posed. That rhythmic designation would have accentuated Jaya·deva’s metrical innovations.

Given the contestability of the original melodies and rhythms of Jaya·deva’s songs, I have (while leaving those suggested by Kumbha in the transliterated text) omitted indications of them from this translation.

Jaya·deva’s use of end-rhymes, often echoing elaborate internal rhymes, is such a significant feature of his songs that I felt justified in attempting to maintain them in English, and in trying to at least suggest some of the melopoeic effects of his use of assonance, consonance, alliteration, and other phonic ornaments. The appeal of so many of the songs is more substantially in the sound of them than in their substance. So, for example, in the first verse of Song 3, onomatopoeia gives a sensuous auditory vibrancy to a stock literary image of breezes rustling vines in a wood resonant with bees and cuckoos. It is this verse that lured Krishna to Chaitanya in the garden in Puri, the song that overwhelmed and transported the saint, making him swoon into beatitude:

The la li la la la la la evokes the sound of the rustled vegetation, the kara kara kara suggests the bees, and the ko ki ku ku ku is the cuckoo’s mating cry. The ko in the first line and la in the second interlace the lines as the end-rhyme fuses them.

The rhetorical playfulness of the text tempers the seriousness, erotic and religious, of its content.