Arising out of a devotional and enthusiastic religious movement that swept across most of northern and eastern India in the period from the fourteenth through the seventeenth centuries, the powerful and moving lyrics collected and elegantly translated here depict the love of Radha for the god Krishna—a love whose intensity and range of emotions trace the course of all true love between man and woman and between man and God. Intermingling physical and metaphysical imagery, the spiritual yearning for the divine is articulated in the passionate language of intense sensual desire for an irresistible but ultimately unpossessable lover, thus touching a resonant chord in our humanity.

The Vaisnava-sahajiya cult that arose in Bengal in the sixteenth century was an intensely emotional attempt to reconcile the sensual and the ascetic. Exploring the history and doctrine of this cult, Edward C. Dimock, Jr., examines the works of numerous poets who are the source of knowledge about this sect. Dimock examines the life of the saint Caitanya, the mad Baul singers, the doctrines of Tantrism, the origins of the figure of Radha, and the worship of Krishna. His study will appeal to students of the history of religion as well as of Indian culture. This edition includes a new Foreword by Wendy Doniger.

"This is a magnificent book—painstakingly researched and gracefully written. . . . Professor Dimock's book is one of the most rewarding and stimulating studies to appear in recent years."—G. Richard Weldon, Journal of Asian Studies