“melody.” It is a sort of soft punning in which diverse associations are insinuated. So, for example, in the first canto of the text, travelers (pathika) are able to delight (ullasa) in the sentiment ([of love] rasa) only by making love (samagama) with their beloveds ([those as dear to them as their own life] prana/sama) in their imagination or fantasies ([by intently thinking about them] dhyan’/avadhana). The ambiguous vocabulary has both ascetic and devotional connotations through which the description suggests a comparison of lovers separated from their beloveds to religious mendicants (pathika) manifesting (ullasa) the (religious) sentiment (rasa) of communion (samagama) with god (the one whom they have identified as their spiritual self, prana/sama) by absorption in deep meditation (dhyan’/avadhana).

Rasa is the pivotal word in this stanza and in the “Gita·govinda” as a whole. It is used similarly, with its erotic reference again given religious resonances by the use of the word “meditation” (dhyana), to describe Radha entranced in contemplation of Krishna and drowning in a sea of rasa (6.10). The phrase suggests the goal of ascetic meditative practice—the dissolution of the transient empirical self into an absolute eternal Self.

The word rasa occurs some two dozen times in the text, most often in direct reference to sexual pleasure, but because the text is about Krishna it is never without some religious undertone or implication: Radha imagines one of the cowherd girls moaning with the “bliss of sex” (rati/rasa) in Krishna’s embrace (Song xiv) just as she, Radha, had swooned with that rasa, that erotic delight, the first time Krishna made love to her (Song vi); and Radha’s friend ________