Rāsa Līlā (Bhāgavata Purāṇa)

The Rāsa Līlā is the great dance of Bhagavān Kṛshṇa with the gopikās (the cowherd women of Vraja) on the bank of the Yamunā at Vṛndāvana. The Bhāgavata Mahā Purāṇa tells it in five chapters of the 10th Skanda, chapters 29 to 33, called the Rāsa Pañcādhyāyī (the five chapters of the rāsa).

It happened on the full-moon night of śarat (autumn). Bhagavān Kṛshṇa played his flute and called the gopikās from their homes. He tested their love, disappeared in the middle of the dance, came back and answered their questions, and then danced with the whole circle of gopikās at once. Vaishṇava tradition holds this event to be the highest showing of the ānanda (bliss) of Bhagavān Kṛshṇa to his devotees.

The night of the flute (chapter 29)

The night was the full-moon night of śarat. The banks of the Yamunā glowed white in the cool moonlight. The kadamba and kunda flowers were in bloom, and the night was long and sweet with scent. Bhagavān Kṛshṇa stood on the bank of the Yamunā and began to play his flute.

The Bhāgavata says the sound of the flute was unlike any ordinary music. It reached the homes of the gopikās, who were wives, daughters and daughters-in-law of the gopa (cowherd) families. It pulled them toward the forest and they could not stop. They left every duty: cooking at the stove, nursing their infants, caring for their husbands, doing their rituals. Some ran. Some came with hair half braided, jewels half worn and clothes put on in haste. They could not explain it and did not try. The flute had called.

When they gathered around Bhagavān Kṛshṇa in the forest, he surprised them. He told them to go home. “What are you doing here in the forest at night?” he said. “A woman’s dharma is to her husband and her household. Your husbands must be wondering where you are. Go home.” His reasons were calm and thoughtful. True service to Bhagavān Kṛshṇa can be done at home, by doing one’s duty with the mind fixed on him. His form is already in their hearts, so they need not be near him in body.

The gopikās refused to leave. They answered him with passion. Had he not already taken their minds and hearts completely? How could they go back to a place their whole inner life had already left? If a physician prescribes rest and the patient cannot rest, is the patient at fault? Their minds were not theirs to take home. This was not a choice. It was a fact.

Bhagavān Kṛshṇa was pleased with the purity and depth of their love, and he agreed. The rāsa began.

The disappearance and the forest search (chapter 30)

In the middle of the dance, Bhagavān Kṛshṇa disappeared. He had been playing with the gopikās when he suddenly withdrew. He took one favoured gopikā with him into the depths of the forest and left the rest bewildered. A moment before they had been dancing with him. Now he was gone.

The gopikās searched the forest and called his name. In their grief they spoke to the trees, the creepers, the earth and the river. “O pippala tree, have you seen Kṛshṇa? O earth, you who hold the footprints of all, have his feet touched you? O Yamunā, the lotus-eyed one must have crossed you. Tell us where he went.”

The trees and the earth seemed to show them the way. They followed footprints in the soft soil of the forest and found two sets of marks. One was Bhagavān Kṛshṇa’s, known by its signs: the flag, the thunderbolt and the lotus. The other belonged to a woman whose heels were pressed deep, which showed that she had walked eagerly, leaning forward. The woman’s footprints went on alone. Then both sets were gone, which showed that Bhagavān Kṛshṇa had carried her.

The gopikās felt the pain of this. One of them had been taken aside and the rest left behind. Then the trail ended. The woman’s prints appeared alone again, and it seemed she had stopped and wept. She had been left, it seemed. She had been taken in pride, and Bhagavān Kṛshṇa left her when she asked him, “Carry me on your shoulders.” That demand was pride of another kind, and Bhagavān Kṛshṇa withdrew his special presence even from her.

The gopikās understood that no one is favoured without condition. The love of Bhagavān Kṛshṇa is sovereign and no one can possess it. They went back to the sandbank of the Yamunā, singing in grief.

The Gopikā Gītam (chapter 31)

On the sandbank of the Yamunā the gopikās sang the Gopikā Gītam. It has nineteen verses of devotion and is one of the most loved songs of praise (stotra) in the Bhāgavata. The song moves through grief, wonder, longing and surrender.

The gopikās speak to Bhagavān Kṛshṇa as “you”. They remember his deeds: protecting Gokula from a forest fire, killing the asura Vyomāsura, and dancing on the hoods of Kāliya. They remember his flute that draws the whole world. They tell how the sight of his face gives rest to eyes tired by the world, and they ask him to place his cooling hand on their burning heads. The last verse is complete surrender. They have come, having left every other path, seeking only him. Let him show his mercy.

This song is studied as a model of the highest bhakti (devotion): love without condition, without calculation and without hope of return.

Kṛshṇa returns and the three kinds of love (chapter 32)

Bhagavān Kṛshṇa appeared again on the sandbank of the Yamunā, smiling, beautiful and wearing garlands of flowers. At once the grief of the gopikās turned into great joy. This is the joy that comes after deep suffering, and it is deeper and brighter than a joy that was never broken.

Some gopikās spoke a gentle reproach. Why had he left them? Was he testing them? Bhagavān Kṛshṇa answered with a teaching on three kinds of love.

• Some love only because they are loved. This is love given in return, like an exchange.
• Some love because they gain something from the beloved. This love is a tool.
• Some love purely, expecting nothing back, even if the beloved does not care. This love is its own goal.

Of these three, he said, the last is the highest, and it is what the gopikās had shown. Their love did not grow less when he left them in the forest. Their devotion did not depend on his being near. So they are beyond any instruction, and they have nothing more to learn.

About his disappearance he said that he withdrew not from lack of care but on purpose. A mind fixed hard on a beloved who is away reaches a depth of meditation that a mind distracted by the beloved’s presence cannot reach. His withdrawal was the highest gift, the deepest strengthening of their dhyāna (meditation).

The Mahā Rāsa, the circular dance (chapter 33)

Now the rāsa came to its fullest. Bhagavān Kṛshṇa made himself many. He made a separate form between each pair of gopikās in the great circle. So every gopikā felt Kṛshṇa beside her, with his arm around her, dancing with her alone. No one’s attention was divided, and each knew him completely. The Bhāgavata describes the watchers from above: the devas and their wives, the gandharvas and the siddhas, all looking on from their flying cars with wonder and reverence.

The rāsa was a circular dance (maṇḍala-rāsa) on the white sand of the Yamunā, in the moonlit forest of Vṛndāvana. It went on to the music of the flute and the sound of the gopikās’ ornaments, anklets and voices. The dance moved into the Yamunā itself. They entered the water, played and splashed and laughed, and Indra rained soft flowers from above, filling the place with divine scent. After the water-play they rested on the bank again.

The Bhāgavata takes up the objection that an avatāra who plays like this with the wives of other men breaks dharma. The answer it gives is the answer of his supreme nature. Fire purifies whatever it touches, and the sun lights everything without preference. Neither is bound by dharma as ordinary beings are. How much more is this true of the Paramātmā, who is the very source of dharma and is untouched by any action. Those who hear this holy account with reverence and meditate on it have the knots of desire in their hearts cut. The Bhāgavata gives the rāsa not as a human love story but as the līlā (divine play) of Bhagavān Kṛshṇa, who holds all beings within himself.

The rāsa went on until brāhma-muhūrta, the holy hour just before dawn. At that hour, by the natural order of time, the dance ended. The gopikās went back to their homes, and their hearts were changed for ever.

The Vishṇu Purāṇa account

The Vishṇu Mahā Purāṇa, in its fifth part (Pañcamāmsa), chapter 13, gives the first stage of the Rāsa Pañcādhyāyī. This is the time of viraha (longing) of the gopikās and of Bhagavān Kṛshṇa’s flute-playing (veṇu) that drew them from their homes. It has some elements that are not found in the same form in the Bhāgavata.

The music and the seven svaras. The Vishṇu Purāṇa explains the saptasvaras, the seven notes of music: shaḍja, ṛshabha, gāndhāra, madhyama, pañchama, dhaivata and nishāda. It links them with cosmic realities in the matter of Kṛshṇa’s flute. The music of the flute is described not only as beautiful sound but as the sounding of the cosmic nāda, the first sound that lies under all creation. Each svara matches a cosmic reality. When Bhagavān Kṛshṇa plays the flute, all seven svaras sound in their perfect cosmic order. This is why the call of the flute cannot be resisted. It is not only music but the voice of creation calling its creatures home.

The longing of the gopikās. The Vishṇu Purāṇa describes with great feeling the time of longing before the rāsa night. The gopikās had known the sound of Kṛshṇa’s flute since childhood and it had always moved them. But on this śārada night, the autumn full moon, the call had a quality it had never had before. Doors were left half open, fires left alone, children still crying, husbands speaking and not heard. The gopikās simply walked out toward the forest.

Following the footprints. The Vishṇu Purāṇa tells how the gopikās tracked Kṛshṇa through the forest by his footprints in the soft soil. The signs of the feet of Bhagavān Kṛshṇa were pressed clearly in the earth of Vṛndāvana: the lotus, the flagstaff, the thunderbolt and the aṅkuśa (elephant goad). The gopikās followed them as one follows the marks of a divine guest.

Sources

• Bhāgavata Mahā Purāṇa, 10th Skanda, chapters 29 to 33 (Rāsa Pañcādhyāyī): chapter 29 (the flute and the rāsa begins), chapter 30 (the disappearance and the search), chapter 31 (Gopikā Gītam), chapter 32 (the return and the three kinds of love), chapter 33 (the Mahā Rāsa)
• Vishṇu Mahā Purāṇa, Pañcamāmsa, chapter 13