Natyasutra Online

Literary Quality

Jayadeva made important innovations in his songs that set them apart from classical Sanskrit poetry. He introduced end-rhymes, and also built them on a moric verse principle. In place of fixed patterns of light and heavy syllables usual in kavya, the moric verse is organised on the number of beats to the line, a light syllable counting as one beat and a heavy syllable as two, the units being further organised into four-beat ganas, which had their patterns. Sanskrit poetry is often ambiguous on key points, and interpreters are obliged to make their own judgements. Since the other words in the text also have alternative readings and shades of meaning, there is no single definitive rendering, even in a prose sense.

Bharatamuni’s magnum opus Natyasastra, the primary Indian treatise on performing arts, describes ashta nayikas or eight types of a heroine in relation to the story's hero. Jayadeva skilfully uses this concept in his presentation of Radha, the lover, who goes through seven stages of transformation – from a shy vasakasajja nayika to a domineering swadheena bhartrika nayika.

Jayadeva gives the jealous woman trope a miss, thus raising Radha from an ordinary spiteful woman to a noble lover. She is aware that Krishna frolics with other gopikas of Vrindavana but this feeling is countered by her awareness of his numerous other virtues.