when she had gone to meet her lover but had waited in vain, thereby being jilted; when her husband or lover had gone abroad and she was faced with days of lonely waiting; and finally, when she had left the house and gone to meet him.  Ladies in situations such as these were known as nayikas and the text embodying the standard classification was the Sanskrit treatise, the Bharatiya Natya Sastra.  A similar analysis was made of men—­lovers or nayakas being sometimes divided into fourteen different types.

Until the fourteenth century, such writings were studies in erotics rather than in literature—­the actual situations rather than their literary treatment being the authors’ prime concern.  During the fourteenth century, however, questions of literary taste began to be discussed and there arose a new type of Sanskrit treatise, showing how different kinds of lover should be treated in poetry and illustrating the correct attitudes by carefully chosen verses.  In all these writings the standard of reference was human passion.  The lovers of poetry might bear only a slight relation to lovers in real life.  Many of the situations envisaged might rarely, if ever, occur.  It was sufficient that granted some favourable accident, some chance suspension of normal circumstances, lovers could be imagined as acting in these special ways.

It is out of this critical literature that our new development springs.  As vernacular languages were used for poetry, problems of Hindi composition began to dwarf those of Sanskrit.  It was necessary to discuss how best to treat each nayika and nayaka not only in Sanskrit but in Hindi poetry also, and to meet this situation Keshav Das, the poet of Orchha in Bundelkhand, produced in 1591 his Rasika Priya.  Here all the standard situations were once again examined, nayikas and nayakas were newly distinguished and verses illustrating their appropriate treatments were systematically included.  The book differed, however, in two important ways from any of its predecessors.  It was written in Hindi, Keshav Das himself supplying both poems and commentary and what was even more significant, the nayaka or lover was portrayed not as any ordinary well-bred young man but as Krishna himself.[64] As a girl waits at the tryst it is not for an ordinary lover but for Krishna that Keshav Das depicts her as longing.

’Is he detained by work?  Is he loath to leave his friends?  Has he had a quarrel?  Is his body uneasy?  Is he afraid when he sees the rainy dark?  O Krishna, Giver of Bliss, why do you not come?’[65]

As a girl waits by her bed looking out through her door, it is the prospect of Krishna’s arrival—­not of an ordinary lover’s—­that makes her happy.

’As she runs, her blue dress hides her limbs.  She hears the wind ruffling the trees and the birds shifting in the night.  She thinks it must be he.  How she longs for love, watching for Krishna like a bird in a cage.’