The Rasikapriya (Connoisseur’s Delights) was composed in 1591 in the Hindi dialect of 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 Radha’s meeting by seeing Krishna’s portrait (Chitra Darshana) (Rasikapriya 6:107):
Although her eyes she turns aside,
Her mind with deepening love is rent,
Beads of sweat on her face arise,
Her body’s hair do stand on end;
Her heart does tremble - what shall I
Of this girl say, who in the deep
Of bashfulness is drowning? By
Shame so much overcome is she
Merely his picture to look on,
As though he had caught hold of her forearm!
(Translation by K. P. Bahadur.)
Accompanied by her gesticulating confidante, Radha bashfully holds her scarf in front of her face as a veil to view a mural of Krishna. The blue-skinned god of devotion stands in a lush landscape accompanied by a woman bearing an honorific peacock feather fly whisk (morchal).
Additional folios from this dispersed series are in the Harvard Art Museums, Cambridge (1984.461) and Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (1990.23).
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. 64, 175, verse and fig. 4.8.
