Today there is no field of culture that has not been influenced by Geet Govind. Art, music, dance and poetry have brought to life Jayadeva’s immortal work. Entire sects of Hinduism are today based on the worship of Krishna and Radha as the supreme deities and they all can be traced back in some way or the other to Geet Govind.
The Origin of Geet Govind
Geet Govind is an epic poem, written in Sanskrit by Jayadeva in the eleventh century. It is said that Jayadeva was a poet in the court of King Lakshmansen of Bengal. He was an ardent devotee of Krishna and he wrote the verses of the Geet Govind as an expression of his devotion. At the temple of Jagannath in Puri he would sing the songs from the epic poem and his wife Padmavati would dance to them. Soon Geet Govind spread through the length and breadth of India. However Puri remained the center for Geet Govind. A special community of dancers known as the Maharis used to enact verses from the poem. A fifteenth century inscription in the temple prescribes the inclusion of dances from the Geet Govind as a part of the nightly rituals of the temple.
The Geet Govind was first translated into English in 1792 by William Jones. There after it has been translated into many European languages and into most of the modern languages of India. It is perhaps the most translated Sanskrit work.
Divine Love
Human emotions have been so intensely portrayed by Jayadeva that it is easy to forget that the protagonists of the epic are divine. But it is amply evident that Krishna and Radha are divine and that Jayadeva considered them to be so and worshipped them devoutly. What Jayadeva describes is the Divine Lila of Krishna and Radha during their avatar in the land of Braj. In fact many Hindu philosophers consider this Lila to be an allegory for the human soul’s desire to merge with the divine.
There are several evidences of the divine nature of Jayadeva’s work. It begins with an invocation to Krishna as the Supreme deity. Throughout the work Krishna is referred to with his several divine epithets and his divine acts, most commonly that of slaying various demons. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, one of the most revered Hindu saints was immensely influenced by Geet Govinda.
The first verse of the poem is a direct reference to an event described in the Brahmavaivarta Purana in which Nand, Krishna’s father, seeing an approaching storm asks Radha to take the frightened Krishna home. The verse in the Geet Govind states that the two however went to the Madhuban on the banks of the river Yamuna to engage in their Lila.
The Poetry of Human Emotions
Very briefly the narrative of Geet Govind is as follows. Radha sees Krishna with the other maidens of Braj and in a fit of jealousy refuses to meet him. Then follows a period when the estranged lovers pine for each other till Radha’s friends arrange a reunion. Jayadeva takes his readers through the entire spectrum of emotions that love can generate. Pain, love, jealousy, ecstasy, longing and bliss are experience in their myriad hues with an emotional lyricism that leaves the reader spellbound.
Please check my course on Hindu Mythology
Please check my articles on Mythology from India
