Jagat

This post was on Vrindavan Today a while back, but I am adding it here because of the dana theme, which we are covering more or less exhaustively on this site. Without commentary here. ========== Fateh Krishna Ji pays sashtanga pranams to the swaroops before the performance. Vrindavan, 2011.08.13 ( VT ): Today was the last day of the Rasa Lila at Jai Singh Ghera. I have been coming down with a cold and there has been a certain amount of fatigue involved in producing this series, as shallow a presentation as it has been. Still, I am happy that my initiation into this Braj tradition was such a delightful one. My limitations in understanding the language were, at times, acute. Since humorous argument delivered rapid fire seems to be a staple of the Rasa Lila, these limitations were especially evident in plays like today's, the Dana Lila, in which such argument dominates. The dāna-līlā is a subject I have some interest in, as I have been working on Dāna-keli-kaumudī for some...

The dana-lila has so many manifestations. Here is another one that had passed me by. I posted this on Vrindavan Today today, crossposting here: Women spectators crowded on the slope. Barsana, 2011.09.14 (VT): The Radhastami celebrations at Barsana turn into a festival that lasts a week. On the Bhadra Trayodasi, which this year fell on September 10, people in Barsana run from door to door through the village with young boys on their shoulders. Dressed as Krishna and Radharani with her girlfriends, these young boys are given yogurt and sweets at each house. This tradition is a part of the Sankari Khor pastime, which is all about Krishna stopping Radharani and her friends and asking them to pay taxes for their yogurt and other wares. It is also known as the burhi-lila festival, It is reenacted every year in a very special way at the Sankari Khor site itself. The custom is said to have been inaugurated by Shri Narayan Bhatt, one of the 16th century stalwarts of Braja bhakti, the...

Original title: DKK: Daily classes at SRSG: Verse 5 I am trying to get my translation and commentary on the Dāna-keli-kaumudī along with an update of the article I presented at JNU last year for publication. As a part of that, I have been giving evening classes on DKK here to a small audience. The ashram is nearly empty and those who are left have to be extraordinarily motivated to come to listen to me speak, quite understandably. So I am happy to get an audience of one or two persons. We have been moving rather more slowly than originally expected, and for the last three days we have managed to do only one verse a day, from three to five, the last of which we really only just began. Verses three and four technically belong to the prastāvanā portion of the play. They describe and explain the ecstatic symptoms of the devotees. Today, I chanted my kirtan alone, as my small audience was late, and as I was reciting my own mangalacharana, I imagined my own audience -- Sri Rupa Gos...

This is the paper I presented in New Delhi on March 10, 2010, at the Jawarhalal Nehru University Centre for Historical Studies conference named "Devotion and Dissent in Indian History." Introduction: Symbol as Dissent Generally speaking, when talking about the relationship of religion to revolution, we are talking about some relationship of the ideal values inculcated in religious movements and their relationship to social justice. In this paper, I would rather like to discuss the relationship between such values as represented by the religious symbol of Radha and Krishna and what it can tell us of sexuality and sexual relationships, including the status of women. I am adopting a Jungian view of religious symbols as products of the collective unconscious, by which I mean that they spring from a non-verbal fountain of ideas, and have sustained power to provide meaning and a sense of the sacred. As such, they may produce a huge theological and hermeneutical superstructure aroun...

I have been writing about the folk and classical versions of the dāna-keli-līlā , in particular with reference to its classicization in the DKK. My point has been that the difference between the folk tradition and the classical is similar to most low-brow and high-brow culture. In one of my last posts , I gave the analogy of folk music to a symphony, or folk stories to an opera as being the kind of distinction that could be made. There will always be people who favor one or the other, but I think it can be said without too much exaggeration that the latter does require and expect a greater amount of education, or saṁskāra , on the part of the audience. This will, as we have been discussing in the comments on some articles on culture, always be a point of contention: how to popularize something while at the same time making its full power and richenss available; the whole question is one of throwing pearls before swine. I have been reading a couple of nice books that go into many of...

In keeping with classical Sanskrit dramatic forms, Dāna-keli-kaumudī (DKK) begins with a nāndī of two verses, the equivalent of a maṅgalācaraṇa in other Sanskrit texts. Both of these verses are quoted in Caitanya-caritāmṛta , which will give us some clues as to their significance and in turn help us to determine which elements make Rupa Goswami's vision of the dāna-līlā differ from that of Chandidas (SKK) and Devakinandan Singh in Gopala-vijaya (GoVi). Some of these differences will appear completely predictable to many readers, others not. At any rate, let us carry on with this exercise with the goal of enriching our reading of DKK and increasing our devotion to our Prema Thakurani, Srimati Radharani. What is immediately noticeable in the first verse is how Rupa Goswami unabashedly indicates his has adapted a longstanding description of the dramaticians. In the Caitanya-caritāmṛta , when Mahaprabhu and his associates are appreciating Rupa's plays, Ramananda Raya (who h...

(2) vibhur api kalayan sadābhivṛddhiṁ gurur api gaurava-caryayā vihīnaḥ muhur upacita-vakrimāpi śuddho jayati muradviṣi rādhikānurāgaḥ Though all-pervading, it increases at every moment; Nothing as serious, yet always lighthearted; Full of twists and turns, yet always straight and pure: Ever glorious is Radha’s love for the enemy of Mura. The second verse of the nāndī shares several common features with the first. First of all, both differ from the usual invocatory prayers in no particular god is being addressed, invoked or supplicated. Here, as in the first verse, where Radha’s anubhāva known as kilakiñcita was seen as the source of blessings, the sthāyi-bhāva of anurāga has been singled out for a declaration of victory. The basic definition of anurāga , which will be discussed in greater detail below, is given in the Ujjvala-nīlamaṇi as follows: sadānubhūtam api yaḥ kuryān nava-navaṁ priyam rāgo bhavan nava-navaḥ so’nurāga itīryate When Rāga becomes ever newer and...