Page:Bengali Religious Lyrics, Śākta.pdf/33

Rh think of it as inflicted by a Hand external to it; our only hope is if we can see God identified with His children's sorrow. Of this conception there is no hint in Rāmprasād, and in this respect he falls short of the Musalman mystic who said, 'My Friend does me no wrong; the cup which he gives me to drink he has drunk before me,' or of the Tamil Māṇikka Vāsahar, who loved Sīva because 'Thou drankest poison black, the humbler beings pitying; That I, thy meanest one, might find no poison, but a nectar fount.' His mood is too monotonously one of complaint; it is that of a grey experience, with little hope or sunlight. Yet how much of purity and tenderness is in his songs! 'What folly is this in thee, the child of the Mother Heart of All, fearing death! Thou, a snake, afraid of frogs!' Least of all should any Christian dare to marvel at the mercy which reached this man through such paths. For God, says St. John, is love. And love, says an old song, will find out the way.

The best edition of Rāmprasād, issued by the Basumatī office, Calcutta, contains 226 songs. This collection is far from complete nor is the text authoritative. Tests of genuineness are various, mention of his name in the poem and the poem's setting to the Rāmprasādi tune being chief. Some undoubtedly authentic songs exist both with and without his name; it is likely, then, that his name was sometimes added by other hands.

Among our translations, we have included as his nearly a dozen songs that are not in the Basumatī collection; also, the fuller and more picturesque text of No. VII, which may possibly be a later writing-up. We have added another four songs—Nos. LXVI-LXIX after those which we believe to be his; they are part of the extensive and hitherto unexamined Rāmprasād 'apocrypha.' They are often printed as his, and may be.