2.8 [v.7] The kadamba tree figures significantly in the mythology of Krishna. It was in its branches that, as an amorous prank, he hid the saris of the cowherd girls as they bathed in the Yamuna; and it was from those branches that he dove into the river to battle the serpent Kaliya.

2.16 [VI.6] Various positions: when, in poetic descriptions of lovemaking, a girl’s anklets jingle, it insinuates that she is beneath her lover; when her girdle bells ring, the connoisseur of poetry would understand that she is on top of him.

2.20 Gladiola is for asoka, a bright red, fragrant flower always associated with love. Although not botanically a gladiola, it is here translated as such because asoka literally means “not sad.”

2.20 The flowering (sikharini) tips of the mango branches refers paronomastically to the name of the meter in which the stanza is composed.

3.1 The epithet for Krishna here is Kams’/ari: the “Enemy of Kansa,” the tyrannical king of Mathura, a demon so powerful that he could only be slain by Krishna.

3.11 Don’t mistake me for Hara: Hara is Shiva, who wears a serpent around his neck, whose throat is stained from swallowing the poison that polluted the cosmic ocean, whose body is smeared with crematory ashes, the god whose ascetic practices were interrupted by Kama. Kama was dispatched by the gods to accompany Parvati in her attempt to seduce Shiva so that he would father a son, the war god Kumara, to kill the demon Taraka. When Kama attempted to weaken Shiva with one of his arrows, Shiva incinerated the love god with fire released from his third eye. Thus, in this and other stanzas and songs, Kama is called Ananga, the “Bodiless One.”

3.14 The god who is both Love and Death: Kama is identified with Mara, the god of Death. This identification is originally a Bud- dhist one, a mythological articulation of the Buddhist teaching ________