Krishna Leela
Krishna is the eight incarnation of lord Vishnu and was born in
the Dvarpara Yuga as the “dark one”. Krishna is the embodiment of love and
divine joy, that destroys all pain and sin. Krishna
is the protector of sacred utterances and cows. Krishna is a trickster and
lover, an instigator of all forms of knowledge and born to establish the
religion of love.
Krishna was born as
the 8th child of Devaki, sister of the cruel demon king Kamsa. The sage Narada
had predicted that Kamsa would be killed by his nephew, so the king killed
Devaki´s first six children. The 7th, Balarama escaped and the 8th, Krishna, was secretly exchanged for a cowherds daughter.
Krishna was brought up in a cowherds family. As a child, Krishna had great love for his foster-mother Yashoda.
Later Krishna loved to play the flute and to seduce the village
girls. Krishna is the deity of Hasya or Humour
and a messenger of peace. His favorite was Radha. This is known as the Krishna Leela.
After Krishna killed his uncle Kansa, he became king. In the
great Mahabaratha epic, Krishna spoke
memorable words on the essence of Bhakti Yoga or the Yoga of Devotion. They are
at the centre of the Bhagavad Gita.
Krishna Leela
comprises of 5 chapters and one of the most interesting section on Krishna.
The complete epic
of the fascinating Lord Krishna with unabridged text and supporting images are
presented in this section :
Krishna As Child : Part – I
On the eighth day
of the waning half of the lunar month of Bhadrapada (August-September), the
horizons were suffused with a new joy. The fires in the hearths of holy men
burnt without smoke. A gentle wind blew, the sky was clear, and the stars shone
with unusual brilliance. Rivers, their waters sweet and clear, flowed with
serenity, the lakes were full of lotuses, the trees were in splendid blossom,
and the waves of the sea made music. As the midnight hour approached, it
appeared as if all of creation was drenched in the moonlight. And then, as the
glorious moment arrived, the earth and the oceans trembled. The gods showered
flower petals upon the earth. The notes of the divine ‘dundubhi’ rent the
air. Heavenly spirits and nymphs-gandharvas and apsaras-danced and sang in
abandon. There was a burst of light as fires, long dead, rose high in
obeisance. A deep thunder, awesome like the roar of the ocean, rumbled across
the clear sky. There fell a hush, and Krishna,
the protector of the world, the incarnation of Vishnu, eighth child of Devaki,
son of Vasudeva, and nephew of the wicked king Karnsa, was born.
His birth was not
an accident. Prithvi, Mother Earth, had suffered long from the depredations of
evil and wicked men and women, who had forgotten dharma, the law of
righteousness. Crime and persecution had become rampant and, in dread, religion
and justice had fled. Karnsa, who ruled Mathura, having usurped the throne from
his good father, Ugrasena, was foremost among the wicked. His cruelty was
matched only by his arrogance and lack of repentance. Unable to bear this state
of affairs any more, Prithvi, assuming the form of a cow, went to Mount Meru,
where the gods-Indra, Shiva and Brahma-had assembled. Hearing her tale of woe,
Brahma approached Vishnu as he lay on his serpent couch in the Milky Sea,
and begged the limitless author of creation, preservation and destruction to
come to the assistance of Prithvi.
Vishnu, ever
compassionate, agreed. Plucking out two of his hairs, one black and one white,
he said: ‘This, my black hair, shall be incarnate in the eighth child of the wife
of Vasudeva, Devaki, and shall kill Karnsa, who is none other than the great
demon Kalenemi.’ The white hair, the Lord said, would also be born to Devaki,
as her seventh child. Together the two would kill the demons and rid the world
of its accumulated evil.Karnsa became aware of his impending fate on the day of
the marriage of his sister Devaki to Vasudeva, son of Sura, an important
chieftain of the clan of the Yadava, who were descendants of Yadu, son of King
Yayati of the Lunar race. As Vasudeva prepared to take his newly wedded wife
home, a celestial voice proclaimed: ‘Karnsa, you fool, this woman, your sister,
will be the cause of your death. Her eighth son will kill you.’ In a flash,
Kamsa’s sword left its scabbard to kill Devaki, but Vasudeva pleaded with him
to spare his wife’s life on condition that he would hand over to him all their
sons.
Karnsa relented and
put Vasudeva and Devaki in prison under heavy guard. There Devaki in time had
six sons, all of whom Karnsa mercilessly put to death. Devaki’s seventh son was
declared to be a miscarriage, but in reality.Lord Vishnu had commanded the
goddess Yoganidra, who is described in the Vishnu Purana as ‘the great illusory
energy of Vishnu, by whom, as utter ignorance, the whole world is beguiled’, to
transfer the embryo-formed of a portion of Sesha, the many-headed serpent,
which was a part of Vishnu-to the womb ofRohini, another wife of Vasudeva,
residing in nearby Gokula.This child was Balarama, also known as Sankarsana,
since he was extracted from his mother’s womb.
The Lord himself
became incarnate in the eighth conception of Devaki. Yoganidra simultaneously
entered the womb of Yasoda, the wife of Nanda, the gentle leader of the cowherd
settlement at Gokula. A day after Devaki-now luminous from the lustre of the
embryo she carried-gave birth to Krishna,
Yasoda delivered a girl, who was none other than the goddess Yoganidra.
Vasudeva picked up his infant son and carried him out of the prison, whose
guards, under the mysterious influence of Yoganidra, had fallen into a deep
sleep. It was raining, but Sesha spread his hoods over father and son to accord
protection. The deep and turbulent Yamuna rose momentarily to be blessed by the
feet of the child in Vasudeva’s hands, and then fell low, rising not above the
knees of Vasudeva. Across the Yamuna Vasudeva reached Gokula, placed the infant
Krishna next to Yasoda and carried her
daughter safely back to Kamsa’s prison. Under the powerful influence of
Yoganidra, neither Gokula, nor Yasoda, nor Nanda, nor Kamsa’s guards, knew of
what had occurred.
On being informed
that Devaki had given birth to her eighth child, Karnsa immediately went to the
prison, and ignoring the piteous entreaties of Devaki, dashed the child against
a stone. But no sooner had the child touched the stone than it rose into the
sky and expanded into a gigantic figure, having eight arms, each wielding a
formidable weapon. This terrific being laughed aloud, and said to Karnsa, ‘What
avails it thee, Karnsa, to have buried me to the ground? He is born who shall
kill thee, the mighty one amongst the gods, who was formerly thy destroyer. Now
quickly secure him, and provide for thine own welfare.’ Thus having spoken, the
goddess vanished before the eyes of Karnsa.
Karnsa, in much
perturbation, went into conference with his advisers. As a protective measure,
he ordered that a full search be made for all children less than a year old)
and that they all be killed. Meanwhile, Gokula woke up, as if from a trance, to
the joyous news that Yasoda had given birth to a son. Krishna, Lord of Lords,
began his incarnate life in the humble abode of the cowherd chief Nanda, in the
sylvan surroundings of Gokula.
The early years of Krishna’s life were spent in the pastoral setting of
Gokula and nearby Vrindavan. The cattle herders’ commune provides the backdrop
to Krishna’s childhood adventures, described
in the early texts-the Harivarnsa, the Vishnu Purana and the Bhagavata
Purana-which deal with his life. (The extracts from the Harivarnsa in this work
have been taken from the lyrical translation by Francis G. Hutchinson, Young
Krishna, those from the Vishnu Purana from the scholarly and pioneering
translation by H.H. Wilson and those from the Bhagavata Purana unless otherwise
indicated from the summarized but comprehensive rendering of its text by Kamala
Subramanian, Srimad Bhagavatam.) The story of the child Krishna’s
victory over theserpent Kaliya is a particularly popular one. No play or ballet
on the life of Krishna is complete without the
enactment of this dramatic feat. In the waters of the Yamuna, as it flowed
along the shores of Vrindavan, there was, so the lore goes, one viciously
noxious pool.
The Harivarnsa, in
typical poetic hyperbole, describes the pool thus:
Even a God could
scarcely have crossed it. This pool was as deep and blank as a motionless .sea.
Its surface burned with the brilliance of a bushfire. Its stagnant depths were
impenetrable) like the sky when thick with clouds. It was difficult to walk
along its shore, which was pitted by large snake holes. The air above was empty
of birds. Fumes rose from the water like smoke from a putrid fire.
In this pool lived
the king of nagas (serpents), the five-headed Kaliya. One day Krishna
and the gopas tending the herd strayed near Kaliya’s abode. Some of the gopas
and cows were inadvertently affected by the pool’s toxic waters. Krishna then climbed a kadambha tree stretching out over
the pool and fearlessly jumped into the deadly waters to do battle with Kaliya.
Kaliya, the Bhagavata Purana states, ‘caught hold of Krishna
and wound his entire length round the form of the young boy; with his five
heads he spat his virulent poison on the child.
He dug his fangs
deep into all the limbs of the little boy.’ Those watching from the shore
looked on with growing horror, and many, including Yasoda, fainted. But soon
the Lord escaped from the serpent’s coils, leaped high into the sky and,
landing on Kaliya’s outspread hoods, began to dance. The waters of the pool
lashed against the shore to provide the music and the waves kept pace with the
beat. Under the relentless pounding of his feet, Kaliya, gravely wounded,
accepted defeat. His many wives, the nagins, begged the Lord’s forgiveness. In
Vishnu Purana they pleaded with the Lord thus:
Thou art
recognised, 0, God of Gods!; thou art the sovereign of all . . . have mercy on
us. [And Kaliya himself said:] 0, God of Gods . . . Thou art the supreme, the
progenitor of the supreme (Brahma): thou art the supreme spirit, and from thee
the supreme spirit proceeds . . . It is in the nature of snakes to be savage,
and I am born of their kind: hence this is my nature, not mine offence . . .
Spare me my life; I ask no more.
And Krishna set Kaliya free but on condition that he, his
wives and entourage would leave the Yamuna forever and reside in the ocean. The
marks of the Lord’s feet on his hood would protect him there from any further
danger.
The manner in which
Krishna subdues Kaliya has a fascinating
quality about it. The dance to victory, the effortless rhythm of the Almighty’s
pace of creation and destruction, the ease, the grace, the sheer play in the
manifestations of the Lord’s will, to which wind and water provide enchanted
accompaniment, are beautifully brought out in the narrative. Indeed, this is
the first inkling in textual material of Krishna
as ‘natawara’ (the dancer), an aspect that would see mesmerizing elaboration in
the famous rasa dance of his later years.
A distinct cluster
of incidents from Krishna’s childhood brings
out his superhuman physical powers. When but three months old, he is said to
have overturned a loaded cart by a kick of his little legs, described in the
Bhagavata Purana as ‘more tender then the creeper clinging to a tree’. Not much
later, Gokula was attacked by the demon Trinavarta, a servant ofKamsa. Trinavarta
took the form of a blinding whirlwind and carried Krishna
away. No sooner had he done so than he realized that the infant’s weight kept
dramatically increasing. Krishna clung so
tightly to Trinavarta’s throat that the demon’s eyes popped out and he dropped
down dead. A very popular incident is of Krishna,
the toddler, dragging a heavy wooden mortar to which he had been tied by Yasoda
as punishment.
After it had been
pulled some distance, the mortar got stuck between two arjuna trees, but such
was the child’s strength that they were uprooted. The trees were none other
than two Gandharvas, Nalakuvara and Manigriva, who due to a curse in their
previous birth, had been imprisoned in the form of trees. The Lord’s touch gave
them release, and the cowherds shook their heads in bewilderment at the
miraculous feat of this little baby in their midst.
A host of demons,
in the form of different animals, reptiles, or birds, were killed by the child Krishna and Balarama. Vatsasura, sent by Karnsa, came in
the guise of a calf; Krishna recognized him, and catching him by the hind legs
and tail, swung him round until he fell dead on top of a wood apple tree.
Bakasura took the form of a giant crane and caught Krishna in his beak, but the
Lord effortlessly ripped his beak apart as though it were a blade of grass.
Aghasura, the brother of Putana, transformed himself into a huge python. Such
was his size that his mouth appeared like a huge cavern, and the young gopas
unsuspectingly walked in. Inside the demon’s belly, Krishna
miraculously increased his size; Aghasura’s passage of breath was checked and
he fell down dead.
The asura, Arishta,
in the form of a terrible bull, under whose hooves the very earth trembled,
attacked Krishna, but the divine lad pushed him back eighteen feet, tossed him
to the ground, and wrenching out one of his horns, battered him to death with
it. Kesin, another dreadful asura sent by Karnsa, came in the lorm of a wild
horse; fire spewed from his mouth, his eyes were red like embers, his body was
black, and his size and speed sent the clouds scattering. Krishna
caught him by his hind legs and threw him as easily as he would a discus.
Wounded but not yet
dead, Kesin came charging again, but the God of Gods stuck his fist into his
mouth and choked him to death. (Hence Krishna
is also called Kesava-the conqueror of Kesin.) Balarama was equally capable of
such ‘acts of valor.The ass-demon Dhenukasura infested a palm grove, preventing
the gopas from eating the fruit. Fearless Balarama caught hold of the dreaded
demon by his hind legs and whirled him around till he fell dead on top of the
trees.
These tales of
valor must have been based on real life incidents of a heroic figure. The
nomadic-pastoral community subsisted at the edge of thick and dense forests in
which wild beasts abounded. Feats of courage and bravery in encountering such
animals were probably in due course woven into folklore, which, by the time of
the Puranas, coalesced into material for the Krishna
legend.
The historical Krishna must have himself been such a figure. From the
religious point of view, what is noteworthy is that his depletion in such
situations is of one who remains supremely unruffled, achieving his ends
without the slightest trace of effort, as though the adversary was created
merely to provide him with a means to casually unfold his jvill. The beast
could be more ferocious than anything the human mind could imagine, but Krishna, always unperturbed, dealt with the situation
with a smile on his face, in flawless control, as if he were at play. Since the
world itself was deemed to be a manifestation of his play, any overt act of
will on his part, in however difficult a situation, could not but be an
extension of that play.
However, in
striking contrast to the portrayal of the unmoved and unblemished Lord is the
description of the destruction of his demonic victims. The Puranas excel
themselves in painting the most gory accounts of their death, the blood oozing
out, the limbs breaking, their frenzied threshing about in pain, and the final
death convulsions.
Krishna As Child: Part-II
The image of Krishna the butter thief has caught the imagination of
both believers and non-believers in a way few other images have. Krishna, on
all fours, holding a ball of butter in his hand (laddoo Gopal), is a ubiquitous
icon all over India.
It is an aspect which has found pervasive reflection in both sculpture and
painting, and is a favourite theme in the folk songs, poetry and plays
depicting his life. For those initiated in his lore, whether by birth, faith or
exposure, the acceptance of this theme of his childhood is unquestioning, even
axiomatic: For those not so initiated, it is a matter of some surprise that a
god, who ought to be the very symbol of rectitude, should in fact be celebrated
for his stealing. It is worthwhile, therefore, to dwell a little on this
‘peculiar’ trait of the blue god.
The world,
according to Hindu mythology, was created as an extension of the Almighty’s
leela or divine play, the effortless unfolding of his unbounded energy. In this
sense, the Supreme, when incarnate in the form of a human ‘avatar’, merely
continues that play. This leela is beyond conventional morality, but not
because that is its essential character. It is beyond such categories because
it emanates from Him who is goodness incarnate. Thus, the butter thief is but
one more manifestation of his infinite, untainted and joyous energy. It is god
merely playing a role, but with gusto. Rama, the hero of the Ramayana, and also
an avatar of Vishnu, was known as Maryada-Purushottam (rectitude personified).
In contrast, Krishna’s appellation is that of Leela-Purushottam
(playfulness personified). He is also regarded as being the ‘puma avatar’ (the
complete incarnation). Krishna, the complete
god, had to be, therefore, the complete child-not only good but also
mischievous, not only obedient but also wayward, not only well-behaved but also
troublesome. His was not a portrayal of the divine accepting the human mantle
with reluctance. As the butter thief, he is the uninhibited child, wilfully
pursuing his aim, oblivious to the categories of right and wrong in adult life.
This boisterous conduct is expected of him, and he cannot but live up to this
image.
And there is to his
stealing a projection of overwhelming innocence. He takes what he wants because
he has not yet learnt that he is not expected to do so. He asks for what he
wants and throws a tantrum if denied, because he knows no other way of getting
his way. The gopis* anger at his conduct is never sustained for long. They
complain to Yasoda but mostly in mock indignation. Yasoda scolds him, even
punishes him, such as when she ties him to the wooden mortar, but her stern
visage is perpetually on the verge of breaking down under an upsurge of
maternal affection. Indeed, his mischief is so attractive in its aggressive
innocence, that the gopis- quite hopelessly in love with this adorable
child-miss it when he fails to raid their homes.
Note:-The cult of the ‘child-god’ was based upon, and grew on,
the dynamic tension inherent in such an appellation. A child is particularly
accessible and capable of appropriation; but the simultaneous knowledge that in
reality the child is the Almighty, merely-and graciously -allowing himself to
be approached in such a form, fuses the feelings of affection and love with awe
and reverence. Surdas, to whose contributions we will come a little later, was
particularly adept at bringing out this dynamic tension in his poems dealing
with Yasoda and Krishna.
Quoting from
Kenneth E. Byrant’s Poems to the Child God.
The mother says ‘Dance!, Krishna, dance and I’ll give you butter!’
His tiny feet pound and stamp upon the earth, his ankle bells ring;
Sur sings the praises of his name, earth and heaven resound with his fame,
but the Lord of the Three Worlds, dances for his butter.
Or again,
He whose glances frighten Time itself
Him his mother threatens with a stick.
He, the fear of whom drives wind and water, sun and moon,
He moves at the threat of a little stick.
Which form pervades earth and sea, yet is not to be found in the Vedas
That form you cause to dance at a snap of your fingers, here in your own very yard.
The mother says ‘Dance!, Krishna, dance and I’ll give you butter!’
His tiny feet pound and stamp upon the earth, his ankle bells ring;
Sur sings the praises of his name, earth and heaven resound with his fame,
but the Lord of the Three Worlds, dances for his butter.
Or again,
He whose glances frighten Time itself
Him his mother threatens with a stick.
He, the fear of whom drives wind and water, sun and moon,
He moves at the threat of a little stick.
Which form pervades earth and sea, yet is not to be found in the Vedas
That form you cause to dance at a snap of your fingers, here in your own very yard.
The vulnerability
and approachability of infancy became the flip side of the infinite power and
grandeur of god. Several stories of Krishna’s
childhood play on precisely this vibrant dualism image. Yasoda scolds Krishna
for eating mud and, when he denies doing so, forces him to open his mouth. In
his mouth she sees the entire universe-the stars and the planets and all the
galaxies, all things animate and inanimate, even the senses and the mind. She
goes into a trance but the Lord, through his power of ‘maya’, makes her forget
this vision, and he is back again as the erring, defenceless child, feigning
innocence before his angry mother. Another favourite story is of Yasoda
catching Krishna stealing butter. Her patience
tested beyond control, she resolves to punish him by tying him to a wooden
mortar. But every time she attempts to tie the knot, the rope falls slightly
short. Finally, seeing her vexed, the childgod allows her to succeed, but only
to later happily crawl out, effortlessly dragging the heavy mortar behind him.
There is also the
story of a gopi rushing to tell Yasoda that her darling son, caught stealing
butter, has been locked up by her. But her amazement knows no bounds when she
sees Krishna playing about in Yasoda’s home.
Stunned, she rushes back to her home and finds Krishna
locked up as she had left him. The child, supposedly under her control, had
once again given dramatic evidence of his essential self that was beyond such
control. Such evidence was usually in the form of a flash, a momentary vision,
deliberately willed by him to quickly lapse into the normal relationships and
situations dictated by his human role.
The recognition of
such duality-child and god- could produce startling outpourings of piety. In
fact, from the tenth or eleventh century to the fourteenth or fifteenth, there
developed a specific genre of Tamil writing called ‘pillai Tamil’-poetry of the
child-which formalized into ten sections the ritual celebration of childhood.
In Krishna, the
Butter Thief, J.S. Hawley says, these ten sections were:
Kappuparuvarn-the invocation of the deities for the protection of the child;
Cenkiraipparuvarn-literally, ‘wavering’, as a blade of grass waves in the wind and as the head of a young child wobbles before the infant can hold it up steadily;
Talapparuvarn-cradle songs, lullabies;
Cappanipparuvarn-clapping;
Muttapparuvarn-when the child learns to kiss;
Varanaipparuvarn-summoning the child;
Ampulipparuvarn-playing with the moon;
Cirrilparuvarn-when the child builds small houses of sand or mud;
Ciruparaipparuvarn-when the child learns to beat a small drum;
Ciruterparuvarn-in which the child drags a small wagon or cart behind him.
The worship of the child Krishna with its plentitude of nuance came to the fore with Surdas Sursagar, written in the sixteenth century, and Bilvamangala’s Krishnakarnamrita, composed around AD 1300. Hitherto, the stock of incidents in the life of Krishna as a child were limited. But the works of Surdas and Bilvamangia removed all constraining parameters in the imagery elaborating the child-gold’s activities. The Sursagar contains several hundred poems of which a substantial number are devoted to the child Krishna. The few examples given below provide an inkling of the amazing spectrum of Sur’s portrayal and his deep insight into the psychology of a child’s behavior.
Kappuparuvarn-the invocation of the deities for the protection of the child;
Cenkiraipparuvarn-literally, ‘wavering’, as a blade of grass waves in the wind and as the head of a young child wobbles before the infant can hold it up steadily;
Talapparuvarn-cradle songs, lullabies;
Cappanipparuvarn-clapping;
Muttapparuvarn-when the child learns to kiss;
Varanaipparuvarn-summoning the child;
Ampulipparuvarn-playing with the moon;
Cirrilparuvarn-when the child builds small houses of sand or mud;
Ciruparaipparuvarn-when the child learns to beat a small drum;
Ciruterparuvarn-in which the child drags a small wagon or cart behind him.
The worship of the child Krishna with its plentitude of nuance came to the fore with Surdas Sursagar, written in the sixteenth century, and Bilvamangala’s Krishnakarnamrita, composed around AD 1300. Hitherto, the stock of incidents in the life of Krishna as a child were limited. But the works of Surdas and Bilvamangia removed all constraining parameters in the imagery elaborating the child-gold’s activities. The Sursagar contains several hundred poems of which a substantial number are devoted to the child Krishna. The few examples given below provide an inkling of the amazing spectrum of Sur’s portrayal and his deep insight into the psychology of a child’s behavior.
Krishna in the cradle
Yasoda lulling Hari
to sleep,
Shaking the cradle, cuddling and fondling,
Singing to him a song.
My darling is sleepy
Why doesn’t sleep come along?
Come sleep, come quickly Kanha for you does long.
Sometimes he closes his eyes Sometimes his lips are aflutter.
Thinking he has fallen asleep Yasoda stops her singing.
Awake still, he’s up suddenly
Enjoying Yasoda’s song.
Such joy as Yasoda feels
Is unattainable to the gods.
Shaking the cradle, cuddling and fondling,
Singing to him a song.
My darling is sleepy
Why doesn’t sleep come along?
Come sleep, come quickly Kanha for you does long.
Sometimes he closes his eyes Sometimes his lips are aflutter.
Thinking he has fallen asleep Yasoda stops her singing.
Awake still, he’s up suddenly
Enjoying Yasoda’s song.
Such joy as Yasoda feels
Is unattainable to the gods.
Krishna crawling:
Chuckling, Kanha
came crawling,
Trying to catch his reflection
In the bejewelled courtyard of Nanda.
One moment he would stare at his shadow
Then move his hands to hold it
Chuckling in delight, two teeth showing
Again and again he would try.
Calling Nanda to come and see Yasoda watched in joy
Then covering Sur’s Lord with her ‘aanchal’
She began to feed her boy.
Krishna begins to walk:
Trying to catch his reflection
In the bejewelled courtyard of Nanda.
One moment he would stare at his shadow
Then move his hands to hold it
Chuckling in delight, two teeth showing
Again and again he would try.
Calling Nanda to come and see Yasoda watched in joy
Then covering Sur’s Lord with her ‘aanchal’
She began to feed her boy.
Krishna begins to walk:
Kanha walks
Two steps at a
time,
Yasoda’s desires see Fulfillment sublime.
‘Runuk jhunuk’ sing his anklets,
A sound So pleasing to the mind.
He sits, But then is up immediately,
A sight difficult to describe.
All the ladies of Braj tire
Of seeing such beauty divine.
Yasoda’s desires see Fulfillment sublime.
‘Runuk jhunuk’ sing his anklets,
A sound So pleasing to the mind.
He sits, But then is up immediately,
A sight difficult to describe.
All the ladies of Braj tire
Of seeing such beauty divine.
Krishna denying he stole the butter:
0, mother mine,
I did not eat the butter
Come dawn, with the herds,
You send me to the jungle,
0, mother mine, I did not eat the butter,
All day long with my flute in the jungles
At dusk do I return home.
But a child, younger than my friends
How could I reach up to the butter?
All the gopas are against me
On my face they wipe the butter,
You, mother, are much too innocent,
You believe all their chatter.
There is a flaw in your behaviour,
You consider me not yours,
Take your herd-stick and the blanket
I’ll dance to your tune no longer.
Surdas, Yasoda then laughed,
And took the boy in her arms,
Mother mine I did not eat the butter
Many of the child Krishna’s activities spilled over into his adolescence, but with decidedly amorous overtones. His demands of milk and butter from the gopis became, as he grew older, less a childish prank and more a pretext for dalliance.
I did not eat the butter
Come dawn, with the herds,
You send me to the jungle,
0, mother mine, I did not eat the butter,
All day long with my flute in the jungles
At dusk do I return home.
But a child, younger than my friends
How could I reach up to the butter?
All the gopas are against me
On my face they wipe the butter,
You, mother, are much too innocent,
You believe all their chatter.
There is a flaw in your behaviour,
You consider me not yours,
Take your herd-stick and the blanket
I’ll dance to your tune no longer.
Surdas, Yasoda then laughed,
And took the boy in her arms,
Mother mine I did not eat the butter
Many of the child Krishna’s activities spilled over into his adolescence, but with decidedly amorous overtones. His demands of milk and butter from the gopis became, as he grew older, less a childish prank and more a pretext for dalliance.
The adorable
Balgopal grows up to be the precocious Kanhaiya; both were irresistible in
their attractiveness, but whereas the one evoked filial affection the other
provoked sexual attention. This transition is demonstrated best in the
tradition of the dan leela, wherein Krishna waylays the gopis as they take the
milk products for sale to Mathura and demands a ‘tax’ from them in the form of
a gift. The discovery of sexual attraction in both Krishna
and the gopis is mutual. Krishna’s behaviour
shows it. He is now not only seeking the butter and the milk, but in obtaining
them, he is forcing physical contact with the gopis.
The gopis are
initially unable to give form to this new dimension to their feelings for
someone whom till the other day they fondled as a child. They ask Krishna to state clearly what he wants. If it is only
their wares, he can have them, but where is the need for the ‘barjori’, the use
of force, the attempt to physically molest them? Krishna, on his part,
continues to mask the overt sexuality of his actions under the conventional
demand for milk and butter. But the imagery becomes transparently overloaded
with double entendre. When he says that he wants to ‘taste’ a gopi’s wares, the
connotation is entirely different from the guileless context of his childhood
stealing. His breaking of the gopis ‘matkis’-earthenware pots containing milk
products-has an equally powerful sexual imagery. The asking of milk from a
woman is not that innocent when the request is made by an adolescent with a
rakish look in his eye. It does not take time for the gopis to understand how
the situation has changed. They still sometimes complain to Yasoda about her
son’s behaviour, but when Yasoda protests that he is still but a child, they
smile to themselves and steal sidelong glances at his lips.
Perhaps the most
famous of Krishna’s adolescent pranks was the
stealing of the gopis’ clothes as they bathed in the river Yamuna. The gopis
had gone into the water nude. Krishna, watching from a nearby kadambha tree,
stealthily stole their clothes and hung them up like so many fluttering banners
on the branches of the tree. Discovering the theft, the gopis hurriedly
reentered the river to hide their nakedness. They implored Krishna
to return their clothes, but he insisted that they come to him for them.
Shivering in the cold water, the gopis had no option but to forget their shame
and come out. With one hand they tried to cover their breasts and with the
other their private parts. Krishna now
insisted that they raise their hands in obeisance to him before he would give
the clothes. Shyly, the gopis raised one hand, the other still somehow trying
to cover their exposed bodies. But Krishna
said the obeisance must be performed with both hands. Only when the gopis had
raised both hands and stood naked before him did he give them their clothes.
The Bhagavata
describes this incident in detail. The explosive sexual tension is not
underplayed, but a religious motif is granted in explication. The gopis, by
entering the waters of the holy Yamuna nude, had offended the gods; their
transgression had to be brought home to them. In asking them to overcome their
shame and modesty, Krishna was teaching them
the importance of total surrender to him, the very baring of their souls, as it
were, to him. The dip in the river was itself part of a religious ritual
performed by unmarried girls every year in the first month of winter in honour
of the goddess Katayani, who would answer their every prayer. Needless to say,
the gopis’ only prayer was that they get the son of Nanda as their husband. Krishna was aware of this and appreciated the ‘purity’
and ‘chastity’ of their sentiments. When they had bashfully put their clothes
on, he promised them that their prayers would not remain unanswered. ‘You will
spend the nights in autumn with me,’ he said, and, in so doing, he freed them
forever from the cycle of birth and rebirth.
Krishna As Lover: Part – I
Even a cursory
reading of the textual material available on Krishna’s
life leaves one in no doubt that he sported with and made love to the gopis.
Here is what the Harivarnsa has to say:
With a young, new
moon sailing untroubled through the balmy autumn nights, Krishna felt playful
and exuberant . . . sometimes, stirred on by pleasurable emotions, he sported
with girls from the camp through the dark, warm nights. The girls ecstatically
drank in his countenance as if it were the moon come to earth. With his bright
arm bands and wild flower garlands, Krishna’s
glowing presence made all Vraja glow.
Entranced by his
graceful ways, the girl herders greeted him joyously as he strolled about. They
pressed their full, swelling breasts against him, their eyes darting about.
Eluding the restraint of mothers, fathers, and brothers, the pleasure drunk
girls dashed through the night to his side.
Forming a row, they
sang praises of his deeds, each girl striving to outdo the others . . . Their
limbs were soon covered with dust and dung as they struggled to satisfy
Krishna, like excited female elephants topped by an aroused bull elephant. With
wide eyes beaming with love, the deer eyed girls thirstily drank in their lover’s
dark form. Then others had their chance to find pleasure in his arms. When he
sighed with pleasure, the girls joyously echoed his melodious sounds. Their
hair, once carefully bound and parted, lay strewn about as they fell back
fulfilled, stray hairs caressing the nipples of their breasts. On many a
moonlit autumn night, Krishna and the herder
girls joined in these revels, amusing themselves in delicious play.
The Vishnu
Purana states:-
. . . Krishna,
observing the clear sky bright with the autumnal moon, and the air perfumed
with the fragrance of the wild water-lily, in whose buds the clustering bees
were murmuring their songs, felt inclined to join with the gopis in sport.
Accordingly he and Balarama commenced singing sweet low strains in various measures,
such as the women loved; and they, as soon as they heard the melody, quitted
their homes, and hastened to meet the foe of Madhu (Krishna).
One damsel gently sang an accompaniment to his song; another attentively
listened to his melody; one calling out upon his name, then shrunk abashed;
whilst another, more bold, and instigated by affection, pressed close to his
side; one, as she sallied forth, beheld some of the seniors of the family, and
dared not venture . . .
Thus surrounded by
the gopis, Krishna thought the lovely moonlight night of autumn propitious to
the Rasa dance . . . As each of the gopis, however, attempted to keep in one
place, close to the side of Krishna, the circle of the dance could not be
constructed, and he therefore took each by the hand, and when their eyelids
were shut, by the effects of such touch, the circle was formed. Then proceeded
the dance to the music of their clashing bracelets, and songs that celebrated
in suitable strains the charms of the autumnal season.Krishna sang of the moon
of autumn, a mine of gentle radiance, but the nymphs repeated the praise of
Krishna alone . . . When leading they followed him; when returning, they
encountered him; and whether they went forward or backwards, they ever attended
on his steps. Whilst frolicking thus with the gopis, they considered every
instant without him a myriad of years; and, prohibited in vain by husbands,
fathers, brothers, they went forth at night to sport with Krishna, the object
of their affection.
The description in
the Harivarnsa is matter of fact, its brevity reinforces its sincerity. There
is in its narration the glimpse of a spontaneous folk culture unburdened with
the constraints of structured morality. The Vishnu Purana bases itself on the
Harivarnsa narrative, but elaborates and embellishes it, using literary
flourishes and the occasional overtone of piety to depict the transparent
burgeoning of passion and desire profiled in the Harivarnsa, It also makes a
much more defined and specific reference to the rasa dance. The rasa emerges as
a spontaneous and joyful chorus in which movement was transparently fuelled by
the physical attraction between Krishna and
the gopis. The dance could be fatiguing, lasting the entire night and for
several nights thereafter, a conduit for the release of sexual tension and a
forum for its expression.
It was human
choreography naturally articulating a need that demanded celebration. But even
at this point it is very clear that the behaviour of the gopis with their
god-like beau, and his behaviour with them, was in opposition to the accepted
morality of the society in which they lived. The Harivarnsa is unambiguous in
asserting that the girls eluded the restraints of their mothers, fathers and
brothers; and the Vishnu Purana is unequivocal in noting that the gopis were
prohibited in vain by their husbands, brothers and fathers.
On the beginnings
made by the Harivarnsa and the Vishnu Purana, the Bhagavata Purana built a
complex edifice dealing with Krishna’s love
games. Seeing the jasmine come to full bloom in the cool autumn nights, the
Lord, the Bhagavata writes, made up his mind to commence his love play. Hearing
his flute and stirred by the moonlight caressing the forest in a gentle glow,
the gopis, breaking all restraints, rushed to him. Having enticed them, Krishna, paradoxically, asked the ladies to return home
since adultery would not be approved of. The gopis were however adamant; they
fervently professed their love for him and explained the suffering they would
undergo if denied union with him. Krishna relented and on the cool sands of the
banks of the Yamuna with the heady perfume of the lilies in the air, made love
to them.
By stretching out
his arms and embracing them; by playfully caressing their hair, by pleasurably
stroking their thighs, loosening their waist cloths and fondling their breasts;
by engaging in battles with fingernails; and by playful derision, glances and
smiles the Lord aroused the women of Vraja to the peak of passion, and made
love to them.
Fulfilled in their
desires, the gopis begin to look upon themselves as superior; conceit and pride
enter their feelings, and to remove these Krishna
suddenly disappears from their midst, leaving them utterly distraught. Their
suffering is so acute that they lose all sense of their person or surroundings.
In their agony some of them begin to imitate Krishna.
Others, almost insane from the pangs of separation, begin to search for him in
the forest, singing in high pitched voices songs in his praise, and asking the
bees and plants, the creepers and animals, of his whereabouts.
At this point Krishna reappears in their midst and starts the rasa. The
Bhagavata Purana introduced a new element in the dance performance. According
to the Vishnu Purana, Krishna, through his
touch, created the impression in the minds of the gopis that each them was
holding his hand. The Bhagavata states that Krishna actually physically
multiplied himself, putting one of his arms round the neck of each gopi, so
that for sixteen gopis there were eight Krishnas.
Each gopi thus had Krishna for herself, and
together they danced the rasa with vigour and passion. During the dance their
breast cloths and the knots of the girdles and braids came loose, but in their
fervour they cared not, ‘delighted by the touches of Krishna*.
The Bhagavata describes the finale of the love play thus:
After multiplying
Himself so that there were as many forms of Him as there were cowherd-women.
His Blessed Lord made love with these gopis—even though His delight is in
Himself, playfully—as a game. The gopis were exhausted by this excess of love
play, and He, compassionate, wiped their faces lovingly . . . with His most
blessed hand. The gopis . . . honouring their virile lover, sang in praise of
the sacred works He had done, filled with joy by the touch of His fingernails.
Vibrantly erotic,
Bhagavata, like the Harivarnsa and the Vishnu Purana, makes it clear that the
gopis’ liaison with Krishna was in the case of the unmarried ones, illicit, and
in the case of the married ones, adulterous. The love play was also carried on
in explicit defiance of the prevailing norms and code of morality. But the
Bhagavata, written around the tenth century AD, reflects the cumulative legacy
of several centuries of legitimizing desire and eroticism as a strand of Hindu
outlook and tradition. Krishna, the lover, was the ultimate rasik— he who knows
of rasa, is immersed in it and can arouse it in others.
When Krishna, sweetness and grace itself, played the flute its
impact was bewitching. Indeed, his flute, with its obvious phallic
connotations, was but an extension of his beauty. The Bhagavata narrates how,
on hearing the melody of his flute, the gopis left whatever they were doing and
throwing all restraint and caution to the winds rushed to his side as if in a
trance. When the strains of his flute wafted through Vrindavan, all things
became intoxicated with passion. Not even the wives of gods could resist its
call. It was as if all of creation for a moment stopped to listen rapt in
attention.
As he played,
clouds bent low to come closer to him, plants and creepers swayed in silent
salute, the reeds from which his flute was made wept tears of joy, and rivers
slowed their pace in involuntary obeisance. Vallabhacharya (AD 1479-1531), the
learned saint and founder of the Vaishnava Vallabha sect, has categorized the
sound of Krishna’s flute into five kinds: when the Lord played with his flute
to the left, passion awoke in women; when his face was to the right, desire
surged in both men and women; when his face pointed upwards, kaama infused the
gods; when downwards, animals and birds became its prey; and when he played
straight ahead, even insentient things could not insulate themselves from its
effect.
But Krishna’s
physical appeal, his madhurya, and the call of his flute were also linked to
the overall ambience of the moment and the setting, moved by which alone he
would set forth to evoke the erotic mood. The flute rang out most clear and
compellingly with the onset of autumn, when the monsoon had spent itself, the
landscape was green and lush, jasmine and coral flowers and water lilies were
in bloom, and the nights were clear and full of stars. The Harivarnsa, the
Vishnu Purana and the Bhagavata categorically link Krishna’s
love play with the autumnal turn of season when man and nature alike were open
to the seduction of Kaamadeva as never before.
In the Harivarnsa, Krishna himself lyrically describes the beauty of autumn,
and brings out forcefully why his flute, could now succeed so eminently in
overwhelming the shores of restraint around the brimful pool of desire. In this
season, he says, the forests are thick with foliage and fruits. Flowers—the red
bandhujiva, the yellow asama and the purple kovidava—are in bloom. The skies
are clear, the breeze is calm, and the earth washed and clean. Rivers, no
longer in spate, flow placidly, their gurgle akin to a woman’s laughter.
Flowering vines decorate the banks of the Yamuna. Lakes, ponds and reservoirs
are full, and lilies and lotuses bloom in them like so many stars in the night.
The fields are awash with the pastel shades of ripening rice. Birds—geese,
cranes and curlews—dot the landscape. Cows are well fed and rich in milk, and
bulls twice as lusty. There is contentment in the hearts of people, when
autumn, like a beautiful damsel, strolls along the countryside.
Krishna’s love play
with the gopis was thus one in which the physical was interwoven with melody,
grace, madhurya, a sense of moment and the resplendence of nature. Sringara
rasa was the outcome of this heady mix. Vallabhacharya makes one of his most
perceptive comments in Subhodhini, his commentary on the Bhagavata, when he
says that in so far as a person does not subordinate himself to the dominant
mood to that extent he lacks aesthetic taste’ (from the translation in James D.
Redington’s Vallabhacharya on the Love Games of Krishna). This and not the
half-hearted attempts at ‘moral’ reconciliation best captures the essence of
the Bhagavata. Indeed, Vallabhacharya goes so far as to say that the male relatives
of the gopis— fathers, brothers, husbands, sons—in attempting to restrain the
gopis ‘were insensitive to the proper mood of the ultimate reward, since their
sole preoccupation was with the means’.
In contrast, the
gopis, overcome by sringara rasa, were rightly unable to control themselves.
Vallabhacharya gives the example of a boat being carried away in a raging flood
that would not stop merely by someone shouting at it to do so. The gopis were
similarly beyond moral categories. Without physical union with Krishna, they
were in genuine suffering; Krishna, for them,
was the destroyer of suffering (artihan) and the destroyer of anxieties
(adihan). Making love with him gave them sukha (bliss), joy, and it is at this
point that ideologically the carnal and the spiritual make a surprising fusion.
According to the Upanishads, creation itself was suffused with sukha and joy as
both a reflection and an attribute of the Infinite. The Chandogya Upanishad
says: ‘where there is joy there is creation. Where there is no joy there is no
creation: know the nature of joy. And in the Taittiriya Upanishad, the seeker
of truth finally understands the mystery of Brahma: ‘And then he saw that
Brahma was joy: for from joy all beings have come, by joy they all live, and
onto joy they all return.’ This ananda, this joy, was also the leitmotif of the
gopis love play with Krishna. The rasa leela
affirmed the sexual as a window to the divine.
The gopis became
jivatmas (individual souls) seeking merger with the paramatma (the absolute).
Physical passion became an aspect of bhakti (devotion). The erotic was
sanctified; the spiritual was sexualized, and once the sacred and the profane
were so bridged, all worrying superimpositions of guilt with reference to
conventional moral standards could be discarded, opening the floodgates for the
fullest ‘humanization’ of Krishna, the lover. The imagination would now not
rest at seeking him only as an impersonal if accomplished lover, available to
all the gopis. He had to have a preference.
His personality was
now free to be embellished with the entire gamut of emotions in the spectrum of
love—desire, jealousy, pride, anger, remorse, self-pity, ecstasy, union and
fulfillment. His eroticism now had unfettered social sanction.His love play
could therefore legitimately be a canvas for infinite themes, themes in which
human emotion and sentiment would be uninhibited participants. Krishna, the
lover, was now ready for acceptance as an absolute theme in itself. The Puranic
lover was ready to be replaced by the myriad nuances of the romantic hero.
The Sanskrit
classic, Gitagovinda (Songs of Govinda) written by Jayadeva in the twelfth
century AD, became a powerfully evocative landmark in this process. Jayadeva
was the court-poet of King Lakshmanasena (AD 1179-1205) of Bengal.
Born in a Brahmin family, he was in early life an ascetic. But, marriage to
Padmavati, a dancing girl in the temple
of Lord Jagannath (another name for Krishna) of Puri, transmuted the ascetic into a
wonderfully lyrical exponent of the relevance of human love. Apart from its
intrinsic literary merit which is of an exceptionally high order, the
Gitagovinda is of special importance for its path-breaking deification of
Radha, Krishna’s consort.
Radha finds no
mention in the Mahabharata and the Harivarnsa, or in the Vishnu Purana and the
Bhagavata Purana. The Bhagavata does mention one gopi who appeared to have
temporarily won special attention from Krishna,
but she is not mentioned by name and later efforts by Vaishnava theologists to
derive the name Radha from ‘aradhita’—the term used for the gopi in the
Bhagavata—are hardly convincing.
Starting from the
second century AD, Radha does find mention in one or two Prakrit texts. The
most notable of these is the Satasai of Hala, variously dated to a period
between the first to seventh century AD. In Sanskrit literature, she is
mentioned for the first time in the inscriptions of the Paramara king, Vakpati
Munja of Malwa (AD 97394). In Tamil Aalvaar poetry there is the mention of
Pinnai or Nappinai as the wife of Krishna, but there is not enough ground to
postulate that she was the same as Radha, or even that this lady was the
inspiration for the scattered references to a Radha in Prakrit and Sanskrit
literature.
The truth appears
to be that Jayadeva intentionally elevated Radha from a somewhat obscure, even
peripheral, personage to a central deity of worship. In doing so he was making
a conscious break with the past. The author of the Bhagavata must also have
known of the existence in earlier literature of Radha. But the intention in the
Bhagavata was to portray the non-exclusivity of Krishna’s
erotic energy. Its theological imperative was solely to essay Krishna’s
love play as an aspect of his divinity. Jayadeva’s purpose went beyond.
He wanted to create
an appropriate foil for Krishna’s erotic
personality. His aim was to give to his love play the dramatic content of a
duet, in which Krishna’s passion would have an
individual focus worthy of its intensity. His goal was to bring the rasa leela
down from its pedestal of powerful but diffused intent to a stage where all the
emotional props were drawn from an emphatically human idiom. Thus, Jayadeva’s
Radha had to be created. If Krishna was
Sringaramurtirnam, Radha, the object of his love, had to be Raseshvari—the very
goddess of that mood. If Krishna was the God
of Love, Radha had to be Rati (Rati is also the wife of Kaamadeva in Hindu
mythology), passion personified. Krishna could
not be portrayed as cosmically aloof. He had to be portrayed as symbolizing, in
the tradition of Hindu mythology, the cosmic unity of purusha and prakriti.
Together with his consort, Krishna was
complete. Alone he was devoid of rasa (nirasa). Each was the object of the
other’s love. And both were the subject of each other’s passion
In theGitagovinda,
Jayadeva succeeded eminently in his purpose. Indeed, the profile of Radha as
Raseshvari emerged so strongly that Jayadeva appears to have been daunted by
his own effort. Stories of Jayadeva’s life recount that the poet was hesitant
to complete his work, afraid that he had gone too far in the portrayal of Krishna abashed at the bower of Radha. One day, so the
story goes, Jayadeva had gone to the river for his bath, when Krishna,
assuming his form, completed the last couplet of the work and ate the food
prepared by Padmavati. When Jayadeva discovered the stanza completed and his
food eaten, he interpreted it as divine sanction for the content of his work.
This little story is interesting in reinforcing the point made earlier that Jayadeva*s
exaltation of Radha was in such measure a new step that it needed the
projection of divine approval to ensure acceptability in the audience of that
time.
The story of the
Gitagovinda is both simple and complex. It is simple because the essential plot
is structured, as in the rasa leela of the Bhagavata, on the unitary theme of
separation (vipralambhasringara) and union (sambhogsringara) of love. The theme
is complex because of the qualitatively new emotions it unleashes. The joy of
union with Krishna and the unbearable pangs of
separation from him—the story of the Bhagavata— are subsumed in a startling
array of sentiments that accompany the amplification of this theme. Krishna is
no longer the detached lover, reciprocating the passion of the gopis with
consummate equanimity. He suffers and agonizes like Radha, who emerges as the
unquestioned central concern of his amours. Her portrayal goes far beyond the
plaintive, desire-besotted gopis of the Bhagavata. The new heroine in Krishna’s life is a strikingly compelling woman:
beautiful, aloof, proud, sensitive, brooding, wilful and passionate.
The Gitagovinda
begins with Nandalal, Krishna’s foster-father, asking Radha to take Krishna home since night was falling and dark clouds were
threatening the sky. Radha obeys, but on the way home disappears into a thicket
of trees with her ward, and the two make love. The secret, illicit character of
the relationship is established ab initio. Jayadeva’s Radha is not Krishna’s wife. According to tradition—probably oral and
textually scattered—but of which Jayadeva was aware, Radha was several years
older than Krishna. She was the daughter of
Vrishbhanu, a clan chief like Nandalal, and belonged to Barsana, a settlement
not far from Gokula. The residents of Barsana migrated to Vrindavan before
those of Gokula. On the way to Vrindavan, they passed Gokula, and it was then
that Radha first saw Krishna. He was but a
toddler then; Radha, a young girl, took him into her arms as a mother would her
child. The Oedipal undercurrent in the Radha-Krishna liaison is plausible.
The concept of the
Mother-Goddess existed in India
since prehistoric times and had been assimilated into Hindu mythology. In
several sects the devi, or goddess, was not merely the consort of a male god
but a supreme power in her own right, pursuing her own purpose and nurturing
her followers in a protective and possessive manner. Perhaps it was the echo of
such a tradition that prompted the necessity to give Radha at one level a
mother-image vis-a-vis Krishna. The concept of
purusha and prakriti could also provide a metaphysical explanation for Radha’s
greater years. According to the Samkhya-Yoga school of Indian
philosophy, all of creation consists of purusha and prakriti. Prakriti is the
all-embracing material substratum of things. Purusha is sentience personified.
Prakriti, which has always existed, remains in a state of dissolution (pralaya)
until the mere presence of purusha (purusha-samnidhi) disturbs the state of its
latent equilibrium, and evolution (sarga) is set in motion. For evolutionary
activity, therefore, the presence of purusha is crucial, but prakriti in its
state of dissolution exists even without it. Radha, the cosmic symbol of
prakriti, had thus to exist prior to the arrival of Krishna, purusha incarnate.
Radha was
supposedly betrothed to one Ayana (or Rayana) while still a child. Ayana, who
was much older than her, is said to have been the brother of Yasoda, Krishna’s foster-mother. On marriage, Radha would be Krishna’s aunt. In some accounts, Radha is already
married to Ayana when she meets Krishna, and
this adds a somewhat surprisingly incestuous dimension to the relationship. The
tradition has had a not insignificant following and has persisted over the
centuries. One example is the highly sensitive writings of Muddupalani
(1730-90), a courtesan in the court of the Nayaka kings ofThanjavur. In Radhika
Santlvanam, a Telugu text consisting of 584 poems, she describes Radha as Krishna’s aunt. Krishna is to marry Ila Devi, a girl
brought up by Radha, and Radha even advises Krishna
on how to behave with her on the wedding night.
Given the seminal
importance of the Gitagovinda in the evolution of the Krishna
cult, it is useful to dwell on it a little longer. After their night of love in
the thicket on that darkening eve, Krishna
deserts Radha, and she, delirious in separation, imagines a love tryst with
him.
Krishna soon abandons the other cowherd girls, and is deeply
remorseful. He asks for forgiveness but Radha is unrelenting. She in her agony
imagines how another woman must have made love to Krishna.
(Extracts from the Gitagovinda unless otherwise indicated are from the
excellent translation by Durgadas Mukhopadhyay, In Praise of Krishna.)
Dressed suitably
for the sport of love
her hair loosened
with flowers disarrayed,
some other woman excelling me in charm
revels with the enemy of Madhu . . .
She looks at her lover
and blushes with a smile.
She murmurs softly
in all the many ways of love
lost in its bliss.
Her body shudders and trembles
Her passion blossoms
with sighs and eyes closing.
Krishna appears abashed before Radha but she taunts him angrily.
her hair loosened
with flowers disarrayed,
some other woman excelling me in charm
revels with the enemy of Madhu . . .
She looks at her lover
and blushes with a smile.
She murmurs softly
in all the many ways of love
lost in its bliss.
Her body shudders and trembles
Her passion blossoms
with sighs and eyes closing.
Krishna appears abashed before Radha but she taunts him angrily.
Your drowsy red
eyes
for being awake through the night
betray the intensity of passion
that you cherish for that other woman.
Alas! Alas! Go Madhava! Go Kesava! leave me!
Do not try to deceive me with your artful words.
Go after her, you lotus-eyed one
she who soothes your grief.
for being awake through the night
betray the intensity of passion
that you cherish for that other woman.
Alas! Alas! Go Madhava! Go Kesava! leave me!
Do not try to deceive me with your artful words.
Go after her, you lotus-eyed one
she who soothes your grief.
Krishna now uses a combination of remorse and flattery to break
Radha’s pride. He praises her moonlike face and the nectar of her lips,
describes her as the very ornament of his life, professes that only she can
arouse passion in him, and assures her that a rival to her has no place in his
life.
0 anxious one,
abandon fear, imagining
me devoted to other women,
You alone entirely occupy my heart
with your voluptuous breasts and hips.
None other than the god of love—
the bodiless one, is blessed
to enter my heart.
0 my beloved, be content in this
and allow me to embrace you.
Crush me with your hard breasts,
entwine me in your vine-like arms
bite me with your merciless teeth
inflict upon me, 0 beautiful one,
any punishment that you wish and be happy.
Let my life not end
under the blows of Love
the five-arrowed one,
the undignified one.
Radha’s friend again urges her to meet Krishna’s mood without shame. The moment and the mood, she says, are ripe for love. Finally, Radha relents.
abandon fear, imagining
me devoted to other women,
You alone entirely occupy my heart
with your voluptuous breasts and hips.
None other than the god of love—
the bodiless one, is blessed
to enter my heart.
0 my beloved, be content in this
and allow me to embrace you.
Crush me with your hard breasts,
entwine me in your vine-like arms
bite me with your merciless teeth
inflict upon me, 0 beautiful one,
any punishment that you wish and be happy.
Let my life not end
under the blows of Love
the five-arrowed one,
the undignified one.
Radha’s friend again urges her to meet Krishna’s mood without shame. The moment and the mood, she says, are ripe for love. Finally, Radha relents.
So the encounter in
love began,
when the shuddering of bodies
hindered firm embrace;
where the joy of contemplating one another
with searching looks
was interrupted by blinkings;
where the mutual sipping
of the honey of each other’s lips
was impeded by the utterances
of small love-cries.
Yet even these seeming hindrances
enhanced the delight in love-play.
Though entwined in her arms
though crushed by the weight of her breasts
though smitten by her fingernails
though bitten on the lips by her small teeth
though overwhelmed by the thirst of her thighs
his locks seized by her hands
inebriated with the nectar of her lips
he drew immense pleasure from such sweet torments.
Strange indeed are the ways of love!
when the shuddering of bodies
hindered firm embrace;
where the joy of contemplating one another
with searching looks
was interrupted by blinkings;
where the mutual sipping
of the honey of each other’s lips
was impeded by the utterances
of small love-cries.
Yet even these seeming hindrances
enhanced the delight in love-play.
Though entwined in her arms
though crushed by the weight of her breasts
though smitten by her fingernails
though bitten on the lips by her small teeth
though overwhelmed by the thirst of her thighs
his locks seized by her hands
inebriated with the nectar of her lips
he drew immense pleasure from such sweet torments.
Strange indeed are the ways of love!
The Gitagovinda
ends in a delightful mood of post-coital languidness, when, with the tension
resolved, Krishna meekly obeys Radha’s
commands.
She said:-
Adorn my breasts
with leaf designs of musk
put colour on my cheeks
fasten the girdle around my hips
twine my heavy braid with flowers
fix rows of bangles on my hands
and jewelled anklets on my feet.
And thus requested by Radha
Krishna who wears the yellow garment
did as she has asked him to, with pleasure.
From the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, a host of poets carried forward the legacy of Jayadeva. However, unlike Jayadeva who wrote in Sanskrit, these poets wrote in the language spoken by the common man. Chandidasa, who lived at the confluence of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, wrote in his native Bengali; Vidyapati (1352-1448) wrote in Maithili; Surdas and Bihari (1595-1664) composed in Braj; and Govindadasa, in the sixteenth century, wrote in Brajaboli. The cumulative result was that the love lore of Krishna and Radha moved out from the sanctum sanctorum of the temple to the dust and din of daily life. Their erotic love play made a transition from the refined, if passionate, milieu of Sanskrit poetics to the earthy and seductive medium of the lingua franca of the masses. The Lord and his consort were removed from the rarefied atmosphere of lotus-leaved arbours and ethereal jungle thickets, and placed with poetic adroitness in more familiar settings. Their rasa leela continued with unabated ardour, but in new situations that were inspired by the humdrum routine of ordinary people.
put colour on my cheeks
fasten the girdle around my hips
twine my heavy braid with flowers
fix rows of bangles on my hands
and jewelled anklets on my feet.
And thus requested by Radha
Krishna who wears the yellow garment
did as she has asked him to, with pleasure.
From the fourteenth to the sixteenth centuries, a host of poets carried forward the legacy of Jayadeva. However, unlike Jayadeva who wrote in Sanskrit, these poets wrote in the language spoken by the common man. Chandidasa, who lived at the confluence of the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries, wrote in his native Bengali; Vidyapati (1352-1448) wrote in Maithili; Surdas and Bihari (1595-1664) composed in Braj; and Govindadasa, in the sixteenth century, wrote in Brajaboli. The cumulative result was that the love lore of Krishna and Radha moved out from the sanctum sanctorum of the temple to the dust and din of daily life. Their erotic love play made a transition from the refined, if passionate, milieu of Sanskrit poetics to the earthy and seductive medium of the lingua franca of the masses. The Lord and his consort were removed from the rarefied atmosphere of lotus-leaved arbours and ethereal jungle thickets, and placed with poetic adroitness in more familiar settings. Their rasa leela continued with unabated ardour, but in new situations that were inspired by the humdrum routine of ordinary people.
Two poems, the
first by Govindadasa (E. Dimock, Jr. and D. Levertov, In Praise of Krishna,
Songs from the Bengali) and the second by Vidyapati (Love Songs of Vidyapati,
translated by D. Bhattacharya), beautifully capture the joyful turbulence of
the first time Radha and Krishna make love.
Radha is afraid and nervous, but that master-lover will brook no delay, and
she, against her own resolve, yields’ to him. It is an indescribably evocative
profile of the tension between a girl’s diffidence and a woman’s passion, the
awakening of love and the losing of innocence in that sudden, pleasurable
discovery of sex.
Fingering the
border of her friend’s sari, nervous and afraid,
sitting tensely on the edge of Krishna’s couch,
as her friend left she too looked to go
but in desire Krishna blocked her way.
He was infatuated, she bewildered;
he was clever, and she naive.
He put out his hand to touch her; she quickly pushed it away.
He looked into her face, her eyes filled with tears.
He held her forcefully, she trembled violently
and hid her face from his kisses behind the edge of her sari.
Then she lay down, frightened, beautiful as a doll;
He hovered like a bee round a lotus in a painting;
Govindadasa says, Because of this,
Drowned in the well of her beauty,
Krishna’s love was changed.
sitting tensely on the edge of Krishna’s couch,
as her friend left she too looked to go
but in desire Krishna blocked her way.
He was infatuated, she bewildered;
he was clever, and she naive.
He put out his hand to touch her; she quickly pushed it away.
He looked into her face, her eyes filled with tears.
He held her forcefully, she trembled violently
and hid her face from his kisses behind the edge of her sari.
Then she lay down, frightened, beautiful as a doll;
He hovered like a bee round a lotus in a painting;
Govindadasa says, Because of this,
Drowned in the well of her beauty,
Krishna’s love was changed.
Krishna As Lover: Part – II
There was a shudder
in her whispering voice.
She was shy to frame her words.
What has happened tonight to lovely Radha?
Now she consents, now she is afraid.
When asked for love, she closes up her eyes,
Eager to reach the ocean of desire.
He begs her for a kiss.
She turns her mouth away
And then, like a night lily,
the moon seized her.
She felt his touch startling her girdle.
She knew her love treasure was being robbed.
With her dress she covered up her breasts.
The treasure was left uncovered.
Vidyapati wonders at the neglected bed.
Lovers are busy in each other’s arms.
Desire and inhibition, passion and fear, seduction and shame, ecstasy and the occasional recurrence of shame—the entire dialectic of a liaison is explored. But the many moods of union are not always delineated in predictable rainbow colours. The causeless hysteria and ingenuity of lovers, their random elations and depressions, their unfathomed joy and sorrow are also the subject of these poets’ attention. The following poem by Chandidasa expresses some of these feelings.
She was shy to frame her words.
What has happened tonight to lovely Radha?
Now she consents, now she is afraid.
When asked for love, she closes up her eyes,
Eager to reach the ocean of desire.
He begs her for a kiss.
She turns her mouth away
And then, like a night lily,
the moon seized her.
She felt his touch startling her girdle.
She knew her love treasure was being robbed.
With her dress she covered up her breasts.
The treasure was left uncovered.
Vidyapati wonders at the neglected bed.
Lovers are busy in each other’s arms.
Desire and inhibition, passion and fear, seduction and shame, ecstasy and the occasional recurrence of shame—the entire dialectic of a liaison is explored. But the many moods of union are not always delineated in predictable rainbow colours. The causeless hysteria and ingenuity of lovers, their random elations and depressions, their unfathomed joy and sorrow are also the subject of these poets’ attention. The following poem by Chandidasa expresses some of these feelings.
I must go.
In spite of my kisses,
My passionate embraces,
He keeps repeating
That he must go.
He goes half a step
And then he turns back
With anguished eyes,
Gazing at my face.
Wringing my hands
He promises returning
He flatters me so much
To meet me again!
Deep is his love,
My beloved one,
Of such terrible passion.
Candidasa says: then Rest in his heart.
In spite of my kisses,
My passionate embraces,
He keeps repeating
That he must go.
He goes half a step
And then he turns back
With anguished eyes,
Gazing at my face.
Wringing my hands
He promises returning
He flatters me so much
To meet me again!
Deep is his love,
My beloved one,
Of such terrible passion.
Candidasa says: then Rest in his heart.
The poets of this
period chafed at the constraints of the hitherto accepted contours of the
Krishna-Radha love games. As a genre their poetry came to be known as riti-kala
or sringara-kala, wherein love, in all its aspects, was the unabashed theme. Their
effor. was to take the Krishna and Radha
humanized by Bilvamangala and Jayadeva and depict them in as many situations as
it was possible for human lovers to find themselves. It was a case of the
divine imitating the human, and the human, being enriched by the divine. Like
any bold man in love, their Krishna was also
capable of the most daring ruses. Their Radha could dress herself up as a
constable to put Krishna in her place, or
steal glances at him unnoticed through a peephole in her tresses as she combed
them after a bath. Some of these bards literally revelled in the novelty of a
new situation. A poem by Bihari {Bihari, The Satasai, translated by K.P.
Bahadur) goes:
Exchanging clothes
Radha and Krishna
came to the rendezvous
for love making.
She was on top
but dressed as a man,
so they got the thrill
of novelty even
while seeming to
make love in the normal way!
Even so, established themes—Krishna’s bewitching flute and the primeval rhythm of the rasa—were not entirely forgotten, but the familiar invocation was often laced with startlingly new imagery.
Radha and Krishna
came to the rendezvous
for love making.
She was on top
but dressed as a man,
so they got the thrill
of novelty even
while seeming to
make love in the normal way!
Even so, established themes—Krishna’s bewitching flute and the primeval rhythm of the rasa—were not entirely forgotten, but the familiar invocation was often laced with startlingly new imagery.
Chandidasa
writes:
How can I describe
his relentless flute,
which pulls virtuous women from their homes
and drags them by their hair to Shyam
as thirst and hunger pull the doe to the snare?
Chaste ladies forget their lords,
wise men forget their wisdom,
and clinging vines shake loose from their trees,
hearing that music.
Then how shall a simple dairy maid withstand its call?
Candidasa says, Kala the puppet master leads the dance.
which pulls virtuous women from their homes
and drags them by their hair to Shyam
as thirst and hunger pull the doe to the snare?
Chaste ladies forget their lords,
wise men forget their wisdom,
and clinging vines shake loose from their trees,
hearing that music.
Then how shall a simple dairy maid withstand its call?
Candidasa says, Kala the puppet master leads the dance.
In the popular
psyche, Krishna and Radha became the universal
symbol for the lover and the beloved. Krishna
was the ideal nayak (hero), and Radha the ideal nayika (heroine). The use of
the word ideal should not be interpreted to mean a monotone image. On the
contrary, they were the ideal precisely because their sringara-leela could
accommodate a thousand variations. All lovers could not but reflect in their
own personality some part (ansh) of the divine love between the two;
conversely, the two incorporated in themselves the personality of all lovers.
The canvas of their love was seamless, a painting which amplified and mutated
itself in a myriad reflections. For this reason, but also as a facade for the
expression of human prurience, an invocation of their name became a password to
sanction the description of all contact between the sexes.
The meteoric growth
in the stature of Radha in Krishna lore was in large measure due to the fact
that Krishna was a god specially made for
women. Radha acquired pivotal importance because through her feeling and
personality she articulated the silent yearnings and fantasies of Indian women
as a whole. Around the tenth century AD, women in India lived in considerably
repressed conditions. Wifely chastity was an overpowering ideal in an
unrepentantly polygamous society. Men could have more than one wife and several
mistresses; women could at best strive to retain the attention of their
husband. For men dalliance outside marriage had social tolerance if not
acceptance; a woman was bounded by the four walls of her husband’s home and
even the thought of a romantic foray beyond them was unthinkable. To make
matters worse, husbands were often away for long periods. An entire genre of
very stirring verse—Baramaasa—came up dealing with a wife’s anguish at the many
seasons of the year drifting barrenly by in the absence of her husband.
Widowhood was a curse, remarriage was taboo, and the plight of -child-widows
pitiable. Sexual frustration was thus rampant under the respectable edifice of
‘stable’ homes and chaste wives.
In Radha, Indian
women found a symbol for the vicarious release of their repressed
personalities. Radha’s intense yearning for Krishna
echoed their own subconscious frustrations. Her uninhibited pursuit of physical
fulfillment with him mirrored their own libidinal stirrings. The secretive,
illicit and adulterous nature of her affair with Krishna
provided a particularly apt framework for them to identify with. Radha, the
furtive rebel, determined to clandestinely break the stranglehold of social
norms and customs, became an image they could readily internalize.
If Radha was the
inspiration, Krishna was the object of the
Indian woman’s fantasy. Unlike other gods in the Hindu pantheon, Krishna’s personality had a softness to it that made it
conspicuously responsive to the longings and desires of women. As a child, his
impish adorability tugged at the maternal instincts of the women of Braj. As an
adolescent, his aggressive behaviour with its transparent sexual overtones was
secretly understood by them. As a lover, he was prepared to overcome his own
initial scruples to respond with equal passion to their overtures. When he
danced the rasa he took care to perpetuate the illusion that he was available
exclusively for each one of them. In lovemaking, he was both untiring and
accomplished. Above all, he was human, treating women nor just as sex objects,
but suffering like them in separation and longing. In his company, they could
relax the code of conduct imposed by an overwhelmingly male-dominated society.
They would assume a stance of familiarity, calling him a thief, a liar, cheat
and so on—something they could never do with their husbands
Krishna allowed
women to play out the fantasy of being in control, of being able to bend the
will of men to their commands. In the Gitagovinda, Radha compelled Krishna to repent and, when they made love, Radha took
the man’s position of being on top. After they had made love, she commanded him
to plait her hair and attend to her toiletries. Mana or the pride between
lovers became, with Krishna, a two-way street.
If he on occasion had to be cajoled out of a sulk, he too was prepared to make
the effort to persuade his beloved to relent. The Rasikapriya, Keshav Das’s
celebrated treatise on erotica, describes how Krishna would arrange to send to
an angry Radha flowers longing to become fragrant by a touch of her breasts, or
an ivory necklace, yearning to fulfill its destiny by going on a pilgrimage to
her bosom, the seat of holiness.
Even in its
post-Vrindavan phase, the Krishna myth
retained its special porousness to the sensitivities of the opposite sex. Soon
after his arrival in Mathura, Krishna
found time, in spite of his preoccupations with the looming battle with Karnsa,
to have a liaison with Kubja, a deformed and hunch-backed woman, whom he
miraculously restored to her original beauty. According to the Bhagavata
Purana, Krishna knew of Kubja’s secret longing
for him. He therefore visited her house. ‘She offered seats covered with
.costly silks to [him]—they sat for a while and Krishna
looked at her who was feeling shy even to look at him. He knew how much she
wanted him and according to his promise, he took her by the hand and led her to
the inner chambers, and pleased her.
Rukmini, the lovely
daughter of the king of Kundalpur, was secretly in love with Krishna, having
heard of his exploits from some wandering mendicants. But she was being
forcibly married off by her wicked brother Rukma to Sisupala, prince of another
kingdom. Krishna, on hearing of this, boldly abducted Rukmini and made her his
queen, defeating Rukma and Sisupala in battle. In the course of several
colourful adventures, he acquired more wives, the more notable among them being
Jambhavati, Satyabhama and Kalindi. The Bhagavata Purana erred a trifle towards
the excessive when it recounted that Krishna,
defeating the demon king Naraka, rescued 16,000 virgins enslaved by him and
married them all. The Bhagavata maintained however that he bestowed equal love
on all his queens, ever responsive to their every wish. When Satyabhama wished
to have the Kalpavriksha, the heavenly wishing tree owned by Indra himself, Krishna promptly set out to obtain it; when Indra refused
to part with it, he took it away forcibly. Such was his legendary prowess in
keeping all his wives satisfied and pleased that the sage Narada, so the
Bhagavata says, once went to see for himself how Krishna managed it all. He was
stunned to see that Krishna was individually
and simultaneously available to all his wives.
The cumulative myth
sustained one basic point: for women, Krishna
was a personal god, always accessible and unfailingly responsive. This was in
stark contrast with the real world where their husbands were shared
disproportionately by the larger joint family, were hierarchically remote and,
more often than not, found an outlet for romance outside the home. Krishna was the avenue to bridge this great hiatus
between reality and fantasy in the Indian woman’s life. He seemed to tell them
that he understood their deep-seated desires; and to reassure them that though
their behaviour might seem an aberration by conventional standards, these
standards did not apply to him. He gave them the ‘permission for joy*. He was
theirs to be moulded for whatever fantasy they wanted. He urged them—as the
incident of stealing the clothes of the gopis demonstrated—to shed their
inhibitions in his presence. He stood for the promise of passion and romance in
their otherwise staid social world; equally importantly, and this is where
complex psychological elements enter, he was prepared to be possessed and
controlled by them in a manner profoundly fulfilling, both as lover and son.
The devotional
poems of the two foremost female Krishna
bhaktas, Aantaal and Mirabai, are congruent at this point to the discussion.
Aantaal, regarded as one of the twelve Aalvaar Vaishnava saint-poets, lived in
the ninth century in Tamil Nadu. Mirabai was born in 1498. It is said that as a
child she was given an image of Krishna and grew so fond of if that her mother
jokingly remarked that Krishna would one day
be her bridegroom.
The significant
common factor in the outlook of both Aantaal and Mira was that they looked upon
Krishna as their husband. Both believed that
in their previous lives they were gopis in Vrindavan. Mira considered herself
to be the incarnation of the gopi Lalita, mentioned in the Bhagavata Purana.
They both looked upon Krishna as their lover.
They both sought physical union with him. They both wrote with an intensity and
passion that was spiritual and erotic simultaneously.
Aantaal has left
behind two basic works. In the Tirupaavai, a poem of thirty stanzas, she evokes
Krishna by linking him with the rainfall that
produces fertility. The poem, obviously basing itself on an ancient fertility
ritual, describes how young girls in the village go from house to house to wake
people to join in the rites. The girls go also to the house of Nanda and
Yasoda, where Krishna is still asleep with his
chest resting on wife Pinnai’s breasts. When Krishna
comes out to meet them, they tell him frankly that all that they want is that
he accept them as his slave girls.
The desire to be
‘possessed’, to be ‘taken over’, physically and otherwise, is a recurring theme
in Aantaal’s verse. Her second and longer work, Nachiyar Tirumoli, is much more
explicitly sensuous. Her burning desire for physical contact with Krishna is the most dominant theme here. In a dream she
sees herself being married to Vishnu, but Krishna
remains elusive. Desperate, she seeks Kaama’s help in fulfilling her desires.
From the days of her youth her growing breasts have been dedicated, she
exclaims, only to Krishna. She entreats Kaama:
‘Can’t you grant me this greatest honour on earth: that with his sacred hands
he touches my soft large breasts and my splendid abdomen.’ The imagery of
‘penetration’, and often even of a desire to be violated, with its concomitant
feelings of both pain and joy, is an identifiable undercurrent of her writing:
He entered inside
me and crushed me to pieces;
he let my life escape and enjoys seeing me dance [in agony].
My bones are melting, my eyes find no sleep for many days.
I am whirling, and drown in the sea of suffering without the boat,
the Lord of Venkata.
he let my life escape and enjoys seeing me dance [in agony].
My bones are melting, my eyes find no sleep for many days.
I am whirling, and drown in the sea of suffering without the boat,
the Lord of Venkata.
I have lost the
beauty of my breasts and my red lips, since Hrishikesha violated me. In the
sole desire to unite with him my breasts grew large and jumped in joy. Now they
make my life melt away and cause such agony.
Mira’s songs
(collectively known as her Padavali) are perhaps less voluptuous, but no less
intense. The profile a highly intimate and personal world in which nothing
seems to exist except Krishna, the object of
her desire.
The viraha of the
gopis on Krishna’s departure from Vrindavan for Mathura falls in a qualitatively separate
category. This was not the stereotyped, temporary separation of lovers so
popular with Sanskrit dramatists and rhetoricians. It was not even the viraha
of the rasa leela, described in the Bhagavata, where separation was but a brief
interlude in the mainstream towards a climactic union. In this viraha, the
sequence of events unfolding in conventional love was reversed: union did not
follow viraha, but viraha followed union. And this viraha was the final viraha,
for Krishna never came back to Vrindavan
again.
At first glance,
this twist to the love of Krishna and Radha, and Krishna
and the gopis, is difficult to explain. Krishna had to leave Vrindavan for
Mathura to fulfil his mission of deposing and killing his wicked uncle, Karnsa.
Having done that he could have plausibly returned to Vrindavan. Even if affairs
of state prevented him from living anymore in Vrindavan, he could have
continued to visit Vrindavan. After all, Mathura
was but a few miles away. In autumn, when the jasmine and wild water lilies
blossomed, and the stars shone resplendently in the clear night sky, he could
have come again to enact the rasa. He was not unaware of the grief and
suffering of the gopis and, above all, of Radha, the subject of his most
passionate attachment. There was also the attraction of Nanda and Yasoda, and
all his childhood friends. By all accounts, his farewell to Vrindavan was more
than poignant. The Bhagavata describes the scene of that early morning when
Krishna and Balarama, along with Akrura, Kamsa’s messenger sent to summon them,
drove away in their chariot for Mathura.
Early m the morning
one of the gopis got up to sprinkle water at her doorstep and to paint pictures
with flour as was the custom. She saw a strange chariot at the door of Nanda’s
house. Dropping her vessel full of water and the dish containing rice flour she
rushed to the other houses and spread the news … One bolder than the others
went nearer and from somewhere near the house saw what was going on. She rushed
out in panic and said: ‘Stop that chariot! Take it away! Hide it! Do something
with it!’ . . . The gopis saw Krishna and he
rushed to them. He was embraced by each and every one of them and they could
not talk, any of them. They did not ask where he was going. They knew that he
was going: it did not matter where . . . They turned to Akrura and spoke harsh
words to him: ‘How dare you take away our darling Krishna
with you? . . . You are Yama) the god of death and you have come to take away
our lives.
We will die if Krishna leaves us.’ Krishna
pacified them and told them that he had to go [but] . . . none of these words
could comfort the lamenting women. . . Krishna
left them and went to his playmates. They were numb with the thought that their
Krishna, their playmate, their companion from childhood was going to the city .
. . Krishna took leave of them and his eyes were sad since he knew he would
never come back to Vrindavan: never again to the slopes of Goverdhan: never
again to the banks of the Yamuna. Never more would he make sweet music on the
sands when the moon shed its soft beams: never again would he hold the stick of
bamboo in his hand and drive the cows to the forests. He had bade farewell to
his cows. But once again he went into the sheds where his beloved cows were
standing and they were all weeping. He wiped their tears and with his forearm
wiped his own tears and went to the presence of his mother.
He fell at her feet
and once again took leave of her. She clung to him and he had to disentangle
himself from her restraining hands . . . After a few stunned moments the gopis
realized that their Krishna had begun his journey to the city . . . They tried
in vain to stop the chariot. Akrura laid his whip across the horses* flanks and
at once they began to move. The gopis and the young boys set up such a wail
that the very skies resounded with their piteous cry . . . They stood staring
in the direction where the chariot was fast disappearing. They wiped their eyes
and stared intently until the dust rising from the progress of the chariot had
settled down and they saw nothing there far away in the distance. Krishna had gone away from them.
Krishna had himself initiated and encouraged the love of the gopis
for him. His affair with Radha was one in which he was completely and equally
involved. Why then was his departure from Vrindavan so final and irrevocable?
Certainly such a course of action would not be attributed to whimsy or
coincidence. It could appear that his sojourn in Vrindavan, and his conscious
and definitive departure from it, was meant to convey the one integrated
message: Kaama has validity, but not exclusive validity; sex is a window to the
divine, but not the only window; the physical is joyous, but so can the
non-physical be.
This Hindu view of
life was always informed by two parallel themes: one emphasized the legitimacy
of desire, the other stressed the joys of transcending such desire. Shiva
gambolled in sexual play with Parvati for such an extended period that the gods
themselves began to worry; but the same Shiva remained for years immersed in
the most sublime meditation, totally oblivious to the senses. The dialectics of
mainstream Hinduism were not either-or. It was not that one path was right, and
the other wrong. Both were valid, for the essential premise was that there was
more than one avenue to experience the bliss of the infinite. Mythology became
a tool to correct the exclusivity of one approach. When Shiva, angry at being
disturbed in his meditation, destroyed Kaamadeva, the God of Love, he was
forced to recreate him.
The empirical
observation of life reinforced such an eclectic outlook. It was apparent that
more than one strand combined to produce the final weave of existence, and more
than one colour the complete picture of reality. In the unfolding life of an
individual there was a plurality of phases, each with a dominant pursuit and
emotion, valid for that particular phase, but not valid in the same manner for
all of them. In the Hindu scheme of things, the ideal life had four stages
(ashramas): brahmacharya, the period of discipline, dedicated to the acquisition
of knowledge; grahastya, the period of the householder and worldly pursuits;
vanaprastha, the period of preparing oneself to withdraw from the worldly
senses; and sanyasa, the period of the hermit, withdrawn from the material
world.
This was an attempt
to construct the rhythm of life, taking into account its inevitable
evolutionary mutations. The mosaic of life was multifaceted, its murals of many
levels. Spring and autumn were beautiful, but each gave way to summer and
winter, which had their own compensations. The day could be resplendent, but it
was inevitably followed by night, and if the night was unhappy, it would as
surely be followed by dawn. Orgasms, however ecstatic, could not be stretched
forever. The sexual urge, however legitimate, could not be sustained in
permanence. The body, however beautiful, could not remain untainted by the
vicissitudes of age. And desire and passion, however intense, could not forever
retain the same efficacy of expression and fulfillment.
Krishna left Vrindavan to demonstrate this verity. In doing so he
demonstrated too the essential nature of his own being. His involvement in
Vrindavan was but an enactment of his leela. He was a participant in the rasa
and in the escapades on the banks of the Yamuna with Radha and the gopis, but
this participation was inherently transcendent. He was involved but it did not
involve him. He was a yogi, above the joys of attachment and the sorrows of
separation. Vrindavan may have been possessed by him, but he could never be possessed
by Vrindavan. His rasa leelas may have proceeded for nights on end, but at
another level, he was the eternal celibate, untainted by his actions, and above
its consequences.
The plight of the
gopis was different. Their attachment to Krishna
was real. The joy they derived in the rasa was overwhelming. Their horizons
were limited to Krishna and the groves of
Vrindavan and the sandy banks of the Yamuna. It was essential, therefore, that
they learnt to give to their desires a form and content which went beyond the
physical. Krishna’s presence in Vrindavan had
given sanctity to the joys of the flesh. His absence from it was meant to
convey the limitations of the joys of the flesh, if pursued in isolation.
Unconstrained joy was the essence of divinity. Sex was an aspect of that divine
joy, but not the whole of it. The enlightened life was a balance of several
goals, each rewarding only in a wholesome linkage with the other. Having
revelled in the rasa, Krishna’s purpose was to
teach, through viraha, the possibility of achieving the same intensity of union
without physical stimulus. In doing so, he was not denying the role of the
senses but merely asserting that in conjunction with the pleasure of the
senses, there could be pursued, as the next stage, an equally valid and
certainly more autonomous (that is, less dependent on external stimuli) path to
fulfilment and joy.
In the Bhagavata, Krishna explained the process to the gopis in the
following way:
As for me, even
when love is showered on me, sometimes I do not return it. The reason is
because I want them to love me more: to become more devoted to me: to think of
me and only me: to become my bhaktas. Take, for instance, a very poor man who
has found wealth suddenly. If, after having it with him he loses it, his pain
will be more than when he was poor, and his thoughts will be more intense about
wealth: wealth which he had found only to lose it: Even so, I vanished from
your sight because I wanted to know how dear I am to you and how indispensable.
Your devotion to me has become more now when you went through the agony of
losing me . . .
The essential logic
was simple: First I give; then I take it away; then you miss what I gave; then
the contemplation of what you had enables you to have without having.
The focused
intensity of vision that viraha could produce was the subject of study of both
erotic and rhetorical texts in India.
The gopis deprived of Krishna’s physical
presence went through an identified phase of emotional and physical trauma.
There was loss of sleep (nidrachcheda), loss of weight (tanuta), an aversion to
any object not relating to the beloved (visayebhyo vyavritti), an unconcern for
shame and modesty (lajja pranasa), delirium (unmaada) and fainting or a feeling
of senselessness (murchcha). There were other symptoms: longing (abhilasha),
anxiety (chinta), remembrance (smarana), telling the qualities of the beloved
(gunakirtana), agitation and fear(udvega), delirium and senseless chatter
(pratapa), seeing all things as consisting of the beloved (tan-maya), sickness
and fever (vyadhi, jvara), stupor or stiffness (jadata), languor and
displeasure (arati), and so forth’.
In the preliminary
phase, the suffering of the separated one—the virahini—was acute, but in time,
as a very consequence of this suffering, she achieved salvation. The intensity
ofRadha’s longing was so great and the concentration of all her reflexes on the
object of desire so sustained that she became one with the object itself.
Radha, separated from Krishna, became Krishna.
She achieved oneness with him (aikya), a state of blissful absorption in him
(tanmayate). The pain of separation vanished; sorrow and grief, longing and
yearning ceased; once rising from the ashes of their torment, Radha and the
gopis overcame the false duality between desire and the object of desire. The
obstacle of physical distance was demolished by the over-reach of the mental
vision. And then there was the experience of a state of inner calm and poise,
suffused by bliss, a sense of fulfilment, not entirely antithetical to the
sense of joyous satiation experienced by the same gopis in the fervour of the
rasa. The gopis’ joy, and the virahini’s bliss was, in the ultimate analysis,
akin; they symbolized two different but equally effective ways to reach the
Lord; the ecstatic ardour of the gopis was contingent on Krishna’s physical
presence, the beatific serenity of the virahini was the end result of his
absence.
The absence of Krishna did not however render him, in the eyes of the
gopis, an abstraction. Their recollection of him may have acquired
philosophical overtones, qualitatively different from the passion aroused in
the rasa, but it was not a recollection deprived of the colour of his
personality. The realization that he, as the personification of the infinite,
was accessible even in his absence may have dawned, but this did not mean that
his being had become attributeless, or that the appeal of his personality in
the form that they knew it, had ceased to have relevance. The vision of the
gopis sought to define the Lord in terms of their own experience. It was a
vision that brought them into the larger arena of the basic debate in Hindu
philosophy: What is the nature of the Absolute?
Surdas and Nandadas
(1533-83), two luminaries of the Bhakti movement, adroitly used the viraha of
the gopis to project the ideological superiority of the devotional mode of
worship of a personal god. The Bhagavata had mentioned that Krishna, soon after
reaching Mathura,
sent Uddhava, one of his most trusted friends, to Vrindavan to console his
grieving parents and the suffering gopis. Uddhava sought to fulfill this task
by urging Nanda, Yasoda and the gopis not to grieve over Krishna’s
identifiable form as they had known it. The way to overcome this grief, Uddhava
said, was by concentrating solely on the acquisition of knowledge of Krishna’s metaphysical reality.
‘Nanda, think on
him as the Parabrahman/ Uddhava gently prodded, ‘and not as your son. If you do
that you will realize that he has no feelings like an ordinary man has. He is
beyond the feelings. No one is dear to him and he hates no one. He has no
desires and he has no likes and dislikes. He is not attached to anyone or
anything. To him no one is high and neither does he consider anyone to be low.
Equality and inequality do not exist for him. He has no motlier: no father: no
wife or children. He has no friends nor has he enemies. He is not confined by a
body and so he has no birth or death.’
The gopis were
sceptical. The memory of Krishna amidst them
was, as yet, too overwhelming for them to accept the detached philosophical
rationalization of Uddhava. In this early phase of their viraha, their pain had
also a sharp tinge of anger at the way in which Krishna
had abandoned them. They had heard of Krishna’s liaison with Kubja in Mathura, and seeing
Uddhava, they gave full vent to their spleen.
Lovers abandon the
women they have loved like a veshya (prostitute] does a man who has no wealth:
like subjects abandon the king who is impure: like students give up their
teachers after they have learnt everything from them . . . like birds desert a
tree which is stripped of its fruits: like guests take leave of the house where
they have had their food: like a deer runs away from the forest which is burnt
in a fire . ..
(Continued...)
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