Chapter 9

All this later poetry differed from the _Gita Govinda_ in one important respect. Instead of dwelling on the temporary rupture in Radha and Krishna's relationship, it roved freely over the many phases of their love-making, subjecting every incident to delighted analysis. A poet thought and felt himself into Radha's mind when as a young girl about to become a woman she discovered for the first time the exquisite sensations of awakening love. Or he imagined he was Krishna stumbling on Radha by accident and being stirred to ecstasy by his first glimpse of her glowing charms. Sometimes he even became the unseen viewer of their rapturous exchanges, comforting Radha with sage remarks or egging her on to appease her hungry lover. In this way many incidents not recorded of any cowgirl in the _Bhagavata Purana_, though possibly preserved in oral tradition, came gradually into prominence, thereby confirming Radha as Krishna's greatest love.

The following incidents will illustrate this process. Radha would be described as one day taking her curds and milk to a village the farther side of the river Jumma. Krishna hears of her expedition and along with other cowherd boys waylays Radha and her friends and claims a toll. Radha refuses to pay but at last offers to make a token gift provided he ferries them over. Meanwhile a cowherd boy has hidden the boat and night is coming on. It is now too late to return so the girls have no alternative but to stay with Krishna. They lie down by the bank but in the darkness give Krishna not only the toll but also their souls and bodies.

In another poem, Krishna is shown pestering the cowgirls for curds. Radha decides to stand this no longer and partly in jest dresses herself up as a constable. When Krishna next teases the girls, she descends upon him, catches him by the wrist and 'arrests' him as a thief.[61]

It is in the poems of Chandi Das, however, that Krishna's most daring ruses are described. Having once gained admittance to Radha's house by dressing himself as a cowgirl, he is shown pretending to be a flower-seller. He strings some flowers into a bunch of garlands, dangles them on his arm and strolls blandly down the village street. When he reaches Radha's house, he goes boldly in and is taken by Radha into a corner where she starts to bargain. Krishna asks her to let him first adorn her with a garland and then she can pay him. Radha agrees and as he slips a garland over her head, Krishna kisses her. Radha suddenly sees who it is and holds his hand.

On another occasion, Radha is ill from love and is lying at home on her bed. Krishna thereupon becomes a doctor and goes from house to house curing the sick. So successful are his cures that Radha also is tempted to consult the new doctor and sends a maid to call him, Krishna comes but before entering adopts a wild disguise--putting his clothes on inside out, matting his hair with mud, and slinging a bag of roots and plants over his shoulder. As he enters, he sits on Radha's bed, lifts her veil, gazes intently at her face and declares that certainly she is very ill indeed. He then takes her pulse and says, 'it is the water of love that is rotting her heart like a poison.' Radha is elated at this diagnosis, rouses herself and stretches her limbs. 'You have understood my trouble,' she says. 'Now tell me what I am to do.' 'I feel somewhat diffident at explaining my remedy,' replies the doctor, 'But if I had the time and place, I could ease your fever and cure you utterly.' As he says this, Radha knows that he is Krishna and this is only another of his reckless wiles designed to bring him near her.

But it was less in the recording of new incidents than in lyrical descriptions of Radha and Krishna, their physical charms and ecstatic meetings, that the poets excelled.

i

Krishna is dancing in a medley of moods and poses. His crown sways, his eye-brows move, Displaying the arts of a clever dancer. The swing of his waist makes his girdle sing And the anklets jingle. One fancies one is listening to the sweet voice of a pair of geese as they touch each other in dalliance. The bangles glitter and the rings and armlets shoot their rays. When with passion he moves his arms, what grace the movements bless! Now he dances after the gait of ladies and now in a manner of his own. The poet's lord is the jewel of the passionate And builds his dance in the depths of ecstasy.[62]

(Sur Das)

ii

With Krishna in their midst the cowherds come to their homes. The calves and cows are ahead, frisking and playing as they go. All the pipes and horns go forth, each his own notes playing. The sound of the flute moves the cows to low as they raise a cloud of dust. The crown of peacocks' feathers glistens on the head like a young moon. The cowherd boys frolic on the path and Krishna in the centre sings his song. Ravished by the sight, the cowgirls pour out their minds and bodies, Gazing on Krishna, quenching their heart's desire.

(Sur Das)

iii

Radha's glances dart from side to side. Her restless body and clothes are heavy with dust. Her glistening smile shines again and again. Shy, she raises her skirt to her lips. Startled, she stirs and once again is calm, As now she enters the ways of love. Sometimes she gazes at her blossoming breasts Hiding them quickly, then forgetting they are there. Childhood and girlhood melt in one And young and old are both forgotten. Says Vidyapati: O Lord of life, Do you not know the signs of youth?[63]

(Vidyapati)

iv

Each day the breasts of Radha swelled. Her hips grew shapely, her waist more slender. Love's secrets stole upon her eyes. Startled her childhood sought escape. Her plum-like breasts grew large, Harder and crisper, aching for love. Krishna soon saw her as she bathed Her filmy dress still clinging to her breasts, Her tangled tresses falling on her heart, A golden image swathed in yak's tail plumes. Says Vidyapati: O wonder of women, Only a handsome man can long for her.

(Vidyapati)

v

There was a shudder in her whispering voice. She was shy to frame her words. What has happened tonight to lovely Radha? Now she consents, now she is scared. When asked for love, she closes up her eyes, Eager to reach the ocean of desire. He begs her for a kiss. She turns her mouth away And then, like a night lily, the moon seized her. She felt his touch startling her girdle. She knew her love treasure was being robbed. With her dress she covered up her breasts. The treasure was left uncovered. Vidyapati wonders at the neglected bed. Lovers are busy in each other's arms.

(Vidyapati)

vi

Awake, Radha, awake Calls the parrot and its love For how long must you sleep, Clasped to the heart of your Dark-stone? Listen. The dawn has come And the red shafts of the sun Are making us shudder.

(Vidyapati)

vii

Startled, the parrot calls. See those young lovers are still asleep. On a bed of tender leaves His dark figure is lying still. She, the fair one, Looks like a piece of jewelled gold. They have emptied their quivers. All their flower-arrows are discharged, Drowning each other in the joy of love. O lovely Radha, awake. Your friends are going to the temple. Asks Govind Das: Whose business is it To interrupt the ways of love?

(Govind Das)

In another kind of poem, Radha and Krishna are themselves made to speak--Krishna, for example, describing his first glimpses of Radha and Radha struggling to evoke in words the ecstasies of their love.

viii

Like stilled lightning her fair face. I saw her by the river, Her hair dressed with jasmine, Plaited like a coiled snake. O friend, I will tell you The secret of my heart. With her darting glances And gentle smiles She made me wild with love. Throwing and catching a ball of flowers, She showed me to the full Her youthful form. Uptilted breasts Peeped from her dress. Her face was bright With taunting smiles. With anklet bells Her feet shone red. Says Chandi Das: Will you see her again?

(Chandi Das)

ix

Listen, O lovely darling, Cease your anger. I promise by the golden pitchers of your breasts And by your necklace-snake, Which now I gather in my hands, If ever I touch anyone but you May your necklace-snake bite me; And if my words do not ring true, Punish me as I deserve. Bind me in your arms, hit me with your thighs, Choke my heart with your milk-swollen breasts, Lock me day and night in the prison of your heart.

(Vidyapati)

x

Never have I seen such love nor heard of it. Even the eyelids' flutter Holds eternity. Clasped to my breasts, you are far from me. I would keep you as a veil close to my face. I shudder with fright when you turn your eyes away, As one body, we spend the night, Sinking in the deeps of delight. As dawn comes, we see with anxious hearts Life desert us. The very thought breaks my heart. Says Chandi Das: O sweet girl, how I understand.

(Chandi Das)

xi

O friend, I cannot tell you Whether he was near or far, real or a dream. Like a vine of lightning, As I chained the dark one, felt a river flooding in my heart. Like a shining moon, I devoured that liquid face. I felt stars shooting around me. The sky fell with my dress Leaving my ravished breasts. I was rocking like the earth. In my storming breath I could hear my ankle-bells, Sounding like bees. Drowned in the last-waters of dissolution I knew that this was not the end. Says Vidyapati: How can I possibly believe such nonsense?

(Vidyapati)

[Footnote 60: Plate 29.]

[Footnote 61: Plate 35.]

[Footnote 62: Note 20.]

[Footnote 63: Note 20.]

(iv) The Rasika Priya

It is a third development, however, which reveals the insistent attractions of Krishna the divine lover. From about the seventh century onwards Indian thinkers had been fascinated by the great variety of possible romantic experiences. Writers had classified feminine beauty and codified the different situations which might arise in the course of a romance. A woman, for example, would be catalogued according as she was 'one's own, another's or anyone's' and whether she was young, adolescent or adult. Beauties with adult physiques were divided into unmarried and married, while cutting across such divisions was yet another based on the particular circumstances in which a woman might find herself. Such circumstances were normally eight in number--when her husband or lover was on the point of coming and she was ready to receive him; when she was parted from him and was filled with longing; when he was constant and she was thus enjoying the calm happiness of stable love; when, for the time being, she was estranged due to some quarrel or tiff; when she had been deceived; when she had gone to meet her lover but had waited in vain, thereby being jilted; when her husband or lover had gone abroad and she was faced with days of lonely waiting; and finally, when she had left the house and gone to meet him. Ladies in situations such as these were known as _nayikas_ and the text embodying the standard classification was the Sanskrit treatise, the _Bharatiya Natya Sastra_. A similar analysis was made of men--lovers or _nayakas_ being sometimes divided into fourteen different types.

Until the fourteenth century, such writings were studies in erotics rather than in literature--the actual situations rather than their literary treatment being the authors' prime concern. During the fourteenth century, however, questions of literary taste began to be discussed and there arose a new type of Sanskrit treatise, showing how different kinds of lover should be treated in poetry and illustrating the correct attitudes by carefully chosen verses. In all these writings the standard of reference was human passion. The lovers of poetry might bear only a slight relation to lovers in real life. Many of the situations envisaged might rarely, if ever, occur. It was sufficient that granted some favourable accident, some chance suspension of normal circumstances, lovers could be imagined as acting in these special ways.

It is out of this critical literature that our new development springs. As vernacular languages were used for poetry, problems of Hindi composition began to dwarf those of Sanskrit. It was necessary to discuss how best to treat each _nayika_ and _nayaka_ not only in Sanskrit but in Hindi poetry also, and to meet this situation Keshav Das, the poet of Orchha in Bundelkhand, produced in 1591 his _Rasika Priya_. Here all the standard situations were once again examined, _nayikas_ and _nayakas_ were newly distinguished and verses illustrating their appropriate treatments were systematically included. The book differed, however, in two important ways from any of its predecessors. It was written in Hindi, Keshav Das himself supplying both poems and commentary and what was even more significant, the _nayaka_ or lover was portrayed not as any ordinary well-bred young man but as Krishna himself.[64] As a girl waits at the tryst it is not for an ordinary lover but for Krishna that Keshav Das depicts her as longing.

'Is he detained by work? Is he loath to leave his friends? Has he had a quarrel? Is his body uneasy? Is he afraid when he sees the rainy dark? O Krishna, Giver of Bliss, why do you not come?'[65]

As a girl waits by her bed looking out through her door, it is the prospect of Krishna's arrival--not of an ordinary lover's--that makes her happy.

'As she runs, her blue dress hides her limbs. She hears the wind ruffling the trees and the birds shifting in the night. She thinks it must be he. How she longs for love, watching for Krishna like a bird in a cage.'

When the lover arrives at dawn, having failed to come in the night, the girl (another _nayika_, 'one who has been deceived') upbraids Krishna for wandering about like a crow, picking up worthless grains of rice, wasting his hours in bad company and ruining houses by squatting in them like an owl.

Similarly when a married girl sits longing for her husband's return, her companion comments not on an ordinary husband's conduct but on that of Krishna. 'He said he would not be long. "I shall be back," he said, "as soon as I have had my meal." But now it is hours since he went. Why does he sit beside them and no one urge him to go? Does he know that her eyes are wet with tears, that she is crying her heart out because he does not come?'

Krishna, in fact, is here regarded as resuming in himself all possible romantic experiences. He is no longer merely the cowherd lover or the hero prince, the central figure of a sacred narrative. Neither is he merely or only the lover of Radha. He is deemed to know love from every angle and thus to sanctify all modes of passionate behaviour. He is love itself.

Such a development concludes the varied phases through which the character of Krishna has passed. The cowherd lover supersedes the hero prince. Radha becomes all in all, yet touches of Krishna's princely majesty remain throughout. Even as a cowherd Krishna shows an elegance and poise which betrays his different origin. And in the _Rasika Priya_ it is once again his courtly aura which determines his new role. A blend of prince and cowherd, Krishna ousts from poetry the courtly lovers who previously had seemed the acme of romance. Adoration of God acquires the grace and charm of courtly loving, passionate sensuality all the refinement and nobility of a spiritual religion. It is out of all these varied texts that the Krishna of Indian painting now emerges.

[Footnote 64: Plate 28.]

[Footnote 65: Note 21.]

VI

THE KRISHNA OF PAINTING

Indian pictures of Krishna confront us with a series of difficult problems. The most exalted expressions of the theme are mainly from Kangra, a large Hindu state within the Punjab Hills.[66] It was here that Krishna, the cowherd lover, was most fully celebrated. Pictures were produced in large numbers and the Kangra style with its delicate refinement exactly mirrored the enraptured poetry of the later cult. This painting was due entirely to a particular Kangra ruler, Raja Sansar Chand (1775-1823)--his delight in painting causing him to spare no cost in re-creating the Krishna idyll in exquisite terms. Elsewhere, however, conditions varied. At the end of the sixteenth century, it was not a Hindu but a Muslim ruler who commissioned the greatest illustrations of the story. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, Hindu patrons were the rule but in certain states it was junior members of the ruling family rather than the Raja himself who worshipped Krishna. Sometimes it was not the ruling family but members of the merchant community who sponsored the artists and, occasionally, it was even a pious lady or devout princess who served as patron. Such differences of stimulus had vital effects and, as a consequence, while the cult of Krishna came increasingly to enthrall the northern half of India, its expression in art was the reverse of neat and orderly. Where a patron was so imbued with love for Krishna that adoration of the cowherd lover preceded all, the intensity of his feeling itself evoked a new style. There then resulted the Indian equivalent of pictures by El Greco, Grunewald or Altdorfer--paintings in which the artist's own religious emotions were the direct occasion of a new manner. In other cases, the patron might adhere to Krishna, pay him nominal respect or take a moderate pleasure in his story but not evince a burning enthusiasm. In such cases, paintings of Krishna would still be produced but the style would merely repeat existing conventions. The pictures which resulted would then resemble German paintings of the Danube or Cologne schools--pictures in which the artist applied an already mature style to a religious theme but did not originate a fresh mode of expression. Whether the greatest art resulted from the first or second method was problematical for the outcome depended as much on the nature of the styles as on the artist's powers. In considering Indian pictures of Krishna, then, we must be prepared for sudden fluctuations in expression and abrupt differences of style and quality. Adoration of Krishna was to prove one of the most vital elements in village and courtly life. It was to capture the imagination of Rajput princes and to lead to some of the most intimate revelations of the Indian mind. Yet in art its expression was to hover between the crude and the sensitive, the savage and the exquisite. It was to stimulate some of the most delicate Indian pictures ever painted and, at the same time, some of the most forceful.

The first pictures of Krishna to be painted in India fall within this second category. In about 1450, one version of the _Gita Govinda_ and two of the _Balagopala Stuti_ were produced in Western India.[67] They were doubtless made for middle-class patrons and were executed in Western India for one important reason. Dwarka, the scene of Krishna's life as a prince, and Prabhasa, the scene of the final slaughter, were both in Western India. Both had already become centres of pilgrimage and although Jayadeva had written his great poem far to the East, on the other side of India, pilgrims had brought copies with them while journeying from Bengal on visits to the sites. The _Gita Govinda_ of Jayadeva had become in fact as much a Western Indian text as the _Balagopala Stuti_ of Bilvamangala. With manuscript illustrations being already produced in Western India--but not, so far as we know, elsewhere--it was not unnatural that the first illustrated versions of these poems should be painted here. And it is these circumstances which determined their style. Until the fifteenth century the chief manuscripts illustrated in Western India were Jain scriptures commissioned by members of the merchant community. Jainism had originated in the sixth century B.C. as a parallel movement to Buddhism. It had proved more accommodating to Hinduism, and when Buddhism had collapsed in Western India in the ninth century A.D., Jainism had continued as a local variant of Hinduism proper. Jain manuscripts had at first consisted of long rectangular strips made of palm-leaves on which the scriptures were written in heavy black letters. Each slip was roughly three inches wide and ten long and into the text had been inserted lean diagrammatic paintings either portraying Mahavira, the founder of the cult, or illustrating episodes in his earthly career.

About 1400, palm-leaf was superseded by paper and from then onwards manuscripts were given slightly larger pages. Owing partly to their association with the same religious order and partly to their constant duplication, Jain manuscripts had early conformed to a certain rigid type. The painting was marked by lean and wiry outlines, brilliant red and blue and above all by an air of savage ferocity expressed through the idiom of faces shown three-quarter view with the farther eye detached and projecting into space. This style was exercised almost exclusively on Jain subjects and in the year 1400 it was the main style of painting in Western India and Raj as than.

During the fifteenth century, this exclusive character gradually weakened. There arose the idea that besides Jain scriptures, secular poetry might also be illustrated and along with the growing devotion to Krishna as God came the demand for illustrated versions of Krishna texts. The three texts we have just mentioned are due to this tendency. All three are illustrated in the prevailing Jain style with its spiky angular idioms and all three have the same somewhat sinister air of barbarous frenzy. At the same time, all disclose a partial loosening of the rigid wiry convention, a more boisterous rhythm and a slightly softer treatment of trees and animals; and, although no very close correlation is possible, the theme itself may well have helped to precipitate these important changes.

Between 1450 and 1575, Western Indian painting continued to focus on Jain themes, adulterated to only a very slight extent by subjects drawn from poetry. It is possible that the Krishna story was also illustrated, but no examples have survived; and it is not until the very end of the sixteenth century that the Krishna theme again appears in painting and then in two distinct forms. The first is represented by a group of three manuscripts--two of them dated respectively 1598[68] and 1610[69] and consisting of the tenth book of the _Bhagavata Purana_, the third being yet another illustration of the _Gita Govinda[70]_. All three sets of illustrations are in a closely similar style--a style which, while possessing roots in Jain painting is now considerably laxer and more sprawling. The faces are no longer shown three-quarter view, the detached obtruding eye has gone and in place of the early sharpness there is now a certain slovenly crudity. We do not know for whom these manuscripts were made nor even in what particular part of Western India or Rajasthan they were executed. They were clearly not produced in any great centre of painting and can hardly have been commissioned by a prince or merchant of much aesthetic sensibility. They prove, however, that a demand for illustrated versions of the Krishna story was persisting and suggest that even prosperous traders may perhaps have acted as patrons.