PLAY OF THE UNIVERSE

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RADHA IN THE EROTIC PLAY OF THE UNIVERSE

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"There is passion in the universe: the young stars, the whirling

galaxies - the living, pulsing earth thrives in the passionate

embrace of life itself. Our love for one another is the language of

our passionate God....It is desire that spins us round, desire that

sends the blood through our veins, desire that draws us into each

other's arms and onward in the lifelong search for God's face". (1)

 

When religion is anthropocentric it has very little to tell us that

is good news about passion and desire. When this happens culture

secularises sexuality and misuses it. Pornography substitutes for

mystery. (2) There is, however, mystery at the core of the Radha-

Krishna tradition in this land. Here passionate love became

sacralised as an expression of bhakti: the loving-woman's longing

became devotion and love-making became worship.. It is the intention

of this essay to begin to explore this mystery, and then to look for

evidence of it in our Christian tradition also. The love of Radha,

the beautiful gopi, who later became a goddess for some cults, and

Krishna, the youthful dark deity, who is the object of widespread

devotion, is less a story remembered than a random succession of

episodes seen and heard, sung and danced. Over the centuries their

love has been portrayed in thousands of exquisite miniature

paintings, which depict the lovers in separation and union, longing

and abandonment. The love story is heard whenever we listen to the

great vocalists of Indian classical music sing the devotional songs

of medieval bhaktas who in their poems sometimes observe, and at

other times participate in the love play as Krishna's beloved. The

story grips our imagination every time we encounter the animated

expressions, flashing eyes and sinuous movements of a dancer, who -

as Radha - expresses her anger at Krishna's infidelities, or - as

Krishna - begs forgiveness for his impetuous dalliance. The love

affair is recreated each time a Krishna bhakta participates in the

communal singing of an episode from the story and especially when she

or he, possessed by the spirit of one of the lovers, feels impelled

to get up and ecstatically dance as the Lord or his beloved. The

Radha-Krishna legend, then, is not a story in the sense of an orderly

narrative whose protagonists have a shared past and are progressing

towards a tragic or happy future. It is more an evocation and

elaboration of the here-and-now of passionate love, an attempt to

capture the exciting, fleeting moments of the senses and the baffling

ways in which love's pleasures and pains are felt before

retrospective recollection, trying to regain a lost control over

emotional life, edits away love's inevitable confusions.

 

A long line of bards and balladeers, most of them indebted to the

twelfth century Sanskrit poet, Jayadeva, who decisively shaped the

legend's outlines, have often described the setting of this legend of

love. A pious Hindu needs only close his or her eyes and `remember'

in order to see Vrindavan, a Hindu garden of Eden, spring into

existence. In the perpetual sunshine of the myth, distinct from the

perpetual mists of history, a forest thicket on the banks of the

River Jamuna awakens to life on a tropical spring day. The mustard

fields at the edge of the forest, with their thick carpet of

brilliant yellow flowers, stretch far into the distance. The air is

redolent with the perfume of pollen shaken loose from newly blossomed

Jasmine and bunches of flame coloured mimosa flowers hanging round

and heavy from the trees. The ears are awash in the humming of bees,

the cries of the cuckoos and the distant tinkling of cow bells. The

seductive call of Krishna's flute comes floating through the forest

thicket, further agitating the already unquiet senses, making for an

inner uprising and an alien invasion. The legend, aiming to fix the

essence of youthful love, has an amorous rather than a geographical

landscape as its location; its setting is neither social nor

historical, but sensuous.

 

In the falling dusk, Nanda, Krishna's foster father and the chief of

a community of cowherds, asks Radha to escort Krishna home through

the forest. On the way, in a grove, their `secret passion triumphs'.

Radha's thoughts come to be absorbed by Krishna who, however, is

unfaithful to her as he sports with other gopis - hugging one,

kissing another and caressing yet another dark beauty.

 

When he quickens all things

 

To create bliss in the world,

 

His soft black sinuous lotus limbs

 

Begin the festival of love

 

And beautiful gopis wildly

 

Wind him in their bodies.

 

Friend, in spring young Hari [Krishna] plays

 

Like erotic mood incarnate. [i.46] (3)

 

Radha is jealous as she imagines the `vines of his great throbbing

arms circle a thousand gopis', but more than jealousy she is infused

with all the perplexing emotions of a proud, passionate woman who

feels deserted by her lover.

 

My heart values his vulgar ways,

 

Refuses to admit my rage,

 

Feels strangely elevated,

 

And keeps denying his guilt.

 

When he steals away without me

 

To indulge his craving

 

For more young women,

 

My perverse heart

 

Only wants Krishna back.

 

What can I do? [iI.10]

 

Solitary grief and images of a love betrayed

Solitary grief and images of a love betrayed and passion lost,

recreated in reverie, alternate and reinforce each other:

 

My eyes close languidly as I feel the flesh quiver on his cheek,

 

My body is moist with sweat; he is shaking from the wine of lust.

 

Friend, bring Kesi's sublime tormentor to revel with me!

 

I've gone mad waiting for his fickle love to change. [iI.14]

 

The power of Radha's yearning produces a change in Krishna. Of all

the gopis, interchangeable suppliers of pleasure and feelings of

conquest, Radha begins to stand out in Krishna's mind as someone

special who is desired in her uniqueness. From the `heroic lover' for

whom no woman is exceptional and who simply desires a variety of

amatory dalliances, Krishna becomes the `romantic lover' impelled

toward a singly irreplaceable mistress. The unheeding pursuit of

pleasure, a bewildered Krishna discovers, has been brought to a halt

by pleasure's arch-enemies - memory and attachment.

 

Her joyful responses to my touch,

 

Trembling liquid movement of her eyes,

 

Fragrance from her lotus mouth,

 

A sweet ambiguous stream of words,

 

Nectar from her red berry lips--

 

Even when the sensuous objects are gone,

 

My mind holds on to her in a trance.

 

How does the wound of her desertion deepen? [iII.14]

 

Having been the Lord who strove to please himself alone, Krishna has

become a man for whom his partner's well-being assumes an importance

which easily equals his own. He discovers that he would rather serve

and adore than vanquish and demand. As a tale of love, this

transformative moment from desire's sensations to love's adoration,

gives the story of Radha and Krishna its singular impact. (4)

 

To continue the tale, hearing of Krishna's remorse and of his

attachment to her, Radha, dressed and ornamented for love, awaits

Krishna at their trysting place in the forest. She lingers in vain,

for Krishna does not come. Radha is consumed with jealousy as she

imagines him engaged in an amourous encounter with a rival. When

Krishna finally does appear, Radha spurns him angrily:

 

Dark from kissing her kohl-blackened eyes

 

At dawn your lips match your body's colour, Krishna.

 

Damn you Madhava! Go! Kesava leave me!

 

Don't plead your eyes with me!

 

Go after her, Krishna!

 

She will ease your despair. [VIII.3]

 

But, in separation, Radha and Krishna long for one another with a

mounting sense of desolation. Eventually, Radha's friend persuades

her to abandon her modesty and pride and go to her lover.

 

Your full hips and breasts are heavy to bear.

 

Approach with anklets ringing!

 

Their sound inspires lingering feet.

 

Run with the gait of a wild goose!

 

Madhu's tormentor

 

Is faithful to you, fool.

 

Follow him, Radhika! [XI.3]

 

In the full throes of a sexual excitement when even her `modesty left

in shame,' Radha rushes to meet an equally ardent (and repentant)

lover. Krishna sings:

 

Throbbing breasts aching for loving embrace are hard to touch.

 

Rest these vessels on my chest! Quench love's burning fire!

 

Narayana [Krishna] is faithful now. Love me, Radhika! [XII.5]

 

Offer your lips' nectar to revive a dying slave, Radha!

 

His obsessed mind and listless body burn in love's desolation.

 

Narayana is faithful now. Love me Radhika. [XII.6]

 

Once the ecstatic love-making subsides momentarily in orgasmic

release, a playful Radha asks Krishna to rearrange her clothes and

her tousled hair, and

 

also:

 

"Paint a leaf on my breasts!

 

Put colour on my cheeks!

 

Lay a girdle on my hips!

 

Twine my heavy braid with flowers!

 

Fix rows of bangles on my hands,

 

And jewelled anklets on my feet!"

 

Her yellow-robed lover

 

Did what Radha said. [XII.20]

 

Jayadeva, legend has it, hesitant to commit sacrilege by having deity

touch Radha's feet, was unable to pen the last lines, and went out to

bathe. When he returned he found Krishna himself had completed the

verse in his absence.

 

The legend of Radha and Krishna as it has come down to us today,

differs from Jayadeva's version in only one significant respect.

Jayadeva merely hints at the illicit nature of their love when he

mentions that an older Radha changes from young Krishna's protective

escort to become his lover, thereby defying the authority and

instructions of the chief of cowherds.

 

"Clouds thicken the sky.

 

Tamala trees darken the forest.

 

The night frightens him.

 

Radha, you take him home!"

 

They leave at Nanda's order,

 

Passing trees in thickets on the way,

 

Until secret passions of Radha and Madhava

 

Triumph on the Jamuna riverbank. [i.1]

 

Later poets (notably Vidyapati in the fifteenth century), who tend to

focus more on Radha and her love than on Krishna, (5) gave the

illicit element in the story a more concrete cast and specific

content. Radha is parakiya, another-man's woman, (6) and her liaison

with Krishna, whatever its powerful meaning in mystical allegory, is

plainly adulterous (7) in human terms. Radha is certainly no paragon

of the womanly virtues detailed in Hindu texts; nor does she come

close to any of the `good' or `bad' mother-goddesses of Indian

mythology and religion. In her passionate craving for her lover and

in her desperate suffering in his absence. Radha is simply the

personification of mahabhava, that `great emotional state' that is

heedless of social proprieties and unbounded by conventions. As

various scholars have pointed out, (8) many different Indian

traditions - religious and erotic, classical literary and folk - have

converged and coalesced in the poetical renditions of the myth,

especially Jayadeva's Gitagovinda, to give that particular work an

allure that extends over large parts of the sub-continent. About

this, more anon.

 

But Radha and Krishna, although linked to the heroine and hero of

classical Sanskrit love poetry in many ways, are primarily products

of the bhakti movement, whose principal mood has always been erotic.

(9) In contrast to much of Western poetry of sexual mysticism,

though, Radha and Krishna are not figures of erotic allegory. Bhakti

extols possessing and being possessed by God. For it sexual love is

where the fullest possession, the `closest touch of all,' takes

place. With this the creators and audiences of bhakti poetry seek to

project themselves into Radha's love for Krishna through poems that

recount all its passionate phases. For bhakti is preeminently

feminine in its orientation, and the erotic love for Krishna (or

Siva, as the case may be) is envisioned entirely from the woman's

viewpoint. Male devotees, saints, and poets must all adopt a feminine

posture and persona to recreate Radha's responses in themselves. We

shall have more to say about this. Radha's passionate love of

Krishna, raised to its highest intensity, is not an allegory for

religious passion; it is religious passion. (10) Jayadeva, thus does

not need to make a distinction, or choose between the religious and

the erotic when he introduces the subject matter of his poem by

saying:

 

If remembering Hari (Krishna) enriches your heart,

 

If his arts of seduction arouse you,

 

Listen to Jayadeva's speech

 

In these sweet soft lyrical songs. [i.4]

 

The adi-guru of the Radha-Krishna cults, Jayadeva knows that the

enrichment of the heart and the arousal of senses belong together.

 

Not only this, there is a powerful sense of eros as the underlying

force motivating all attractions.

 

Eros is seen as pervading the universe, binding all things together,

infusing life with creativity and exuberance, drawing beings to one

another in love, and the love between man and woman is viewed as an

intense participation in this ongoing erotic play of the universe.

(11)

 

A major source of this erotic excitement in the treatment of Radha

and Krishna is the forbidden crossing of boundaries. First, in the

pervasive presence of the adulterous in the narrative, there is an

illicit transgression of moral and legal limits. Accentuating this is

the intense yearning of love-in-separation (viraha). Second, in a

striving to entertain the erotic feelings and sensations of the other

sex, a lover would violate his primal sexual demarcation as a male.

Arousal is provoked, preserved and brought to a pitch by the stealth

and secrecy in which the crossing of such bounds takes place. As much

has been written on these elements, singly and together, (12) we

shall only briefly refer to them.

 

The most obvious manifestation of the illicit, involving the crossing

of boundaries set by social mores and norms, is found in the

persistent adulterous character of the narrative. But even the later

accounts which saddle Radha with a husband, throwing in a mother-in-

law for good measure, persistently underline the adulterous nature of

her love for Krishna. There was, of course, much theological

uneasiness regarding this circumstance. Some commentators went to

great lengths to explain why, since Krishna is divine, he could have

not actually coveted the wife of another. Others went to even greater

lengths to prove the contrary, explaining that precisely because

Krishna is divine he is not bound by normal human restrictions. In

the end, and perhaps inevitably, the community's quest for pleasure

triumphed over its theological scruples in firmly demanding that the

mythical lovers be accepted as unambiguously adulterous. (13)

 

The fifth century Tamil epic Shilappadikaram is perhaps the earliest

illustration of the contrasting attractions of the adulterous and the

conjugal for the Indian man. (14) The sensuality and abandon in the

description of Kovalana's relationship with his mistress Madhavi in

this epic, provide a strong counterpoint to the tenderness and

uxorious dependability of his wife, Kannaki.

 

Significantly, the bhakti cults gave more exalted reasons for making

Radha an adulterous parakiya. For them the adulterous was symbolic of

the sacred, the overwhelming moment that denies world and society,

transcending the profanity of everyday convention, as it forges an

unconventional (and unruly) relationship with God as the lover.

 

Not surprisingly, viraha was idealised as the necessary condition of

the intense yearning which characterises the adulterous relationship.

 

As the clouds scatter, her tears flow,

 

as night deepens, her sighs increase;

 

Like a bird in flight, her laughter vanishes,

 

lightning strikes and robs her of her sleep.

 

Like a cataka, she cries out "Piu, piu!"(15)

 

waves of fierce heat rise up within her.

 

Listen, says Kesav, this is her condition:

 

there is no fire, but her limbs are burning. (16)

 

It is a complex relationship, for the devotee is the `same as and yet

different from' the Lord, and so even in the joy of union there is

the pain of separation. Indeed, the highest form of devotion,

according to Yamunacarya, comes not in union but after the union, in

the `fear of new separation'. (17) Thus the passionate Radha became

the prototype of the passionate devotee. The entire life of the

bhakta was to consist of a `holy yearning', the intense desire caused

by separation. More on this, too, anon.

 

The crossing of individual sexual boundaries is another major source

of erotic excitement in the treatment of Radha and Krishna. In

painting, the depiction of this crossing ranges from the portrayal of

the lovers in the traditional Orissa school, where they appear as one

androgynous entity, to some of the paintings from the Himalayan

foothills where Radha and Krishna are dressed in each other's

clothes, or Radha is seen taking the more active `masculine' role. In

poetry, Sur Das would speak in Radha's voice.

 

You become Radha and I will become Madhava, truly Madhava; this is

the reversal which I shall produce. I shall braid your hair and will

put (your) crown on my head. Sur Das says: Thus the Lord becomes

Radha and Radha the son of Nanda. (18)

 

The inversion of sexual roles is even more striking in Jayadeva's

depiction of what are usually regarded as `feminine masochistic'

sexual wishes. Krishna, not Radha, sings.

 

Punish me, lovely fool!

 

Bite me with your cruel teeth!

 

Chain me with your creeper arms!

 

Crush me with your hard breasts!

 

Angry goddess, don't weaken with joy!

 

Let Love's despised arrows

 

Pierce me to sap my life's power! [X.11]

 

It was only under the influence of nineteenth century Western

androcentricity, one of the more dubious `blessings' of British

colonial rule, that many educated Indians would become uneasy with

this accentuation of femininity in a culture hero. The prominent

Bengali writer, Bankim Chandra Chatterji, the proponent of a virile

nationalism, found in Krishna the perfect embodiment of the ideal

culture-hero, and when he contrasts the representation of the life of

Krishna in the Mahabharata, the Bhagavata Purana, and the

Gitagovinda, he regretted that the obvious allegory of the relation

of purusa (spirit) to prakrti (matter) represented by Krishna's love

with the gopis had vanished in the Gitagovinda. (19) In the Radha-

Krishna cults, where the devotee must create an erotic relationship

with Krishna, the transcendence of the boundaries of gender becomes

imperative for the male devotee, who endeavours to behave like a

woman in relation to the Lord. Here, Krishna not only demands such a

reversal from his male devotees, but he has himself set the

compelling exemplar. Consequently, tales of Hindu saints who have

succeeded in feminising themselves are legion. In support, we may

cite only a couple of illustrations. The fifteenth century Gujarati

bhakta Narsi Mehta writes.

 

I took the hand of that lover of gopis [Krishna] in loving

converse....I forgot all else. Even my manhood left me. I began to

sing and dance like a woman. My body seemed to change and I became

one of the gopis. I acted as a go-between like a woman, and began to

lecture Radha for being too proud....At such time I experienced

moments of incomparable sweetness and joy. (20)

 

A.K. Ramanujan tells us that the voice of the Tamil saint-poet

Nammalvar, who composed 370 poems on the theme of love, was always

that of a woman, Krishna's beloved, the girlfriend who consoles and

counsels, or the mother who restrains her and despairs over her

daughter's lovesick fantasies. Nammalvar's love poems alternated with

other kinds of poems and a thirteenth century commentary explained

these shifts: "In knowledge, his own words; in love a woman's words."

(21) A legend has it that Amaru, one of the earliest and greatest

Sanskrit poets of love, was the hundred and first incarnation of a

soul which had previously resided in the bodies of a hundred women.

 

Narsi Mehta, Nammalvar and countless other, unknown devotees of the

Radha-Krishna cults perhaps bear testimony to the primal yearning of

men, ensheathed and isolated by their masculinity, to yield their

heroic trappings and delight in womanliness, woman's and their own.

The mother has figured early on as the omnipotent force of a parental

universe, making things, including fathers and other males,

materialise as if at will. It is she whose breast and magic touch had

long ago soothed the savage instinctual imperatives, she whose fecund

womb seemed the very fount of life. Such maternal and feminine powers

are earthly yet mysterious and transcendent, undiminished by the

utter sensuousness in which they are manifest. Indeed, Krishna's

erotic homage to Radha conveys something of the aching quality of the

man's fantasy of surrender at the height of sexual excitement.

 

The profusion of the imagery of darkness and night in the meetings of

Radha-Krishna underscores the secret nature of these fantasies. The

paintings which depict Radha and Krishna surrounded by darkness while

they themselves are lit by a sullen glare from the sky, or portray

the lovers enclosed in a triangle of night while the inhabitants of

Vrindavan unconcernedly go about the day's tasks, are visual

metaphors for a sensualism which is simultaneously hidden from the

world and from the lovers' awareness. For Radha, night and darkness

are excitement's protectors as are the silence and secrecy of

friends.

 

Leave your noisy anklets! They clang like traitors in love's play.

 

Go to the darkened thicket, friend! Hide in a cloak of night! [XI.11]

 

In a Basholi painting from Rasmanjari the text describes the seated

lovers

 

thus:

 

Fear of detection does not permit the eager lovers' gaze to meet.

 

Scared of the jingling sound of armlets, they desist from embracing.

 

They kiss each other's lips without the contact of teeth.

 

Their union, too, is hushed . (22)

 

Many other portraits of Radha reveal that it is not only other people

who must be unaware of her sexual arousal. Radha, too, when in a

state where "love's deep fantasies/struggle with her modesty,"

[XII.1] would feign ignorance of her true condition, as if it were a

secret another part of her self must not admit knowing. It is given

to the poet to perceive correctly her struggle.

 

Words of protest filled with passion,

 

Gestures of resistance lacking force,

 

Frowns transmuted into smiles,

 

Crying dry of tears - friend,

 

Though Radha seeks to hide her feelings,

 

Each attempt betrays her heart's

 

Deep love for demon Mura's slayer. (23)

 

Identifying with Radha's pounding breasts as she steals out at night

to meet Krishna, other poets graphically describe her fear while

merely hinting at the suppressed thrill of her sortie, the arousal

sharpened by the threat of discovery. They give us images of storm,

writhing snakes, scratched and burning feet.

 

We imagine that on hearing Radha's plaint, Krishna, whose gaze into

the recesses of the human heart is as penetrating as it is

compassionate, smiled to himself in the dark. He would surely have

known that the strains of his flute are the perennial and

irresistible call of the human senses caught up in the throes of

love.

 

And what do darkness and night mean to Krishna as he passively offers

himself to Radha's embraces? Here, too, only under the cloak of night

does the Lord reveal what may be the deepest 'secret of man'- that

he, too, would be a woman. in the jungle, visual and discrete modes

of perception are replaced by the tactile, the visceral, and the more

synesthetic forms of cognizance. Representations of the self and

beloved fade and innermost sensate experience comes to the fore. As

the illusions of bodies fused, androgynously, the fantasies around

womanliness and sexual excitement feed each other and Krishna "knows"

Radha not with the eye but with the flesh.

 

Love is bone of bone and flesh of flesh. Thus I hear the Song of

Songs. It speaks from lover to lover with whispers of intimacy,

shouts of ecstasy, and silences of consummation. At the same time,

its unnamed voices reach out to include the world in their symphony

of eroticism. (25)