of Eastern Hindustān has been profound, and that his songs became the household poetry of Bengal and Behar. His poems were adopted and constantly sung by the great Hindū lover, Cāitanya, in the sixteenth century, and they have been adapted and handed down in many dialects, above all in Bengālī, in the Vaishnava tradition, of which the last representative is Rabindranāth Tagore. A poem by the latter well resumes and explains the theory of the Vaishnava lovers:^[2]

Not my way of Salvation, to surrender the world!
Rather for me the taste of Infinite Freedom,
While yet I am bound by a thousand bonds to the wheel:
In each glory of sound and sight and smell
I shall find Thy Infinite Joy abiding:
My passion shall burn as the flame of Salvation,
The flower of my love shall become the ripe fruit of Devotion.

This leads us to the subject of the true significance of poems such as Vidyāpati's. It is quite true, as Mr. Nicholson says, that students of oriental poetry have sometimes to ask themselves, 'Is this a love-poem disguised as a mystical ode, or a mystical ode expressed in the language of human love?' Very often this question cannot be answered with a definite 'Yes' or 'No': not because the poet's meaning is vague, but because the two ideas are not at all mutually exclusive. All the manifestations of Kama on earth are images of Pursuit or Return.

As Vidyāpati himself says (No. LXIII):

The same flower that you cast away, the same you use in prayer.
And with the same you string the bow.

It is quite certain that many poems of Vidyāpati have an almost wholly spiritually significance.^[3] If some others seem very obviously secular, let us remember that we have no right to detach such poems from their context in books and still less any right to divorce them from their context in life.

We may illustrate this point by a comparison with poetry of Western Europe. Take for example a poem such as the following, with a purely secular significance (if any true art can be said to be secular):

Oh! the handsome lad frae Skye
That's lifted a' the cattle, a'oor kye.
He's t'aen the dun, the black, the white.
And I hae mickle fear
He's t'aen my heart forbye.

Had this been current in fifteenth century Bengal, every Vaishnava would have understood the song to speak as much of God and the Soul as of man and maid, and to many the former meaning would have been the more obvious. On the other hand, there are many early medieval Western hymns in which the language of human love is deliberately adapted to religious uses, for example:

When y se blosmes springe,
And here foules songe,
A suete love-longynge
Myn herte thourh out stong;
Al for a love newe,
That is so suete and trewe.
That gladieth al mi song.

Here the 'new love' is Christ.

Finally, there are other Western lyrics, and very exquisite ones, that could equally be claimed as religious or secular, for example:

Long ago to thee I gave
Body, soul and all I have—
Nothing in the world I keep. ^[4]

The Western critic who would enquire what such a poem meant to its maker and his hearers must be qualified by spiritual kinship with him and with them. Let us demand a similar qualification from those who propose to speak of Oriental poetry:

Wer den Dichter will verstehen.
Muss in Dichter's Lande gehen,—

if not in physical presence, at least in spirit.

In ecstasy, man is beside himself: that this momentary escape from 'himself' is the greatest gift life offers, is a promise, as it were a foretaste, of Release, warranting us that Nirvāna is something more than annihilation. At the same time, be it well understood that such ecstasies are not rewarded to those who are followers of Pleasure, nor to those that cling to self-will. In Vaishnava literature this is again and again emphasized. It is not till the ear ceases to hear the outside world, that it is open to the music in the heart, the flute of Krishna. If the objection is still made that our poet sings rather of human than divine love,—and we do not deny that he worships physical beauty, albeit the critics have told us that Rabīndranath Tagore is the first Indian poet to do so,—we answer with him that Love is One, and we would also quote the very splendid passage of the Prema Sāgara where the doubt is resolved, "How could the love of a certain milk-maid have brought her salvation, notwithstanding that her love for Krishna was paramours, and she knew him not as God, but as man?" The answer is given as follows:

Shri Krishna sat one moonlit night at the edge of a deep forest, playing his flute with intent to lure the milk-maids from their homes. The Braj girls could not rest nor resist the call, and abandoning the illusion of family and the ties of duty, they hurried in confusion from their homes to the forest. But one was seen and detained by her husband; yet she, in the intensity of her absorption in the thought of Hari, abandoned her body and was the first to reach Him. Perceiving the love of her heart. He gave her final release.

The king to whom the story has been thus far related, remarks that the milk-maid did not worship Krishna knowing him to be God, but regarded him as an object of sensuous desire, and asks, 'How then was she saved by her love?' The answer is given that even they who worship Krishna unawares obtain emancipation; just as the water of life makes the drinker immortal, without question whether he knows or does not know its virtue.^[5] Should anyone with any purpose worship, he will be emancipated. Shri Krishna was reverenced in many ways, and in each was salvation obtained. Thus, "Nand, Yashodā and others knew him as a child, the milk-maids as a lover, Kāns worshipped him by fear, the cowherds called him their friend, the Pāndavas knew him as an ally, Shishupāl worshipped him as a foe, the Yaduvamsīs thought him one of themselves, the Yogīs, Yatīs and Munis meditated upon Him as God; but at last everyone of these obtained deliverance. What wonder then if one milk-maid by devotion to Him, was able to cross the sea of life,—to reach the further shore?"^[6]

This pure humanism is the Vaishnava equivalent for: "Inasmuch as ye have done it unto these, ye have done it unto Me," and "The worship of God is . . . loving the greatest men best."

We may also give here the Indian