Can you make a beautiful RadhaAstami tag for this thread too?
Originally posted by: metacrisis
Sure! This is mostly from what I remember from my childhood, so others if you know more about these, please do pitch in. ❤️
In my understanding, Radha is an exceptionally dynamic character, who dared to control her own life and succeeded, despite her contemporary societal norms.
For us, Krishna and Radha exist outside the confines of the Mahabharata timeline, and they exist throughout time and space, revealing themselves in every song, and prayer, and prose ever written. They appear as imagined by Jayadeva, Chandidas, Rami, Govindadas, Vidyapati, Lalon Fakir, Karim Das and Rabindranath Tagore. Each of these poets (and more) express their Radha glowing in defiance of their contemporary society.
In Bengali mythology, there are a few different streams the story takes:
- Radha is Shiva's avatar, and Krishna is Kali's. This happened as a result of Shiva and Kali both challenging each other by taunting that they won't be able to survive as a person of the other gender. This I believe is a fantastic example of Bengal's rich Shakti traditions mixing sweetly with its Vaishnav roots.
- Radha is married to Ayan Ghosh, a soldier in Kamsa's army, and she is an aunt of Krishna by marriage. Here, Radha is older than Krishna, and she is the one that drives this relationship.
Radha in these traditions, is stronger, older, much more assertive in her pursuit of Krishna and defiant of the unfair societal norms. In these stories, she is not a daughter of some fancy King, but just a random gopi from a village in the middle of nowhere. This ends up especially significant, as this girl from nowhere becomes the very foundation of Krishna's overall personality.
This is the same Radha that wears the name kalankini as a badge of honour. She doesn't just stand quietly beside Krishna being a prop to his shenanigans, but she actually goes out and fights for him. Now, that's a woman to look up to!
In most Bengali traditions, Radha-Krishna's separation is final. One fine morning, Akrura comes in with the truth about Krishna's parentage and by evening Krishna is gone forever, and that is the end of their relationship. This separation of theirs is almost sacred, to the point that making them meet, even decades later seems somewhat of a snub to their great sacrifice.
- I've also read another version, which pretty much recreated Ramayan's Uttara Kand with Radha-Krishna and Radha's twin manasa sons Suchitra and Vichitra. In this version, though Krishna meets the kids after the Kurukshetra war, Radha still refuses to meet him.
As far as I remember (I might be dreaming this part also), Krishna and Radha just sit on opposite sides of a wall without ever talking, until Krishna has to finally go back to Dwarka.
Wow, I never knew about any of these stories. These stories truly defines Radha’s character strength and her ultimate sacrifice. And that Normal Gopi wala part is also there in one of the poems I listened - वो गाँव की ग्वालिन, संतों की वाणी बन गई।
This was the exact line, which depicts that Radha was not any incarnation but a normal cowherd girl and the divine love she shared with Krishna was what made her immortal.
Tag?? Kaise??
Originally posted by: Rani_Sahiba
Wow, I never knew about any of these stories. These stories truly defines Radha’s character strength and her ultimate sacrifice. And that Normal Gopi wala part is also there in one of the poems I listened - वो गाँव की ग्वालिन, संतों की वाणी बन गई।
This was the exact line, which depicts that Radha was not any incarnation but a normal cowherd girl and the divine love she shared with Krishna was what made her immortal.
Wow, I was thinking of that exact line when I was writing the thing! ❤️
Radha is a very important character in other ways as well. She is the result of a long anti-caste movement in Bengal at the tail end of the Bhakti movement in India as a whole. In fact, she is first mentioned in Brahma Vaivarta Puran (11th century-ish) and Geeta Govindam (12th century). She is surprisingly modern as compared to some of the other Gods/Goddesses.
Originally posted by: Rani_Sahiba
Tag?? Kaise??
Jaise sab celebration thread pe rehte hain...waise hi wala title tag.
Mujhe animated banana nhi aata😅 if pic is fine wid u then i can try
comment:
p_commentcount