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 the manifest fury (or agitation) of the nayika (Rasikapriya 8:276):
The bosom companion says to the nayaka.
‘Who seeing you then had fled away,
Today would die if you don’t come,
In poison drowned she is all day,
And in the night by moonlight burnt!
From bed to ground, from ground to bed
A million airs she takes; Oh! Krishna,
Give her some ornaments, so that rest
Their sight may to her body bring!’
(Translation by K. P. Bahadur.)
In the upper register, Radha lies in a bedchamber pining for Krishna and attended by maidservants. In the pavilion below, Krishna receives the imploring confidante.
Additional folios from this dispersed series are in the British Library, London (Add.Or.5634), National Museum, New Delhi (57.68/4), Government Museum, Udaipur (over 80 folios), and a promised gift from the Kronos Collections, New York to the Metropolitan Museum of Art, New York (L.2018.44.6).
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. 88, 251, fig. 8.32.
