76 BENGAL VAISHNAVISM aesthetics. The dasya ram or the romance of the servitor and master relation is different from and must not be identified with even the most loyal attachment of the servant to his master and of the complete subordination of the wishes and will of the former to those of the latter. The test of romance is the complete transfiguration of the servitor, both physically or in his nervous system and emotionally or spiritually, during his service. When the servant falls into a trance and loses all outer consciousness in an onrush of ecstacy at the touch of his master’s body or even at the sight of him, it is then and then only that the servitor relation rises to the plane of the romantic, and loses all taint not only of the physical but even of those degrading social distinctions that ordinarily constitute this relation. The servitor is no more conscious of the dignity and superiority of his master’s position than of the indignity and inferiority of his own position. He and his master become completely identified in the beatific consciousness of this romance. In this romance, when it is organised in the relation between the son and the father, the same thing happens, as it did in the case of Christ, who in his beatitude declared : “I and
