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 archetypal male and female lovers (nayakas/nayikas) and their corresponding emotions and encounters.
This folio [#46] illustrates the confidante entreating Krishna or Krishna’s Punishment (Shiksha) (Rasikapriya 13:398):
Having smeared her limbs with sandal paste,
And bathed her with saffroned water
With perfumed things having her arrayed,
For making love have you brought her?
Put sandal-marks on her, and laid
Flower garland her neck to adorn,
And beautified her in all ways
All to no end? Her eyes how come
You have dark with collyrium made?
Why beetle-leaves you have begun
To give with camphor scented, say?
Oh! Krishna! Your mind in merriment
Remains absorbed, why don’t you lay
Yourself upon her feet, that won
With fawning she’s whose mouth always
Imbued with fragrance, sweet becomes?
(Translation by K. P. Bahadur.)
For an almost identical folio [#255] in the Polsky Collection, New York, see Andrew Topsfield, ed., In the Realm of Gods and Kings (London: Philip Wilson, 2004), pp. 156-157, no. 61.
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. 106, 295, verse and fig. 13.3.
