ShringaraAdvanced

हरि को ललित बदन निहारु

Hari Ko Lalit Badan Niharu

1 min read 1 versesKrishna's leela Krishna Yashoda

1 verses · ~1 min

हरि को ललित बदन निहारु! निपटही डाँटति निठुर ज्यों लकुट करतें डारु॥ मंजु अंजन सहित जल-कन चुक्त लोचन-चारु। स्याम सारस मग मनो ससि स्त्रवत सुधा-सिंगारु॥ सुभग उर,दधि बुंद सुंदर लखि अपनपौ वारु। मनहुँ मरकत मृदु सिखरपर लसत बिसद तुषारु॥ कान्हहूँ पर सतर भौंहैं, महरि मनहिं बिचारु। दास तुलसी रहति क्यौं रिस निरखि नंद कुमारु॥

इति

Rasa: Shringara
Stanzas: 1
Lines: 8
Reading time: ~1 min
Form: Pada
Metre: pada
Rhyme: irregular

This poem evokes an intimate, playful domestic scene infused with the sweet, tender mood of shringara mixed with maternal affection. A painting of this verse would show the foster-mother Yashoda standing over the young child Krishna, pretending to scold him with a raised stick while her fierce anger immediately melts away at the sight of his captivating face. Krishna's dark eyes, still moistened with tears and edged with kohl, shine like blue lotuses bathed in dew, while tiny flecks of curd dot his radiant chest like pure frost clinging to a tender emerald peak. The underlying narrative captures a fleeting moment of mock-fury dissolved by overwhelming love, as Yashoda finds herself utterly disarmed, realizing that even the most feigned wrath cannot survive the enchanting gaze of Nanda's son. The artistic tone is fiercely devotional yet profoundly tender, capturing the divine play of childhood innocence triumphing over discipline.

हरि को ललित बदन निहारु (Hari Ko Lalit Badan Niharu), by Tulsidas runs to 8 lines, set as Eight-line sweet childhood description. Its governing rasa is Shringara, shaded by Hasya. The metre is pada. Rhyme falls as irregular.

यह पद तुलसीदास कृत 'कृष्ण गीतावली' से है, जो सूरदास के बाल-लीला वर्णन के समकक्ष माना जाता है।

Read it for बाल कृष्ण की सुंदर चेष्टाओं और रूठने का वर्णन and माता यशोदा के वात्सल्य और क्रोध का शमन. 3 words in it carry older or regional senses, so the poem rewards a second pass.

The verse is hung beside Yashoda and Krishna: Bathed in a warm, intimate emotional atmosphere of profound maternal devotion and domestic tenderness, the scene depicts the foster mother Yashoda cradling the infant Krishna within an elegant architectural interior…

Words worth pausing on

लकुट: लाठी या छड़ी
महरि: यशोदा (नंद की पत्नी)
तुषारु: ओस या बर्फ

Threads

Krishna's leela Krishna Yashoda

The Poet

तुलसीदास

Tulsidas

1532 · 1623

There are works of literature, and there are works that become the living tissue of a civilization works so deeply absorbed into the bloodstream of a people that they cease to be read and begin, instead, to be breathed. Tulsidas's Ramcharitmanas is that second and almost impossibly rare thing. Composed in Awadhi in the sixteenth century, at a time when Sanskrit had erected a wall of exclusion around sacred knowledge, the Ramcharitmanas was an act of radical democratization a decision by a scholar of profound erudition to lay down his privilege and carry the light directly to those who had been told they were unworthy of it. Tulsidas took the Valmiki Ramayana and did not merely translate it. He recomposed it in the devotional key of Bhakti, saturating every couplet with such concentrated love that the text functions as much as a spiritual practice as a literary one. Generations of Hindu households have woken before dawn to the sound of these verses, heard them at birth and at death, found in them the moral grammar by which they ordered their lives. Tulsidas was not merely a poet. He was, in the most precise sense, an architect one who built a cathedral large enough for an entire subcontinent to live inside. The structure still stands. It has sheltered half a billion souls and shows no sign of age.