Radha Krishana:
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The Radha-Krishna is a love legend of all times. It's indeed hard to miss the
many legends and paintings illustrating the Radha-Krishna affair is the most
memorable. Krishna's relationship with Radha, his favorite among the 'gopis'
(cow-herding maidens), has served as a model for male and female love in a
variety of art forms, and since the sixteenth century appears prominently as a
motif in North Indian paintings.
The allegorical love of Radha has found expression in some great Bengali
poetical works of Govinda Das, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, and Jayadeva the author of
Geet Govinda. Krishna's youthful dalliances with the 'gopis' are interpreted as
symbolic of the loving interplay between God and the human soul. Radha's utterly
rapturous love for Krishna and their relationship is often interpreted as the
quest for union with the divine. This kind of love is of the highest form of
devotion in Vaishnavism, and is symbolically represented as the bond between the
wife and husband or beloved and lover. Radha, daughter of Vrishabhanu, was
Krishna's lover during that period of his life when he lived among the cowherds
of Vrindavan.
Since childhood they were close to each other - they played, they danced, they
fought, they grew up together and wanted to be together forever, but the world
pulled them apart. He departed to safeguard the virtues of truth, and she waited
for him. He vanquished his enemies, became the king, and came to be worshipped
as a lord of the universe. She waited for him. He married Rukmini and
Satyabhama, raised a family, involved in the great war between Pandavas and
Kauravas at Kurukshatra, and she still
waited. So great was Radha's love for Krishna that even today her name is
uttered whenever Krishna is refered to, and Krishna worship is though to be
incomplete without the deification of Radha. One day the two most talked about
lovers come together for a final single meeting. Suradasa in his Radha-Krishna
lyrics relates the various amorous delights of the union of Radha and Krishna in
this ceremonious 'Gandharva' form of their wedding in front of five hundred and
sixty million people of Vraj and all the gods and goddesses of heaven. The sage
Vyasa refers to this as the 'Ras'. Age after age, this evergreen love theme has
engrossed poets, painters, musicians and all Krishna devotees alike.
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