek, Katholieke Universiteit Leuven, 5–16. ———. 1983. “The Fatehpur Manuscript and the Sūrsāgar Critical Edition.” In Bhakti in Current Research, 1979–1982, ed. Monika Thiel-Horstmann. Berlin: Dietrich Reimer Verlag, 37–52. ———. 1992. “Three-three-two Versus Four-by-four: Metrical Frames for the Padas of Sūrdās.” In Devotional Literature in South Asia, ed. R. S. McGregor. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 209–224. ———. 1999. “The Bottom of the Page: Representing Variation in an Oral Tradition.” In Studies in Early Modern Indo-Aryan Languages, Literature, and Culture, ed. Alan W. Entwistle and Françoise Mallison. Delhi: Manohar, 87–100. Busch, Allison. 2011. Poetry of Kings: The Classical Hindi Literature of Mughal India. New York: Oxford University Press.

174

005752_MCLI005_260_EM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 174



bibliography

Clayton, Martin. 2000. Time in Indian Music: Rhythm, Metre, and Form in North Indian Rāg Performance. New York: Oxford University Press. Dharwadker, Vinay. 2003. Kabir: The Weaver’s Songs. New Delhi: Penguin. Dvivedī, Hazārīprasād. 1973 [1936]. Sūr-sāhitya. Delhi: Rājkamal Prakāśan. Fairbanks, Constance Elizabeth. 1981. “The Development of Hindi Oral Narrative Meter.” Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin. Grierson, G. A. 1895. “On the Stress-Accent in the Modern Indo-Aryan Vernaculars.” Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland (January): 139–147. Gupta, Parameśvarī Lāl, ed. 1967. Kutuban kṛt mṛgāvatī. Varanasi: Viśvavidyālay Prakāśan. Hawley, John Stratton. 1984. Sūr Dās: Poet, Singer, Saint. Seattle: University of Washington Press and Delhi: Oxford University Press. ———. 2005. Three Bhakti Voices: Mirabai, Surdas, and Kabir in Their Time and Ours. Delhi: Oxford University Press. ———. 2016. Into Sūr’s Ocean: Poetry, Context, and Commentary. Cambridge, Mass.: Department of South Asian Studies Harvard University. Inden, Ronald, Jonathan S. Walters, and Daud Ali. 2000. Querying the Medieval: Texts and the History of Practices in South Asia. New York: Oxford University Press. Jhā, Narendra. 1978. Bhaktamāl: Pāṭhānuśīlan evam vivecan. Patna: Anupam Prakāśan. McGregor, Ronald Stuart. 1968. The Language of Indrajit of Orchā: A Study of Early Braj Bhāṣā Prose. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. ———. 1973. Nanddas: The Round Dance of Krishna and Uddhav’s Message. London: Luzac. Mītal, Prabhudayāl. 1962. “Sūr kṛt padoṃ kī sab se prācīn prati.” Nāgarī Pracāriṇī Patrikā 67, 3. Pāṇḍey, Mainejar. 1993. Bhakti āndolan aur sūrdās kā kāvya. New Delhi: Vāṇī Prakāśan. Parīkh, Dvārakādās, ed. 1970 (V.S. 2027). Caurāsī vaiṣṇavan kī vārtā (Tīn janma kī līlā bhāvanā vālī). Mathura: Śrī Bajaraṅg Pustakālay. Parīkh, Dvārakādās, and Prabhudayāl Mītal. 1962. Sūr-nirṇay. Mathura: Sāhitya Saṃsthān. Pauwels, Heidi R. M. 2005. “Romancing Rādhā: Nāgarīdās’ Royal Appropriations of Bhakti Themes.” South Asia Research 25: 55–78.

175

005752_MCLI005_260_EM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 175



bibliography

Prakāś, Ved. 2006. Kāvyanirṇaya. Delhi: Sanjay Prakāśan. Rousseva-Sokolova, Galina. 2005. Jeu et dévotion: Aspects ludiques de la bhakti kṛṣṇaïte au Braj. Paris: Éditions Champion. “Rūpkalā,” “Sitārāmśaraṇ” Bhagavān Prasād. 1969 [1910]. Śrī bhaktamāl. Lucknow: Tejkumār Press. Sanyal, Ritvik, and Richard Widdess. 2004. Dhrupad: Tradition and Performance in Indian Music. London: Ashgate. Śāstrī, Udayśaṅkar. 1972. “Sūrasāgar kī sāmagrī kā saṅkalan aur uskā sampādan.” Bhāratīya Sāhitya 17, 1–2: 73–103. Snell, Rupert, ed. and trans. 1991. The Eighty-Four Hymns of Hita Harivaṁśa: An Edition of the Caurāsī Pad. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass. Śrīvāstav, Snehlatā. 1958. Hindī meṁ bhramargīt kāvya aur uskī paramparā. Aligarh: Bhārat Prakāś Mandir. Śukla, Rāmcandra. 1948. Sūrdās. Ed. Viśvanāthprasād Miśra. Varanasi: n.p. ———.1965 [1925]. Bhramar-gīt-sār: Sūrdās kṛt. Banaras: Nāgarīpracāriṇī Sabhā. Reissued with a preface by Viśvanāthprasād Miśra. Varanasi: Kṛṣṇadās Porvāl. Thielemann, Selina. 2001. Musical Traditions of Vaiṣṇava Temples in Vraja. 2 vols. New Delhi: Sagar Printers and Publishers. Varmā, Vrajeśvar. 1979. Sūrdās: Jīvan aur kāvya kā adhyayan. Allahabad: Lokbhārati Prakāśan. ———. 1961. Sūr-mīmāṃsā. 2nd ed. New Delhi: Oriental Book Depot, n.d. Zrnic, Biljana. “Sūrdās’ Poetry Through the Lens of the Community of Dādūpanth.” Asiatische Studien - Études Asiatiques. (forthcoming).

176

005752_MCLI005_260_EM_TXT_EngOnly_APP • 10/07/22 05:28:14 PM • 176