November 17, 2009 

It has rightly been said that dance is the art form par excellence that best reflects the human condition, for dance reflects a state of being or human consciousness at the highest order of both sensual evocation and spiritual discipline. The concept of movement and stillness, the circle and the centre, as paradigms of life and ultimate reality, appear early in the Indian tradition and the passage from the Svetasvatara seem to presage the many circular dances that exist both as theatrical performances and artistic representations and especially the rasa lila of Krishna.  

Dance is primal and through its movement, captures certain cosmic truths. Of all the dances the rasa lila of Krishna is a central and defining event in the Puranas and especially in the dashama skanda of Srimad Bhagavata Purana, which not only brings Krishna's romantic association with the gopis to a climax but one in which he expresses his bheda abheda, identity and difference, a persona and a theological concept that is the quintessential position of Vaishnavism. In Vaishnava thought, as opposed to Shaivism, Vishnu is not just transcendent but immanent, not a distant divinity but a god in our midst, for he participates in the lives and rhythms of mankind, giving freely of himself to each and every one and ensuring that he is lovingly and completely available to his devotees; as samsara evolves he remains totally involved in their lived lives, holding aloft the Govardhan mountain under which samsara can find security and sustenance and more than any other godhead Vishnu through his avatara of Krishna, conveys the true meaning of love.  
 

Badal Mahal, Bundi

Kapila Vatsyayan writes:  

It is thus evident that between the period of Harivamsha (latest date suggested third century AD)  and Shrimad Bhagavata (about 10th century AD) on the one hand and the Sanskrit kavyas and  natakas on the other, the Krishna theme, and the rasa in particular, was known to many parts of India  and constituted a key motif of mythological, poetic and dramatic writing. (p. 174)

It is interesting to note that Jain texts of this period also mention the rasa. From then on circular dances called variously rasa, rasaka, hallishaka and charchari were well known and discoursed in texts on dance and music. It has been suggested that "the hallishaka (out of all the circular dances) mentioned in the Harivamsha denoting a circular dance of many women around one man, may have been the earliest." (P. 174) The rasa became an important part of the literature of the bhashas and thus entered the pushtimarg Vaishnava tradition particularly in Gujarat and Rajasthan and equally in Bihar and Orissa and was subsequently taken to Assam and Manipur when Vaishnavism spread there. However, Vrindavana remained the hub of the Bhagavata faith and Vaishnavas from all parts of India gathered there to celebrate the love of Krishna and returned to their homes and carried the rasa, in all its theatrical richness with them. The dancing and the fluting Krishna became the leitmotif of Vaishnava literature across the country and it is not surprising that artists in Rajput courts were greatly touched by it. We are here mainly concerned with the painted rasa lila and not so much with its representation in the other arts, although in a sense they cannot be separated as one feeds on the other.  
 

Pichhwai, 19th century, Tapi Collection

Pichhwai-detail

Rasa is not only ancient but equally primal and is reminiscent of the ghotul of the tribals where young men and women gather on a full moon night for romantic and erotic pleasures, reminding us that the Krishna of the Bhagavata belongs as much to the adivasis as to the sophisticates, that the rasa is the coming together of the many streams of knowledge, the northern Vedantic stream of transcendence, the southern Tamilian stream of ecstasy and the autochthonous stream of erotic pleasures.  

The rasa pancha dhyayi of the Bhagavata Purana begins on this important note:  

And Surdas echoes the same sentiment when he says:  

The jasmine flowers, variously called malati, mallika, jati and yuthika define the sensuality of the romantic nights in which the rasa unfolds. Its fragrance excites and allures the gopis. As the Bhagavata states:  

If the jasmine evokes sensuality, the night blooming lotus suggests spirituality:  

The first and an important point in the commencement of the rasa lila is Krishna's flute inviting the gopis for the dance. In this invitation is the tacit presumption that the gopis are the perfect bhaktas, that the time is right for them to move their shringara rasa to a higher level of shringara bhakti and it is Krishna's flute that invites them to begin that period of transformation. The gopis wait till they are called, underscoring the important dictum that it is god who chooses his bhakta and not the other way around. They had assembled nightly for their rasa on the banks of the Yamuna but tonight was sharada purnima and it was different. Krishna's flute is not just music but an invitation to the yoga of love, in its melody there is a beckoning to move the mind from sensuality to spirituality, in its sweet notes there is a call to transform the mundane time bound samsara to a world of eternity, in its sound there is the allure of the higher domains of love. Without that call of Krishna's flute, the gopis would remain in the limited world or prakriti and unable to taste the vast and boundless purusha.  
 

Chamba Ruma, 20th century, Dehejia Collection

The rasa is now ready to begin. It is a beautiful full moon night in sharada when the moon seems so much bigger and closer, red like fresh saffron; when the sky is clear and the waters of the Yamuna are limpid, it is a time of the year when the autumnal light is luminous, when the earth trembles with excitement of a rich harvest, when night blossoming jasmine and the blue lotus are radiant and there is a certain expectancy in the air, and when along with the earth the heart throbs, romantic feelings pulsate and the mind reaches out for amorous embraces and a mood of romantic anticipation and longing is everywhere, visible and palpable, as Krishna plays his flute and beckons the gopis to join him in the rasa dance. The gopis resemble flashes of lightning engulfed by Krishna who looks like a ring of dark clouds.  

The Bhagavata says:  

The night sky with its bright stars and white cloudless sky was like the intellect  which is all sattva guna...the rivers..were flowing softly and very gently. The very air  was perfumed with the scent of flowers which began to bloom again.  Vrindavana was drenched in beauty.

The place where the rasa dance was held was sprinkled with saffron.  The dust of the earth there acquired the perfume of camphor.  The spot was full of beautiful flowers of different colours. (P. 257)

The rasa lila is not a mere dance for entertainment or recreation, nor just a romantic activity. Vallabhacharya is emphatic about Krishna's intentions in participating in this and says that the main purpose of this rasa lila is to create and manifest shringara rasa in the gopis.  

Kota, 17th century, Dehejia collection

The circular dance of the gopis is like the movement of the earth around the radiant sun, a sun that gives freely of its energy and light, where every gopi feels connected to Krishna just like a spoke of a wheel to its centre, and every living being on earth to the sun. The rasa is not merely a dance but is a paradigm of the earth and its movements, its rhythms and sounds, but it is even more. There in the rasa a pulsating, throbbing rasa, as eyes meet and hands are clasped and as every gopi experiences Krishna, there is within her an amorous delight, a joyous thrill, an excitement and a fulfillment, a realisation of the pleasure of togetherness with each other and with Krishna, a pleasure that is shared by the blossoms and the birds of all of Vrindavana. When the gopis gather and join hands and form a circle they are expressing their commonality, they are stating that this is a satsang, a gathering of like minded people in the pursuit of something supra-mundane, and that they are about to bring their love to a climax, their shringara rasa is about to be transformed into shringara bhakti and finally to rest in the samadhi of shringara. The rasa lila thus becomes no mere dance but a yoga of shringara and like all other yogas leads to ultimate knowledge.  
 

Delhi-Agra, 1525-40, Philadelphia Museum of Art

It is significant that the Bhagavata describes Krishna looking like a resplendent emerald set in a ring of gold. The natural colour of Krishna is the blue black of the clouds of ashadha but after the amorous dalliance with the gopis, and as the rasa lila begins, he assumes the colour green, that of emerald. Krishna has changed, his colour is now not blue but green, because of the influence of the golden hue of the gopis. He has not only given his love to the gopis but has in equal measure received love from the gopis and this has transformed him, and this the Bhagavata shows through the change in colour. Even Krishna is not immune from the boundless love of the gopis which underscores another important Vaishnava tenet that not only do the avataras of Vishnu descend to earth and are a part of the lived lives of their devotees, but are in the process touched, transformed and conquered by their love. Krishna is not distant and impregnable, for he admits tat priyam priyah, I am your beloved; he is neither aloof and uninvolved, but the stream of love and longing flows equally from the gopis to Krishna and from Krishna back to the gopis, it is a love where the circle is drawn to the centre and the centre in turn gives of itself to the movement of the circle; god and the devotee are equal partners in the dance of love. Thus it is that Krishna is green in colour during the rasa lila, and this motif becomes another example of how merely through the use of colours, the poet and the artist can express the many shades and nuances, the depth and the meaning of Krishna's love. Bilvamangala describes Krishna thus:  

In the Caitanya Caritramrita, Ramananda speaks to Chaitanya and says: "His sweetness increases when mingling with the goddesses of Vraja."  
 

Jaipur, 19th century, National Museum, Delhi

While the rasa lila takes place within the limitations of time and space yet there are suggestions that the rasa dance takes place in time that is beyond time, it is a sacred time, and the full moon of sharada becomes the night of Brahma, where there is fullness and no fragmentation, just being not becoming, where man and god are not divided or distant but in one blissful embrace and the sacredness of this remains as long as the gopis are interlocked with each other, their hands clasped, protecting the space within from the profanity of the world. In the Sursagar of Surdas, we find this description of the night of Brahma:  

Brahmavaivarta Purana, Assam, 1836, India Office, British Library

The ecstasy of (romantic) rapture promises continuity of being. We so profoundly  long to experience that state of being which links us with the all. The condition of man  is to yearn for a flowing harmonious togetherness, a communion with others. Through  religion man seeks to restore the lost continuity, the vanished unity of being, of oneness  with the all. The universe longs to regain its primordial state of oneness and seeks to  reverse the fragmentation. Everything real and actual in any meaningful sense concerning  the living stream of Indian religion can only be understood from a viewpoint of receptivity  that is participative. The fundamental continuity, the flowing coalescence of all things,  washes over us like the waves of a warm ocean.

Bilvamangala describes this in an oft repeated verse:  

Kota,17th century, Dehejia collection

Krishna's presence has converted Vrindavana on that full moon night into a celestial paradise and even the gods rain flowers on them to express their delight as gandharvas, the celestial musicians play music. Clearly there is the correspondence between the microcosm of the gopis and the macrocosm of Krishna, a connection between the earth and the sky, between the one and the many and the many to the ultimate One, a movement from the sensual to the spiritual, between prakriti and purusha. The rasa if properly understood, is a dance of transformation, of knowledge, of realisation, of divine intimacy, of love that moves to a perfect state of being. In the ultimate analysis, the rasa lila of Krishna is a lila with himself, as the gopis who are perfect devotees, are nothing but emanations of himself. In a passage in the Brihadaranayka Upanishad, we are told:  

This cryptic Vedantic thought resonates well with the concept of the rasa lila.  

The rasa lila has also been described as the rasa mandala. Quite simply, a mandala is a group that find security in being together and bond together in pursuing a common cause. In a mandala, individuality is subverted to commonality, the person is less important than the group, and personal preferences give way to the good of the group and for a higher purpose. A mandala is also a visual diagram that attempts to do just that by creating visual forces which on deep contemplation shape the mind. Schweig correctly points out that "various mandala configurations and designs were incorporated in ancient sacrificial rites during the Vedic period because they were thought to be powerfully emblematic of the cosmos. Such configurations also functioned on a more internal level as an aid in various forms of yogic and tantric meditation, stimulating subtle energies within the body." (p. 174) The visual mandala is primarily a support for meditation and helps the process of reintegration of the alienated soul with the cosmic principle and thus becomes a yoga in its own right. The rasa lila of Krishna and the gopis is not just an ordinary mandala but a living mandala where the gopis transform their love for Krishna into a grand spectacle of dance, ostensibly for romantic pleasures, but Krishna ensures that the mandala, through the various steps of the rasa lila leads ultimately to self-awareness and knowledge. As Tucci has succinctly stated:  

The representation of the divine cycles in the form of a mandala is  not the result of arbitrary construction, but the reflection in appropriate paradigms  of personal intuitions. By an almost innate power the human spirit translates  into visual terms the eternal contrast between the essential luminosity of its  consciousness and the forces which obscure it. From this process cognition is acquired."  (P. 36 The Theory and Practice of the Mandala, London, 1961)

Drawing, 19th century, Rajasthan

The many nuanced and multi layered rasa lila is the climax of the romantic dalliance of the gopis but even more, it is an event of fundamental aesthetic and religious significance. It is here that the all important Vaishnava concept of shringara bhakti is brought alive, a concept that is then carried forward into the Vaishhnava sampradaya both at Nathadwara and Jagannatha.  

Spink is right in saying that Krishna's lila can be considered, ultimately, to be a lila of Krishna with himself, sva-pratibimba vibhramah or playing with his own reflection. The jiva or the gopis are a part of Krishna and Krishna was able to be with sixteen thousand gopis at once because of the power of his svarupa to be manifest in an infinite number of forms without any effect on his true nature. The rasa lila is ultimately about stillness and not about movement, for even though Krishna multiplies and takes part in the circular dance holding hands with gopis on both sides, he also stands at the still centre of the rasa; that is the source of energy, it is that unmoving centre which makes movement possible, and into which all movement must end. It is when Krishna leaves and the mandala is dissolved that movement leads to stillness, shringara to shringara bhakti, a group activity becomes a personal search for the ultimate meaning of love. It is Krishna's flute that ensures that the rasa takes place outside time and beyond space, in a time which is beyond time and in a space that converts the earthly gokul to the celestial goloka, where:  

According to Vaishnava doctrine, the timeless and endless rasa lila of Krishna is the source of a stream of rasa that flows perpetually from the eternal Vrindavana to the earth and further it is this same rasa that flows as a stream of rasa to and between mankind. It is a timeless dance in which the divine and the human lose themselves in the rhythms, movements and melodies of pure love. It is only fitting that the rasa lila has been called sarva lila chuda mani, the crest jewel of all lilas of Krishna. The rasa lila is a river and a fountain which has no beginning and no end, it is a stream so broad that it has no other shore, it is an ocean of nectar and of youth, of life and vitality, of joy and bliss. To drink its waters is to find love and to be touched by its waters is to find freedom, to be blessed by it is to find divinity and to be nourished by it is to find oneself, for has it not been said rasa iva saha. 
 

 
Harsha V Dehejia has a double doctorate, one in medicine and the other in Ancient Indian Culture, both from Mumbai University. He is a practicing Physician and an Adjunct Professor of the Division of Religion in the College of Humanities at Carleton University in Ottawa, ON., Canada. His special interest is in Indian Aesthetics. He has 12 books to his credit. He writes mostly on Krishna.