4. Jay! jay! in Nawadwip; by Gorang's order Adwaita goes to prepare the consecration of the drum. Bringing all the Vaish.navas with sound of "Hari bol," he initiates the great feast. He himself giving garlands and sandal-paste, converses with his beloved Vaish.navas, Gobind taking the drum plays ta-ta-tum tum, Adwaita lightly clashes the cymbals. Hari Dâs begins the song, Sribâs keeps time, Gorang dances at the kîrtan celebration. On all sides the Vaish.navas crowding echo "Hari bol," to-morrow will be the great feast. To-day consecrate the drum and hang it up, joyfully saith Bansi sound victory! victory!!
Having thus concluded the initiatory ceremonies in the lst Pallab, the 2nd Pallab begins the real "Kîrtan." It contains 26 hymns by masters who are mostly of comparatively recent date. Of the old masters Gobind Dâs and Cha.n.di Dâs alone appear in this Pallab. We now commence the long and minutely described series of emotions and flirtations (if so lowly a word may be used) between Râdhâ and K.rish.na, and this Pallab and in fact the whole of the first Sâkhâ is on that phase called "pûrbarâga" or first symptoms of love. In No. 2, Cha.n.di Dâs represents two of Râdhâ's Sakhis, or girl-friends, whispering together as they watch her from a distance (the punctuation { i.e. colon (:)} refers to the cæsura, not to the sense):
"She stands outside the house, a hundred times restlessly she comes and goes: depressed in mind, _with_ frequent sighs, she looks towards the kadamba jungle. Why has Rai (Radhikâ) become thus? serious is her error, she has no fear of men, where are her senses, or what god has possessed her? Constantly restless, she does not cover herself with the corner of her robe: she sits still for a while, then rises with a start, her ornaments fall with a clang. Youthful in age, of royal descent, and a chaste maiden to boot: what does she desire, (why) does her longing increase? I cannot understand her motives: from her conduct, this I conceive, she has raised her hand to the moon: [Footnote: She has formed some extravagant desire.] Cha.n.di Dâs says with respect she has fallen into the snare of the black one (K.rish.na)."
This poem vividly expresses the first symptoms of love dawning in the girl's heart, and from a religious point of view the first awakenings of consciousness of divine love in the soul. It is difficult for the European mind, trained to draw a broad distinction between the love of God and love for another human being, to enter into a state of feeling in which the earthly and sensual is made a type of the heavenly and spiritual, but a large-souled charity may be perhaps able to admit that by this process, strange though it be to its own habits and experiences, there may have been some improvement wrought in the inner life of men brought up in other schools of thought; and my own experience, now of fourteen years standing, enables me to say that Vaish.navism does, in spite of, or perhaps in virtue of, its peculiar _modus operandi_, work a change for the better on those who come under its influence.