Unique devotional poem

GITA GOVINDAM -- Sacred Profanities (A study of Jayadeva's Gita Govinda -- Original Sanskrit text with English translation): Dr. N.S.R. Ayengar; Penman Publishers, 7309/5, Premnagar, Shaktinagar, Delhi-110007. Rs. 350.

GITA-GOVINDA has a special position in Sanskrit stotra literature. Its lyric sequence of unutterably exciting cadences encased in a perfectly knit poetic structure of beauty has made it a unique work of art combining music and poetry.

Composed by the Orissa poet Jayadeva of the 12th century A.D., it is a richly orchestrated symphony of songs in various ragas set in linked situations featuring the spring-time love-play (vasanta vilaasa) of Lord Krishna, which Raasa Panchaadhyaayi (five chapters on the Raasa dances of Krishna with the Gopis) in the Bhagavatam also speak about, without the character of Radha probably unknown in its time.

Jayadeva was a dedicated devotee of Lord Jagannath, the Deity of Puri, and a disciple of Nimbarka, who founded the Radhavallabha sect, giving prominence to Radha as the loving Consort of the Lord (distinguishable from Lakshmi the Consort of His Omnipotence). The Gita-Govinda arose as a stotra, an offering of devotional music to Lord Jagannath. It is sung as part of the worship-ritual before the Deity and it has also been staged many times as a lyrical dance-drama before interested audiences all over India.

The poem is divided into 12 sargas (marking movements in the love-play of Radha and Madhava) with 24 songs including the first two invocatory stotras of noble praise of Krishna's 10 incarnations. There are only three characters - Krishna, Radha and the girl-friend and messenger between them - figuring in the poem; the songs are distributed between them as their speeches, and the links of the story are provided by slokas (verses) introducing each sarga. The songs form a musical sequence of various ragas of unparalleled sweetness. Their cadences based on alliterations, rhymes, and assonances of words that trip on the tongue delight the lover of poetry, the rasika, as nowhere else.

The song-melodies depict for us pictorially successive scenes of the brief love-story. From Krishna's free play with the ordinary Gopi maids of Brindavan (reported by the girl-friend) offending Radha's sense of superiority and making her brood and isolate herself, we move to Krishna's own penitent mood (also reported by the messenger) and to Radha's rebuff of him (in spite of her inner longing) taunting him for his affairs.

Krishna's own importunities and the friends' advice bring Radha round to the happy consummation of their love. Altogether we have here an enchanting drama of sheer lyrical outpourings of love's estrangement and reconciliation.

A valid criticism against this drama finds fault with its open eroticism and its descriptions of the physical attractions of the female body and those of sexual pleasure, set out in all their grossness. But this criticism may receive extenuation from considering two aspects. Even in the "obscene'' contexts of the poem we are reminded by the poet that he is singing of the play of the Divine, the God, whom he worships with dedication, and that it is "a sacred sex-abandon'' and a symbolic one though put in physical terms. Historically the poet lived in an age in which sex was not a taboo, with the spread of Buddhist tantric practices and "sexo-yogic'' sadhana, and this may have contributed to this open language to some extent.

The translator earns our appreciation for his industry, and care in the presentation of the poem; he has given us an excellent and exhaustive introduction providing the historical and literary background necessary to understand the poem's special features. He is happily aware that his own translation has scope for improvement and that there will always be such scope (in every attempt).

Translators are forced to sacrifice the sense or the language of the original at one stage or other and he states that the most acceptable version is the one that makes the least sacrifice on either count.

We find that this translation could have been a more acceptable version if it had displayed more sensitivity to the stylistic nuances of the original like showing slokas in lines of lengths different from those of the songs and imitating, instead of substituting, many expression - patterns like retaining the statement form of the original instead of rephrasing it as questions (Song 16, p.133-34). This is only a suggestion for improvement and not a reflection on the present performance.

J. PARTHASARATHI

Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Section  : Features
Previous : Reminiscences of a naval officer
Next     : Towards interfaith dialogue