Page:Bengal Vaishnavism - Bipin Chandra Pal.djvu/78

ART IN BENGAL VAISHNAVISM 63 subject or son and father does not rise to the plane of romance. The essential characteristic of romance is the pursuit of the unseen and the ideal through the seen and real instru- ment of it. When the servitor loses himself completely in his master, has no desire of his own apart from the wishes of his master, or when the subject conipletel3' loses his indivi- dualitj' or personality^ in his sovereign lord and king, (as found sometimes in the feudal stage of socio-political evolution), or when the son completely loses his own personality in his father or mother, so that he has no will of his own, not only in opposition to that of parcivts but even apart from it, it is then and then only that our affections through these human relations rise to the plane of romance. In this romantic plane of our affections our bodies and our senses are transformed and overwhelmed by' the super-sensuous and the spiritual. The servant, the subject and the son lose their outer consciousness in what may' be called a trance, when in their inner consciousness they realise their absolute identity with the object of their affection. So also in the realisations of the other rasas. Our friendship docs not rise to the level of rasa or romance in every