By Dr. M. MANSINHA,
M.A., Ph.D.
(Principal,
G.M. College, Sambalpur)
The
Vishnu-Cult in India has so widely and deeply fascinated the masses for
centuries, because, for the first time in Indian thought, the speculative and
the far-off external Divinity comes closest to humanity. No Vedic god or
goddess or any other Deity of the later Hindu Pantheon is so completely human
as Vishnu. As a matter of fact, He is merely a superman, a man like any of us,
but with the additional capacity for miracles. But the most significant quality
of His personality is that–and this explains the profound appeal to the minds
of the devotees–He suffers in this earthly existence like all of us here and
comes out of his troubles only after hard struggles. In and through an ordinary
human life, Vishnu symbolises through his sufferings and triumphs the eternal
battle of good and evil, which gives inspiration to millions of forlorn hearts.
He
alone of the entire Hindu Pantheon is credited with so many Avatars. This
Descension of the Lord of the Heavens again and again into this rude plane of
ours to save the world and humanity from the forces of evil, is in itself an
act of supreme grace. And, of the ten or more Avatars, the two that are most
popular and most widely studied, talked of, sung and worshipped, are those of
Krishna and Rama, the one exhibiting the very Norm of social virtues based on
strict ethical principles, and the other as the ideal of Love as a spiritual
force. In the popular mind the Krishna legend, however, exercises a stronger
fascination. This is due to the pastoral surroundings in which the story is
placed, and Krishna’s victorious leadership against the tyrannies of a local
autocrat, the colourful display of emotions in his relations with his foster
parents and with the cowherds and their women folk in the village of Brindavan
on the bank of the river Yamuna. As the naughty child, the fearless boy, the
dutiful son, the successful rebel against political tyranny and religious
dogmatism, as the ardent lover and also as the wise statesman and the profound
philosopher, Krishna is, to most Hindu minds, the picture of the Complete Man,
the perfectest Avatar of God on earth. He, in his life, in the significant
words of Wordsworth, combines the two apparently contradictory and yet truly
kindred points of Heaven and Home, and stands symbolic of the complete
surrender of the human soul to the world soul, in and through our family and
social experiences.
The
Krishna-Cult spread rapidly into all regions and all the languages of India
after the twelfth century. In fact, like Buddhism and Christianity, this Cult
has created new literatures. The very first recorded song or poem in many an
Indian language is round a sentimental episode of Krishna’s life,–at least this
is so in my own literature, Oriya. By the 14th century, the whole of
North India, including Bengal, reverberated with the rapturously worded and
deeply sentimental songs of Vidyapati, surdas, Mirabai and Chandi Das. An
enormous amount of explanatory philosophy and directive manual grew up for the
understanding and guidance of the laity and the initiated.
For
long centuries, Orissa had been the land of Buddhism and Jainism. It is the
only State in the Republic of India where Buddhism still exists as a living
faith among thousands of peasants and weavers in rural areas. Due perhaps to
the predominance of Buddhistic tenets in Orissa, Jagannath has been
apocryphally counted as the Buddha or the Tenth Avatar of Vishnu. The
disappearance of caste rules within the precincts of the famous Jagannath
temple, the pervading spirit of Ahimsa all round it, and the Car festival,–all
point to a remote Buddhistic origin of this well-known Hindu Deity. After
Buddhism, came Saivism to Orissa, bringing in its wake the Tantric practices.
So, on the whole, religion to the masses in Orissa had been a melange of rites
and beliefs conglomerated from later Buddhism, Saivism and Tantra, till the
waves of the Krishna-Cult reached its shores. That was in the 14th century, synchronising
with the visit to, and long residence at Puri of Chaitanya. The adaptible Hindu
theology soon transformed Jagannath from the Avatar of the Buddha into a
rebirth of Krishna with appropriate legends. This is the interpretation that
appeals most to the devout Vaishnavas. To them, the two holiest places on earth
are Brindavan where Krishna spent his childhood days, and Puri where He
reappeared in the shape of Jagannath, out of compassion for the devotees in
this Kali Yuga.
But,
in spite of all these readjustments, Vaishnavism or rather Krishnaism in Orissa
was rather slow to permeate the mass mind. The philosophic part of it was well
propagated all over the land through the Bhagavat of Jagannath Das from the
15th century. But the wonderful lyrical outpouring over the Krishna episodes,
such as had already appeared in Hindi, Maithili and Bengali as early as the
14th century, was to wait in Orissa till the last lap of the 18th century. The
fine vehicle of this Krishnian lyrical outpouring in Orissa, Gopal Krishna, is
the subject of this essay.
Gopal
Krishna was born in Parlakimedi in the district of Ganjam. He came of a family
of hereditary accountants in the local Maharaja’s Estate. The family still
continues in the same house where the poet died in 1862. It is now turned
almost into a shrine visited with wondering reverence by religious and literary
admirers of the poet, bowing to his bust-statue placed in a room soon after the
poet’s death, and touching the dust of the place with their foreheads.
Gopal
Krishna composed hundreds of songs, of which many have been lost. The poet was
rather indifferent to his own literary creations and never attempted to have
them collected and edited. He had no method in his poetic madness either. He
would, when inspiration was on, scribble a complete song on the wall with a
piece of chalk while in bed, or write it down on a palm-leaf and hand it over
to an admiring friend. He would never think of it again. The nation owes a deep
debt of gratitude to an obscure person, Haribandhu Patnaik, for having left
behind in one collection as many of the songs of his great friend and master as
he could gather out of people’s mouths.
The
lilting tunes and the apt, musical, and easy yet telling diction of the songs
of Gopal Krishna, for which they are now sung everywhere in Orissa to the
sensuous as well as spiritual thrill of
the audiences, cannot unfortunately be translated. But what I value most
in Gopal Krishna’s lyrics, is not the words, nor the music, matchless though
either is, but the faithful pictures of the workings and moods of the human
mind, and the ecstasy of the human soul, when under the pervading spell of
love, both human and Divine, that one gets in them. Songs and lyrics and epics
in Oriya on the Radha-Krishna episodes, there are many. But most of them are
attempts to glorify an insipid conventionality, or to camouflage an immorality
in an impenetrable habiliment of highfalutin, a display of customarily
dressed-up, but lifeless nice words. Of all the Vaishnav writers in Oriya it is
in the writings of Gopal Krishna that we find an actual suffering soul speak.
In his lines, we feel his own heart-throb or rather ours,–our own moods of
dejection and happiness, our own feelings and dreams. Radha and Krishna are but
symbols here, just the conventional pegs to hang the human tale on. In and
through Gopal Krishna’s songs, one finds actually the turbulent stream of love
between two young throbbing hearts, flowing sometimes in terrific spate,
sometimes in the quiet, slow rhythm of autumnal fullness. The waters are
sometimes turbid with quarrels, misunderstandings and jealousies, and at others
limpid and dancing with the ecstatic joy and happiness of consummation. In the
overflow of the human hearts, the theology or the worship have become swamped,
and the dry conventionalities have become galvanised with live, human
experiences.
But
to the poet, Krishna and Radha were the Divine Masters, not merely Lovers. In
innumerable songs he has poured out pathetic appeals to this Divine pair for
his own salvation. Perhaps these were written late in his life. In one of them,
we feel the poet’s despair after long waiting. It begins:
“The
sands of my life have run on while I have been following Thee.
How
would it matter, Oh Lord, if Thou but gavest away a drop out of Thine vast
river of Mercy?”
In
another, he dances in expectancy, saying:
“Am
I so lucky as to be counted a servant of the great Mistress of Brindavan?”
For
the develepment of the romance of these Divine Lovers, however, the poet has
woven a pattern all his own, which fits naturally into the rural surroundings
with which the poet was familiar. As a matter of fact, the pattern seems to
have grown out of the poet’s own experience.
In
this pattern, we meet Radha and Krishna as an extraordinarily handsome girl and
boy, living separately in two parts of the same village of Brindavan on the
Yamuna. They had not met each other till they grew into the florescence of
pre-adolescence, when, through one or other mutual acquaintance, they come to
hear each other’s name and know each other’s extraordinary physical beauty and
mental qualities. And that sets fire to their imagination and desires. The
great romance starts, and nothing can stop, its flow till the two streams of
love mingle into one.
This
unique courtship, this ‘love at hearing’ as against the conventional ‘love at
first sight’ in literature, is described in two artistically logical
dialogue-lyrics. In one, the conversation is between Lalita and Radha, and in
the other between Krishna and Brinda. This lyrical type is unique in
Oriya, and only Gopal Krishna has attempted it with splendid success. I may
quote a few stanzas from each Song.
Radha
asks: “O Darling, who is that Prince of Braja?” “Darling,” says Lalita, “He is
the same whose flute-play had enchanted you the other day.”
Radha–“What
name is that you had said, Darling?”
Lalita–“Ah,
You want to hear it again? Krishna, Krishna, I had said.”
Radha–“Is
He generous?”
Lalita–“One
who has begged of Him once dost not find any more need to go begging others.”
Radha–“Is
He married?”
Lalita–“Mother
Yasoda has set her eyes on you, Darling, as her future daughter-in-law.”
Radha–“Don’t
you say so!”
Lalita–“Those
that match each other are to be united. You need not, Darling, get into a pique
for that.”
In
the other Song:
“In
the Bakul groves, Krishna once whispered into Brinda’s ears: ‘Who indeed is
this Radha in this village of Braja? Ever since I beard that name, I feel like
one drinking nectar. Will you unravel this mystery, please?”
From
these little sproutings, however, the romance grows rapidly into flowering and
fruition. We get in Gopal Krishna every phase of the human love-experience. The
poignancy of feeling becomes all the greater here, as, due to social
considerations, the two lovers could not either be married or meet each other
openly. Secrecy is the salt of all love stories. The hearts work quicker
because of obstructions, and souls try to rush towards each other over walls,
mountains, and seas. The same things happen here also.
At
first, however, young, little, delicate Radha is naturally hesitant, unfamiliar
as she is with these extraordinary feelings, and she tries for her life to get
away from them. “In one Song she says:
“This
flute of Shyam; the Beautiful, will indeed undo me.
The
other day I was in the midst of elders, sitting and talking with them–
And
I heard it, and how I was taken aback!
My
hairs stood on end allover the body,
And
I shivered, though it was not winter;
I
closed my two eyes and lost all consciousness; my mind flew away
I
knew not where.
I
failed to perceive whether it was day or night, home or wilderness, or I was
asleep or awake.”
In
another song she says:
“Oh
this danger to me!
I
cannot get away from thoughts of Shyam even for a moment!”
But,
in and through these timid hesitancies so natural in young lovers, the course
of love was running in accordance with well-laid plans. Friends had arranged a
tryst. In one song, the poet describes the subtle feelings, the painful
misgivings of Radha, about to meet Krishna in the first tryst. Says she:
“Have
you indeed given him an appointment? Oh, I tremble even now; I know not what it
will be when I see him. I have lost all interest in household work, and go
about in constant fear of my heart-throbbings being detected by somebody. What
was he doing when you met him, where was he? What did you say? What was his
reply? Or, are you merely jesting? Couldn’t you go again and tell him that the
appointment is cancelled? I am so afraid of the consequences; I remember what
happened to Chandrabali!”
But,
after all, the lovers met, and met again and again. The happiness of
fulfillment and complete forgetfulness are expressed in many songs. In one,
says Radha:
“For
the love of Krishna I have given up my family and society.
His
love indeed is the treasure of my life.
I
have realised the merits of my million births.
I
am now a beggar woman, and He mine begging bowl.
I
am but an unknown wild flower, and He my honey-bee.
I
shall be eternally counting the rosary of His Beauty and virtues.”
Then
came fits of jealousy, and a lover’s right to reject or remonstrate with the
loved one. This bold transformation in the slip of a girl that was Radha, whom
we met when she first heard Krishna’s name, is so gradual and so logical
through the various songs of Gopal Krishna, that the casual reader takes it for
granted and never bothers about the extraordinary subtlety with which the great
poet has depicted the different steps in the natural development of the human love
affair.
But Radha very soon rises above these petty feelings. Her love soon attains a height where, in the ethereal plane of sublime emotion, she forgets completely her own self, her own claims and rights, and surrenders absolutely to the desire of her lover. In one song she says, in the deepest poignancy of pathos:
“I
don’t mind His unkindness to me,
As
I consider myself but an humble maid of His.
Do
you think, my friend, Radha would ever have pleasure by wounding Shyam’s
feelings?
I
would rather spend my life in looking after anybody who takes His fancy, than
sulk over my supposed insults.
I’ll
get all the treasures of the world if He is happy, even if it be with another
woman.
My
only desire is to look upon His face just once in the day, either close at hand
or
from
a distance.”
Says
Gopal Krishna, the friend laughed and said, ‘See who is behind you.’
In
another unique lyric also, says Radha:
“Let
this scandal of Shyam stick to my name for ever.
Let
my days pass with thoughts of Him and Him alone.
Whatever
others may say, misfortunes of many births of mine appear to float away
If
I but once look at His beautiful face.”
This
is the sublime consummation of this unique and apparently immoral, but really
allegorical, love story. In the bands of the uninitiated and ignorant, this
story reeks with vulgarities. But in the haabis of persons of real genius in
whom, as in Mirabai and Gopal Krishna, devotion, scholarship and inherent
artistic qualities met in proper balance and generated in them the proper
creative insight, this story exhales the supersensuous spiritual perfume that
it was meant to. In a sea of vulgarities, obscenities, and deceptive bombasts
that we come across in Oriya literature covering the story of Radha and
Krishna, Gopal Krishna’s poetry stands out like a holy yet magnificently
beautiful lotus. He alone coveys to us the Truth and Good of Love through
Beauty. In a forest, noisy with the clamours of innumerable birds, he is the
pathetic nightingale that reaches direct to our hearts and souls through his
unobtrusive, gentle notes.