The Loves of Krishna in Indian Painting and Poetry Part 5

Udho, who earlier in the story has acted as Krishna's envoy to the cowgirls quickly realizes that the end is near and approaches Krishna for advice. 'Tell me, O Lord, what it is proper I should do. For it is clear that shortly you will destroy the Yadavas.' Krishna then tells him to go to a shrine high up in the mountains and by meditating on Krishna obtain release. He adds minute instructions on the technique of penance and ends with some definitions of the yoga of devotion. He concludes by telling Udho that when all the Yadavas have perished, he himself will go to heaven and Dwarka will be swallowed by the ocean. Udho bows low and leaves for the mountains.

Krishna now a.s.sembles the leading Yadavas and leaving behind only the elders, the women and children, escorts them to Prabhasa, a town inland, a.s.suring them that by proper worship they may yet avert their fate. At Prabhasa the Yadavas bathe and purify themselves, anoint the G.o.ds' statues and make offerings. They appease the Brahmans with costly gifts--'thereby countering evil omens, gaining the road to happiness and ensuring rebirth at a higher level.'

Their worship however, is of no avail for almost immediately they fall to drinking. 'As they drank, the destructive flame of dissension was kindled amongst them by mutual collision, and fed with the fuel of abuse.

Infuriated by the divine influence, they fell upon one another with missile weapons and when these were expended, they had recourse to the rushes growing high. The rushes in their hands became like thunderbolts and they struck one another with them fatal blows. Krishna interposed to prevent them but they thought that he was taking part with each severally, and continued the conflict. Krishna then, enraged, took up a handful of rushes to destroy them, and the rushes became a club of iron and with this he slew many of the murderous Yadavas; whilst others, fighting fiercely, put an end to one another. In a short time, there was not a single Yadava left alive, except the mighty Krishna and Daruka, his charioteer.'[43]

With the slaughter thus completed, Krishna feels free to leave the earth.

Such Yadavas who have been left behind in Dwarka have been spared, but the greater part of the race is dead. He therefore makes ready for his own departure. Balarama, who has helped Krishna in the brawl, goes to the sea-sh.o.r.e, performs yoga and, leaving his body, joins the Supreme Spirit.

Sesha, the white serpent of eternity, issues from his mouth and hymned by snakes and other serpents proceeds to the ocean. 'Bringing an offering of respect, Ocean came to meet him; and then the majestic being, adored by attendant snakes entered into the waters of the deep.'[44]

Krishna then seats himself by a fig tree, lays his left leg across his right thigh, turns the sole of his foot outwards and a.s.sumes one of the postures in which abstraction is practised. As he meditates he appears lovelier than ever. His eyes flash. The four arms of Vishnu spring from his body. He wears his crown, his sacred thread and garland of flowers. As he sits, glorious and beautiful, the same hunter, who earlier had salvaged the iron spike from the fish, chances to pa.s.s by. His arrow is tipped with a piece of the iron and mistaking Krishna's foot for part of a deer, he shoots his arrow and hits it. Approaching the mark, he sees Krishna's four arms and is horrified to discover whom he has wounded. As he begs forgiveness, Krishna grants him liberation and dispatches him to heaven.

Daruka, Krishna's charioteer, now comes in search of his master. Finding him wounded, he is overwhelmed with grief. Krishna tells him to go to Dwarka and inform the surviving Yadavas what has happened. On receiving the news they must leave Dwarka immediately, for the sea will shortly engulf it. They must also place themselves under Arjuna's protection and go to Indraprastha. 'Then the ill.u.s.trious Krishna having united himself with his own pure, spiritual, inexhaustible and universal spirit abandoned his mortal body.'[45]

Daruka goes mournfully to Dwarka where he breaks the news. Vasudeva with his two wives, Devaki and Rohini, die of grief. Arjuna recovers the bodies of Krishna and Balarama and places them on a funeral pyre. Rukmini along with Krishna's seven other queens throw themselves on the flames.

Balarama's wives, as well as King Ugrasena, also die. Arjuna then appoints Krishna's great grandson, Pariks.h.i.t, to rule over the survivors and, after a.s.sembling the remaining women and children, removes them from Dwarka and travels slowly away. As they leave, the ocean comes up, swallowing the city and engulfing everything except the temple.

[Footnote 40: Plate 19.]

[Footnote 41: Note 13.]

[Footnote 42: Note 14.]

[Footnote 43: Note 7.]

[Footnote 44: Plate 1 and Note 7.]

[Footnote 45: Plate 2 and Note 7.]

(iv) The _Purana_ Re-considered

Such an account gives us what the _Mahabharata_ epic did not give--a detailed description of Krishna's career. It confirms the epic's view of Krishna as a hero and fills in many gaps concerning his life at Dwarka, his relations with the Pandavas, his life as a feudal prince and finally, his death. It makes clear that throughout the story Krishna is an incarnation of Vishnu and that his main reason for being born is to aid the good and kill demons. At the same time, it shows him in two important new lights--firstly, as one whose youth was spent among cowherds, in circ.u.mstances altogether different from those of a prince and secondly, as a delightful lover of women, who explores to the full the joys of s.e.xual love. The second role characterizes him both as cowherd and prince but with important differences of att.i.tude and behaviour. As a prince, Krishna is wedded first to Rukmini and then to seven other wives, observing on each occasion the requisite formalities. Even the sixteen thousand one hundred girls whom he rescues from imprisonment receive this formal status. With all of them Krishna enjoys a variety of s.e.xual pleasures and their love is moral, respectable and approved. Krishna the prince, in fact, is Krishna the husband. Krishna the cowherd, on the other hand, is essentially a lover. The cowgirls whose impa.s.sioned love he inspires are all married and in consorting with them he is breaking one of the most solemn requirements of the moral code. The first relationship has the secure basis of conjugal duty, the second the daring adventurousness of romantic pa.s.sion.

The same abrupt contrast appears between his character as a cowherd and his character as a prince. As a youth he mixes freely with the cowherds, behaving with an easy naturalness of manner and obtaining from them an intense devotion. This devotion is excited by everything he does and whether as a baby crying for the breast, a little boy pilfering b.u.t.ter or a young man teasing the married girls, he exerts a magnetic charm. At no time does he neglect his prime duty of killing demons but this is subordinated to his innocent delight in living. He is shown as impatient with old and stereotyped forms of worship, as scorning ordinary morality and treating love as paramount. Although he acts continually with princely dignity and is always aware of his true character as Vishnu, his impact on others is based more on the understanding of their needs than on their recognition of him as G.o.d. When, at times, Krishna the cowherd is adored as G.o.d, he has already been loved as a boy and a young man. In the later story, this early charm is missing. Krishna is frequently recognized to be G.o.d and is continually revered and respected as a man. His conduct is invariably resolute but there is a kind of statesmanlike formality about his actions. He is respectful towards ritual, formal observances and Brahmans while in comparison with his encounters with the cowgirls his relations with women have an air of slightly stagnant luxury. His wives and consorts lavish on him their devotion but the very fact that they are married removes the romantic element from their relationship.

Such vital differences are only partially resolved in the _Bhagavata Purana_. Representing as they do two different conceptions of Krishna's character, it is inevitable that the resulting account should be slightly biased in one direction or the other. The _Bhagavata Purana_ records both phases in careful detail blending them into a single organic whole. But there can be little doubt that its Brahman authors were in the main more favourably inclined towards the hero prince than towards the cowherd lover. There is a tendency for the older Krishna to disparage the younger.

Krishna the prince's subsequent meetings with the cowgirls are shown as very different from his rapturous encounters with them in the forest and the fact that his later career involves so sharp a separation from them indicates that the whole episode was somewhat frowned upon. This is especially evident from the manner in which Krishna addresses the cowgirls when they meet him during the eclipse of the sun. By this time he has become an ardent husband constantly satisfying his many wives. He is very far from having abjured the delights of the flesh. Yet for all his former loves who long for him so pa.s.sionately he has only one message. They must meditate upon him in their minds. No dismissal could be colder, no treatment more calculatingly callous. And even the accounts of Krishna's love-making reflects this bias. The physical charms of the cowgirls are minimized and it is only the beauty of Rukmini which is stressed. It is clear, in fact, that however much the one tradition involved a break with morals, the second tradition shrank from countenancing adultery and it was this latter tradition which commanded the authors' approval. Finally, on one important issue, the _Purana_ as a whole is in no doubt. Krishna's true consort is Rukmini. That Krishna's nature should be complemented by a cowgirl is not so much as even considered. The cowgirls are shown as risking all for Krishna, as loving him above all else but none is singled out for mention and none emerges as a rival. In this long account of Krishna's life what is overwhelmingly significant is that the name of his supreme cowgirl love is altogether omitted.

V

THE KRISHNA OF POETRY

(i) The Triumph of Radha

During the next two hundred years, from the tenth to the twelfth century, the Krishna story completely alters. It is not that the facts as given in the _Bhagavata Purana_ are disputed. It is rather that the emphasis and view-point are changed. Krishna the prince and his consort Rukmini are relegated to the background and Krishna the cowherd lover brought sharply to the fore. Krishna is no longer regarded as having been born solely to kill a tyrant and rid the world of demons. His chief function now is to vindicate pa.s.sion as the symbol of final union with G.o.d. We have already seen that to Indians this final union was the sole purpose of life and only one experience was at all comparable to it. It was the mutual ecstasy of impa.s.sioned lovers. 'In the embrace of his beloved, a man forgets the whole world--everything both within and without; in the same way, he who embraces the Self knows neither within nor without.'[46] The function of the new Krishna was to defend these two premises--that romantic love was the most exalted experience in life and secondly, that of all the roads to salvation, the impa.s.sioned adoration of G.o.d was the one most valid. G.o.d must be adored. Krishna himself was G.o.d and since he had shown divine love in pa.s.sionately possessing the cowgirls, he was best adored by recalling these very encounters. As a result, Krishna's relations with the cowgirls were now enormously magnified and as part of this fresh appraisal, a particular married cowgirl, Radha, enters the story as the enchanting object of his pa.s.sions. We have seen how on one occasion in the _Bhagavata Purana_, Krishna disappears taking with him a single girl, how they then make love together in a forest bower and how when the girl tires and begs Krishna to carry her, he abruptly leaves her. The girl's name is not mentioned but enough is said to suggest that she is Krishna's favourite.

This hint is now developed. Radha, for this is the girl's name, is recognized as the loveliest of all the cowgirls. She is the daughter of the cowherd Vrishabhanu and his wife, Kamalavati, and is married to Ayana, a brother of Yasoda. Like other cowgirls, her love for Krishna is all-consuming and compels her to ignore her family honour and disregard her husband. Krishna, for his part, regards her as his first love. In place, therefore, of courtly adventures and battles with demons, Krishna's adulterous romance is now presented as all in all.[47] It is the moods, feelings and emotions of a great love-affair which are the essence of the story and this, in turn, is to serve as a sublime allegory expressing and affirming the love of G.o.d for the soul. With this dramatic revolution in the story, we begin to approach the Krishna of Indian painting.

Such a change can hardly have come about without historical reasons and although the exact circ.u.mstances must perhaps remain obscure, we can see in this sharp reversal of roles a clear response to certain Indian needs.

From early times, romantic love had been keenly valued, Sanskrit poets such as Kalidasa, Amaru and Bhartrihari celebrating the charms of womanly physique and the raptures of s.e.x. What, in fact, in other cultures had been viewed with suspicion or disquiet was here invested with n.o.bility and grandeur. Although fidelity had been demanded in marriage, romantic liaisons had not been entirely excluded and thus there was a sense in which the love-poetry of the early Indian middle ages had been partly paralleled by actual courtly or village practice. From the tenth century onwards, however, a tightening of domestic morals had set in, a tightening which was further intensified by the Muslim invasions of the twelfth and thirteen centuries. Romance as an actual experience became more difficult of attainment and this was exacerbated by standard views of marriage. In early India, marriage had been regarded as a contract between families and romantic love between husband and wife as an accidental, even an unexpected product of what was basically a utilitarian agreement. With the seclusion of women and the laying of even greater stress on wifely chast.i.ty, romantic love was increasingly denied. Yet the need for romance remained and we can see in the prevalence of love-poetry a subst.i.tute for wishes repressed in actual life.[48] It is precisely this role which the story of Krishna the cowherd lover now came to perform. Krishna, being G.o.d, had been beyond morals and hence had practised conduct which, if indulged in by men, might well have been wrong. He had given practical expression to romantic longings and had behaved with all the pa.s.sionate freedom normally stifled by social duty, conjugal ethics and family morals. From this point of view, Krishna the prince was a mere pillar of boring respectability. Nothing in his conduct could arouse delight for everything he did was correct and proper. Krishna the cowherd on the other hand, was spontaneous, irresponsible and free. His love for the cowgirls had had a lively freedom. The love between them was nothing if not voluntary. His whole life among the cowherds was simple, natural and pleasing and as their rapturous lover nothing was more obvious than that the cowgirls should adore him. In dwelling, then, on Krishna, it was natural that the worshipper should tend to disregard the prince and should concentrate instead on the cowherd. The prince had revered Brahmans and supported established inst.i.tutions. The cowherd had shamed the Brahmans of Mathura and discredited ceremonies and festivals. He had loved and been loved and in his contemplation lay nothing but joy. The loves of Krishna, in fact, were an intimate fulfilment of Indian desires, an exact sublimation of intense romantic needs and while other factors must certainly have played their part, this is perhaps the chief reason why, at this juncture, they now enchanted village and courtly India.

The results of this new approach are apparent in two distinct ways. The _Bhagavata Purana_ continues to be the chief chronicle of Krishna's acts but the last half of Book Ten and all of Book Eleven fall into neglect.[49] In their place, the story of Krishna's relations with the cowgirls is given new poignancy and precision. Radha is constantly mentioned and in all the incidents in the _Purana_ involving cowgirls, it is she who is given pride of place. At the river Jumna, when Krishna removes the cowgirls' clothes, Radha begs him to restore them. At the circular dance in which he joins with all the cowgirls, Radha receives his first attentions, dancing with him in the centre. When Krishna is about to leave for Mathura, it is Radha who heads the cowgirls and strives to detain him. She serves, in fact, as a symbol of all the cowgirls' love. At the same time, she is very far from being merely their spokesman or leader and while the later texts dwell constantly on her rapturous love-making with Krishna, they also describe her jealousy when Krishna makes love to other girls. Indeed the essence of their romance is that it includes a temporary estrangement and only after Krishna has neglected Radha, flirted with other cowgirls and then returned to her is their understanding complete.

The second result is the allegorical interpretation which Krishna's romances now received. In Christian literature, the longing of the soul for G.o.d was occasionally expressed in terms of s.e.xual imagery--the works of the Spanish mystic, St. John of the Cross, including 'songs of the soul in rapture at having arrived at the height of perfection which is union with G.o.d.'

Oh night that was my guide!

Oh darkness dearer than the morning's pride, Oh night that joined the lover To the beloved bride Transfiguring them each into the other.

Within my flowering breast Which only for himself entire I save He sank into his rest And all my gifts I gave Lulled by the airs with which the cedars wave.[50]

This same approach was now to clarify Radha's romance with Krishna. Radha, it was held, was the soul while Krishna was G.o.d. Radha's s.e.xual pa.s.sion for Krishna symbolized the soul's intense longing and her willingness to commit adultery expressed the utter priority which must be accorded to love for G.o.d. If ultimate union was symbolized by romantic love, then clearly nothing could approach such love in ultimate significance. In deserting their husbands and homes and wilfully committing adultery, Radha and the cowgirls were therefore ill.u.s.trating a profound religious truth.

Not only was their adultery proof of Krishna's charm, it was vital to the whole story. By worldly standards, they were committing the gravest of offences but they were doing it for Krishna who was G.o.d himself. They were therefore setting G.o.d above home and duty, they were leaving everything for love of G.o.d and in surrendering their honour, were providing the most potent symbol of what devotion meant. This approach explained other details. Krishna's flute was the call of G.o.d which caused the souls of men, the cowgirls, to forsake their worldly attachments and rush to love him. In removing the clothes of the cowgirls and requiring them to come before him naked, he was demonstrating the innocent purity with which the soul should wait on G.o.d. In himself neglecting Radha and toying with the cowgirls, he was proving, on one level, the power of worldly pleasures to seduce the soul but on another level, the power of G.o.d to love every soul irrespective of its character and status. From this point of view, the cowgirls were as much the souls of men as Radha herself and to demonstrate G.o.d's all-pervasive love, Krishna must therefore love not only Radha but every cowgirl. Equally, in the circular dance, by inducing every cowgirl to think that she and she alone was his partner, Krishna was proving how G.o.d is available to all. Finally it was realized that even those portions of the story which, at first sight, seemed cruel and callous were also susceptible of religious interpretation. When Radha has been loved in the forest and then is suddenly deserted, the reason is her pride--pride that because Krishna has loved her, she can a.s.sert herself by asking to be carried. Such a.s.sertiveness is incompatible with the kind of humble adoration necessary for communion with G.o.d. To prove this, therefore, Radha's pride must be destroyed and Krishna resorts to this seemingly brusque desertion. Action, in fact, which by human standards would be reprehensible is once again a means for imparting spiritual wisdom. In a similar way, Krishna's departure for Mathura and final abandonment of the cowgirls was accorded a religious interpretation. At one level, his departure symbolized 'the dark night of the soul,' the experience which comes to every devotee when, despite the most ardent longing, the vision fades. At another level, it ill.u.s.trated how life must be lived when G.o.d or Vishnu was no longer on earth. If Krishna's love-making was intended to symbolize the ultimate rapture, his physical absence corresponded to conditions as they normally existed. In instructing the cowgirls to meditate upon him in their minds, Krishna was only attuning them to life as it must necessarily appear after he has left the human stage.

It was these conceptions which governed the cult of Krishna from the twelfth century onwards and, as we shall shortly see, informed the poems which were now to celebrate his love for Radha.

[Footnote 46: Note 15.]

[Footnote 47: Note 16.]

[Footnote 48: Note 17.]

[Footnote 49: I.e. the whole of Krishna's career after his destruction of the tyrant.]

[Footnote 50: Roy Campbell, _The Poems of St. John of the Cross_ (London, 1951), 11-12.]

(ii) The Gita Govinda

The first poem to express this changed conception is the _Gita Govinda_--the Song of the Cowherd--a Sanskrit poem written by the Bengali poet, Jayadeva, towards the close of the twelfth century. Its subject is the estrangement of Radha and Krishna caused by Krishna's love for other cowgirls, Radha's anguish at Krishna's neglect and lastly the rapture which attends their final reunion. Jayadeva describes Radha's longing and Krishna's love-making with glowing sensuality yet the poem reverts continually to praise of Krishna as G.o.d.

If in recalling Krishna to mind there is flavour Or if there is interest in love's art Then to this necklace of words--sweetness, tenderness, brightness-- The words of Jayadeva, listen.

He aims, in fact, at inducing 'recollection of Krishna in the minds of the good' and adds a description of the forest in springtime solely, he says, in order once again to recall Krishna.[51] When, at last, the poem has come triumphantly to its close, Jayadeva again exhorts people to adore Krishna and 'place him for ever in their hearts, Krishna the source of all merit.'

The poem begins with a preface of four lines describing how Krishna's romance with Radha first began. The sky, it says, was dark with clouds.

All around lay the vast forest. Night was coming up and Nanda who had taken the youthful Krishna with him is alarmed lest in the gathering gloom the boy should get lost. Radha, who is somewhat older, is with them, so Nanda desires her to take Krishna home. Radha leads him away but as they wander by the river, pa.s.sion mounts in their hearts. They forget that Nanda has told them to hurry home. Radha ignores the motherly character of her mission and loitering in the trees, the two commence their dalliance.[52] In this way the love of Radha and Krishna arises--the love which is to dominate their hearts with ever-growing fervour.

The poem then leaps a period of time and when the drama opens, a crisis has occurred. Radha, after long enjoying Krishna's pa.s.sionate embraces, finds herself abruptly neglected. Charming but faithless, Krishna is now pursuing other girls and the jilted Radha wanders alone. Meanwhile spring has come to the forest and the thought that others are enjoying Krishna's love tortures her to the point of madness. As she broods on her lost joys, a friend describes to her what is happening.[53]