Gita Govinda -- Jayadeva's Song of Radha and Krishna

Every night at the Jagannath temple in Puri, before the deity is put to rest, songs from a twelfth-century Sanskrit poem are offered to him. They have been sung there for centuries, and they are love songs. The poem is the Gita Govinda, "the song of Govinda", by the poet Jayadeva, and it is about the separation and reunion of Radha and Krishna on a spring night by the Yamuna.

Little about Jayadeva is certain. Tradition places him in the twelfth century and links him to the court of King Lakshmana Sena of Bengal; Bengal and Odisha both claim his birthplace, at Kenduli. Tradition also names his wife, Padmavati, a dancer, and later legend says that she danced as he sang the poem. Whatever his exact story, the poem itself became one of the most influential works ever written in India.

The story is simple. Krishna, playing with the cowherd women in the spring, seems to have forgotten Radha. Hurt and jealous, she withdraws. Krishna, remorseful, searches for her; her friend carries messages between them; Radha passes through anger, longing and pride; at last Krishna comes to her and asks forgiveness, and they are reunited in a forest bower.

What makes the poem new is its form. Jayadeva built it in twelve cantos (sargas), and set at their heart twenty-four songs called ashtapadis -- songs of eight couplets each, with a refrain -- framed by verses in classical Sanskrit metres. Each song names the raga and tala in which it is to be sung. It is a poem meant to be performed, not only read: a drama in songs.

The first song of the poem is not about Radha at all. It is a hymn to Vishnu's ten avatars, each verse ending with the refrain "jaya jagadisha hare" -- "victory to Hari, lord of the world" -- beginning with the fish who saved the Vedas in the waters of the dissolution. Jayadeva's list counts Balarama as the eighth avatar and the Buddha as the ninth, praising him for his compassion and his rejection of animal sacrifice. The hymn is sung on its own all over India, and its refrain passed into many later devotional songs.

That opening tells the reader how to take what follows. The Krishna who longs for Radha is the same Lord who takes the ten forms to protect the world. For the tradition, the love of Radha and Krishna is the love between the soul and God -- madhura bhakti, devotion in the mood of lovers -- and its passion is the point, not a distraction from it.

The Gita Govinda's influence is hard to overstate. It made Radha central to Krishna devotion in a way earlier texts had not, and the great Bhakti poets of the following centuries -- Vidyapati, Chandidas, and the Vaishnavas of Bengal around Chaitanya, who loved to hear it sung -- wrote in its shadow. It shaped Odissi dance, whose dancers still perform its ashtapadis, and the classical music of both north and south; ashtapadis are sung in Kerala temples in a style called sopanam. Two hymns attributed to Jayadeva are even included in the Guru Granth Sahib of the Sikhs.

For a reader today, the best way into the poem is to hear it -- an ashtapadi sung in its raga, or danced -- and then to read it slowly, as Jayadeva meant it: as a love story that is also a prayer.