Jayadeva’s Gita-Govinda Against a Backdrop of Shri Radha-Shri Krishna Cults of Vrindavan

Jayadeva the author of Gita Govinda flourished in the second half of the twelfth century. He was one of the court poets of Laxman Sena of Bengal. ¹ Unfortunately, the exact dates of his birth and death are unknown but from the Gita Govinda we get to know of the names of his parents: Bhojadeva and Ramadevi/Vamadevi, his wife Padmavati and some others like his friend Parasara.

The Gita Govinda is a poem that sings of the love of Shri Radha and Shri Krishna. The love that this text celebrates is of the mystic and spiritual kind. The poem indicates that Jayadeva was a Vaishnava by inclination. His work begins with benedictory verses with two invocations to Shri Vishnu in his incarnations. ²

It is often argued that around the twelfth century, the era of classical Sanskrit poetry was shifting in a new direction and making way for a new style of self-expression in the Vernaculars. Jayadeva’s work celebrates this shift. He held the hands of both, the going and the coming styles. His words guided the emerging style as he stood at the yuga sandhi; a confluence of two epochs. It is thus no wonder that he has been called the last of the ancients and the first of the moderns. ³

The Gita Govinda consists of 386 verses, both in the descriptive portions and in the 24 songs which are scattered throughout the 12 sargas or cantos in which the poem is divided. Though the tittles of the sargas are based on the various dispositions of Shri Krishna, it is the popularity of Shri Radha that the Gita Govinda electrified. ⁴ Shri Radha is considered to be the celebrated aradhika of the Bhagvat Purana. Her description in the in the Gita Govinda further glorifies her. The echoes of the image created by Jayadeva are very crystalline and blaring in the following period of history up till the seventeenth century when religious philosophies around the worship of Shri Radha became mature.

The scene depicted by Jayadeva in the beginning of the Gita Govinda is of a dark and cloudy night, when Nanda hands over a frightened and young Shri Krishna to Shri Radha to escort him home. ⁵ Monika Verma in her translation of the Gita Govinda says that this said verse is based on the fifteenth chapter of the Krishnajanam khanda of the Brahmavaivarta Purana. ⁶ However, the currently standard and popular version of this Purana is believed to have been written only sometime between the fifteenth and the sixteenth centuries while the Gita Govinda was written in the second half of the twelfth century. ⁷ Anyways, it is possible that the medieval Brahmavaivarta Purana is a later compilation of some earlier Purana which would have had a similar kind of content.

In any case what is fascinating for the present discourse is that some of the sects of Shri Radha’s worshippers, which flourished in the medieval times, have knitted the whole episode of Shri Radha’s marriage with Shri Krishna in the Bhandeervan, around this verse of Jayadeva. ⁸ While doing so they have, on the one hand, highlighted attributes of divinity in the imagery of Shri Radha, and on the other, have given deeper metaphysical and religious rationale to the Gita Govinda. By the sixteenth century, Jayadeva was hailed as a great Vaishnava saint. The Bhaktamala of Nabhadas, a sixteenth century work on saints, speaks highly of Jayadeva ⁹ Both the Brahmavaivarta Purana and the Gargasamhita justify Nanda’s handing over Shri Krishna to Shri Radha because they profess that Shri Krishna had deliberately assumed the form of a child and that Shri Radha was Prakriti and Krishna’s consort. Nanda was well aware of these facts and thus he handed Shri Krishna over to Shri Radha as a part of a lila (divine game). In the spiritual narrative of both these texts, Shri Radha is married to Shri Krishna by Shri Brahma. While the Gita Govinda remains silent on the issue of their marriage, this silence is very potent in making Jayadeva cardinal to the phenomenal growth in Shri Radha’s devotees in the sixteenth and the seventeenth centuries. It nourished two streams of thought: one that considers Shri Radha swakiya (Shri Krishna’s wife) and the other Parkiya (which considers her to be his lover but not married to him). The dominant examples of these two categories are the Vallabha Sampradaya and the Gaudiya Chaitanya Sampradaya.

In the Gita Govinda some of the fundamental concepts attached to medieval Radhaism evolve. An adroit example is the concept that the gopis (cowherd-girls) love for Shri Krishna is direct and not routed through Shri Radha. On the other hand, the friends of Shri Radha or the sakhis are not directly in love with Shri Krishna but they only assist the divine couple in their meetings. In the Gita Govinda, the differentiation between the gopi-bhav (feelings of a cowherd girls) and the sakhi-bhav (feelings of the friends of Shri Radha) is manifest in the following passage:

The gopis look only at Krishna, hear only his magic mind beguiling flute, they do not see him look at Radha. But I, Jayadeva, most fortunate of men have seen that terrible love filled glance, and may that lovely look reawaken, endless joy and happiness in all the created world. ¹⁰

Consequently, it seems that Jayadeva has placed himself in the category of a sakhi because he too like the sakhis in his poem is aware of the intense passion of Shri Radha, unlike the gopies who fail to notice her. The metaphor of gopis and sakhis ripens in the Gita Govinda and later becomes a way to categorise the devotion of devotees. Later the abstraction of manjari bhav advocated by Rupa Goswami of Chaitanya Gaudiya sect in the Bhaktirasamrita Sindhu a sixteenth century work revolves around this sakhi bhav. Krishnadas Kaviraj in Chaitanya Charitamrita distinguishes between external and internal service to God. ¹¹ The former he says is performed by the physical body and includes such acts as singing praises, while the latter is performed mentally through one’s spiritual body, siddha deha. The mental service is the more intimate kind of service. It can only be carried out in the form of a sakhi. ¹² Fixation to the sakhi bhav in the sixteenth century Braj is further manifested in the beliefs of the Hit Harivansha sect and the Sakhi Sampradaya of Swami Haridas whose paramount religious literature is based on the nikunja lila of Shri Radha and Shri Krishna, which seems like a sequel of the Gita Govinda. ¹³

In fact, emulation of the female role, especially of the sakhi bhav, is an ideal accepted in almost all the sampradayas devoted to Shri Krishna and is acted out with varying degrees of literalness. ¹⁴ Practically, all devotional poems describing Shri Krishna and his activities are written from the standpoint of a woman; be it Yashodha, Radha, a gopi or a sakhi. Saints and religious leaders were often extolled as the incarnation of a sakhi. An example of the same comes from the case of Vithalnath and Krishnadas Adhikari of the Vallabha sect where the two are cited as the incarnations of Chandravali and Lalita sakhi, respectively. ¹⁵

It is a visible fact that the Krishanite saints and religious leaders are often depicted as polite and dreamy people. For example, Chaitanya and Nityananda are portrayed with soft features, while Vallabhacharya is sometimes depicted with long flowing hair. On the other hand, Shri Krishna though endowed with divine and superhuman power and capability of ripping apart demons and defeating Kansa’s prize wrestler is not portrayed with the same kind of muscular physique as Shri Hanuman. He is primarily depicted as a beautiful and handsome figure and is usually represented with slender arms and soft, attractive features. In simple words, he comes across as Man-Mohan, the one who wins over every heart.

Some other key concepts of sixteenth century Radhaism, which are enumerated in the Gita Govinda, are the contemplation by Radha to harm herself and her famous Maan-Lila, when she displays anger over Shri Krishna, and he tries to appease her by various means.

In the Gita Govinda Shri Radha says:

O Yamuna, why should you be merciful?

Come let me throw myself into you,

Let me sink into your waves,

Let me die within your lovely blue waters of eternal love.

Let death cool my raging heart…

My burning body, my limbs… ¹⁶

This idea of self-destruction by Shri Radha as a display of her emotions for Shri Krishna is repeated in the sixteenth century plays of Rupa Goswami, Vidagdha Madhava and Lalita Madhava. ¹⁷

In a manner corresponding with the sequence in the Gita Govinda, Shri Krishna addresses an angry Shri Radha in the following words.

O my love if you are truly angered, punish me hurt me wound me;

turn on me those fiery eyes of yours,

Let that be your weapon to inflict upon me my mortal wound. ¹⁸

This is repeated at least 12 times in the Kelimal of Swami Haridas, and at least six times in the plays of Rupa Goswami. ¹⁹ In fact, when Radhaism advances in the times following the Gita Govinda, Shri Krishna’s attitude in the course of these maanlilas of Radha becomes increasingly submissive. In the Kelimal, he says.

Leave anger O Radha Radha!

The more you hold back the more I am hurt,

I constantly show you more devotion,

It nourishes my life to hear even a few words from you. ²⁰

In a like manner, the concept of divine frenzy or divyonmadh mentioned in the Gita Govinda is used to explain various levels of bhakti by Rupa Goswami. ²¹

Finally, comes the theme of exchange of dresses between Shri Radha and Shri Krishna.

The Gita Govinda states.

One day at dawn the sakhis had seen Shri Hari dress in the blue garments of Shrimati and Shrimati adorned in the golden garments of Shri Hari. ²²

This keynote is vital in the later establishment of ‘bheda-abheda’, that is, difference in non-difference, between Shri Radha and Shri Krishna, which in some sects develops to the extremity of Shri Radha dominating Shri Krishna himself. It is important to also note that the idea of this exchange evolves as a complex Vaishnava religious philosophy and is not just a game. Ashtachapp poet Surdas makes Shri Radha say, as follows.

You become Radha and I will become Madhava.

This is the reversal that I shall produce, I will braid your hair, and will put your crown upon my head. Surdas says that the lord becomes Radha and Radha the son of Nanda’. ²³

While Swami Haridas writes.

Having rubbed her limbs with musk, holding a flute, wearing a yellow sash,

she says Radha I am Shyama.

The youth having decorated himself with ear studs, puts Shyama’s black color on his eyes. ²⁴

Thus, the idea of non-difference between Radha and Krishna was activated in the Gita Govinda, and it came to a peroration in the Brahmavaivarta Purana, one of the Mahapuranas where it is said.

Is that Shri Krishna, you, Radha?

Or are you Radha Hari himself?

This matter has not been determined by me in the Vedas; by whom can it be ascertained? … By whom can it be determined?

Whether you are a portion of him or he a portion of you? ²⁵

Thus, the journey of Shri Radha’s incredibly great popularity from the Bhagvad Purana to that of being Prakriti, the mother Goddess in the Brahmavaivarta Purana, is a long one. She displays many sides of spiritual transformations on the way, but hardly ever confirms to the role models specified for ordinary women in the society, not even as a mother. ²⁶ She remains a towering figure of divinity and inspiration for her devotees. The Gita Govinda is one of the earliest texts that celebrated her stature. Shri Krishna had in the Bhagvad Purana left his ‘aradhika’ for having beseeched to be carried because of tiredness ²⁷ ; here he says to Shri Radha.

Ah! You have traveled far, your feet are tired, let me hold them in my own tender hands and sooth all your weariness away. ²⁸

And Radha’s triumph begins! She becomes ‘Radha Rani’, the undisputed queen of Braj-Vrindavan and remains so. Thus, the Gita Govinda is not just a piece of poetical excellence, it is an extremely important work for researchers of religion and history. It goes without saying that the spiritualists and bhaktas love it.