Early History of the Vaishnava Faith and Movement in Bengal, from Sanskrit and Bengali Sources c10.s3.14

c10.s3.14

It cannot be said that Kṛṣṇa, as conceived by the emotional Bengal faith, is fully ethicised in this sense. The precarious Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa legend, on which its whole system of devotion is based, is taken not as a symbol but as a reality, not as religious myth but as religious history. A strenuous attempt is, therefore, made to explain and fit in all its details and implications; and theological justification for it is found in the dogma that the Vṛndāvana sports are those of the supreme deity, viewed as the Śaktimat, with his own energies, viewed as the Śakti. But the detailed working out of the Vṛndāvana-līlā, both in the theological and poetical works¹ of the sect, clearly shows that it is never taken in the sense of an allegory (which modern thought would delight to find in it) but in a vivid and literal sense. These blissful, but purposeless, sports are supposed to go on eternally; but the deity, who cannot be anything but blissful, is made entirely engrossed in them. It is a delightful devotional fancy, but it is wholly unethical. The slaying of demons in the divine Līlā indeed implies the upholding of a moral order, but it is only a diversion, which, we are told², is accomplished not by the deity's self but by the countless Avatāras who appear simultaneously with him. His essential erotic Mādhurya is not to be obscured by such acts of heroic Aiśvarya. The Kṛṣṇa of Vṛndāvana alone counts; the Kṛṣṇa of Kurukṣetra is deliberately effaced. The heroic acts, in the theory of the school, are justifiable only because they evoke softer sentiments; for instance, they excite parental affection in Nanda and Yaśodā, friendly solicitude in Kṛṣṇa's companions, and, above all, erotic feelings in Rādhā and her Sakhīs¹.