Finding Radha

by Namita Gokhale

  4 Ibid.

  5 Banerjee, Appropriation of a Folk Heroine, p. 225.

  Chapter 3: Radha and the Completion of Krishna by Meghnad Desai

  1 Barbara Stoler Miller in her scholarly translation of the Gita Govinda mentions an ambiguous reference in the Bhagavata. ‘[T]he mention of a favoured cowherdess who is “worshipped” or “desired” (arid hits) by Krishna in the tenth book of the Bhagavata Purana . . .’ See Barbara Stoler Miller, The Gitagovinda of Jayadeva: Love Song of the Dark Lord (New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1984), p. 28.

  2 Miller’s work mentioned directly above quotes a citation in the Atharva Veda that Radha occurs in the reference to the nakshatra Vishakha, which is a dual-starred constellation. Indra is in the Vedic literature called a gopa (cowherd) and is paired with the two stars of Vishakha described as adhipatni (half wives). Radha is translated as ‘perfection, wealth or success’. Indra is called radhaspati: Miller, The Gitagovinda of Jayadeva, pp. 26–27.

  3 Miller, The Gitagovinda of Jayadeva, p. 29.

  4 Chapters 19 and 23 in Volume 1 of Mohak Vansali (Seductive Flute) in K.M. Munshi’s Krishnavatar (New Delhi: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1963).

  Chapter 4: Gita Govinda: Illustrated Manuscripts from Rajasthan by Kapila Vatsyayan

  1 M.R. Mazmudar, ‘A fifteenth-century Gita-Govinda manuscript with Gujarati painting’, Journal of the University of Bombay, vol. VI, part VI (May 1938): pp. 128–36.

  2 Karl Khandalavala, ‘Gita Govinda in the Prince of Wales Museum’, Prince of Wales Museum Bulletin, 1953–54. Also see New Documents of Indian Painting, p. 85. Karl Khandalavala ascribes the set to 1525–75 AD.

  3 M.R. Mazmudar, ‘A fifteenth-century Gita-Govinda’, University of Bombay Journal, vol. X, part 2 (September 1941): pp. 119–31. Original manuscripts are at the B.J. Institute of Indology, Ahmedabad.

  4 The paintings of the Kankaroli Gita Govinda have been rarely published. U.P. Shah had a few folios in his personal collection. Others are presumably still in the Kankaroli Palace.

  5 Unpublished manuscript. Original in the Jodhpur Library.

  6 U.P. Shah, New Documents of Jaina Paintings, L.P. Institute, Ahmedabad. Illustrations of the Laghu Samgrahani Sutra.

  7 N.C. Mehta, ‘A New Document of Gujarat Paintings’, Journal of the Indian Society for Indian Art, vol. XIII (1945): pp. 36–48.

  8 Ibid.

  9 Kapila Vatsyayan, ‘Miniatures of the Gita-Govinda’—17th-century manuscript of north Gujarat, Jaipur, Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II Museum, 1980.

  10 Karl Khandalavala, ‘Leaves from Rajasthan’, Marg, vol. IV, no. 3 (1950): pp. 8–9 ff.

  11 Kapila Vatsyayan, ‘The Jaur Gita-Govinda’, National Museum, New Delhi, 1982.

  12 Ibid.

  13 Andrew Topsfield, ‘Sahibidin’s Gita-Govinda’, Chhavi, II Golden Jubilee Volume (1981): pp. 231–36 (Bharat Kala Bhavan, Varanasi).

  13a. Pramodchandra: Article on Indian painting in Encyclopedia Britannica, see Gita Govinda illustrations as Plate 6.

  14 Kapila Vatsyayan, The Mewari Gita-Govinda (New Delhi: National Museum, 1987), and An Illustrated Manuscript of the Gita-Govinda from Mewar, Dr Moti Chandra Commemoration Volume (Calcutta: JISOA, 1978), pp. 36–60.

  15 Kapila Vatsyayan, The Bundi Gita-Govinda (Varanasi: Bharat Kala Bhavan, 1981).

  Chapter 5: Integrating the Natural, the Divine and the Erotic in the Gita Govinda and Shir Ha-Shirim by Yudit K. Greenberg

  1 For an English translation of the Gita Govinda, see Barbara Stoler Miller, ed. and trans. Love Song of the Dark Lord: Jayadeva’s Gitagovinda (New York: Columbia University Press, 1977).

  2 For an English translation of Song of Songs, see Ariel Bloch and Chana Bloch, The Song of Songs: A New Translation (Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1995). Song of Songs is also known as Canticles and as The Song of Solomon.

  3 For an earlier version of this comparative study, see Yudit K. Greenberg, ‘The Languages of Love and Desire in the Gitagovinda and the Song of Songs’, Journal of Vaishnava Studies 22.1 (2013): pp. 69–78. For a comprehensive reference book on love and religion see, Yudit K. Greenberg, ed. Encyclopedia of Love in World Religions (Santa Barbara: ABC-CLIO, 2008).

  4 Masterpieces of erotic poetry and prose include the troubadours Shakespeare, Dante, Rumi and Teresa of Avila.

  5 See Sir Edwin Arnold, Light of Asia and the Indian Song of Songs (New Delhi: Crest Publishing House, 1994). He explains that his title ‘The Indian Song of Songs’ is justified insofar as both the Gita Govinda and Shir Ha-Shirim are mystical allegory. See also Lee Siegel, Sacred and Profane Dimensions of Love in Indian Traditions, as Exemplified in the Gītāgovinda of Jayadeva (New Delhi: Oxford University Press, 1978).

  6 See, for instance, Renita Weems, ‘Song of Songs’, in The Women’s Bible Commentary, ed. Carol A. Newsome and Sharon A. Ringe (Louisville: Westminster/John Know Press, 1992), p. 157.

  7 Phyllis Trible, God and the Rhetoric of Sexuality (Minneapolis: Fortress Press, 1978), pp. 144–66.

  8 On the theme of love-in-separation, see Maurice Jacques Valency, In Praise of Love: Introduction to the Love Poetry of the Renaissance (New York City: Macmillan, 1961); Denis de Rougemont, Love in the Western World (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983); Edward C. Dimock, The Place of the Hidden Moon: Erotic Mysticism in the Vaisnava-Sahajiya Cult of Bengal (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1989).

  Chapter 8: Enjoying God: The Divine Paramour by Makarand R. Paranjape

  1 An earlier version of this paper was presented at the workshop on ‘Radha: Transformation from Gopi to Goddess’, organized by Professor Harsha V. Dehejia (Carleton University, Ottawa), at the School of Arts and Aesthetics, Jawaharlal Nehru University, New Delhi, 29–30 January 2010. My special thanks to Harshabhai and Sudhatai, his wife, for nurturing these words and for their affection.

  Several scholars attest to the importance of the feminine aspect of God in Hindu traditions. In his introduction to Hindu Goddesses: Visions of the Divine Feminine in the Hindu Religious Tradition (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1986), David Kinsley compares this feature of Hinduism with other religions (1–5); see also John Stratton Hawley’s Prologue to Devi: Goddesses of India (1–3). In the opening lines of The Divine Feminine in the Theology of Krishna, Graham M. Schweig declares: ‘Nowhere in the panorama of world religious traditions, from ancient times to the present, do we find such a strong presence of the feminine voice within the divinity as we do in the Hindu complex of religion’ (441). But of all these manifestations of the divine feminine, none is as charming, attractive or romantic as Radha.

  2 By the late 16th century, however, there would be a reversal. For instance, the Radhavallabha sect would accord a higher status to Radha than Krishna, so much so that in the 19th century, a member of the sect, Vamsi Ali, would compose a poem called ‘Sri-Radhika-maharasa’ ‘to avenge the wrong that had been done to their deity [Radha] by the author of the Bhagavata in not mentioning her name in his work’ (B. Mazumdar, Krishna in History and Legend, cited in Siegel 122). In this poem ‘the name Krishna does not find any place at all. In it we find Radha playing on the flute and calling her female friends to the forest . . .’

  3 For an indigenous study of Gita Govinda, see Vidya Nivas Mishra’s Radha Madhav Rang Rangi (2004).

  4 Nimbarka (c. 13th century AD) initiated the worship of Radha–Krishna long before Chaitanya. According to the Sri Navadwipa-dham Mahatmya, a later Chaitanyite text, he saw Sri Gauranga, the combined form of Radha and Krishna, who would later incarnate as Chaitanya, in a vision. Later practitioners of Radha–Krishna worship, through such back projection and invention, tried to create continuity in the tradition.

  5 See Ramakanta Rath’s Sri Radha (1996). Rath, speaking of how he came to write the poem, reminisces, ‘The anticipation of death, the thought that all this beauty would be beyond my reach some day was the theme [. . .] I reflected on who else could have experienced this kind of emotion—love and terror in equal measure. I d
ecided that it could be only one person, Radha’ (Hariharan Balakrishnan, Hindu Literary Review, 2 April 2006). Rath’s Radha is not simply Krishna’s beloved, but is endowed with a subjectivity that is independent and strong, not merely relational. For instance, in one of the stanzas, translated by Rath himself into English, Radha considers her own bygone years:

  As I bathed that morning, I looked through the water at my legs and thought these legs are not mine, nothing is mine, this body is not mine, the history of all my hopes and despairs is not mine. And my husband, my house, my herds of livestock—they too are not mine. Neither this life nor the death that shall surely come some day are mine. I am forever a beggar woman, a disturbed void enclosed between these two arms that reach into outer space.

  Interestingly, Rath’s next major work, Palataka, featuring Krishna, was simply not as well-received or significant.

  6 It was Harshabhai’s suggestion that I include an analysis of the opening doha, the traditional mangalacharan of Bihari’s Satsai, in this paper. Also see H.S. Shiva Prakash’s essay in this volume for more reflections on the modern Radha.

  7 I owe thanks to Dr Imre Bangha of the faculty of Oriental Studies, Oxford University, for his help in explaining this couplet to me.

  8 Verse 1.3.28 of the Bhagavata extols the greatness of Krishna over all other incarnations: ‘These [other incarnations] are amsha, or kala, partial incarnations, but krishnas tu bhagavan svayam, ‘Krishna is Bhagavan, God, himself’’ (Bryant 114). Most Krishna theologians resort to this verse, regarding it the mahavakya, or ‘pivotal statement’, of their theology. A similar strategy has been used by other sects to exalt their master over others; for instance, commenting on Sri Aurobindo, the Mother said, ‘What Sri Aurobindo represents in the history of the earth’s spiritual progress is not a teaching, not even a revelation. It is a mighty action straight from the Supreme.’

  9 This is a variation of a metaphor used by Rabindranath Tagore in his celebrated essay ‘Viswa-Sahitya’, the sun being an allusion to himself (Rabi means sun) (222; 225).

  10 Scholars like Jessica Frazier, however, offer insightful and alternative readings, invoking Zizek and Kristeva. Frazier argues that Radha, the gopi-turned-goddess, trades in her subjection for passionate commitment, incorporating both her divine lover and the audience into her purposive agency. For Frazier, she is a model of a strong—rather than weak—woman. Frazier, thus, makes a persuasive case against the conventional view that ‘even in sringara, the erotic mode, there is no notion of equality between devotee and deity. The function of this rasa is primarily to spiritualize and aestheticize male dominance of gender relations. In the numerous legends about Krishna’s sexual adventures among the milkmaids (gopis) of Braj, the initiative is always his to seduce, dally with and desert his female partners [. . .] This implies, among other things, the passivity of the female. Bhakti actually prescribes such passivity by depicting the gopis as women who have no sexual passion (prakrta-kama) of their own, but are merely conducive to Krishna’s pleasure’ (Guha 48–49).

  11 Nyasa literally means ‘placing’, ‘touching’, ‘applying’ or ‘founding’, as when a worshipper touches himself in certain places and in certain ways to consecrate himself before commencing the puja, or ritual of worship. Gavin Flood describes pranapratisha as ‘A ritual of consecration in which the consciousness or power of the deity is brought into the image awakens the icon in a temple’ (7).

  12 From the Krishna Charnamritam of Bilvamangal, translated by Frances Wilson, quoted in Bryant (462).

  13 From the Dimock and Levertov translation, quoted in Bryant 464–65.

  14 From the Dimock and Levertov translation, quoted in Bryant 466.

  Chapter 9: Radha: The Play and Perfection of Rasa by Shrivatsa Goswami

  1 Prabodhananda Sarasvati, Sri Radha-rasa-sudha-nidhi, ed. Puridasa (Vrindavana: Haridasa Sarma, 1953), verse 26, p. 3.

  2 Jiva Goswami, Bhakti Sandharba, ed. Puridasa (Vrindavana: Haridasa Sarma, 1951), anu. 310, pp. 157–79.

  3 Cf. Jiva Goswami, Priti Sandharba, anu. 110ff., pp. 65ff.

  4 Ibid., p. 67, 110–11.

  5 Rupa Goswami, Ujjvala Nilamani, ed., with two commentaries by Puridasa (Vrindavana: Haridasa Sarma, 1954), 4.6–7, p. 24.

  6 Raghunatha Dasa Goswami, Stavavali, ed. Puridasa (Mymensingh: Sacinatha Rayachaudhuri, 1947), 15.1-10, p. 40.

  7 Rupa Goswami, Ujjvala Nilamani, 14.1-237, pp. 124–56.

  8 Ibid., 14.219, p. 155.

  9 Bhagavata Purana, 9.4.63; Priti Sandharba, anu. 41, p. 34.

  10 Jiva Goswami, Krsna Sandarbha, ed. Puridasa (Vrindavana: Haridasa Sarma, 1951), anu. 189, p. 117.

  11 Aphorisms on the Gospel of Divine Love or Narada Bhakti Sutras, ed. and trans. Swami Tyagisananda (Madras: Sri Ramakrishna Math, 1967), no. 52, p. 15.

  Chapter 11: The Heart-throb of Chaitanya by Harsha V. Dehejia

  1 Edward C. Dimock, The Place of the Hidden Moon: Erotic Mysticism in the Vaisnava-Sahajiya Cult of Bengal (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966), p. 32.

  Chapter 14: Krishna: The Playful Divine by Pavan K. Varma

  1 Keshav Das, Rasikapriya, in M.S. Randhawa, Kangra Paintings on Love (New Delhi: National Museum, 1962), pp. 46–60.

  2 Ibid., p. 59.

  3 Id., p. 62.

  Chapter 15: Radha in Nazrul Geeti by Reba Som

  1 ‘Tumi Jodi Radha Hotey Shyam’, translation mine.

  2 See Nitish Sengupta, History of the Bengali-Speaking People (New Delhi: UBSPD Publishers, 2001), p. 96.

  3 Harsha V. Dehejia, ‘The Heart-throb of Chaitanya’, in Radha: From Gopi to Goddess, ed. Harsha V. Dehejia (New Delhi: Niyogi Books, 2014), p. 173.

  4 See Priti Kumar Mitra, The Dissent of Nazrul Islam: Poetry and History (New Delhi: OUP, 2007).

  5 Krishna-Muhammad (died in infancy); Arindam-Khaled, also called Bulbul, died of smallpox at age three; Kazi Sabyasachi and Kazi Aniruddha.

  6 Rabindranath Tagore, ‘Sahitye Nobyota’, in Rabindra Rachanabali, vol. 14 (Government of West Bengal, 1961), p. 332 et seq.

  7 ‘Aami Jaar Nupurer Chhondo Benukaar Shur’, translation mine.

  8 ‘Bodhu Ami Chhinu Bujhi Brindabaner Radhikar Aakhi Jauley’, translation mine, from the enclosed booklet in my CD album Love Songs of Kazi Nazrul Islam, Times Music, 2016. The album can be heard on YouTube and www.timesmusic.com.

  9 ‘More Ghumo Ghorey Eley Manohar’, translation mine, from the enclosed booklet in my CD album Love Songs of Kazi Nazrul Islam, Times Music, 2016.

  10 ‘Tumi Haath Khani Jaubey Rakho More Hather Paurey’, translation mine, from the enclosed booklet in my CD album Love Songs of Kazi Nazrul Islam, Times Music, 2016.

  Chapter 16: Lovelorn Radha, Forlorn God: Tagore’s Bhanusingher Padavali by Lalit Kumar

  1 The two poems in the epigraph are excerpts from Tagore’s Bhanusingher Padavali, poem number one and nineteen respectively. For the transliteration of these two complete poems in Devanagari, see Rabindra Rachnavali, Kavita, vol. 1.

  2 The role of Kadambari Devi as Tagore’s muse, writes Malashri Lal, has been endlessly speculated upon. She further argues that ‘for young Robi, Kadambari was a secret love that became apotheosized as poetry or image’. See Tagore and the Feminine, Introduction, p. xxi.

  3 For the English translation of the biography The Life of Bhanusimha Thakura, see Appendix to The Lover of God, pp. 113–20.

  4 Ibid., p. 120.

  5 Thomas Chatterton (1752–70) was a precocious English poet who managed to pass off his work as a fictional 15th-century poet called Thomas Rowley. Tagore intended to be the second Chatterton.

  6 George Abraham Grierson had claimed that Vidyapati was the ‘first of the old Vaishnava master-singers who spoke and wrote in the language of the people’, that is, Maithili. See Chrestomathy, p. 84.

  7 For the early English translation of Tagore’s autobiography, Jiban Smriti, see My Reminiscences. For a more recent translation, see The Picture of My Early Life. For the chapter on Bhanusingh see pp. 135
–38 and 92–94, respectively. Tagore also claimed in this section that while Bhanusingh’s songs were being published in Bharati magazine, one Nishikanta Chattopadhyaya earned his doctorate on them by comparing the traditional lyric poetry of India with that of Europe: see My Reminiscences, p. 137. However, subsequent efforts to locate such a thesis submitted in all the major German universities around that time bore no fruit: see The Lover of God, p. 106.

  8 Rosinka Chaudhuri calls the language of these poems ‘Maithili dialect (a mixture of old Hindi and Bengali prevalent in eastern India)’. This seems to be a case of misrepresentation of a language as dialect, for Maithili was neither a dialect, nor a mixture of old Hindi and Bengali. Ironically, a language that Tagore was enamoured with had to contest with Hindi and Bengali in order to debunk the myth that Maithili is a dialect. For Chaudhuri’s discussion of Bhanusingher Padavali, see ‘The Rustle of Language’.

  9 See Sisir Kumar Das, A History of Indian Literature 1800–1910. Das argues that the hybridization, or mixing, of languages is an essential feature of not only everyday linguistic activity in India, it is also an interesting feature of Indian literary activity, p. 346.

  10 For Grierson’s analysis of Vidyapati’s imitators in Bengal and his coinage ‘bastard language’, see Chrestomathy, pp. 34–36.

  11 The Picture of My Early Life (Jivansmriti), p. 92.

  12 Though there is no direct mention of Radha in the Bhagavata Purana, the tenth book of this text mentions a cowherdess who is favoured and desired by Krishna. See Das, A History of Indian Literature 500–1399, p. 186.

  13 Ibid.

  14 Barbara Stoler Miller, in the introduction to her translation of Gita Govinda, argues that Radha is one of the most obscure figures in early Indian literature. Before Jayadeva made her the heroine of his poem, she appeared only in some verses scattered through Puranas, anthologies of Sanskrit and Prakrit poetry, grammar, drama and a few inscriptions. See Barbara Stoler, The Gitagovinda of Jayadeva: Love Song of the Dark Lord (New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1984), p. 26.