Yasoda's Songs to her Playful Son, Krsna: Periyalvar's 9th century Tamil Tirumoli is a translation of a South Indian devotional text in which the poet predominantly takes the voice of the god Krsna's mother, capturing the emotions of an intimate personal relationship with the deity through the poet's depictions of Krsna as an adorable baby, a naughty boy and then a handsome youth. As the earliest poet to express maternal love as religious devotion, Periyalvar played a crucial part in the pan-Indian development of the Krsna sect and laid the foundation for the prolific genre of later Hindu...