Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/153

 [II]. ] BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE, — 123 suffered so much because of his love, passed away from the earth. jects of his refined form was the theme of Candidas’s songs. poems. His poems on Radha and Krisna fall under the classification usual to the love-poems of the Vaisnavas. The Parva Raga or dawn of love; Dautya or message of love; Abhisara or secret going-forth, and Sambhoga-milana or meeting of the lovers, Mathur or the final separation, caused by Krisna’s going to Mathura ; Bhava-sanmilana or union in spirit, and so forth. _ Krisna is the Divine Incarnation worshipped by Krisha and the Vaishavas. He is represented as having a dark করনি blue complexion. Dark blue suggests the predo- minating colour of the universe. We find it in the azure, in sky and ocean, in distant landscapes and in the immense verdure of pastoral meadows. On the head of Krisna isa crown of flowers and a plume of peacock’s feathers reminding us of the rainbow. This symbolizes the various colours which adorn the main dark-blue pervading the earth and the sky. He has a flute in his hand, and when he plays on it, the very Jumna bends out of her course signi- fying that with a person who has heard the call of his God, the result is irrestible, the course of his life is sure to change. The human soul is sym- bolized in Radha, the soul that, with its five finer senses, becomes instinct with new life, the moment God appears to it in all His glory. This is how the enlightened Vaisnavas inter- A further pret the love of Radha and Krisna. Let us explain the sublece this idea a little more elaborately. The devout Vaisnava believes that there is no paradise higher
 * have said that love in its most abstract and, The sub-
 * . lysis of