Excerpt from Love in Hindu Literature

Love between man and woman has always been a theme of Hindu poetry. With Kalidasa, the Shakespeare or Goethe of classical Sanskrit literature, (who flourished in the first half of the fifth century in the reign of Chandragupta II, one of the Indian Charlemagnes), love between the sexes was a principal motif of his epic, lyric and dramatic works. But when a Hindu speaks of his love-literature, he thinks first and foremost of the mediaeval pastoral lyrics, the Padabali, which may be conveniently, described as the "Idylls of Radha, " of which Radha is the heroine and Krishna or Kanu her lover. The present essay seeks mainly to interpret a few of these lyrics as englished by Dr. A. K. Coomaraswamy.

In mediaeval Bengal writers on love were legion. They are commonly known as the trouveres or minstrels of Vaishnavism, a cult of bhakti or devotion, which corresponds to the Jodo Buddhism of Japan and the Sufi mysticism of Persia. In Vaishnava parlance the name, Krishna, is divine, and Radha semi-divine. Radha-Krishna literature is thus liable to be regarded as an allegory of the mystical union between God and the Soul. The present writer pleads for a thoroughly human and secular interpretation, unless, of course, the relation between the sexes be considered as something spiritual or divine. The treatment of love by Vaishnava poets, by Vidyapati in particular, is so plainly and emphatically in the language of the senses, that it is impossible to read any super-sensual meaning into it. If sexual love is mysticism, Vidyapati is a mystic.

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