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Radha

Radha is a popular female figure in Hindu mythol-

ogy and literature. She is usually presented as the

primary consort of KRISHNA; their passionate love

has served as a spiritual model and inspiration in

Indian culture.

Radha appears in association with Krishna in

textual fragments dated as early as the third cen-

tury C.E., although she is not mentioned by name

in the authoritative Vishnu Purana (c. fifth century

C.E.) or in the equally important BHAGAVATA PURANA

(10th century C.E.). By the 12th century, however,

her role as Krishna’s consort was assured, as in the

magnificent GITAGOVINDA of Jayadeva.

The more Krishna became associated in the

devotional literature with a divine “sweetness,”

the more his sweet, poignant love of the cowherd

woman Radha and her reciprocal love became the

guide for devotees to the god everywhere in India.

As the Gitagovinda describes Radha’s shifting

moods of love, anticipation, pique, disappoint-

ment, and eventual union, the writer evokes a

passion that seems to extend to the elements of

nature, the trees, the wind, and the Moon. Radha

is love incarnate.

Theologically, the Gitagovinda presents Radha

as an energy, a SHAKTI (the Hladini Shakti), of

Krishna himself. In the Bengali Vaishnavite tradi-

tion, which eventually extended its influence to

BRINDAVAN and beyond, one has the sense that

Krishna too cannot exist without the love of

his counterpart. The devotee becomes, in effect,

essential to God. Sometimes the tradition goes so

far as to say (in devotional hyperbole) that it is

better to worship the devotee than God himself.

Occasionally, in the Vaishnavite tradition,

Radha is actually portrayed as Krishna’s wife and

partner. This attempt to sanitize their relation-

ship distorts it: the power of their attraction is

theologically understood to reside in her unavail-

ability: she is married to someone else. Krishna

and Radha are eternal paramours and not spouses.

It should not go unsaid that Radha is not just a

cowherd woman, but the goddess herself. Some

elements of the great GODDESS (Mahadevi) can be

found in her literary image.

Further reading: Edward C. Dimock, The Place of the

Hidden Moon: Erotic Mysticism in the Vaisnava Sajiya

Cult of Bengal (Chicago: University of Chicago Press,

1966); Lee Siegel, Sacred and Profane Dimensions of Love

in the Indian Traditions as Exemplified in the Gitagovinda

of Jayadeva (London: Oxford University Press, 1978);

John Stratton Hawley, The Divine Consort: Radha and

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