IN SEARCH OF THE HISTORICAL RADHA
Jawhar Sircar
{Published in Finding Radha (Penguin, 2018)
Ed. Malashri Lal and Namita Gokhale}
We cannot ever imagine Krishna without Radha, but not many are, perhaps,
know that she actually entered the life and legend of Krishna rather late. An
even lesser known fact is that Krishna himself took his own time to blossom as
a dominant figure in Indian mythology. Contrary to what most people are told,
Krishna was certainly not visible in the Vedic period — when all that was or is “holy,
good and great in India” is claimed to have appeared. His first mention — just
a wisp of it — appears well after the Rig Veda had been completed and
over with. It is in the Chhandogya Upanishad of the 8th or 7th
century BC or BCE (Before the Common Era), that we get one ‘Krishna, son of
Devaki’: Krisnaya-devakiputraya. However sparse, this single mention
of Krishna indicates that some legends about him were possibly in circulation
somewhere, in the post-Vedic period.
This is about the time when the speakers of an Indo-Aryan language were
coming to terms with the indigenous people of India — whom they had earlier
reviled, rather intensely. Over the next few centuries, we get to hear of him,
in bits and pieces, in other texts such as the Taittiriya Aranyaka, the
Jain sacred tales, Panini’s Ashtadhyayi and so on. Vasudeva — as a
divine character who is distinct from, yet allied to Krishna — makes his first
physical appearance a century or so before the Christian Era or the Current Era
commenced. On one side of a silver coin of Agotheles the Greek, we get an image
of Vasudeva-Krishna. We must remember that, during this period, Vasudeva was an
independent, established deity, while Krishna was a rather amorphous, upcoming
deity on whom there was neither any literature or any icon. Pierre Amiet and
his fellow scholars declare, rather decisively: “there is no evidence of
Krishna (or Radha) in sculpture or coinage or inscription before the Current
Era began”[1]
The first clear image of Krishna appears in the Ekanamsa group of
sculptures of 2nd century AD or ACE in Gaya, Bihar[2], where he appears
to have broken free from Vasudeva. But he is still yoked with Balarama, whose
images, incidentally, are quite visible in the preceding three centuries. This
Kushan period sculpture of Ekanamsa positions Krishna next to Balarama, with a
female who is identified as ‘Subhadra’, their sister. The first sacred text
that mentions Krishna is the Harivamsa
of
the 3rd or 4th century, that collated the hitherto-nebulous or
patchy tales about Krishna into one authoritative omnibus. It is around this
time that the Mahabharata and the Ramayana had reached a final
stage of composition after almost five centuries “in the making” — busy absorbing
and sewing together different, colourful tales from all over the Indo-Gangetic
plains, and beyond. Yet, though both the Harivamsa and
the Mahabharata extol the ‘mature and godly
Krishna’,
we do not come across any corroborative
sculpture
or other arts. These are all on Bala-Krishna as are the large number of sculptural or
terracotta representations of Krishna that appear in the next six hundred
years. Gupta and post-Gupta art depict Krishna as a baby or a child, not as a
youth or adult — which precludes Radha’s arrival.
To reach Radha, we need to cross another six long centuries, to reach
the 9th century sacred text, the Bhagavata Purana. But before we come
to the first Radha-like young woman in Brahmanical literature, we must mention
a secular text that mentions Radha. The Gatha Saptasathi is a collection of
seven hundred verses composed in Prakrit by a king named Hala. We know that he belonged to the
upper Deccan but we do not know when he did so. This could have been in the 2nd century AD/ACE,
which means this book preceded the final version of Mahabharata and the Harivamsa. Or, it could have
been composed some three-four centuries later — no one knows. We are taken
aback at the explicit reference — pada 225 of the first
chapter, that says, “O Krishna, by the puff of breath from your mouth, as you
blow the dust from Radha’s face, you
take away the glories of other milk-maids”[3]. Not only this, we
come across a verse in another work, Banabhaṭṭa’s Harshacharita, which
describes how“the
breasts of Radha made Krishna dance in the courtyard, and people were amazed.”
It is clear that the myth of Radha and Krishna — including his loves and leelas — was surely known
to a section of the masses of India, by the middle of the first millennium of
the Current Era. The moot point here is, however, that Radha was still not
‘recognised’ by Brahmanical religion, even though we find Radha in Jain
commentaries. In the 7th century, we get a mention in Bhattanarayana’s Venisamaraha.
Another Jain scholar, Ananada-vardhana, also mentions her in
his famous Dhyanaloka, which preceded the first
Hindu sacred text to refer to her, that too, rather indirectly — the Bhagavata
Purana.
This Purana
speaks of an unnamed lady who is so much
like Radha, but
she is not called Radha — she actually remains without a name. In his
well-researched work, Sumanta Banerjee[4] states that she
has been called Anyaradhita
or the ‘conciliated
one’ —which is an appellation, not as a proper noun. And she is conciliated by
a Krishna-like cowherd called Mayon who frolicked with several gopis and disappears
occasionally with one of them. The Bhagavata Purana, however, mentions
that she is usually singled out, for special favours. Because the cowherd (not
Krishna, by name) is divine, this was his way of teaching humility to all the gopis and even the
special gopi was also taught
her share, by being abandoned, time and again. Book 10, Chapter 30, Verses
36-38 of this Purana
describes
it all. This solitary word, Anyaradhita, is taken by scholars to be the origin of
the proper name ‘Radha’, but as we have seen, the name Radha was already known
to the folk. We see how much time it takes a folk deity (or a popular tale or a
rhyme) to reach the next higher level — of finding some mention in a sacred
text.
Of course, ‘conciliation’ of Radha does form an integral part of the
Radha-Krishna love-story and however ‘humiliating’ this act may have appeared
to patriarchy, the common people enjoyed it.
They could, obviously, identify themselves with the repeated episodes of
‘conciliation’ of the woman — irrespective of the religiously-sanctioned
prescription of gender domination. These are the subtextual inferences of
societal behaviour that copybook historians usually shy away from — as they are
more comfortable with indexed hard references to quote from. In any case, it is
interesting to note that Brahmanism finally ‘legitimised’ the character through
a new Sanskrit Purana. It is worth noting that this bold Purana was composed in deep
Tamil country and not in Braj or Mathura and also that by this time, all the 18
Maha-Puranas had either been completed or had reached a stage of
maturity. They were all focused on male deities — Vishnu, Shiva, Brahma,
Krishna, Agni, Vayu — and the major exception was the Markandeya Purana
of the 7th or 8th century, that had ‘legitimised’ Durga.
But the Devi Mahatmya episode did not feature in the main body of the MarkandeyaPurana
— it came in through an appendix. We also need to be clear that though the Bhagavata
Purana surely introduced a Radha-like character, who hailed from the
community of herders and milk-men, and it also described in detail the divine
dance, the Raas Lila, it is actually a long eulogy of Krishna. "Though art Brahman, the ancient One,
the immortal One, free from all qualities and miseries. Thou art
all-bliss...…the Lord of the Self, Atmesvara …. who is to be
adored” (VIII.12.7).
The fact that this Sanskrit Purana was written by Tamil scholars hints
at the existence of a tradition where romance and unorthodox dalliances were
accepted.We need to appreciate that Tamil poetry, notably the Sangam
literature, was quite familiar with the spirit of puranchi — which was not just
love making, but a sublime experience. The romance described in the Bhagavata Purana was thus, in the
best traditions of Tamil poetry, especially the Aham variety. Let us recall the story of Andal to
understand how deep was the yearning for the lord in Tamil Vaishnavism, the Alvar tradition. Andal
could just not live without him and thus merged herself physically into his
idol. It is, therefore, not surprising that Sanskrit writers in Tamil country
were more comfortable with a long poetic tradition that celebrated a spirited
gopi, called Nappinnai in Tamil lore, who drew Mayon into her dance and was
thus his favourite[5]. It was not only
in South India, but also in Eastern India, that we get indications of Radha. In
the same 9th century, we are
intrigued to observe a partner positioned next to a sculpture of Krishna in
Paharpur in Pala-ruled Bengal. As we have seen, Jain tradition was more open to
Radha, while Brahmanical literature was still reticent or ambiguous about her.
Jain scholars like Somadeva Suri and Vikramabhatta, who wrote
between the 9thand the 12th
centuries, keep mentioning Radha.
The real credit for bringing Radha
into the mainstream of devotional poetry, however, goes to Jayadeva in eastern
India. His immortal Gita Govinda, composed in the 12th
century, set new trends like the Ashtapadi
or groups of eight lyrical couplets. He could portray divine love with such
finesse that he became the fountain of inspiration for countless generations of
poets, singers and dancers since then. Though Jayadeva mixed his Sanskrit with
Apabhramsa, an Eastern sub-language, Brahmanical tradition not only accepted
him and his Radha-Krishna, but several learned Sanskrit commentaries like
Khumba’s Rasikapriya, Shankara Misra’s Rasa-Manjari and Tirumala
Deva Raya’s Sruti Ranjana were actually written on Jayadeva’a work. We
have also to mention two other later 15th century poets, Chandidas
of Bengal and Vidyapati of Mithila who elaborated the path-breaking work of
Jayadeva of Odisha very picturesquely. The trio’s poetry could finally
establish the Radha-Krishna legend beyond any challenge. We must not forget to
mention that it was Vidyapati who could successfully express for the first
time, the subtle nuances that personify the feelings of a woman, that male
poets had missed earlier. It was, however, that the pinnacle was reached a
century later by Surdas — who broke totally free from Sanskrit tradition. By
composing in simple and lyrical Braj Bhasa, Surdas touched the common man as
none else could dream of. However, Surdas was an Ashtachap poet and a follower
of Vallabhacharya, who did not agree with the questionable marital status that
the romance represented — so Surdas overcame the distinctly uncomfortable
affair by promptly “getting them married”. Despite this, Surdas’ language and
emotions were so intense and his style so utterly masterly that he could describe Radha’s pangs as a virahini
as vividly as a passionate, forlorn lover.
We have reached the 16th
century by now, which is when one can safely aver that Radha and Krishna became
an inseparable and accepted part of the Indian tradition. This is also the time
when Mughal miniature paintings appeared and started circulating the finest
polychromatic paper images ever, all over India. The Rajput schools and other
genres of miniatures introduced the much-needed visual component to the story
of Radha and Krishna. The Bhakti movement was another factor that really
propelled the romantic tale and Chaitanya portrayed Radha as the metaphor for
yearning “to be one with the lord” — to its fullest. Along with literature,
visual arts and religion came the powerful and immensely popular medium of mass
communication — the performing arts. Radha and Krishna were, thus, united for
ever. We can conclude his brief account of how Krishna arrived nearly one and a
half milleniums after the Vedas were first composed and, also noting how Radha
took another 13 centuries more — to make it to the top billing position. A bit
of history and a minimal sense of sequencing dates and events will easily belie
oft-believed, oft-repeated notions of how deities like Radha-Krishna have
always been a part of our history and culture for ever — without dates — i,e, sanatan
or eternal. We are not demeaning them — we are only clarifying facts so
that those who know less may not hijack them, for their own agenda.
[3]
Banerjee, S. (1993) Appropriation
of a Folk- Heroine, Indian Institute of Advanced Study,
Shimla, page 9
