Bold references are to the English text; bold italic references are to the Sanskrit text. An asterisk (*) in the body of the text marks the word or passage being annotated.
CANTO I Damodara, literally “he who has a rope around his waist,” the name of Krishna in the title of this canto (
s’/amoda/Damodardh), refers to an episode in the mythology of the god as child prankster. Imagining that Krishna was her own naughty infant, Yashoda, his foster mother, tried to prevent him from running away from her by tying him to a wooden rice-husking mortar with a rope so that she could spank him. At first he playfully frustrated her efforts, but then, out of affection for her, he submitted, and allowed himself to be bound. Devotional readings of the mythology avow that, in this act, Krishna demonstrated that, although he cannot be constrained by anyone, he is willing to surrender to those who adore him.
1.2Radha and Krishna (Sri/Vasudeva) is glossed by several commentators as “Lord Vasudeva,” reading
Sri as an honorific rather than as a name of the goddess of Prosperity who, following other commentaries, is incarnated as Radha in Vrinda·vana.
1.4 For discussion of these poets please see the Introduction, p. xxvii. Go·vardhana’s “Seven Hundred Elegant Verses” will appear in the C
LAY S
ANSKRIT L
IBRARY, F
RIEDHELM H
ARDY (trans.), New York: New York University Press & JJC Foundation. Dhoyi’s “Wind Messenger” is published in the C
LAY S
ANSKRIT L
IBRARY’S volume of “Messenger Poems,” S
IR J
AMES M
ALLINSON (trans.), New York: New York University Press & JJC Foundation, 2006.
SONG I On the
ragas and
talas, please see the Introduction, pp. xl–xli.
SONG I The invocatory song is a
stotra, a devotional hymn of praise, to Krishna as Vishnu in his ultimate and absolute form, not, as in
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