Finding Radha Read online

  The arched bowers are enlarged to constitute rich lush woods and forests, the foliage becomes a tapestry of geometrical design and the figures of Radha and Krishna are often full-faced. The Kama figure disappears in the Darbhanga Gita Govinda altogether and is seen only twice in the two Jaipur sets. The sakhis sing and dance, but now not with cymbals (manjira) and the tambourine (jhanja); instead the sarangi and a pair of tablas accompany the rasa. Monkeys, symbols of Eros, continue to appear, but they are not half as impish as those in the Mewari Gita Govinda set in the Udaipur State Museum.

  The deification of Krishna and Radha is clear from the halos and the adornment. The impact of the Chaitanya and the Vallabha sampradaya is also clear from the saint figures, particularly in the set located in the City Palace Museum, Jaipur.

  Despite these derivative features, there are some remarkable innovations within the conventional style. The arched bowers are sometimes small and diminutive, hidden in branches of trees without trunks. These invariably represent dream or fantasy states. The time past and recollection is frequently portrayed through this pictorial device. The sakhi as the bridge between the separation of the two is brought home aptly by placing her outside the consecrated space of the arched bower. The image of the wagtails and does is slurred over, but peacocks are used as symbols of internal emotive states. All three sets use the pair of peacocks effectively to support and underline the nature of the dialogue of the human characters. There is very little evidence of the word-to-word or line-to-line relationships, between the verbal imagery and the paintings. The artist seeks to portray a whole prabandha or a sarga and not a particular phrase.

  The colours undergo a great change. Although the colour symbolism of the dark Krishna (shyama) and the fair Radha, the blue sky and the pitambara continues, the tonalities are different. Lighter and brighter shades of blue and green are used. The Indian red of the early Mewari paintings becomes scarlet and crimson, and the orange gives place to yellow. Although white is used for the platform, there is a difference: now designs and floral decorations adorn the platform on which Radha, the sakhi and Krishna meet. This detracts from the symbolic purity of the white of the platform used in the Mewari paintings of the second and third phases. The red background of the bower also changes colour. Also the text is not written as superscription. The paintings accompany a text page as in the Saraswati Bhandar Gita Govinda.

  And, finally, the comprehension of the text and its creative pictorial transfiguration are at the level of ritual rather than sensuous perception and spiritual experience. This is perhaps the most important distinction between these paintings and those of the second and third phases.

  5

  INTEGRATING THE NATURAL, THE DIVINE AND THE EROTIC IN THE GITA GOVINDA AND SHIR HA-SHIRIM

  YUDIT K. GREENBERG

  EROTIC LOVE IS the leitmotif that characterizes two of the best works of poetry ever produced, the Gita Govinda1 and Shir Ha-Shirim (Song of Songs).2 These lyrical poems are teeming with cultural tropes, and contribute to the richness of the cross-cultural study of religious love and desire. The Gita Govinda, the 12th-century Sanskrit poem composed by Jayadeva, depicting the passionate love between Krishna and Radha, is one of the most popular works in Vaishnava Hinduism. There are more than forty commentaries on the Gita Govinda, and its lyrics have been set to devotional music, dance and paintings throughout India. It is, therefore, not surprising that the Gita Govinda has been claimed as the Indian ‘Song of Songs’. Shir Ha-Shirim—Song of Songs, comprising one of the Hebrew Bible’s twenty-four books portraying the sensuous love between a shepherdess and a shepherd in the land of Israel—has been the most quoted biblical book, inspiring a plethora of literature, theology, liturgy, art and music.

  While there are several compelling resemblances between the two poems that are worthy of examination, my objective is to initiate their comparative study with a focus on female desire and the role that imagery from the natural world plays in depicting the physical beauty of the lovers and their sexual desire.3

  Eros has been understood by early philosophers such as Plato, Aristotle and the Neo-Platonists as passionate desire for union with the beloved.4 Such love stems, to a large extent, from the physical separation of the lovers from each other.5 While this dynamic dominates both the Gita Govinda and Shir Ha-Shirim, the nuanced features of erotic love represent unmistakable geographic locations and historical/mythological narratives of which these texts speak.

  The Gita Govinda, consisting of twelve chapters and further divided into twenty-four songs, is a poem, not embedded in scriptures, yet deriving its inspiration from the sacred texts of the Bhagavata. While celebrating religious fervour intertwined with eroticism, the Gita Govinda explicitly introduces Vaishnava theology and references to deities, primarily to Lord Krishna.

  The Gita Govinda has been expressed through dance for at least 500 years, in the Odissi dance style that originated in the Jagannath Temple in Puri. Not only in Bengal and Odisha but also in Nepal, the Gita Govinda is sung during the spring celebration in honour of the goddess Sarasvati in which worship is offered to the god of love, Kamadeva and his consort. In the Jagannath Temple as well as in other temples, the song is sung daily.

  Shir Ha-Shirim comprises a series of dialogues spoken chiefly between the male lover and his female beloved and is an inimitable voice in the Hebrew Bible. Since the 16th century, Shir Ha-Shirim has played a performative and liturgical role in the weekly recitation by Kabbalists and Sephardic Jews on the eve of the Sabbath. Other occasions of the song’s recitation include the last day of the spring holiday of Passover and at weddings.

  In both the Gita Govinda and Shir Ha-Shirim, the woman’s voice is the dominant one. This feature has led some scholars to suggest that Shir Ha-Shirim was composed by a woman.6 Furthermore, contemporary feminist interpretations suggest that Song of Songs redeems the problematic rhetoric of gender and sexuality in the Bible. Scholars such as Phyllis Trible have suggested that Shir Ha-Shirim has engendered notions of positive sexuality and an egalitarian relationship, focusing especially on the portrayal of the woman lover who asserts her emotions and desires.7

  A profound parallel in the Gita Govinda and Shir Ha-Shirim is the ubiquity of imagery from nature during springtime. The natural world is integral and woven into the fabric of the verses and interlaced with the moods of the lovers. To begin with, the rendezvous take place during the spring, and they occur amid nature’s fecundity, either in the forest in Vrindavana (Gita Govinda) or the garden, the hills and desert of Israel (Shir Ha-Shirim). Furthermore, revelling in beauty and sensuality, the lovers’ bodies, in both poems, are often described in the likeness to trees, fruits, flowers, animals and geographic areas. In the narrative, parts of the human body are often compared to aspects of fruits, trees and even animals.

  In the Gita Govinda, the Vrindavana forest is the location of the lovers’ rendezvous. Krishna and Radha’s encounters occur on the banks of the River Yamuna, at the Mansarovar Lake and in the forest as the following verses reveal: ‘O my dear friend, the mango trees in the forest groves of Vrindavana are covered with freshly sprouted buds because they are thrilled by the embrace of the restless creepers [. . .] Shri Hari is affectionately playing with young women in the pure water of the Yamuna that flows alongside those forest groves’ (Gita Govinda, 3:34).

  References to a variety of native flowers and scents abound in the Gita Govinda (5:4–8; 7:11; 15:23; 19:14):

  Varieties of flowers are opening and tearing open the hearts of lonely lovers [. . .] Once, in the splendid spring season, when Radhika was pining for Krishna, she began to search for him in one forest grove after another [. . .] The nectar of spring flowers and the aroma of jasmine blossoms are enthralling [. . .] His tender lips are an enchanting soft reddish colour like the bud of a scarlet mallow flower [. . .] The blueness of my throat is not the effect of poison, but a garland of blue lotus flowers [ . . .] The bow of fresh petal-like eyebrows [. . .] Your lips, as soft and red as bimba frui
t [. . .] O Shri Krishna, my sakhi Radha is behaving exactly like a deer [. . .] My beloved Candi, O hot-tempered woman, your enchanting red lips are friends with the lustre of a bandhuka flower. Your cool cheeks have assumed the splendour of a madhuka flower. Your nose is like a sesame flower. Your teeth are as radiant as jasmine blossoms. O beloved, the flower archer Kamadeva worshipped your face with his five flower arrows and then conquered the entire universe.

  In Shir Ha-Shirim, the lovers are assimilated into their environment and are associated with specific locations in the land of Israel. ‘I am a flower of Sharon, a water lily growing in the valleys’ (2.1–2). ‘Your hair is like a flock of goats moving down mount Gilead’ (6:5).

  The imagery of the land includes its native flowers and fruit trees whose buds and scents joyfully announce spring. Of the fruits, the pomegranate in particular, has a prominent place in the Song where it appears six times. A native to the land, the rimon (pomegranate) is used in metaphors for skin colour and wine drinking (Shir Ha-Shirim 4.3, 13; 6.7, 11; 7.13; 8.2). The multiplicity of its seeds is a known symbol of fertility and its blossoms are a sign of the timelessness of love in ancient Near East literature.

  Therefore, the profusion of the natural landscape merges with the personality and mood of the protagonists. The lovers are not only an integral part of nature, they domesticate it as its stewards. In the Gita Govinda, both Krishna and the gopis herd cows, and in Shir Ha-Shirim the lovers are referred to as a shepherd and a shepherdess. The juxtaposition of exquisite human form and scenic beauty in the Gita Govinda and Shir Ha-Shirim and the similes of nature employed in both works of poetry reinforce and extend the erotic beyond the sexual. At the same time, the Gita Govinda, regardless of its abundant similes of nature, is imbued with direct and transparent sexuality. Although Radha and Krishna suffer from periods of separation from each other, their bodies are often portrayed as if in the midst of a sexual experience that takes place in the present, rather than as imagined and distant objects. Her eyes are not only analogized as lotus-shaped but are ‘languid with passion’s drunkenness’ (Gita Govinda, 19:15). Other examples from the Gita Govinda of erotic bodies and sexual experience include: ‘[H]er fortunate body bears drops of sweat . . .’; ‘[U]pon a delightful-woman’s face, where love has arisen where a lower lip is turned for a kiss . . .’; ‘[T]he pitcher of your breast is more heavy and full of juice than coconuts’; and ‘[O]h, you who bear the burden of firm breasts and thighs . . .’ (Gita Govinda, 23:14).

  Frequent and explicit sexual encounters in the Gita Govinda also include references to physical movement and experience during lovemaking, such as sweat, scratches, trembling and sexual exertion. For example: ‘Punish me, lovely fool! Bite me with your cruel teeth! Chain me with your creeper arms!’ (Gita Govinda, 19:11).

  In Shir Ha-Shirim, there are clear references to kisses and touch, but these are often spoken in the future tense and couched as longing for such encounters. Take, for example, the opening line of the song: ‘May he kiss me with the kisses of his mouth,’ and ‘He shall lie all night between my breasts.’ Also, images of breasts as two fawns, hair like a flock of goats streaming down from mount Gilead, etc., embody the integration of the lovers’ bodies with the sensuality of nature in the land of Israel.

  The love language of Shir Ha-Shirim is a bit more suggestive of a sexual encounter, and is often expressed in botanical metaphors, rather than in direct and overt language, as indicated in the following: ‘A garden is my sister, my bride; a spring shut up, a fountain sealed . . . Let my beloved come into his garden, to eat his pleasant fruits’ (Shir Ha-Shirim, 4:12).

  To reiterate, in both songs we find the preponderance of similes of the landscape of India and Israel. Furthermore, we note that the holiness of Jerusalem, Vrindavana and the Yamuna River serve as the backdrop for the lovers’ erotic desire for each other. In the Hindu tradition, one of the holiest rivers is Yamuna, and Jayadeva makes abundant references to it in the Gita Govinda. Also, the forest of Vrindavana is a pilgrimage site in Vaishnavism for its association with the life of Krishna.

  Weaving such sacred places into the poetry of the Gita Govinda and Shir Ha-Shirim, where the lovers meet, contributes to the allegorical and spiritual meanings of the text. While the entire land is holy for Jews, the holiest site in the land of Israel is Jerusalem. Thus, we read recurrent references to Jerusalem in Shir Ha-Shirim. The woman often speaks to the ‘Daughters of Jerusalem’, who appear seven times in the song. The wilderness of the forest, the open spaces of the hills and the desert, the dynamism of the fauna, and the lushness of the garden in the Gita Govinda and Shir Ha-Shirim underpin the unstable nature of erotic love. Radha and the Shulamite, the female protagonists, are often portrayed as lovelorn due to the pain of separation from their lovers. In the Gita Govinda, Krishna’s rendezvous in the forest include numerous gopis who are enamoured of him. These trysts with women are portrayed quite explicitly: ‘He hugs one, he kisses another, and he kisses another dark beauty . . . while Hari roamed in the forest making love to all the women, Radha’s hold on him loosened . . .’ Ultimately, in his deep love for Radha, Krishna repents, changing his demeanour and promising Radha absolute devotion.

  In comparing the relationships of lover and beloved in both songs, we note the intensity of ‘love in separation’ (viraha) as a dominant motif.8 While the cause of the lover’s absence in Shir Ha-Shirim is often a mystery, in Krishna’s case, his absence is due to his sexual encounters with multiple gopis until he is finally ready to commit to Radha. In contrast, even in the midst of acknowledging numerous ‘wives and concubines’, the male lover in Shir Ha-Shirim is never portrayed as desiring or being with them. In fact, he differentiates between his beloved and his other relationships: ‘[B]ut unique is my dove, my perfect one’ (Shir Ha-Shirim, 6:9).

  The Gita Govinda is, in its literal meaning, simultaneously about earthly, sensuous human love and also divine love—that is, between Krishna, a humanly incarnated god, and Radha, a humanly incarnated goddess. In the literal reading of Shir Ha-Shirim, in contrast, the shepherd and shepherdess are irrefutably human. Only in later rabbinic commentaries and interpretations of the Song is she allegorized as the nation of Israel, and he, as representing God. Interestingly, in a reversal of the common tendency to depict God as male, in some of the allegorical interpretations of the Gita Govinda, Krishna represents the human soul that is subject to uncontrollable desires, whereas Radha is seen as the symbol of ‘love from heaven,’ as prema—divine, unconditional love.

  With the focus on erotic love in the Gita Govinda and Shir Ha-Shirim, we uncovered similarities in the dominance of the female voice, and in the intensification of Eros provided by the imagery of nature. In its depiction of overt female sexual desire, Shir Ha-Shirim represents a welcome alternative to the representation of Eve, the female protagonist in the ‘Garden of Eden’ biblical narrative, who is the subject of temptation, sin and punishment. Still, the joy of sexual union eludes the lovers in Shir Ha-Shirim, despite the woman’s deep yearning for her paramour. She remains in a state of desire and longs for the joyful fulfilment of her love. While both female protagonists suffer the pain of separation from their beloved, Radha and Krishna do attain ecstasy at the end of the poem when Radha finally conquers Krishna’s heart, body and being. The very fact that Krishna and Radha are able to consummate their love offers the bhakti devotee an embodied and temporal image of ananda—the bliss achieved in the union of lovers, and in the union of the human soul with the divine.

  6

  BECOMING RADHA

  ALKA PANDE

  RADHE RADHE! I turned my head at the sound of the most attractive bass baritone greeting in the small village of Barsana. I see this small man raising his hand in salute, greeting his friend who responded with an equally musical Radhe Radhe. I was in Radha’s birthplace, the village where the nayika of all nayikas was born and grew up. As I travelled through the place, I was intent on visiting the Radharani Temple—the only one in the country dedica
ted to Krishna’s muse and Shakti—his beloved Radharani. The town where people greet each other by calling out Radhe Radhe. Even Krishna is not affixed or suffixed to the greeting. The next greeting is ‘Radha Krishna’ in one breath.

  Goddess Radha was born to Vrishabhanu and Kirti. According to one legend Radha was the daughter of a king. While cleaning the floor for a yajna puja he found the infant Radha. Another tale goes on to say how Radha appeared in this world when Lord Vishnu was set to take birth on earth as Lord Krishna and he requested his family to accompany him, and so, as a lover and companion to Lord Krishna she emerged. She is always believed to be older than Krishna. But until Lord Krishna appeared in front of her, Radha as a baby did not open her eyes.

  Om ajnana-timirandhasya jnananjana-salakaya

  caksur unmilitam yena tasmai sri-gurave namah

  I was born in the darkest ignorance,

  And my spiritual master opened my eyes with the torchlight of knowledge.

  I offer my respectful obeisance unto him.

  Radha is the essence of Krishna, she is his Shakti, the very core of his being. Radha is a metaphor for many things: power, love, bhakti and oneness. The oneness of Radha–Krishna is also similar to the concept of the Shiva–Parvati manifestation of Ardhanarishvara. In Vaishnavism it is seen as Ardhanarikrishna, as in Shaivism it is Ardhanarishiva, in Shaktism it is Ardhanarishakti, and in the acculturation of Shiva and Vishnu in the manifestation of the Harihara image.