ART IN BENGAL VAISHNAVISM 77 my Father are one’’. Christ did not desire here to bring the Father down to his own level, nor raise himself to the level of the Father, but only proclaim a fact of his deepest realisation of the romance of the son and father love, wherein the sense of all difference of status is completely lost in the conscious- ness of that unity or identity with the object of his love, which is the eternal hankering of all romantic affection. It is only when this highest beatitude is attained, that the servitor and master or the son and father relation rises to the level of rasa or romance. Unless and until this is achieved, dasya remains, what it generally is, a mere physical or social relation, and does not acquire the spiritual quality of rasa or romance. The same remark applies to father or mother love also. Men and women may love their progeny even to distraction, They may consecrate them- selves to the ceaseless and untiring service of their children. But these alone do not raise their carnal affections for their progeny to the level of the romantic. Here also the real test of rasa is the physical or psycho- physical transfiguration of their whole being, body and soul together, into the universal form of parept-love or hatsalya. When this
