“Krishna the lover” and a “blacksnake,” one of the deadliest of Indian serpents. The name Nanda, furthermore, as a common noun, means “joy” or “delight.” This stanza, rather atypical of Jaya·deva’s style, is not included in various manuscripts.

7.39 In southern breeze ... don’t be cruel: there is play on the words daksina (“southern,” but also “right,” and “good”) and vama (”cruel,” but also “left,” and “perverse”). The breeze is perverse in that, although it is the life-breath of the world (prana), it is, by making Radha think of Krishna, taking her breath and life away.

8.8 [xvii.7] Putanika, “the stinking one,” the demonic daughter of Bali, was solicited by Kansa to find and destroy the baby Krishna. When she attempted to kill him by suckling him at her breasts rubbed with poison, Krishna, impervious to the poison, sucked the life out of her instead.

10.15 Heavenly nymphs on earth: again there is a pun on the name of the meter (prthvi) used as a common noun for the “earth.” The names of the beautiful and voluptuous nymphs of Indra’s Paradise, the apsarases, whom Radha is described here as incarnating on earth, are embedded in the physical description of her: Radha’s thighs are like “plantains” (referring to Rambha, the queen of the apsarases, often considered a form of Lakshmi and the most beautiful of the apsarases); her brows are like “painted strokes” (Chitra·lekha, skilled in painting and magic, friend and confidante of Ushas, the Dawn); her eyes are “languid” (the nymph Madalasa); her face glows like the “moon” (Indumati); her gait is charming (Mano·rama); and her lovemaking is skillful (Kalavati).

12.12–15 The conceit in these stanzas is in a play on the rasas as the codified aesthetic sentiments of Sanskrit literature. The erotic sentiment, appropriate for these stanzas, becomes mixed, as the commentator Kumbha explains, with the other rasas: when Radha tries to make love on top of her lover, to display the “manly rasa,” _____________________