"Drsau... rupa dhare hain."
Hari perseveres with his descriptions of Radha.
"Your eyes are lazy with wine like Madalasa,
Your face glows like the moonlight nymph Indumati,
Your gait pleases every creature like Manorama,
Your thighs are plantains in motion like Rambha,
Your passion is the mystic rite of Kalavati,
Your brow forms the sensual line of Citralekha,
Frail Radha, as you walk You bear
the young beauty of heavenly nymphs."
Jayadeva conjures up a whole world of celestial apsaras in these lines. Associations of Ramayana, Mahabharata, Kalidasa, and other Puranas all enter the mind of an initiated reader.
The artist is aware of the multi-layered analogy. He divides the pictorial space with a clear formal curve. Radha is seen through the empty bower with bolster and ornaments and two winged nymphs in boats float in the heavenly sea; Radha sits in the bower holding her necklace and Krsna and the sakhi stand adoring her. The 'mortals' who worship her are distributed in the lower half of this curve. One plays the pakhavaja, another recites to the accompaniment of a tanpura. A fourth figure presumably is the representation of the word kalavati and is in an acrobatic pose. On the extreme left are gods, men, and creatures of the water all adoring Radha.
The compositional pattern is simple and the artist has been successful in grasping the essence of the verse. In this painting the formal arrangement is meaningful - not purely decorative. The paintings inspired by the tenth sarga and the nineteenth prabandha exhibit varying degrees of artistic comprehension of the spirit of the poem and are of an unequal level of pictorial competence.
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