60 BENGAL VAISHNAVI8M Yaishiiava aesthetics has realised four rasas that ai*e produced by the romance of our human relations. These are (i) dasya, or the romance of the master and servitor relation, or the relation between subject and king or the romance of the filial relation ; (ii) sakhya or the romance of friendship ; (iii) batsalya or the romance of father and mother love ; and (iv) madhurya or the romance of the man and wife or the hero and heroine affection in litera- ture. Though shanta is counted as a rasa in Hindu aesthetics, it is not seriously enumera- ted as a rasa in the Bhakti cult of Bengal, because shanta does not enter into any of these human relations. All romance is moved by passion, which reallj’’ disturbs our equanimity. In romantic affection, whether the object of it be a king or a parent or a friend, or child or a lover, we become the sport of our passion, and lose that self-control which is the soul of equanimity or the shanta rasa. And as the culti- vation and realisation of bhakti as under- stood by" the Bengal school, involves a passion- ate longing for the Lord, shanta or equani- mity has no place in it. Therefore,' Bengal Vaishnavism does not count shanta as a constituent element of its bhakti or love of God. But it is nevertheless regarded as abso-
