The poems voice the thoughts or represent the spoken words of Radha and Krishna, of sakhis (Radha's friends) and dutikas (messengers of Radha or Krishna), and of the poet himself The greater part of the whole is properly dialogue, but inasmuch as the 'audience' is generally silent, we have only thought it necessary to make use of quotation marks where the words of more than one speaker are reported in one and the same song.

The following synonyms of Krishna are used by Vidyapati: Hari, Madhava, Kana, Kanu, Kanta, Kanai, Murari, Murali, Banamali, Shyama, Vallabha, Giridhara, Gokula-natha, Nanda-kumara,—and the following of Radha: Radhika, Rai.

As regards the use of capitals: 'Love' is so printed when the poet refers to love as a Power (Kamadeva, Ana?ga, PaÑca-ban, Madan, Manmatha), and 'Desire' is similarly printed with a capital when the reference is to desire as a Power (Rati, the wife of Kamadeva).

In the use of pronouns refering to Krishna, we have only occasionally printed a capital 'He,'—for though He was God, he appeared to Radha as man. We have generally used the colloquial second person plural, in place of the thee and thou of the original, since to reproduce the original would not convey the needed intimacy of the French 'tutoyer': but in few cases it seemed better to adhere to the singular.