Abstract
Vedānta Deśika produced his monumental poetic biography of Kṛṣṇa in a time when Kṛṣṇa-centered devotionalism was expanding to become perhaps the dominant mode of bhakti across South Asia. Central to this phenomenon is the growing popularity of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa, and especially of its exploration of Kṛṣṇa’s erotic play with the gopīs in his youth. Troubled by the unrestrained and seemingly adharmic sexuality of Kṛṣṇa, Deśika used the literary techniques and narrative paradigms of the mahākāvya to assimilate but also domesticate this increasingly important Bhāgavata episode: Kṛṣṇa’s eroticism remains central but confined within more conventional marital norms and is thus made dharmically and theologically acceptable. Once he has resolved these dharmic problems, however, Deśika is happy to explore the soteriological, devotional, and paradoxical dimensions of erotic love with Kṛṣṇa.
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Notes
See, for example, the final verse of the Yādavābhyudaya, where Deśika calls himself kavikathakamṛgendra (24.98), although, in most of the colophons, including those of this work, the sobriquet is kavitārkikasiṃha. Unless noted otherwise, all quotations from the Yādavābhyudaya are from the Vani Vilas edition (sargas 1–12) and the Mysore Oriental Research Institute edition (sargas 13–24).
Vasudevachariar (1992: 30–32) recognizes that Deśika draws on many Purāṇic sources, including the Bhāgavatapurāṇa, but suggests that the Viṣṇupurāṇa is his primary source, mainly based on the order of the events in Kṛṣṇa’s life. But at least for the main episodes discussed in this article, Kṛṣṇa’s lovemaking with the gopīs and later with his wives, the primary source is the Bhāgavatapurāṇa (certainly for the latter episode, which only occurs there). Kṛṣṇa’s marriage to Nīlā, also mentioned here, occurs in neither source and is found in the Harivaṃśa (on which episode, see below).
Note that Rāmānuja and most of his early followers largely avoid the Bhāgavatapurāṇa as a source, much preferring the earlier Viṣṇupurāṇa (see van Buitenen 1966: 25–27; Sheridan 1986: 5–7). Deśika is among the first of Rāmānuja’s followers to refer to or quote the Bhāgavatapurāṇa in his theological works.
The immediately succeeding chapter five consists mainly of descriptions of the changing seasons, culminating in the villagers’ preparations to worship Indra. Chapter six conveys Kṛṣṇa’s citra-filled speech persuading them to worship the mountain Govardhana instead. In chapter seven, Indra reacts angrily, attacks, and is defeated by Kṛṣṇa.
In the parallel passage in the Bhāgavatapurāṇa (10.9), Kṛṣṇa’s trepidation is described, but only when he is seen by his mother Yaśodā, and the whole episode, unlike this verse, is presented from her point of view.
The Bhāgavatapurāṇa also notes the potential dharmic problem in this episode but resolves this radically differently. When Parīkṣit (adopting the preferred spelling of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa, rather than “Parikṣit,” as the name is given in the Mahābhārata) asks the narrator, Śuka, what Kṛṣṇa was thinking in doing “such disgusting things” (jugupsitam), the answer is that “violations of dharma and rash conduct are seen on the part of lords; this is no problem for those who are very powerful, as for fire who eats without restraint. But someone who isn’t a lord should never do such a thing even in thought” (dharmavyatikramo dṛṣṭa īśvarāṇāṃ ca sāhasam | tejīyasāṃ na doṣāya vahneḥ sarvabhujo yathā || naitat samācarej jātu manasāpi hy anīśvaraḥ | Bhāgavatapurāṇa 10.33.30–31ab). The commentator Śrīdhara understands the gopī problem differently: he is concerned mainly not with the dharmic problem of the gopīs being married, but with the appearance that Kṛṣṇa is acting out of lust, which stands in contradiction (viparītam) to the claim that Kṛṣṇa has conquered love. His solution is to spiritualize the episode by pointing to textual evidence of Kṛṣṇa’s sexual detachment and to assert that the entire episode is “specifically devoted to spiritual liberation in the guise of lovemaking” (śṛṅgārakathāpadeśena viśeṣato nivṛttiparā: ad Bhāgavatapurāṇa 10.29.1).
The women know Kṛṣṇa to be a secure fortress (kṣemapurī), but the verse is somewhat ambiguous: is he a fortress in which they can take refuge, or is he an already occupied defensive structure for them to assault? We prefer the latter interpretation as better fitting the context.
This verse appears to be a deliberate echo of Bhāgavatapurāṇa 10.33.24, which comes at the end of the rāsakrīḍā chapter and where Kṛṣṇa is compared to a rutting elephant (madacyuddvirada) surround by female elephants. However, it may also hark back to 10.90.11, in which Kṛṣṇa, playing with his 16,000 wives, is similarly compared to a single male elephant amid a host of females. See also Harivaṃśa 63.30.
Mahābhārata, after 14.68.23 (*138): yadi me brahmacaryam syāt satyaṃ ca mayi saṃsthitam | avyāhataṃ mamaiśvaryaṃ tena jīvatu bālakaḥ || “If I’ve been celibate, if truth holds firm in me, and if my lordship is unobstructed, then let this child live.” According to the critical edition, the verse is attested in only a single grantha manuscript (volume 18, page 259), but Appayya Dīkṣita, in his comments on this verse, quotes it verbatim (page 192 in the Vani Vilas edition, volume 1).
Appayya Dīkṣita, in his comments on this verse, seems to have enjoyed himself. He begins by asking, “How is it that Kṛṣṇa could enjoy the gopīs and yet not break his celibacy?” (nanu gopakanyā bhuktāḥ brahmacaryaṃ ca na skhalitam iti katham?). He gives three explanations. First, if one sleeps with women who are under the sway of passion to the point that they will be unable to survive without sex, one’s celibacy is not violated so long as one is dispassionate; and, as demonstrated in the preceding passage, Appayya notes, the gopīs’ life was in danger. This point is corroborated by a lengthy quote-filled summary of Arjuna’s encounter with the snake princess Ulūpī in Book 1 of the Mahābhārata. Second, Appayya points out that during his encounter with the gopīs, Kṛṣṇa never ejaculated, a point he corroborates with a quotation from Bhāgavatapurāṇa 10.33.26 (ātmany avaruddhasaurataḥ; “having his semen retained in himself”); we should note parenthetically that Śrīdhara, in his commentary on this verse of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa, interprets this phrase in just the same way, and also uses the very term for “semen” (caramadhātu) that Appayya uses here. Finally, Appayya says that any embracing or touching of the gopīs could not count as a violation of Kṛṣṇa’s celibacy because, as the supreme soul, Kṛṣṇa has the entire universe for his body, the gopīs included, and touching one’s own body is not in any way opposed to celibacy (svaśarīrāliṅganādeś ca brahmacaryāvirodhitvāt; the quotes are from pages 192–93 in the Vani Vilas edition, volume 1). Appayya’s defense of Kṛṣṇa is thus scripturally immaculate and well-informed about Śrīvaiṣṇava theology, but perhaps not devoid of sarcasm.
Two significant narrative elements are mentioned here. First is the return of Viṣṇu’s crown: in an earlier life, it was stolen by the demon Bali, and Garuḍa now recovers it, recognizes Kṛṣṇa as its owner, and gives it back to him (4.81–82; the story is not found in the Bhāgavatapurāṇa, but is found in most versions of the Harivaṃśa: see volume 2, appendix 1, passage 18, verses 578–599). Second, in a single verse, 4.83, Deśika alludes to the story of the sacrificers’ wives who offer food to Kṛṣṇa while their husbands ignore him to perform their rituals; the wives receive a divine blessing (4.83; cf. Bhāgavatapurāṇa 10.23).
Highlighting the tension here, Appayya, in his comments, describes this as an instance of the figure “apparent contradiction” (virodhābhāsa): “It is contradictory to say that the supreme yogī desired sexual pleasures with the gopīs, but this contradiction is resolved since he does it for the sake of giving the women the results of their own prior religious merit. This, then is a case of the figure ‘apparent contradiction’” (mahān yogī gopikāsaṃbhogam icchati smeti virodhaḥ, prācīnatadīyatapaḥphala-pradānārthatvena tatsamādhānaṃ ceti virodhābhāsālaṅkāraḥ).
The verse is complex and potentially ambiguous. It is not clear whose excessive attachment is at work here, particularly in the case of Kṛṣṇa. The word order suggests that it is fate that “broke the rules” out of atiprasaṅga, which may mean something like “exceptional circumstances.” However, if it is either Kṛṣṇa’s or Yudhiṣṭhira’s “excessive attachment” that dictates their approval of the relevant relationships, this might suggest that they are not so dharmic after all. It could also be, in Kṛṣṇa’s case, that he makes special provisions for his female devotees, permitting them what would otherwise be forbidden because they are so attached to him.
Harivaṃśa, critical edition, volume 2, appendix 1, passage 12, pages 54–62. For a good survey of the sources of the Nīlā story, see Edholm and Suneson 1972. The Bhāgavatapurāṇa does include an episode in which Kṛṣṇa defeats seven bulls to win a new wife, but here the woman is a princess not named Nīlā, and the episode occurs long after he has already married another woman and left Vṛndāvana far behind (Bhāgavatapurāṇa 10.58.32–55).
Appayya again views this as an “apparent contradiction” and explains that while thinking about lovemaking usually is a stimulant, thinking about this lovemaking destroys them.
Kṛṣṇa’s devotees in the later tradition founded by Caitanya in Bengal confronted the same problem of his extramarital relations with the gopīs. While this does not seem to have been an issue for Caitanya himself and his follower Rūpa Gosvāmin, Jīva Gosvāmin propounded the theory that the gopīs were in fact Kṛṣṇa’s own (svakīya) wives and actually took on different bodies in their relations with their supposed husbands (Brzezinski 1997). Other thinkers in the tradition fought back against this view, insisting that the heightened emotional intensity of the gopīs’ relations with Kṛṣṇa is precisely the result of their being other men’s (parakīya) wives engaged in extramarital lovemaking (Okita 2018).
Deśika says that “The Lord enjoyed a brand new youth” (abhinavayauvanam anvabhuṅkta nāthaḥ, 24.15); the women, too, are given “the treasure of a brand new youth” (abhinavayauvanasampad, 24.62; cf. Bhāgavatapurāṇa 10.90.2, which describes Kṛṣṇa’s wives in this scene as “splendid with new youth” (navayauvanakānti).
Bhāgavatapurāṇa 10.90.15–24.
We translated vallabhā, referring to married or unmarried lovers, as “wives,” based on the context and numerous other explicit references.
Appayya, commenting on these royal sages, describes them as those who are “intent on dharma and also greedy for sensual pleasure” (dharmaparaiḥ bhogalampataiś ca).
See Bhāgavatapurāṇa 10.90.28–29.
Verse 24.55 is complex and challenging, and we admit it is susceptible to other interpretations. Appayya, in his commentary on this verse, takes bahumatibheda to refer to the splitting into multiple forms only concerning the moon while referring punningly to the “special respect” (bahumānaviśeṣa), which the women show Kṛṣṇa. This they do, he says, through their flirtatious gestures, another possible meaning of the word vibhrama, which we translated as “confusions.” In Appayya’s reading, these flirtatious gestures, imagined as waves born from the ocean of their love, are a compliment (namaskāra) to him. Our understanding, however, is that the “confusions” (vibhrama) that the women display in response to Kṛṣṇa’s multiplication are an inadvertent compliment to his bewitching powers, including his ability to multiply.
The chapter in question is Bhāgavatapurāṇa 10.69. The mention of yogamāyā is in 10.69.37–38. When Nārada leaves happily, he is said to be honored “by Kṛṣṇa whose soul is dedicated to material success, pleasure, and dharma” (arthakāmadharmeṣu kṛṣṇena śraddhitātmanā 10.69.43), thus emphasizing the variety of human aims that Kṛṣṇa achieves simultaneously.
Bhāgavatapurāṇa 10.29.10–11, 10.90.25.
See, for example, 24.58–59, 64 for them, 24.9, 28, 91 for him. Sometimes the comparisons dwell specifically on Dvārakā’s material riches as equivalent to those of heaven (for example, 24.20, 22).
The Vani Vilas edition reads amanuta, probably a typographical error, since Appayya’s commentary confirms the reading atanuta.
Bhāgavatapurāṇa 10.29.42 (ātmārāmo ’py arīramat); 10.33.20 (reme…ātmārāmo ’pi), 10.33.26 (ātmany avaruddhasaurataḥ—already quoted by Appayya in this context; see footnote 11 above).
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Acknowledgements
An earlier version of this paper was presented at “Vaishnavism as Fine Literature,” a workshop organized by Alexander Uskokov and held at Yale University in May 2022. We are grateful to the participants for their input and comments. We are also deeply indebted to the anonymous reviewers for their excellent suggestions, from which this paper benefited.
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Bronner, Y., McCrea, L.J. Celibate Seducer: Vedānta Deśika’s Domestication of Kṛṣṇa’s Sexuality in the Yādavābhyudaya. Hindu Studies 27, 213–235 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11407-022-09327-w
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11407-022-09327-w