Gopal Krishna: Bard of Utkal

By Dr. M. MANSINHA, M.A., Ph.D.
(Principal, G.M. College, Sambalpur)

The Vishnu-Cult in India has so widely and deeply fascinated the masses for centuries, because, for the first time in Indian thought, the speculative and the far-off external Divinity comes closest to humanity. No Vedic god or goddess or any other Deity of the later Hindu Pantheon is so completely human as Vishnu. As a matter of fact, He is merely a superman, a man like any of us, but with the additional capacity for miracles. But the most significant quality of His personality is that–and this explains the profound appeal to the minds of the devotees–He suffers in this earthly existence like all of us here and comes out of his troubles only after hard struggles. In and through an ordinary human life, Vishnu symbolises through his sufferings and triumphs the eternal battle of good and evil, which gives inspiration to millions of forlorn hearts.

He alone of the entire Hindu Pantheon is credited with so many Avatars. This Descension of the Lord of the Heavens again and again into this rude plane of ours to save the world and humanity from the forces of evil, is in itself an act of supreme grace. And, of the ten or more Avatars, the two that are most popular and most widely studied, talked of, sung and worshipped, are those of Krishna and Rama, the one exhibiting the very Norm of social virtues based on strict ethical principles, and the other as the ideal of Love as a spiritual force. In the popular mind the Krishna legend, however, exercises a stronger fascination. This is due to the pastoral surroundings in which the story is placed, and Krishna’s victorious leadership against the tyrannies of a local autocrat, the colourful display of emotions in his relations with his foster parents and with the cowherds and their women folk in the village of Brindavan on the bank of the river Yamuna. As the naughty child, the fearless boy, the dutiful son, the successful rebel against political tyranny and religious dogmatism, as the ardent lover and also as the wise statesman and the profound philosopher, Krishna is, to most Hindu minds, the picture of the Complete Man, the perfectest Avatar of God on earth. He, in his life, in the significant words of Wordsworth, combines the two apparently contradictory and yet truly kindred points of Heaven and Home, and stands symbolic of the complete surrender of the human soul to the world soul, in and through our family and social experiences.

The Krishna-Cult spread rapidly into all regions and all the languages of India after the twelfth century. In fact, like Buddhism and Christianity, this Cult has created new literatures. The very first recorded song or poem in many an Indian language is round a sentimental episode of Krishna’s life,–at least this is so in my own literature, Oriya. By the 14^th century, the whole of North India, including Bengal, reverberated with the rapturously worded and deeply sentimental songs of Vidyapati, surdas, Mirabai and Chandi Das. An enormous amount of explanatory philosophy and directive manual grew up for the understanding and guidance of the laity and the initiated.

For long centuries, Orissa had been the land of Buddhism and Jainism. It is the only State in the Republic of India where Buddhism still exists as a living faith among thousands of peasants and weavers in rural areas. Due perhaps to the predominance of Buddhistic tenets in Orissa, Jagannath has been apocryphally counted as the Buddha or the Tenth Avatar of Vishnu. The disappearance of caste rules within the precincts of the famous Jagannath temple, the pervading spirit of Ahimsa all round it, and the Car festival,–all point to a remote Buddhistic origin of this well-known Hindu Deity. After Buddhism, came Saivism to Orissa, bringing in its wake the Tantric practices. So, on the whole, religion to the masses in Orissa had been a melange of rites and beliefs conglomerated from later Buddhism, Saivism and Tantra, till the waves of the Krishna-Cult reached its shores. That was in the 14th century, synchronising with the visit to, and long residence at Puri of Chaitanya. The adaptible Hindu theology soon transformed Jagannath from the Avatar of the Buddha into a rebirth of Krishna with appropriate legends. This is the interpretation that appeals most to the devout Vaishnavas. To them, the two holiest places on earth are Brindavan where Krishna spent his childhood days, and Puri where He reappeared in the shape of Jagannath, out of compassion for the devotees in this Kali Yuga.

But, in spite of all these readjustments, Vaishnavism or rather Krishnaism in Orissa was rather slow to permeate the mass mind. The philosophic part of it was well propagated all over the land through the Bhagavat of Jagannath Das from the 15th century. But the wonderful lyrical outpouring over the Krishna episodes, such as had already appeared in Hindi, Maithili and Bengali as early as the 14th century, was to wait in Orissa till the last lap of the 18th century. The fine vehicle of this Krishnian lyrical outpouring in Orissa, Gopal Krishna, is the subject of this essay.

Gopal Krishna was born in Parlakimedi in the district of Ganjam. He came of a family of hereditary accountants in the local Maharaja’s Estate. The family still continues in the same house where the poet died in 1862. It is now turned almost into a shrine visited with wondering reverence by religious and literary admirers of the poet, bowing to his bust-statue placed in a room soon after the poet’s death, and touching the dust of the place with their foreheads.

Gopal Krishna composed hundreds of songs, of which many have been lost. The poet was rather indifferent to his own literary creations and never attempted to have them collected and edited. He had no method in his poetic madness either. He would, when inspiration was on, scribble a complete song on the wall with a piece of chalk while in bed, or write it down on a palm-leaf and hand it over to an admiring friend. He would never think of it again. The nation owes a deep debt of gratitude to an obscure person, Haribandhu Patnaik, for having left behind in one collection as many of the songs of his great friend and master as he could gather out of people’s mouths.

The lilting tunes and the apt, musical, and easy yet telling diction of the songs of Gopal Krishna, for which they are now sung everywhere in Orissa to the sensuous as well as spiritual thrill of the audiences, cannot unfortunately be translated. But what I value most in Gopal Krishna’s lyrics, is not the words, nor the music, matchless though either is, but the faithful pictures of the workings and moods of the human mind, and the ecstasy of the human soul, when under the pervading spell of love, both human and Divine, that one gets in them. Songs and lyrics and epics in Oriya on the Radha-Krishna episodes, there are many. But most of them are attempts to glorify an insipid conventionality, or to camouflage an immorality in an impenetrable habiliment of highfalutin, a display of customarily dressed-up, but lifeless nice words. Of all the Vaishnav writers in Oriya it is in the writings of Gopal Krishna that we find an actual suffering soul speak. In his lines, we feel his own heart-throb or rather ours,–our own moods of dejection and happiness, our own feelings and dreams. Radha and Krishna are but symbols here, just the conventional pegs to hang the human tale on. In and through Gopal Krishna’s songs, one finds actually the turbulent stream of love between two young throbbing hearts, flowing sometimes in terrific spate, sometimes in the quiet, slow rhythm of autumnal fullness. The waters are sometimes turbid with quarrels, misunderstandings and jealousies, and at others limpid and dancing with the ecstatic joy and happiness of consummation. In the overflow of the human hearts, the theology or the worship have become swamped, and the dry conventionalities have become galvanised with live, human experiences.

But to the poet, Krishna and Radha were the Divine Masters, not merely Lovers. In innumerable songs he has poured out pathetic appeals to this Divine pair for his own salvation. Perhaps these were written late in his life. In one of them, we feel the poet’s despair after long waiting. It begins:

“The sands of my life have run on while I have been following Thee.
How would it matter, Oh Lord, if Thou but gavest away a drop out of Thine vast river of Mercy?”

In another, he dances in expectancy, saying:

“Am I so lucky as to be counted a servant of the great Mistress of Brindavan?”

For the develepment of the romance of these Divine Lovers, however, the poet has woven a pattern all his own, which fits naturally into the rural surroundings with which the poet was familiar. As a matter of fact, the pattern seems to have grown out of the poet’s own experience.

In this pattern, we meet Radha and Krishna as an extraordinarily handsome girl and boy, living separately in two parts of the same village of Brindavan on the Yamuna. They had not met each other till they grew into the florescence of pre-adolescence, when, through one or other mutual acquaintance, they come to hear each other’s name and know each other’s extraordinary physical beauty and mental qualities. And that sets fire to their imagination and desires. The great romance starts, and nothing can stop, its flow till the two streams of love mingle into one.

This unique courtship, this ‘love at hearing’ as against the conventional ‘love at first sight’ in literature, is described in two artistically logical dialogue-lyrics. In one, the conversation is between Lalita and Radha, and in the other between Krishna and Brinda. This lyrical type is unique in Oriya, and only Gopal Krishna has attempted it with splendid success. I may quote a few stanzas from each Song.

Radha asks: “O Darling, who is that Prince of Braja?” “Darling,” says Lalita, “He is the same whose flute-play had enchanted you the other day.”

Radha–“What name is that you had said, Darling?”

Lalita–“Ah, You want to hear it again? Krishna, Krishna, I had said.”

Radha–“Is He generous?”

Lalita–“One who has begged of Him once dost not find any more need to go begging others.”

Radha–“Is He married?”

Lalita–“Mother Yasoda has set her eyes on you, Darling, as her future daughter-in-law.”

Radha–“Don’t you say so!”

Lalita–“Those that match each other are to be united. You need not, Darling, get into a pique for that.”

In the other Song:

“In the Bakul groves, Krishna once whispered into Brinda’s ears: ‘Who indeed is this Radha in this village of Braja? Ever since I beard that name, I feel like one drinking nectar. Will you unravel this mystery, please?”

From these little sproutings, however, the romance grows rapidly into flowering and fruition. We get in Gopal Krishna every phase of the human love-experience. The poignancy of feeling becomes all the greater here, as, due to social considerations, the two lovers could not either be married or meet each other openly. Secrecy is the salt of all love stories. The hearts work quicker because of obstructions, and souls try to rush towards each other over walls, mountains, and seas. The same things happen here also.

At first, however, young, little, delicate Radha is naturally hesitant, unfamiliar as she is with these extraordinary feelings, and she tries for her life to get away from them. “In one Song she says:

“This flute of Shyam; the Beautiful, will indeed undo me.
The other day I was in the midst of elders, sitting and talking with them–
And I heard it, and how I was taken a!
My hairs stood on end allover the body,
And I shivered, though it was not winter;
I closed my two eyes and lost all consciousness; my mind flew away
I knew not where.
I failed to perceive whether it was day or night, home or wilderness, or I was asleep or awake.”

In another song she says:

“Oh this danger to me!
I cannot get away from thoughts of Shyam even for a moment!”

But, in and through these timid hesitancies so natural in young lovers, the course of love was running in accordance with well-laid plans. Friends had arranged a tryst. In one song, the poet describes the subtle feelings, the painful misgivings of Radha, about to meet Krishna in the first tryst. Says she:

“Have you indeed given him an appointment? Oh, I tremble even now; I know not what it will be when I see him. I have lost all interest in household work, and go about in constant fear of my heart-throbbings being detected by somebody. What was he doing when you met him, where was he? What did you say? What was his reply? Or, are you merely jesting? Couldn’t you go again and tell him that the appointment is cancelled? I am so afraid of the consequences; I remember what happened to Chandrabali!”

But, after all, the lovers met, and met again and again. The happiness of fulfillment and complete forgetfulness are expressed in many songs. In one, says Radha:

“For the love of Krishna I have given up my family and society.
His love indeed is the treasure of my life.
I have realised the merits of my million births.
I am now a beggar woman, and He mine begging bowl.
I am but an unknown wild flower, and He my honey-bee.
I shall be eternally counting the rosary of His Beauty and virtues.”

Then came fits of jealousy, and a lover’s right to reject or remonstrate with the loved one. This bold transformation in the slip of a girl that was Radha, whom we met when she first heard Krishna’s name, is so gradual and so logical through the various songs of Gopal Krishna, that the casual reader takes it for granted and never bothers about the extraordinary subtlety with which the great poet has depicted the different steps in the natural development of the human love affair.

But Radha very soon rises above these petty feelings. Her love soon attains a height where, in the ethereal plane of sublime emotion, she forgets completely her own self, her own claims and rights, and surrenders absolutely to the desire of her lover. In one song she says, in the deepest poignancy of pathos:

“I don’t mind His unkindness to me,
As I consider myself but an humble maid of His.
Do you think, my friend, Radha would ever have pleasure by wounding Shyam’s feelings?
I would rather spend my life in looking after anybody who takes His fancy, than sulk over my supposed insults.
I’ll get all the treasures of the world if He is happy, even if it be with another woman.
My only desire is to look upon His face just once in the day, either close at hand or
from a distance.”
Says Gopal Krishna, the friend laughed and said, ‘See who is behind you.’
In another unique lyric also, says Radha:

“Let this scandal of Shyam stick to my name for ever.
Let my days pass with thoughts of Him and Him alone.
Whatever others may say, misfortunes of many births of mine appear to float away
If I but once look at His beautiful face.”

This is the sublime consummation of this unique and apparently immoral, but really allegorical, love story. In the bands of the uninitiated and ignorant, this story reeks with vulgarities. But in the haabis of persons of real genius in whom, as in Mirabai and Gopal Krishna, devotion, scholarship and inherent artistic qualities met in proper balance and generated in them the proper creative insight, this story exhales the supersensuous spiritual perfume that it was meant to. In a sea of vulgarities, obscenities, and deceptive bombasts that we come across in Oriya literature covering the story of Radha and Krishna, Gopal Krishna’s poetry stands out like a holy yet magnificently beautiful lotus. He alone coveys to us the Truth and Good of Love through Beauty. In a forest, noisy with the clamours of innumerable birds, he is the pathetic nightingale that reaches direct to our hearts and souls through his unobtrusive, gentle notes.