Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/156

 does she say to them? Her glance becomes fixed on the neck of the peacock. Love for Krisna, says ‘Chandi Das, has dawned on her heart.” Love for Krisha—the shepherd god, who wears the crown of peacock’s feathers,—Krisna, whose beautiful dark-blue colour so soothes the eyes! It is this which accounts for her reveries about the clouds, her own hair, and the neck of the peacock, referred to in the poem. All alike remind her of Krisna. She drinks deep of their beauty. She is indifferent to her physical comfort. She fasts and lives hke a holy maiden—a Yogini,:we find in the lines! It is a strange abstract love, and symbolises also the spiritual love of the Vaisnavas! For this dark-blue complexion, as I have said, is taken to mirror the pervading colour of the Infinite, and, as an emblem of the divine presence, is sacred to all Vaisnavas. Many a time and oft it is told of Chai- tanya Deva, the God-man of Nadia that he saw the dark-blue clouds, reminding him of God and swooned away in an ecstasy of love. To him the very contact with matter conveyed a spiritual idea. The objects of the senses were mere signs of the presence of One who was above the senses ; form indicated in his eyes the formless, colour, the colourless, and all knowledge of the outword world,—the great Unknowable. ‘This is the আকুল নয়নে, চাহে মেঘ পানে কি কহে হুহাত তুলি ॥ এক দিঠি করি, TA ATA ক করে নিরক্ষণে। চণ্তীদাস কয়, নব পরিচয় কালিয়। বধুর সনে ॥
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