The Treatment of Love in the Gitagovinda

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Date: 02, December 2010.
The Treatment of Love in the Gitagovinda
Introduction
Gitagovinda is translated as the "Song of the Cowherd" and was composed in twelfth century by one of the Indian epic poets Jayadeva who was a fervent devotee of Krishna hence the presence of the Vaishanava faith that include the worship of Vishnu and its avatars with Krishna as the original and supreme God (Greenlees, 56).
In this poem Jayadeva sings of the mystical amours between Radha and Krsna by elaborating on the love of the cosmic duo thus creating an aesthetic atmosphere of erotic-mystical mood that is a bliss for the devotees of Krishna and this hence gives Gitagovinda a divine adornment and devotional orientation. It is a poem about an illicit relationship between Radha and Krishna defined by an intense yearning for Viraha or love in separation.
Treatment of love in the Gitagovinda
In this play love has been treated in many ways as discussed in the following paragraphs. Passionate love has been sacralised as an expression of bharti by making the loving-woman`s longing to be devotion and the love making as worship (Rodriguez par 4). The love of Radha who is a beautiful gopi later became a goddess of some cults and the Krishna the youthful deity became the object of widespread devotion (Rodriguez par, 4).
Youthful love has been treated to be amorous and sensuous and this is evident in the play when the author through its setting elaborates of a passionate love that captures exciting, fleeting moments of senses and the baffling ways in which loves pleasure and pains are felt retrospective relocation and the effort to control emotional lives that edits away love inevitable confusions (Siegel, 85).
Love is also treated as being jealous. This is seen when Nanda asks Radha to escort Krishna home through the forest at dusk and he becomes unfaithful to her as he sports with other gopis and this makes Krishna jealous when she imagines of "vines of his great throbbing arms circle a thousand gopis" (Guin and Mirabai, 10) and more so she is infused with the emotions of passionate and proud woman who feels she is deserted by her lover.
Devine Love is also treated to be unconditional and forgiving especially when Krishna admits that she still wants her lover back despite the fact that he was unfaithful to him (Siegel, 93). She says that she refuses to admit her rage when he stills away from her to indulge in his craving for young women but her perverse heart only wants him back.
Love portrayed leads to solitary, lost passion and grief as shown when Radha greatly yearns for Krishna producing a change in him as Radha stands out in the his mind as a someone special and unique person who cant not be replaced even with a thousand gopis (Siegel, 61).
From the incident of yearning Krishna discovers that he would rather serve and adore her mistress rather than vanquishing and demanding, by doing so, he t...