Gopīs

Gopī · gopī, “the cowherd women”

The gopīs (also called gopikās and gopāṅganās) are the cowherd women of Gokula and Vṛndāvana in the land of Vraja, among whom Śrī Kṛshṇa grew up as the son of Nanda and Yaśodā. The Bhāgavata Purāṇa tells their part in his līlā from the day of his birth to his last meeting with them at Samantapañcaka, and holds up their love for him as the highest bhakti, not possible, as Uddhava says, even for munis. Their minds were on Śrī Kṛshṇa alone: he was their life, and his darśana was the great festival of their eyes. Some of them were the mothers of the gopa boys; the young women among them, the kanyās of Gokula, kept the Kātyāyanī vrata praying that he would be their husband.

The account follows them through every stage of his life in Vraja. They ran to Yaśodā’s house with gifts when he was born, performed rakshā over the child after Pūtanā, and told Yaśodā of his mischief. In the forest years they waited each evening for his return, sang of his flute in the Veṇu Gīta, and in the autumn nights left everything at the call of his veṇu to meet him on the bank of the Yamunā. There he first told them to go home, then fulfilled their wish; when pride rose in them he withdrew from sight, and they searched the forest, asked the trees, followed his footprints and sang the Gopī Gīta until he appeared again and danced the Mahā Rāsa with them, taking as many forms as there were gopīs. When Akrūra came to take him to Mathurā they lamented together; when Uddhava came with his message they questioned him and spoke to a bee as his messenger, and Uddhava, seeing their love, bowed to the dust of their feet. Balarāma visited them, and at the solar eclipse at Samantapañcaka Śrī Kṛshṇa met them once more, taught them the truth of the ātmā, and they became jīvanmuktas, free while still in the body.

The texts show them as women of simple village life, milking, churning curds, sweeping and rocking cradles, who sang his līlās through all their work. They did not know his true nature and loved him as a beloved, yet by that love alone, the Bhāgavata says again and again, they reached him, the Parabrahman, as rivers give up name and form and enter the ocean.

Source: Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 10, Chapters 21, 29–33, 39, 47, 82; Skandha 11, Chapter 12

Before the account of Vraja

The Bhāgavata speaks of the gopīs long before it tells of Gokula. Bhīshma, on his bed of arrows, praises Śrī Kṛshṇa and remembers the gopikās who were devoted to him for his gait, his charm, his smile and his loving glances; when he withdrew from their sight they imitated his acts, such as the lifting of Govardhana, and became one with him. In Brahmā‘s account of the līlā-avatāras to Nārada, Śaṅkhacūḍa, a follower of Kubera, carried off the gopikās, and Śrī Kṛshṇa cut off his head.

When Vidura meets Uddhava, Uddhava remembers how Śrī Kṛshṇa honoured the gopīs with smiles, playful words and glances, so that they left their housework half done to gaze at him, and how on autumn evenings, when Vṛndāvana shone with moonlight, he sported with the circle of the gopīs, singing songs of unmanifest sweetness. At night, when the time allowed, he delighted in the rāsa-krīḍā with them.

Nārada, telling Yudhishṭhira how beings fix their minds on Īśvara, names the gopikās as those who fixed their minds on him through kāma.

Source: Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 1, Chapter 9; Skandha 2, Chapter 7; Skandha 3, Chapters 2–3; Skandha 7, Chapter 1

Śrī Kṛshṇa’s childhood in Gokula

His birth. When Yaśodā had a son, the gopikās rejoiced. They put on new clothes, kājal, jewels and sandal paste and hurried to her house with gifts. They wore gem earrings, pendants and colourful sārīs; garlands fell from their hair onto the path; they shone with swaying earrings, necklaces and bracelets. They blessed the child, “O Īśvara, protect this child long”, sprinkled turmeric and oil on the people and sang aloud, and Nanda gave garments, ornaments, cows and wealth to the gopīs and gopas, the paurāṇikas, the praisers and the musicians.

Pūtanā. When Pūtanā came in a lovely form, the gopīs thought, because of the lotus in her hand, that she was Lakshmī Devī come to see her husband Śrī Hari. At her death-roar their hearts, ears and heads seemed to burst, and seeing her huge body they feared all the more. They came at once and took the child, and with Yaśodā and Rohiṇī they performed rakshā over him: they waved a cow’s tail over him and made him touch a cow’s ears, sprinkled him with cow’s urine and the dust raised by cows, and with cow-dung made rakshā on the twelve places of tilaka with the names of Īśvara. They did ācamana and nyāsa on themselves and placed the bīja-aksharas one by one on the child’s limbs and hands. Bound by love, they performed this rakshā for Bāla-Kṛshṇa. Śuka adds that for those who looked on Śrī Kṛshṇa as their son, milk flowed from love, and for them the stream of birth and death born of ajñāna does not return.

Śakaṭa and Tṛṇāvarta. When the cart overturned, Yaśodā, Nanda and the women were alarmed and asked how it had fallen by itself. When the whirlwind of Tṛṇāvarta died down, the gopīs heard the weeping in Nanda’s house and, not seeing Kṛshṇa, wept too. They found the child hanging on the rākshasa’s chest and gave him to Yaśodā, and the gopīs and gopas with Nanda rejoiced at getting him back from the mouth of death. The wicked one died by his own pāpa, they said; for a good person, sama-dṛshṭi frees one from fear; and they asked what tapas, pūjā, wells, yajñas, dāna or compassion of theirs had brought back the child who had been as good as dead.

His mischief. The gopīs gathered and told Yaśodā of the mischief he did when they were busy with housework. When she tried to bind him, they smiled softly at her, and she laughed with them, greatly amazed. Śrī Kṛshṇa came under the gopīs’ control like a wooden puppet: when they urged him he danced and sang loudly, and at their command he carried a seat, a grain-measure or a sandal, and slapped his arms, delighting all who watched. When Gokula moved to Vṛndāvana, the gopīs, in fresh kuṅkuma, new sārīs and golden pendants, rode in chariots singing the līlās of Bālakṛshṇa. Whenever he came back from danger, the gopas and gopīs gazed at him as at one returned from death and were never satisfied.

Source: Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 10, Chapters 5–9, 11

The forest years in Vṛndāvana

The mothers of the boys. When Brahmā hid the calves and the gopa boys, Śrī Kṛshṇa himself became the calves and the boys, wishing to give joy both to the boys’ mothers and to Brahmā. At the sound of the flute the mothers came running, lifted and embraced their sons and fed them milk that flowed from love; they gave them oil baths and sandal paste, put ornaments on them, warded off the evil eye, put tilaka on them, fed them and put them to sleep. Their conduct was as before, but their love grew; his love for them was as before, but without the attachment that comes from ignorance. For a whole year, love grew every moment in the mothers and in the cows, even for children and calves long weaned.

Waiting for his return. Śrī Kṛshṇa’s darśana was a festival for the gopīs’ eyes. In the evening they came out in a group to meet him; the young women of Gokula drank the honey of his lotus face with the bees of their eyes, and the pain of the day’s separation left them. He accepted their sidelong glances with modesty, a smile and humility, and entered Gokula. Without him a moment was like a hundred yugas, and seeing him return they were filled with joy. Even the breeze could not take away their distress while he was away.

Kāliya. When Śrī Kṛshṇa was held in the coils of Kāliya, the gopīs, who remembered his love, his smile, his glances and his words, burned with grief; the three worlds seemed empty without him. When Yaśodā was about to enter the lake after her son, they held her back, and they wept with her, telling his līlās with their eyes fixed on his face, like corpses. When he rose from the lake, Yaśodā, Rohiṇī, Nanda, the gopīs and the gopas met him, and life returned to them.

The gopas’ report. The gopas told the gopīs of Balarāma‘s slaying of Pralamba and of Śrī Kṛshṇa freeing them from the forest fire, and the elders and gopīs, amazed, thought that Kṛshṇa and Balarāma were leaders of the devas who had come down to Gokula.

Govardhana. At the yāga for Govardhana, held in place of Indra‘s yajña, the adorned gopīs rode in bullock carts, singing of Śrī Kṛshṇa’s valour. When Indra’s storm came, the cattle, the gopas and the gopīs, shivering with cold, took refuge in him; when he set down the mountain, the gopīs worshipped him with curd, akshatas and water, blessed him and went home singing of his līlās, such as the lifting of Govardhana. Śuka says that Śrī Kṛshṇa, having taken a human body for his līlā, delighted the cows, the gopas and the gopīs with his form, his words and his acts.

Source: Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 10, Chapters 13–17, 19–20, 23–25

The Veṇu Gīta

In the autumn, when Śrī Kṛshṇa entered Vṛndāvana with Balarāma, the gopas and the cows and played his flute, some of the gopīs heard its music closely and described it to their friends who had stayed in Gokula. As they began, his doings came to their minds and their love was so great that they could not go on. All the women of Gokula heard that flute, which steals the minds of all beings, and meeting one another they described it and embraced. This is the Veṇu Gīta, the gopīs’ song of the flute, which Śuka tells Parīkshit. They remembered him as he went: peacock feathers on his head, koṇḍagogu flowers on his ears, a garment yellow as gold, a garland of flowers of five colours, the flute at his lower lip.

What they said, in order: the fruit of having eyes is to see the faces of Balarāma and Kṛshṇa, the flute on their lips, and they know no greater fruit; the two brothers, in their many-coloured dress, sing among the gopas like great actors on a stage; the flute must have done great puṇya, for it drinks the nectar of the lips of Dāmodara, who belongs to the gopīs, while the rivers that fed its bamboo bloom with lotuses for joy and the bamboos shed tears like the elders of a family; Vṛndāvana, marked with the lotus signs of his footprints, spreads the fame of the earth, and the peacocks dance to his music while all creatures stand still to watch; the doe-deer offer him pūjā with their loving glances for flowers; the women of the devas in their vimānas are bewildered by his music; the cows drink it with raised ears and the calves stand with milk still in their mouths; the birds that listen without blinking must be maharshis; the rivers stop their flow and offer lotuses to Murāri’s feet with their waves; the cloud of his own colour shades him like an umbrella; the women of the hunters, finding on the grass the kuṅkuma from a gopī’s breast that his feet had left, applied it to their faces and breasts and cured their love-sickness; Govardhana is the greatest of his devotees, for it gives them caves, water, grass, roots and fruits; and the flute makes the moving beings still and the unmoving trees thrill like the moving.

So the gopīs described his līlās to one another and became absorbed in him.

Source: Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 10, Chapter 21

The Kātyāyanī vrata

In Hemanta, in the month of Mārgaśīrsha, the kanyās (unmarried girls) of Nanda‘s Gokula kept the vrata of Kātyāyanī Devī, eating only havis of wheat grits and jaggery. At dawn they bathed in the Yamunā, made a mūrti of the Devī from the sand of the bank, and worshipped her with sandal paste, fragrant garlands, coconuts, incense and lamps, tender shoots and akshatas, with naivedya and fruits, praying: “O Devī, treasure-house of all that is auspicious, Mahāmāyā, great yoginī, sovereign of all, make Śrī Kṛshṇa, the son of Nandagopa, my husband. Namaskāra to you.” For a month they kept it without a break, worshipping Pārvatī Devī, rising at the end of the night, calling one another by name and going hand in hand to the river, singing his glory.

One day, as they played in the water, Śrī Kṛshṇa, master even of the lords of yoga, came with his friends to bring their vrata to fulfilment. He took their garments and climbed a kadamba tree, and called them to come and take them. They pleaded from the cold water, calling themselves his dāsīs. He told them that bathing unclothed while under a vrata was an offence against the deity of the waters, and that to remove it they should join their palms above their heads and bow; they did namaskāra to Śrī Kṛshṇa himself, the fruit of every vrata and the witness of karma, and, pleased with their pure hearts, he gave them their garments. They put no blame on him and only rejoiced in meeting their beloved. Seeing in their resolve the wish to touch his feet, he told them: “O puṇyavatīs, your resolve to worship me deserves to come true. Desire fixed on me does not lead to saṃsāra, as a roasted seed does not sprout. You have attained siddhi; in the nights to come you will delight with me.” Meditating on his lotus feet, they went back to Gokula reluctantly.

Source: Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 10, Chapter 22

The Rāsa nights

The five chapters of the Rāsa (the Rāsa Pañcādhyāyī) are the heart of the gopīs’ account. Śuka tells them to Parīkshit. They are given here in summary.

The call of the veṇu

On an autumn night, when the jasmines had blossomed and the full moon rose red as fresh kuṅkuma, Śrī Kṛshṇa, taking refuge in his yogamāyā, resolved to sport, and played his veṇu. Hearing that song, which makes love for Bhagavān Kṛshṇa grow, the women of Gokula ran to him, each unknown to the other, their earrings swinging. Some left the cows half milked, the milk on the stove, the wheat havis uncooked; some left off serving food, feeding the children, serving their husbands or eating; some went with sandal paste, oil-bath or kājal half done, with their sārīs reversed, bangles on their feet and anklets on their hands. Husbands, parents, brothers and kinsmen tried to stop them, but Govinda had stolen their minds and they did not stop.

Some gopīs could not leave the house. They closed their eyes and meditated on Śrī Kṛshṇa alone. The heat of unbearable separation washed them clean, and the bliss of his embrace in dhyāna exhausted their puṇya-vāsanās; though they met the Paramātmā even with the feeling that he was a jāra (a lover outside marriage), their bondage of karma was destroyed and they gave up the body made of the three guṇas, that is, the identification with the body.

Parīkshit asked how saṃsāra was removed for those who thought of Śrī Kṛshṇa as their beloved, not as Parabrahma. Śuka answered that if Śiśupāla attained siddhi even while hating Śrī Hari, there is no need to say that those who love him attain it; Śrī Hari, nirguṇa and beyond all pramāṇas, becomes manifest so that beings may attain moksha; and those who always hold him in their minds with love (as the gopīs), anger (Śiśupāla), fear (Kaṃsa), friendship (Arjuna) or bhakti (Nārada) attain sāyujya with him.

His words and their answer

Śrī Kṛshṇa welcomed them as greatly fortunate, asked what he could do for them and whether Gokula was well, and told them to go back: the night was fearful, their kin would be searching for them, the children and calves were crying, and the highest dharma of a woman is to serve her husband and his kin without deceit and to nourish the children; bhakti for him comes from hearing his accounts, seeing his form, singing his glory and meditating on him, not from being near him. Or perhaps, he said, they had come out of love for him, and that befitted them, for all beings love him. His words broke their resolve. Heads bowed, they scratched the ground with their feet; their tears, black with kājal, wiped the kuṅkuma from their breasts. Then, their voices choked with a little loving anger, they spoke: they had given up all enjoyments for his feet, and as the Paramātmā accepts those who seek moksha, so he should accept them; his teaching on svadharma was true, but let it rest in him, the teacher, the aim of all teaching and the ātmā of all; he had stolen their minds and their feet would not move from his; the joy of touching his feet comes to Lakshmī Devī only now and then, and having touched them they could stand before no one else; he had descended to remove the fear of Gokula as Śrī Hari protects the devaloka, so let him place his lotus hand on their bosoms and their heads, and grant them his dāsya.

Hearing their piteous words, Śrī Kṛshṇa laughed with compassion and, though he delights in his own svarūpa, gave them delight. Leader of hundreds of gopīs, wearing the vaijayantī garland, he sang praising their love as they sang his glory, and shone among them like the moon among the stars. He went with them to the sandbank of the Yamunā, where a cool breeze fragrant with water-lilies blew, and with embraces, touch, jests, glances and laughter made their love grow. Then the gopīs grew proud, each thinking herself the greatest of women on earth; seeing their pride in their beauty and their sense that he was theirs alone, Śrī Kṛshṇa withdrew from sight, to remove it and to bless them.

The search

Not seeing him, the gopīs were in pain like she-elephants who have lost the leader of their herd. Meditating on their oneness with him, they began to imitate his līlās; the marks of his walk, his smile and his glances appeared in their own bodies, and each declared, “Here! I am Kṛshṇa!” Singing loudly, they went from forest to forest like people out of their minds, asking the trees: the banyan and the other great trees, the aśoka, punnāga, nāga-keśara and campaka, Tulasī, whom they called auspicious, the jasmines and the āmalaka, the mango, jackfruit, jambū, bilva, bakula, kadamba and every tree on the Yamunā bank. They asked the Earth what tapas she had done to rejoice at the touch of his feet, and a doe whether he had passed with his beloved. One gopī played Pūtanā and another drank at her breast; others acted out Śakaṭa, Tṛṇāvarta, Vatsāsura and Bakāsura, the flute, the lifting of a shelter against the rain, the trampling of the serpent, the forest fire and the binding to the mortar. One walked with her arm on another’s shoulder and said, “I am Kṛshṇa, see my beautiful walk.”

Then they found his footprints, known by the flag, lotus, vajra, aṅkuśa, grain and cakra, and beside them a woman’s footprints. She must have worshipped him, they said, for Govinda had left them all and walked alone with her. Where her prints vanished, he must have carried her; where only the front of his feet showed, he had picked flowers for her; there he had sat and tied her hair. Following on, they found her: the gopī he had taken with him had grown proud and asked him to carry her, and when he told her to climb on his shoulder he withdrew from sight, and she had fainted in the grief of separation. She told them all, and they were astonished. They searched as far as the moonlight showed the forest, then, as darkness came, turned back to the sandbank of the Yamunā. With minds fixed on him alone, speaking only of him and imitating only his acts, they lost all awareness of body and home, and there they sang together of him.

The Gopī Gīta

That song is the Gopī Gīta. Gokula has become higher than svarga by his birth, they sang, yet his own, who hold on to life only for him, search for him in every direction. They called themselves his unpaid servants, weak women who obey his command. They remembered how he had protected them from Kāliya’s poisoned water, from Aghāsura, from Indra‘s storm and thunderbolt, from Tṛṇāvarta, Arishṭa and Vyomāsura; they declared that he is not only Yaśodā’s son but the Paramātmā, the witness in all hearts, who took avatāra in the line of the Yādavas at Brahmā‘s prayer. They begged him to place on their heads the hand that gives abhaya and on their bosoms the feet that trod on Kāliya’s hoods; they sang that the nectar of his kathā gives life to the suffering and that those who tell it are the greatest givers; that a moment without him is a yuga, and Brahmā, who made the eyelids blink, is dull-witted; and they ended, “Your foot is tender as a lotus; does it not hurt on the stones of the forest? You alone are our life.”

His return and his answer

As they wept in sweet voices, Śrī Kṛshṇa appeared before them, smiling, lotus-faced, in his yellow garment and vanamālā, a beauty that would enchant Manmatha himself. As the limbs revive when life returns, they all rose at once. One took his hand in her joined palms; one placed his arm on her shoulder; one took his chewed betel; one placed his foot on her bosom; one, in loving pique, looked at him as though she would strike him; one gazed at his face without blinking and was never satisfied; one drew him into her heart through her eyes and, like a yogī, sank into an ocean of bliss. Their grief flew away. On the sandbank they made him a seat of their upper cloths, worshipped him in their assembly and, a little vexed, asked him which is right: to love those who love you, to love those who do not, or to love neither.

He answered that love given only in return is for one’s own gain; the compassionate, like a mother and father, love even those who do not love them; and some love neither, being either mahātmās content in the ātmā, or ungrateful, or betrayers of their benefactors. “I appear and withdraw from sight,” he said, “so that the meditation of those who love me may go on without a break, as a poor man who has found and lost wealth thinks of nothing else. For my sake you set aside the world’s propriety, the rules of the gṛhastha āśrama and your kin; even when unseen I was loving you. Your love is without guile. Even with the lifespan of the devas I could not repay it. You broke the strong fetters of home and household to love me. Let the repayment of your love be your love itself.”

The Mahā Rāsa

Then Govinda began the rāsa krīḍā. The gopīs stood in a circle holding one another’s hands, and Śrī Kṛshṇa, master of Yogamāyā, entered between each two of them and embraced them at the neck, so that each gopī saw him at her own side; by Yogamāyā he took as many forms as there were gopīs, though he delights in himself alone. The devas filled the sky with their vimānas, the dundubhis sounded, flowers rained, and the gandharvas and apsarās sang his glory. The bangles, anklets and girdle-bells of the dancing gopīs made one dense sound; they danced with steps and turning hands and smiling, bending brows, their earrings shining on their cheeks, and singing his glory they shone like lightning in a mass of clouds, while he shone among them like a great sapphire among golden gems. One sang in a higher note than his rāga and he cried, “Well done, well done”; another sang the dhruva tāla in the same note and he praised her more. Tired gopīs leaned on his shoulder; he wiped their faces with his hand. He played with the young women of Gokula as a child plays with his own reflections, without any change in himself. Then he entered the Yamunā with them, and they splashed him laughing from every side, and afterwards he roamed with them in the garden on the bank. So Śrī Kṛshṇa, whose will is always true, sported with the gopīs through all the nights of śarad, and at brāhma muhūrta he gave them leave, and unwilling, they went home.

When Parīkshit asked how Śrī Kṛshṇa, the protector of dharma, could do such a thing, Śuka answered that for the Parameśvara, who dwells as antaryāmī within the gopīs, their husbands and all beings, there is no question of puṇya and pāpa; he took a human body to reveal his līlās and bless beings, and one who hears them becomes absorbed in him. The people of Gokula never thought any fault in him, for, enchanted by his Yogamāyā, each saw his own wife at his side.

Source: Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 10, Chapters 29–33

Śaṅkhacūḍa, the Yugala Gīta and Arishṭa

One night Govinda and Balarāma sported in Vṛndāvana among the gopīs, who sang their glory until they lost all awareness of their bodies, garments and falling garlands. Then Śaṅkhacūḍa, fearless, drove the crying gopīs towards the north before the brothers’ eyes. They cried “O Śrī Kṛshṇa! O Balarāma!”, and the brothers ran after him like men running after a thief, or a tiger, that has carried off cows; Balarāma stayed to protect the women while Śrī Kṛshṇa pursued Śaṅkhacūḍa. Later the gopīs sang of how he freed them from Śaṅkhacūḍa.

When Śrī Kṛshṇa went to the forest by day, the gopīs’ minds went with him, and they passed the days singing his līlās. This is the Yugala Gīta, sung in pairs: the siddha women in the sky and the deer, the rivers that stand still, the creepers and trees, the birds of the lake and the cloud over Govardhana all respond to his flute; when he walks like an elephant, playing the flute and casting playful glances, the gopīs stand motionless like trees, unaware of loosened hair and slipping cloth; and in the evening he comes home with the cows, his face grown pale. Śuka says that for the women of Gokula Śrī Kṛshṇa was life itself and his darśana their great festival; even by day they found joy only in singing his līlās.

When the bull asura Arishṭa came, the gopīs and gopas were afraid, cried “O Śrī Kṛshṇa!” and took refuge in Govinda. Akrūra, on his way to Gokula, longed to see the feet of Śrī Kṛshṇa marked with the kuṅkuma from the gopīs’ breasts, and the lotus-fragrant hand whose touch in the Rāsa had removed their weariness.

Source: Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 10, Chapters 34–36, 38

The parting at Akrūra’s coming

When the gopīs heard that Akrūra had come to take Balarāma and Kṛshṇa to Mathurā, they grieved. Some felt a burning of the heart and their faces faded with hot sighs; for some, garments, bangles and hair-knots slipped loose; some, in dhyāna on him, lost all sense and body-awareness, like yogīs who have realised the ātmā; some were overcome remembering his loving words, his gait, his glances and his līlās. With tears on their faces they gathered in groups and spoke.

They said that Brahmā has no compassion, uniting beings in love and parting them before their wishes are fulfilled, showing them Kṛshṇa’s face, with its dark curls, fine cheeks, high nose and lovely smile, and then hiding it. “You who bear the name Akrūra are cruel,” they said; “he who gave us sight is taking it away.” They had left homes, kin, sons and husbands for his dāsya; he loves new people, and among the city women with their honey-sweet words he would forget them, for “we are village folk”. He had mounted the chariot, the gopas were hurrying him, and the elders kept silent. They resolved to band together and stop him: what could the elders and kin do to them? They remembered the Rāsa, when many nights passed like a moment, and how he came home at evening playing the veṇu, his curls and vanamālā grey with cow-dust. Casting off shame, they wept, “O Govinda! O Dāmodara! O Mādhava!”, and while they wept the sun rose.

They followed the chariot; stopped by him, they waited for his word. Śrī Kṛshṇa, seeing them grieve, sent a loving message by a messenger, “I will come back”, and comforted them. They stood like figures in a painting as long as the flag and the dust of the chariot could be seen, their minds gone with him; then, losing hope of his return, they turned back and passed the days and nights singing his līlās, forgetting their sorrow.

As he left, the gopīs spoke blessings on the people of Mathurā, and those blessings came true for all in Mathurā who saw his beauty. The women of Mathurā said: what tapas did the gopīs do, that they see these two every moment and drink with their eyes his face, the essence of loveliness? The gopīs are blessed: while milking, pounding, churning, sprinkling, rocking cradles, soothing children, watering plants, sweeping and bathing they sing his līlās; remembering him brings them tears and a choked throat; at dawn and dusk they come out to see his smiling face, and he looks on them with compassion. Gazing at that face, the gopīs crossed many sorrows without effort.

Source: Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 10, Chapters 39, 41–44

Uddhava in Gokula

Śrī Kṛshṇa sent Uddhava to Gokula to give joy to his parents and to free the gopīs from the sorrow of separation with his messages. “Their minds are on me alone,” he said; “I am their life; they left even their own kin for me and hold me as their beloved, their dearest and their self. In separation they are anxious with longing and fall into deep moha; they have reached oneness with me and hold on to life with difficulty, through my message that I will return.” Uddhava arrived at sunset, and at dawn he saw the gopīs rise, light the lamps, decorate courtyards and doorways with rangavallī and churn the curds, their bangled arms pulling the ropes, their faces bright with kuṅkuma and their gems sparkling in the lamplight. Their loud singing of Śrī Kṛshṇa’s glory, mingled with the sound of churning, touched the sky and drove away all inauspiciousness in every direction. Seeing his chariot, they asked whether Akrūra had come again, to offer piṇḍas to his dead master Kaṃsa through them.

When they saw Uddhava, dressed like Śrī Kṛshṇa, they gathered round him asking who he was. Knowing he brought Śrī Kṛshṇa’s message, they seated him in a secluded place, honoured him with smiles, sweet speech and arghya, bowed and questioned him humbly. He had come to give joy to Kṛshṇa’s parents, they said; apart from them he remembered nothing in Gokula. Friendship with those who are not kin lasts only until its purpose is served: a veśyā leaves a man without wealth, students leave the ācārya when their studies are done, ṛtvijas leave the yajamāna who has given dakshiṇā, birds leave a fruitless tree, guests a house after the meal, animals a burnt forest, and a paramour the woman who loves him. Offered to Govinda in mind, speech and body, they gave up all reserve before Uddhava and sang the līlās he had done from childhood up to the age of ten, weeping without shame.

The Bhramara Gīta. One gopī, meditating on her union with Śrī Kṛshṇa, saw a bee and spoke to it as his messenger. Do not touch our feet, she said, with whiskers stained with a rival’s kuṅkuma; he is a deceiver like you, who drinks the honey and leaves the flower, who made us drink the nectar of his lips once and left us. Go and sing to the young women of Mathurā. What woman in svarga, on earth or in Pātāla would not yield to his smile? Yet he is called Uttamaśloka, a name that fits only one who is compassionate to the afflicted. In his Rāma avatāra he killed Vālī from hiding and disfigured Śūrpaṇakhā, and he accepted Mahābali‘s pūjā and then had him bound: let us have no more friendship with the dark one, she said, yet we cannot give up the talk of his līlās, for one drop of that nectar washes away the pairs of opposites. Like does trusting the hunter’s song, we trusted his words; enough, tell other news. Then, as the bee came back, she asked it whether it would take them to him, and when the son of Nanda would place on their heads his arm fragrant with aguru.

Uddhava’s answer and the message. Seeing their longing, Uddhava said: “You are fulfilled; the worlds will worship you, for your minds are offered wholly to Śrī Kṛshṇa. Bhakti for him arises when dāna, vratas, tapas, homa, japa, study of the Vedas and restraint of the senses have ripened; you have the very highest bhakti, not possible even for munis. You left sons, husbands, attachment to the body, kin and homes and chose the Purushottama. You have attained his true tattva, that he is the ātmā of all, beyond the senses, and to witness your separation is a great grace for me.” Then he gave them Śrī Kṛshṇa’s message: “I am the ātmā of all; there is never any separation of you from me. As the five bhūtas pervade all beings, so I am the ground of mind, prāṇa, senses and guṇas. I am far from your eyes only so that you meditate on me unceasingly and feel my presence in the mind. Give up every other activity of the mind, remember me alone at all times, and you will soon attain me. The gopīs who stayed in Gokula and did not take part in the Rāsa attained me by meditating on my līlās alone.”

The gopīs’ reply. Hearing the message, they were joyful and remembered his līlās. It is auspicious, they said, that Kaṃsa was slain with his followers and that Śrī Kṛshṇa is well among his own. Does he give joy to the young women of Mathurā? Among the city women, does he remember us village folk, and those Rāsa nights in the forest bright with white lilies and moonlight? As Indra revives the forest with the clouds, will he come and revive us with his hands and feet? He has gained a kingdom and will marry the daughters of kings. Even the veśyā Piṅgalā said that to be without hope is the greatest happiness; we know it, yet we cannot give up our hope in him. These rivers, hills and forests bear the marks of his feet and will not let us forget him. “O Govinda, protector of us, of Lakshmī Devī and of Gokula, lift Gokula out of the ocean of sorrow.” By the message the pain of their separation went, and knowing that Śrī Kṛshṇa is beyond the senses and is the ātmā, they worshipped Uddhava. He stayed some months in Gokula, removing their grief with the accounts of Śrī Kṛshṇa’s līlās.

Uddhava’s gīti. Seeing the gopīs’ minds fixed on Śrī Kṛshṇa, Uddhava bowed to them and sang: “In this world only the birth of these gopīs is fruitful; those who fear saṃsāra, and the maharshis too, long for such love. Where are these forest women, who do not know the conduct of the cultured, and where such unwavering love for the Paramātmā? Yet Īśvara grants vast welfare even to the ignorant who give him unceasing bhakti, like a fine medicine well taken. The grace shown to the gopīs when he embraced them in the Rāsa was not given to Lakshmī Devī on his chest, nor to the lotus-fragrant women of the devas. The Śrutis are still seeking the path to him; the gopīs left their kin and the dharma of their elders and walked the path of love. May I be a bush, a creeper or a plant in Vṛndāvana that receives the dust of their feet! The foot worshipped by Lakshmī Devī, Brahmā and Indra and meditated on by the kings of yogīs, the gopīs placed on their breasts in the Rāsa. The life of the gopīs, sung with Śrī Hari’s līlās, purifies the three worlds. Again and again I bow to the dust of the feet of the gopīs of Nanda‘s Gokula.” Then he took leave of the gopīs, Yaśodā, Nanda and the gopas, and went back to Mathurā.

Source: Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 10, Chapters 46–47

Balarāma’s visit

When Balarāma came to Gokula, the gopas and gopīs, long waiting, embraced him. Smiling, the gopīs asked whether Kṛshṇa, beloved of the city’s young women, was well, whether he remembered his kin and parents, whether he would come once to see his mother, and whether he remembered their service. For him they had left parents, brothers, sisters, husbands, children and kin; he had cut the cord of love and left them; they had believed his sweet words and been deceived; the clever city women would not trust him, yet are won when he tells stories and smiles. One gopī said: “What have we to do with talk of him? If time passes for him without us, so let it pass for us.” Remembering his laughter, speech, glance, gait and embrace, they wept. Balarāma, skilled in consoling, consoled them with Kṛshṇa’s heart-stealing messages. He stayed among the groups of gopīs, who sang the deeds of the plough-bearer, and sported with them in the Yamunā like a lord of elephants with his she-elephants; won by their graces, all those nights seemed to him as one night.

Source: Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 10, Chapter 65

The meeting at Samantapañcaka

At the time of the solar eclipse, when the Yādavas came to Samantapañcaka, Nanda came with the gopas, and the gopīs, who had long waited eagerly, saw their beloved Śrī Kṛshṇa again. They used to scold Brahmā for putting blinking into the eye while they gazed at him; now through their eyes they installed him in their hearts, embraced him there and attained oneness with him, which even those established in yoga do not attain. Śrī Kṛshṇa met them in a secluded place, embraced them, asked after their welfare and said, laughing: “I was delayed, working to destroy the enemy and help my own. Do you remember me? Do not think me ungrateful. As the wind brings together clouds, grass, cotton and dust and scatters them again, so the Creator, Time, brings beings together and parts them. Bhakti in me gives moksha; that you have it is auspicious. As all things are born from the five elements and dissolve into them, so all beings are born from me and dissolve into me; I am within them and without.” So he taught them the truth of the ātmā, and by constant remembrance their sense of limitation ended and they became jīvanmuktas.

The gopīs prayed: “O Padmanābha, the lords of yoga headed by Sanaka meditate on your lotus foot in their hearts; it is the support for those fallen into the well of saṃsāra. May that foot shine always in our minds, even while we are in our household work.”

Śuka says that Śrī Kṛshṇa alone is the teacher and the supreme goal of the gopīs; having taught them the truth of the ātmā, he blessed them. When his wives told Draupadī how each had come to him, the sixteen thousand said that they long for the touch of his feet as the gopas, the gopīs, the hunter women, the grasses and the creepers longed for it when he grazed the cows. Kuntī, Gāndhārī, Draupadī, the wives of other kings and the gopīs heard of the love of total self-offering that his wives have for him, were filled with wonder, and their eyes filled with tears. When at last Nanda went back to Gokula, he, the gopas and the gopīs could not draw their minds back from Śrī Kṛshṇa’s lotus feet.

Source: Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 10, Chapters 82–84

The gopīs’ bhakti in the teaching of the Bhāgavata

Again and again the Bhāgavata names the gopīs when it speaks of how beings reach Bhagavān Kṛshṇa.

• Śuka to Parīkshit: those who fix the mind on Śrī Hari with love, like the gopīs, attain sāyujya with him, as surely as those who do so with anger, fear, friendship or bhakti; the gopīs who met him even as a jāra had their karma-bondage destroyed.
• Uddhava: their bhakti is the highest, not possible even for munis; the worlds will worship them; their life, sung with Śrī Hari’s līlās, purifies the three worlds.
• Bali, in Sutala, to Śrī Kṛshṇa: some, like Kaṃsa, reached him by enmity, and some, like the gopīs, by loving bhakti, as even the sattva-filled devas and ṛshis could not.
• The Śrutis, in their stuti: what yogīs reach by meditation his enemies reached by remembering him; and the gopīs, whose minds were on his arms like the body of Śesha, and the Śrutis, who hold his feet, are equal before him who sees all equally.
• Śrī Kṛshṇa to Uddhava: the gopīs reached his state through satsaṅga alone, without study of the Vedas, service of mahātmās, vratas or tapas; they, with the cows, trees, birds and serpents, attained him easily by bhakti alone. When he went to Mathurā they suffered intense grief but sought no other means of happiness. In Vṛndāvana the nights with him passed like half a kshaṇa, and without him the same nights were like kalpas. Like maharshis in samādhi, their minds bound to him by love, they knew neither themselves, nor their bodies, nor this world nor the next; as rivers give up name and form and enter the ocean, they merged in him. Hundreds and thousands of women, not knowing his true nature, loved him as a jāra, and by the power of that saṅga attained him, the Parabrahman.
• Sūta, at the close of the Purāṇa, praises Śrī Kṛshṇa as the one whose fame the gopikās and the bhaktas sing, and in the list of its contents names his līlā with the gopīs in the nights and their lament.

Source: Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 10, Chapters 29, 47, 85, 87; Skandha 11, Chapter 12; Skandha 12, Chapters 11–12

Per Bhavishya Purāṇa

The Bhavishya Purāṇa speaks of the gopīs in four places: in Bhagavān Vishṇu‘s own word about the śrutis, in Śrī Kṛshṇa‘s account of the first Malla Dvādaśī, in the rite of Janmāshṭamī, and in the praise of Vṛndāvana.

The śrutis who will come as gopīs

The Pratisarga Parva of the Bhavishya Purāṇa tells, in the words of Sūta, that when Bhagavān Vishṇu was born from the womb of Devakī in the house of Vasudeva at Mathurā, in the twilight of Dvāpara as Kaliyuga came, Brahmā and the other devas praised him. Bhagavān Vishṇu, pleased, spoke to them. For the good of the devas and the destruction of the daityas, he said, he would be born in Kaliyuga, and in Kaliyuga he would play a secret, solitary krīḍā (divine play) in the subtle, delightful, divine Vṛndāvana that stands on the earth. In terrible Kaliyuga all the śrutis, all the Vedas, would come in the form of gopīs and play the rāsa-krīḍā with him in the rāsa-maṇḍala. At the end of Kaliyuga, prayed to by Rādhā, he would complete this secret krīḍā and descend in the form of Kalki.

Hearing this, the devas vanished from there. Sūta closes the account: only the bhaktas of Bhagavān Vishṇu know this secret.

Source: Bhavishya Purāṇa, Pratisarga Parva, Khaṇḍa 4, Chapter 5

The gopīs at the first Malla Dvādaśī

Śrī Kṛshṇa himself tells this to Yudhishṭhira. When he was eight years old, he sat on a siṃhāsana under a vaṭa tree in Bhāṇḍaura-vana, on the bank of the Yamunā. Great mallas (wrestlers) and gopīs came and did his pūjā there with curd, milk, fruit and flowers.

The Purāṇa names six of those gopīs, “and others”:

1. Gopālī
2. Dhanyā
3. Viśākhā
4. Dhyānanishṭhikā
5. Anugandhā
6. Sudhagā

The mallas named with them are Surabhadra, Maṇḍalīka, Yogavardhana and Yakshendrabhadra, “and others”. Then three hundred and sixty mallas, doing his pūjā with bhakti, held a malla-yuddha (wrestling contest), and for Śrī Kṛshṇa’s delight they held a very great utsava, with many kinds of food, go-dāna, gatherings and pūjā, and brāhmaṇas were honoured with śraddhā. From that day the Malla Dvādaśī came into practice.

Source: Bhavishya Purāṇa, Uttara Parva, Chapters 73–74

In the rite of Janmāshṭamī

In the Janmāshṭamī vrata that Śrī Kṛshṇa teaches Yudhishṭhira, the keeper of the vrata builds a sūtikā-gṛha (birth chamber) of Mother Devakī at midday and furnishes it like Gokula, with gopas and gopīs, bells, mṛdaṅga, conches and auspicious kalaśas.

Source: Bhavishya Purāṇa, Uttara Parva, Chapter 55

Vṛndāvana, hallowed by them

In the account of the bhakta Bopadeva, which Sūta tells Śaunaka, Vṛndāvana is the tīrtha hallowed by the gopas and gopīs. There Bopadeva worshipped Janārdana for a year and received jñāna from Bhagavān Śrī Hari.

Source: Bhavishya Purāṇa, Pratisarga Parva, Khaṇḍa 2, Chapter 32

Sources

• Bhāgavata Purāṇa, Skandha 1, Chapter 9; Skandha 2, Chapter 7; Skandha 3, Chapters 2–3; Skandha 7, Chapter 1; Skandha 10, Chapters 5–9, 11, 13–17, 19–25, 29–36, 38–39, 41–44, 46–47, 65, 71, 82–85, 87; Skandha 11, Chapter 12; Skandha 12, Chapters 11–12
• Bhavishya Purāṇa, Pratisarga Parva, Khaṇḍa 2, Chapter 32; Khaṇḍa 4, Chapter 5; Uttara Parva, Chapters 55, 73–74