playstudy, Huizinga connects play to ritual and war, and he indicates how
they are bound by designated space and rules. He concludes that real
civilization cannot exist in the absence of a certain play element.
Divine play is evident within Hinduism with relation to its gods and
goddesses. The Sanskrit term for play or sport is līlā, which suggests an
activity that is intrinsically satisfying. This type of activity is unfettered and
unconditioned, transporting the player from the confines of the mundane
world to a kind of magical, superfluous place where a person can revel. The
concept of divine play in Hinduism presupposes that gods and goddesses
are complete in their nature, and they thus need and desire nothing, although
they continue to act. This continuing action can be grasped as play, a pur-
poseless, spontaneous activity that is not pragmatic. Divine play is directly
connected to bliss (ānanda) in the sense that a god possesses bliss, and his
nature is blissful. Therefore, Hindu gods are blissful when they dance,
laugh, and sing. Their free spontaneous, superfluous actions are an aimless
display that dazzles, sparkles, fascinates, and sometimes terrifies witnesses.
From a macrocosmic perspective, the world is the play thing of divine
beings. In fact, the world, a stage upon which the gods can play, dance, and
dazzle, is created in the spirit of play. Divine play transforms the mundane,
ephemeral world into a phantasmagoric display or magic show, and it over-
flows with divine bliss that humans can experience.
Although there are many divine players within the Hindu pantheon,
Krishna is the player par excellence because he is depicted as the divine
child, adolescent, and lover. The play of Krishna as a child expresses a
spontaneous, pure mode of play when he crawls about aimlessly, plays
tricks, and steals butter and sweets. As an adolescent, Krishna becomes
the leader of a frolicking band of cowherd boys who engage in frivolous,
merry, rollicking, free and wild play. Krishna’s life and death struggles
with demonic beings are performed in the spirit of play. As the divine
lover, Krishna, an embodiment of beauty, grace, and charm, plays with
the cowherd women (gopīs) or with Rādhā, a favorite cowherd female.
Krishna calls the women to play with him by means of his flute, an exten-
sion of his beauty and anarchical instrument that calls into question and
breaks down social norms of behavior. As the divine lover of Rādhā, their
playful love is more personal and complex, whereas Krishna’s love rela-
tionship with the other cowherd girls is riotous, festive, and secretive
because he induces them to surreptitiously leave their families and steal
into the forest to play with him. This play often assumes the form of a
circle dance (rāsa-līlā) during which Krishna stations himself between
every two girls, giving each of them the impression that the god is next
to them. The dance and frolicking are performed in the spirit of play and
are forms of play.