Kṛṣṇa and the “field of vision”

cetaś cañcalatāṃ tyaja priya-sakhi vrīḍe na māṃ pīḍaya
bhrātar muñca dṛśau nimeṣa bhagavan kāma kṣaṇaṃ kṣamyatām |
barhaṃ mūrdhani karṇayoḥ kuvalayaṃ vaṃśaṃ dadhānaḥ kare
so ’yaṃ locana-gocaro bhavati me dāmodaraḥ sundaraḥ ||

Heart, stop fluttering;
Dear friend, stop torturing me!
Brother, let me see, just for a moment;
Cupid, spare me, just for a second:

        A peacock’s feather in His hair,
        water-lilies in His ears,
        bamboo flute in His hands—

He’s all I can see,
        Dāmodara the handsome.

This gorgeous verse, from the Rasamañjarī of Bhānudatta, has also been translated by Sheldon Pollock, although I cannot find my copy of the book right now.  What I love most about this verse—and what I find impossible to translate—is the compound locana-gocara. 

In terms of pure sound: its two halves are almost exactly identical prosodically, differing only in the third and sixth syllables (and that too only because the sixth must bear the added weight of the -sU case ending). Furthermore, the repetition of the -oca- sounds makes it delightfully delicate to recite. (Think “cellar door”.)

And in terms of meaning too, the two halves of the word work beautifully. The first, locana, can mean either the seeing organ, “eye”, or the sense itself, “eyesight”. It is also connected with such meanings as “illumination” and “lighting up”. The second, gocara, is even more fascinating. Etymologically, it is in fact a compound, go-cara, literally meaning “cow-pasture”. Through some considerable semantic drift, it comes to mean “field”, first literally and then metaphorically, encompassing such meanings as “scope”, “range”, sometimes even “topic”. A smart translation for locana-gocara would therefore be something like “range of vision” (taking into account the associations of “range” with cattle rearing).

But in the particular context of this verse, I really wanted something simpler. Kṛṣṇa isn’t just in the nāyikā’s range of vision, He becomes it. He is the pasture in which the cows that are her eyes roam, coming to rest at a few particularly succulent grazing spots—His peacock-feather, His ornaments, His flute. He is, simply put, all she can see.