Jayadeva
A figure from the books
#Jayadeva
Jayadeva · c. 1170–1245 CE
In the books · 1 chapter
Who this is
Sanskrit poetry and music — the Gīta Govinda, the song-poem of Krishna and Rādhā that became the fountainhead of Vaiṣṇava devotional art.
“A frankly erotic poem has been sung to God at Puri nearly every night for centuries — required by royal inscription since 1499 — because Indian tradition, at its most confident, held the erotic and the sacred in one hand and felt no need to apologize for either.”
The big idea, in the book's words:
“He set God's love life to music — and made God the one who pines. In the Gīta Govinda Krishna burns, begs and bows, and Rādhā, a human woman, is the greater of the two.”
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