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RELIGIOUS PRACTICES AND OPINIONS
until they had converted it into a gross deformity, and furnished a model adapted to the ardent imagination of irrational enthusiasm. A remarkable specimen of this style has been given to English readers by Sir William Jones, in his translation of the songs of Jayadeva*; where, although to the uninitiated the hero and heroine appear to be actuated by human passions alone, yet the initiated find in the fervent desires and jealous tortures of Rádhá the anxieties, the hopes, the fears, the longings of the soul; and in the steady, though sometimes seemingly inconstant love of Krishna the affection which the Supreme Being bears amidst all his misgivings and fallings off to man. As a brief and inoffensive specimen of this kind of composition, I will quote a few stanzas attributed to a lady named Mírá Báí, princess of Jaypur, and one of the Sádhwis, or female saints of the Vaishnavas, addressed to Krishna as Rana-chhor, a curious title to have been given him, as it means the coward, the runaway from battle.
"O sovereign Rana-chhor, give me to make Dwáraká my perpetual abode. Dispel with thy shell, discus, and mace, the fear of Yama (the deity of death). Eternal rest is pilgrimage to thy sacred shrines. Supreme delight is the sound of thy shell, the clash of thy cymbals. I have abandoned my love, my pos
[Works IV. 235 ff. See also Lassen's edition of the Gitagovinda, p. XI-XIII. Ind. Alt.. IV. $16. G. de Tassy, Histoire de la lit. hind., II, 54-64.]
