Studies in Indian Art c12.s6.24

c12.s6.24

9. *Gopa-yoshit*,—A female Gopi. On railing pillar B. 86 in the Lucknow museum we have the representation of a woman wearing a rustic petti-coat (*lehngā*) and a scarf (*oṛhṇī*) falling back from the head, and carrying a big pitcher on her head. Her features and the well-built limbs make her out to be a village woman lacking in the finer graces of city life. She should be identified as a *gopī* or a typical country-woman in the land of Braja, where powerful living traditions about her have survived both in religion and in literature in relation to the legend of the divine cow-herd Kṛishṇa. The conception of *gopīs* certainly goes back to the Kushāṇa period. The *Buddhacharita* of Aśvaghosha refers to gopa-women and their dalliances (IV. 14). In the famous Tamil classic *Śilappadhikaram* (Epic of the Anklet) which is one of the five great Mahākāvyas of Tamil literature and is definitely assigned to the 2nd century A.D., there is distinct reference to a cow-herd Kṛiṣhṇa and his dance with the *gopīs*. [English translation by V. R. R. Dikshitar, Canto XVII, p. 228.]