LOVE SONGS OF VIDYAPATI
RAVI S. VARMA
Love is the mental condition which
sanctions the search for, an enduring relationship, most frequently on the
physical plane, between a man and a woman. It has always been a favourite theme
with the poets in all ages, and is the most dominant feeling in the lyrics of
Vidyapati.
Vidyapati (1375-1448) lived at the court of
Raja Shiv Singh of Mithila, composed eleven books in Sanskrit, two in Apabhramsha
and chose Maithili, the language of everyday life, for his love lyrics. These
lyrics are his masterpiece and even if he had written nothing else he would
have claimed a niche in the temple of poetic genius. These lyrics are marked
with such intensity of feeling and vibrant heart appeal that Chaitanya
Mahaprabhu would fall into a trance singing them. He included them in his ‘kirtan’
and gave them wide currency throughout the Northern India.
A lyric is a short poem in which a single emotion or idea
is expressed in rhythmic melody. It has no connection with the preceding or the
following verses and is capable of arousing poetic experience by itself. The
most splendid specimen of lyrical poetry in Sanskrit is Jayadeva’s “Geeta
Govinda”. He has sung of love and romance and amorous sports of Radha and
Krishna in a language marked by spontaneous delicacy and rhythmic felicities
The Theme of Vidyapati’s Lyrics
Vidyapati has sung of the love of Radha and Krishna in more
than five hundred lyrics. His Radha and Krishna are legendary figures modelled
mainly after Jayadeva, but he drew freely, on other popular amatory works of
his time. His Krishna is not the politician of the Mahabharat, nor is he an object
of worship belonging to a school of ‘Bhakti’. He is a man of the world, a
pleasure-seeker and a luxury-lover. He is a man by nature and dallying with young
minds, among whom Radha is the chief, is his sole pastime. He plans and
arranges meetings with her on the banks of the Jamuna, at her own house or in
the woods and pleasure gardens. He strokes back while she is fast asleep and
stealthily watches her bathing in the pond, her wet sari sticking to her body.
It was an auspicious day, I watched the maid bathing in
the pond.
Water dripping from her tresses, like pearls from a dark
cloud.
She unties her undergarment, ‘I am fulfilled’, cries out
Vidyapati.
But Krishna is not always wanton, nor are his actions
gross and indecent. Sometimes he behaves like a true and sincere lover: plays
softly on his flute under a ‘Kadamba’ tree, waiting anxiously for Radha to
come. He is overwhelmed by her beauty and is willing to follow her wherever she
goes.
Krishna is always seen making merry with Radha who is
beauty and youth personified. Vidyapati has excelled in the description of a
woman’s form and figure. He has exhausted all his skill and craftsmanship in
painting most bewitching pictures of Radha’s enchanting beauty.
Vidyapati’s Radha is an adolescent dairy maid on the
threshold of youth of which she is slowly growing conscious. Although adorned
with all the traditional attributes, the poet’s genius has endowed her with a
personality of her own. She possesses comely grace, is tall and slender but her
shapely breasts are hard and round. She slyly glances over them and covers them
under her sari with a coy smile.
Her eyes are large and black and she evinces great
interest in prurience. She is learning to be coquettish and her charm and
fascination grow with her youth. She meets Krishna, winks at him and invites
him to love. Vidyapati has painted innumerable pictures of these meetings each
more exciting than the other and has lavishly described their fun and frolic
and playful activities. He has depicted Radha on a physical plane, who excites
lust rather than reverence and flirts with handsome Krishna. She is an object
of sensual gratification and represents the feudal taste.
The Two Aspects of Love
1. Love in Union: Vidyapati
has described both the aspects of love: love in union and love in separation.
Radha is blossoming into youth and meets Krishna on the way. They gaze at each
other and still they gaze and still the wonder grows. Cupid shoots his arrows
thievishly and they fall in love at first sight. She lets her sari slip from
over her breasts, winks smilingly at him and encourages him to love. She can’t
endure a moment’s separation from him. When she learns that he is about to
leave for Mathura her heart brims with fear and anxiety and she coaxes her maid
to ask him to postpone his departure. But when the maid fails to prevail on
Krishna to do so, she flings away all bonds of modesty and etiquette and boldly
gives vent to her feelings. So intense is her love for him.
Krishna leaves the place while she is fast asleep at
night and when she wakes up to learn of this her heart breaks. The poet has
beautifully compared her to a female partridge whose mate has flown away and
who cries painfully in his absence. The parrot, the cows and all her maids and
playmates are moved with sympathy for her. A palpable silence falls about her
and the banks of Jamuna where she used to meet Krishna and dally with
him are enveloped in loneliness. The poet has faithfully recorded her most
transient feelings and moods and gestures.
2. Love in
Separation: Separation tests the endurance of love. The physical distance
between the lovers burns the dross and taint of lust and true love purified of
all its carnal concomitants shines forth. The heart of the lovers is a scene of
expectancy and despair and Vidyapati has delineated these feelings in a
masterly manner.
While presenting pictures of love in union, the poet has a
tendency to display his learning and becomes pedantic. The descriptions often
cross the limit of decency and verge on obecenity. But in his pictures of
separation Radha emerges as a true paragon of love and faith and her intense
suffering melts the poet’s heart and carries off the kindred reader.
Radha feels a strong repulsion for making herself up, the
idea of it nauseates her in the absence of Krishna. “Whom should I adorn myself
for?” asks she peevishly. She wipes the vermillion mark off her forehead, and
casts her pearl necklace into the Jamuna. Sandalwood paste and soft moonlight
scorch and burn her like hot summer winds and aggravate her pain and agony. The
cool fragrant breeze of Sawan stings bites her and enkindle her passions. She
fondly hopes to meet Krishna in a dream but the Almighty is so cruel-hearted
that she fails to get to sleep. And when, perchance, she drops off for a moment
and sees Krishna in her dream she wakes up disturbed and writhes with pain. She
spends the night restlessly tossing about on her bed.
A crow’s cawing gives her great solace and comfort for
according to popular belief it lignifies the return of her lover. She promises
the crow a bowl of milk-rice and assures it to gild its beak.
Sometimes the descriptions are a little hyperbolic. Radha
has been reduced to skin and bone and her maids fear to fan her with a lotus
leaf lest she should be blown away with the puff of breeze. This is the height
of poetic fancy. When her maids prompt her to forget such a callous lover who
has renounced her and gone away, she regrets her inability to do so, for her
very existence is bound up with his memory. The moment she drives him off her
thoughts she would cease to exist. She is reluctant to die as she has no one in
mind to whom she can bequeath Krishna.
Vidyapati has described the ten stages of love in
separation set by poetic convention, yet
he is not mechanical. He has made them striking by the introduction
of new elements and choice of diction and wealth of fresh phrases. A judicious
use of poetic figures adds to their intensity and poignancy. Radha is haunted
by the memory of Krishna. She wistfully remembers the days spent in his
company. She wishes she had the wings of a dove and could fly and meet him. She
fondly asks,
When shall I get rid of this endless sorrow?
O, when
shall I re-enjoy the moonlight
and play with the lotus like a bee?
She recalls his qualities and recounts them to her maids.
Her anxiety grows every moment. She longs to meet him. “When will he be back
and stroke my breast and kiss and caress me and fulfil my desires?” asks she.
Her condition deteriorates, she has fainting fits and even the cool and
fragrant breeze fails to revive her. Nothing less than the touch of Krishna’s
hand can save her now. Her suffering reaches its climax when she becomes
delirious and forgetting her identity imagines herself to be Krishna and invokes
the name of Radha. Then a feeling of tedious numbness overtakes her. Her eyes
are bedimmed and she wails listlessly:
Madhava, no longer can I live without you,
You have gone to Madhupur.
Oh! how shall I cast this mortal bond and fly unto you.....?
Radha’s love is not unreciprocated; Krishna is equally
afflicted with separation from her. In these yearnings of Radha and Krishna to
meet each other the devotees have seen the individual soul’s yearning to meet
the supreme soul.
Vidyapati has also given a marvellous description of the
cycle of seasons and shown how the changing scenes of nature torment Radha and
add to her misery. This description, though marked by ornate extravagances and
occasional vulgarities has been so masterly and fascinating that it has set a
tradition in Hindi poetry and became an inalienable part of the description of
love in separation. Jayasi and Surdas who later elevated it to perfection are
indebted to Vidyapati for their inspiration.
Vidyapati writes what he feels and he feels with his
heroine all the pangs of love in separation. His feelings are intense and he has
not missed even the minutest thought that may cross the mind of the love-lorn
heroine. His lyrics are replete with a spirit of romanticism and are a
wonderful product of conscious art. Elements of genuine folk songs survive in
the refrains, repetitions and interjections contained in these lyrics. He is at
once strong and restrained in the expression of elemental passions. He is
unexcelled in dainty sweetness, grace and movement. He weaves variations of
metaphor and music round a single statement and repeats sonorities to arouse incantatory
rhythm. He rounds off every single line with finished care without ever
sacrificing the organic unity of the entire poem. He favoured classical
conventions but never allowed his scholalship to chill his creative imagination
which is always ardent and marked by
luxurious fancy and joyous abandon. His lyrics have all the freshness
and charm of youth, they are better and more directly sensual and exhibit the
lighter and more fanciful side of his genius. The form, the idea, the development
from start to finish are bee beautifully fashioned and correlated. They present
a curious and piquant combination of an ardent romantic imagination and an
outlook essentially worldly and matter of fact. In technique he is admirable
and while displaying, in no small measure, of the charm and grace of the Sanskrit
lyrists, he infuses them with innovations of his own.
His innovations are not confined to poetry alone, but in the
matter of language also his courage is noteworthy. Flouting the traditions of
his age he chose Maithili, the dialect of the people as a vehicle of his lyrical
effusions. In this sense he was a true revolutionary poet and had an unswerving
confidence in the power and capacity of his language and diction to charm the
popular ear. He elevated Maithili from a local dialect to the language of poetry
and rightfully became its first poet and singer.