THE RASAKALLOLA.
OCT. 4, 1872.]
the latter class of poems we are never sure that we are being presented with a real living picture of the language as it was actually spoken by the contemporaries of the author ; we have to allow for so many licenses of form and construc tion that it is only by observing the shape taken by a particular word, in places where no vis metri occurs to change it, that we can feel even tolerably certain that we have at length lit upon
its genuine colloquial guise. No such difficulty confronts us in Dinkrishna's flowing and facile verse. If we except an occasional diaeresis such
as Tāāſ for qāār, ançT for ACT and a few other easily recognized licenses, the language is the same as that in which the gentle and refined Oriya clodhopper of to-day fondly curses his wife or his bullocks, or grumbles over his daily pill of adulterated opium. In the third canto the Gopis hear that a son has been born to Nand and rush tumultuously to Nand's house to see the infant.
Here occurs
one of those absurd pieces of exaggeration which so frequently, to European taste, spoil the beauty of Indian poems. The Hindu never knows when to stop. Starting from the gener ally accepted opinion that the female form is most symmetrical and beautiful when the waist is slender and the parts immediately below it large and round, the poet proceeds to make the waists of the Gopis so absurdly thin and their continuations so enormously large that they be come, instead of the ideals of loveliness he intends them to be, monsters of deformity. One charm ing creature who appears to have combined in her own person every possible disproportion, is thus addressed by the girdle round her waist— Kāhā katire dāki kānchi málá Kahu achhi, “dhire are abalá Kāma mada tu hoi matta, bholā Karu majhā thare já ere helä,
Ki tujānu nāhuń ejere saru Kucha jugala tora jere guru ? Karu achhu jāhā drudha gamana Kåle ehāku heli achhi Šamana.
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And thy twin breasts how heavy The swift pace which thou maintainest Shortly will be its destruction.
What, is thy boldness like the spider's, Or why on this (the waist) art thou so pitiless? What will happen when it shall break 2 At that time thou too wilt die.”
The poet seems rather proud of this tasteless trifling for he specially remarks that this is to be regarded as a metaphor, and is elegant and fan ciful (ādhyāhāra). The Gopis crowd round the two infants, and examine them with every mark of delight. The sun, the moon, night, lotuses, the sea, and all sorts of plants and animals are called into com parison, and are pronounced inadequate to rival the beauty of Krishna's black skin, or Balará ma's white one. The Gopis then go home look ing back and lingering and loth to depart, and the canto ends.
The metre of the second canto, which I omit ted to describe before, consists of four lines to the pada or stanza. The first and third are very long consisting of 29 mátras each. There are casuras at the eighth and sixteenth mátras,
the syllables of which generally rhyme with each other. The last syllable of the first line rhymes with that of the second. Owing to the great
length of the lines it is customary to write the first sixteen matras as one line and the remaining thirteen as a second line.
The third line has
nine mátras with casura at the fourth, and the fourth line thirteen with casura at the eighth måtra; thus:
1. ka ra a he sa dhu |ja | namá |ne | ma | na | e |ka tā na | kar |na | de i |ka ma la | na | ya na ka thã ku 2.
The same.
3. ka la |ka ra||an | dhā |ra |pra | ye| 4. Krish na ka thã Šra | va | na | re] du |ri | ta kha | ye ||. The rhyme-syllables are in italics. The metre of the third canto is very simple. It is the Rág kedar chakrakeli, and consists of
Ki to sáhasa jāyājiba prāye, Kibä ehā thare ere nirdaye 2 Kiki hoi ejebe jiba bhangi 2 Kåle tu hi maribu ehā lagi.
mātras with no caesura.
From the waist of one the girdle calling
12 mātras to the charan and two rhyming cha rans to the pada. There is a caesura at the
Says, “gently, gently, O maiden :
ninth mátra.
two charans to the pada, each containing nine The charans rhyme.
The fourth canto is in the Ahári metre with
Thus—
-
Thou, intoxicated with the wine of love,
kar |nal de i | Su na | a he såldhu lja | ne.
Forgettest thy waist of what sort it is.
ku mā ran ka jan mille ke|te | di ne.
What! knowest thou not how slender it is
It relates how Krishna in his cradle destroyed
