Gopikā Vastrāpaharaṇa (Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa)

The Gopikā Vastrāpaharaṇa is a sacred narrative of the Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa. It tells of two linked events. The first is the Mārgaśīra Gaurī Vrata, a month-long vow kept by the gopīs of Vṛndāvana. The second is the līlā (divine play) in which Śrī Kṛshṇa and his friends took the garments of the bathing gopīs and gave them back only after granting each a blessing.

Inside this account are the story of Vedavatī, Pārvatī’s words to Rādhā, and Kṛshṇa’s teaching on pativratā-dharma, the duty of a faithful wife.

The Mārgaśīra Gaurī Vrata

The ṛshi Nārada once came to Bhagavān Nārāyaṇa and asked about the greatest vrata (vow) a woman can keep to win a good husband, a long life for him, and moksha. Nārāyaṇa was pleased by the question and told him of the Mārgaśīra Gaurī Vrata. This is a month-long vow to Pārvatī, who is also called Gaurī and Durgā, in the month of Mārgaśīra (Agrahāyaṇa).

The vrata starts on the first day of Mārgaśīra and lasts the whole month. Each day the woman wakes before sunrise, makes herself pure, and offers the Shoḍaśopacāra pūjā (worship with sixteen offerings) to an image of Gaurī or to a form of her made of clay. She fasts on the Ekādaśī days of the month by strict rules:

• She takes no food on Ekādaśī itself.
• On the Daśamī before it she eats no rice, beans or tamarind.
• On Dvādaśī she does not touch oil.

Bhagavān Nārāyaṇa declares that the phala (fruit) of the Ekādaśī of Śukla Paksha is especially great. It equals the puṇya (merit) of ten thousand Aśvamedha yajñas.

The gopīs of Vṛndāvana wanted Śrī Kṛshṇa as their husband (pati) for ever. They kept this Gaurī Vrata with full devotion through the whole month of Mārgaśīra. Each morning they rose before dawn and bathed in the Yamunā. They honoured Durgā, in her form as Kātyāyanī, with garlands, sandal paste, lamps, and offerings of fruits and sweets of the season. They prayed with one wish:

Kṛshṇaṃ patiṃ dehi

“Give us Kṛshṇa as our husband.”

The śāstra is clear that Gaurī grants the wishes of faithful wives. Those who keep this vrata with firm faith win their heart’s wish in this very life.

On the last day of the month, Mārgaśīra Pūrṇimā, the gopīs ended the vrata with rich offerings. They gave gifts to brāhmaṇas and shared food and cloth with those who deserved them. (Śrī Kṛshṇa Janana Khaṇḍa, chapter 26)

The Vastrāpaharaṇa līlā

On the morning after the vrata ended, the gopīs went down to the bank of the Yamunā for their ritual bath. Their vows were fulfilled, and their hearts were full of bhakti (devotion) and longing. They left their garments on the bank and went into the cool water. They played happily, sang the names of Kṛshṇa, dived under, and splashed one another. Their hearts were wholly lost in thought of Kṛshṇa.

Śrī Kṛshṇa is the sarva-antaryāmin, the one who knows the longing of every heart. He came to the bank of the Yamunā with twelve of his closest friends (sakhās): Śrīdāma, Sudāma, Vasudāma, Subala, Suparśva, Śubhāṅga, Sundara, Candrabānu, Vīrabānu, Sūryabānu, Vasunbānu and Ratnabānu. Balarāma came with them too. Laughing and planning together in the spirit of childhood play, Kṛshṇa and his friends picked up the garments that the gopīs had left. They climbed into the branches of a great kadamba tree nearby and hung the clothes over the boughs above them.

From his seat in the kadamba tree, Kṛshṇa called to the gopīs: “Come and take your garments, but come one by one, and with folded hands.”

The gopīs were in the water up to their necks. They were first amazed and then ashamed. Some begged, some teased, some argued. But Kṛshṇa did not move at their begging or their arguments. He insisted that each gopī come forward alone, with her hands joined in añjali, to take her cloth from him.

Each gopī gathered her courage, came out of the water, and walked up to Kṛshṇa with her palms joined in añjali-mudrā. As each stood there, her pride gone and her whole self offered, Kṛshṇa looked on her with a gaze full of grace. He gave back her garment with a smile. The añjali-mudrā of the gopīs was not a mere gesture. It was the form of full surrender, the jīva standing before Paramātmā with nothing held back. The friends laughed, the forest rang with sound, and even the current of the Yamunā seemed to pause with joy.

When all the gopīs had their garments, Kṛshṇa came down from the tree. He said with deep sincerity that the gopīs had kept the Gaurī Vrata wholly for his sake. He told them: “Your vrata is complete, and your wish is fulfilled. On the full-moon night of Caitra I shall dance the Rāsa with you in Vṛndāvana, and your wish will be made whole.”

In this way he promised the Rāsalīlā as the fruit of their Gaurī Vrata. (Śrī Kṛshṇa Janana Khaṇḍa, chapter 27)

The story of Vedavatī

Kṛshṇa told the story of Vedavatī to show the divine origin of certain gopīs.

Vedavatī was a famous brāhmaṇī of great beauty and the power of tapas. She was the daughter of Kuśadhvaja. She had vowed to marry only Vishṇu, and for years she kept hard austerities in the forest for this aim. The rākshasa Rāvaṇa met her in the forest and, overcome by desire, seized her by the hair. Her tapas was dishonoured. Vedavatī cut off the hair he had seized with her own hand. She declared that she would enter the fire, and that she would be born again as the cause of Rāvaṇa’s death. She entered the fire and gained a divine form.

By the grace of her devotion to Vishṇu, Vedavatī was born again in a later age, in a place that brought her into Kṛshṇa’s own divine play.

Some of the gopīs of Vṛndāvana carry the jīvas of such pure women of tapas. By lives of deep devotion and tapas these women had earned the highest fruit, which is service to Kṛshṇa in his most intimate līlā at Vṛndāvana. In this way Kṛshṇa reminded the gopīs that their longing for him was not born in one life. It was the fruit of great tapas over many lives. (Śrī Kṛshṇa Janana Khaṇḍa, chapter 27)

Pārvatī’s words to Rādhā

At the time of the Gaurī Vrata, Rādhā was worshipping together with the gopīs. She received a direct and private revelation from Gaurī herself. Pārvatī appeared before Rādhā and told her own deepest identity and her eternal bond with Bhagavān Śiva. Through this she showed the nature of the great pairs of Śakti at the level of the whole creation.

Pārvatī said to Rādhā: “You are not only a gopī born in Vṛndāvana. You are the first Śakti, the left half of Kṛshṇa’s own being. I was Satī and am born again as Pārvatī, and I am for ever the ardhāṅginī (half body) of Bhagavān Śiva. In the same way you are for ever the left limb and the life of Kṛshṇa. The worship you offer me in this vrata always returns to its own source, for the Śakti worships the Śakti. Your longing for Kṛshṇa is not bhakti rising from below. It is the longing of his own nature reaching back for itself.”

Pārvatī then told Rādhā of her own tapas and her parting from Śiva, in the account of Satī and her new birth. She told how even the highest Śakti must go through the fire of viraha (separation) to become the perfect half of the Purusha. This deepened Rādhā’s understanding of her own eternal nature and of what her bond with Kṛshṇa means for the whole creation. (Śrī Kṛshṇa Janana Khaṇḍa, chapter 27)

Kṛshṇa’s varas to the gopīs

After he gave back their garments and promised the Rāsalīlā, Kṛshṇa was moved by the purity and sincerity of the gopīs’ devotion. He spoke to each group of gopīs and gave them each a particular vara (boon). He said:

“You bathed in the Yamunā before dawn each day this month and chilled your bodies for the grace of Gaurī. Know that every dawn bath in the Yamunā equals a bath in all the tīrthas (holy places) at once. But your bath this month, together with the Gaurī Vrata, has earned you more than the fruit of a tīrtha. It has earned you the direct grace of the highest Śakti.”

“You who are pativratās, faithful wives by nature and by vow, have shown the highest dharma of a woman. Pativratā-dharma is not only loyalty to a human husband. At its root it is the loyalty of the jīva to Paramātmā, who sees in the husband the presence of Bhagavān Nārāyaṇa. The husband who is worshipped as Bhagavān Nārāyaṇa answers the Śakti’s devotion with moksha.”

“This is the vara I give you. You will dance with me on the full-moon night of Caitra Trayodaśī in the Rāsa Maṇḍala. In that Rāsa each of you will know the direct ānanda (bliss) of union with Paramātmā. No other karma, jñāna or tapas leads to where one moment of Rāsa-ānanda leads. You have earned this by your month of devotion.”

Kṛshṇa also spoke of the añjali-mudrā of the gopīs and called it the perfect form of surrender. He said: “When you stood before me with folded hands, you stood as the jīva stands before Paramātmā, with nothing hidden, nothing held back, and the ego gone. That gesture completed your vrata more fully than any ritual.” (Śrī Kṛshṇa Janana Khaṇḍa, chapter 27)

Sources

• Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa, Śrī Kṛshṇa Janana Khaṇḍa, chapter 26 (the Mārgaśīra Gaurī Vrata)
• Brahma Vaivarta Purāṇa, Śrī Kṛshṇa Janana Khaṇḍa, chapter 27 (the Vastrāpaharaṇa, Vedavatī, Pārvatī and Rādhā, and Kṛshṇa’s varas)