The Rasikapriya (Connoisseur’s Delights) was composed in 1591 in Braj-Bhasa by the poet Keshavdas (1555–1617). He was the court poet of Kunwar Indrajit Singh and Raja Bir Singh Deo of Orchha (r. 1605-1627). The text portrays Radha and Krishna as ideal lovers and enumerates the eight archetypal male and female lovers (nayakas/nayikas) and their corresponding emotions and encounters.
This folio illustrates the hidden great arrogance of the nayika (Prachanna Guruman) (Rasikapriya 9:304):
The son of Nanda [Krishna] did meet today,
Radha, his days of parting past;
Her sullenness he drove away
With laughter, and with joy at last,
As love to her he made: when lo!
Beneath his doublet she did espy
Nail-marks upon his chest, and so,
Dumbfounded did remain her eyes!
(Translation by K. P. Bahadur.)
This dispersed Rasikapriya attributed to circa 1655-1660 is from the workshop of Manohar (active circa 1650). See Andrew Topsfield, Court Painting at Udaipur (Zürich: Museum Rietberg, 2001), pp. 90, 103, n. 35. The original inscriptions in the headers have been distinctively overwritten. Additional folios are in the Kanoria Collection, Patna (GKK 161), National Museum of Scotland, Edinburgh (A.1961.393), San Diego Museum of Art (1990.606), Victoria and Albert Museum, London (IS.45-1961), and Bharat Kala Bhavan, Varanasi.
For an alternate translation by V. P. Mishra, see Harsha V. Dehejia, Rasikapriya: Ritikavya of Keshavdas in Ateleirs of Love (New Delhi: D.K. Printworld, 2013), pp. 92, 260, verse and fig. 9.4.
