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Imagining a Fluid World Pervaded by Divine Love: An Exploration of the Ideas of Broken Boundaries in Surdas’s Poem NPS 2490 Ilgin Nas Harvard University
Imagining a Fluid World Pervaded by Divine Love: An Exploration of the Ideas of Broken Boundaries in Surdas’s Poem NPS 2490 Ilgin Nas
Harvard University
Born in the fifteenth century in Braj, Surdas occupies a special place among the saguna bhakti poets of India. He began composing poems about the lilas of Krishna when he became a disciple of the Vaishnavite philosopher Vallabha. One particular poem, numbered 2490 in the Kashi Nagaripracarini Sabha edition of Sur Sagar, stands out for its unique way of demonstrating Surdas’s worldview and his religious views. In this poem, Surdas uses his own thematic and stylistic devices to break a number of standard conventions of Northern bhakti poetry while toying with the idea of overstepping boundaries. By employing a fluid narrative voice, depicting the gopi in an unconventional way, and focusing on the theme of thievery, he exemplifies the transcendence of physical, literary and social limitations. In doing so, Surdas encourages his readers to question the rules and boundaries that direct their lives, and to reevaluate the merit of these rules in facilitating their interaction with the divine.
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he word bhakti is derived from the Sanskrit root bhaj, which means “to divide, share, partake, participate, belong to.”1 The word implies “attachment, devotion to, fondness for, homage, faith or love, worship, piety to something as a spiritual, religious principle or means of salvation.”2 According to John S. Hawley, the concept of bhakti stands for the following: Bhakti is heart religion – the religion of participation, community, enthusiasm, song and often personal challenge. It evokes the idea of a widely shared religiosity for which institutional superstructures aren’t all that relevant. It implies direct divine encounter, experienced in the lives of individual people. These people, moved by that encounter, turn to poetry, which is the natural vehicle of bhakti.3 Although there were references to the concept of bhakti in ancient Indian texts such as the Shvetashvatara Upanishad, the Katha Upanishad and the Bhagavad Gita, its rise as a movement did not occur until the fifth century. The bhakti movement began in Tamil Nadu, spreading first to Karnataka and then to Maharashtra, and eventually gaining wide acceptance in Bengal and Northern India. According to Hawley, the defining characteristics of the bhakti movement are “the singing of devotional songs composed in vernacular languages by poets who have attained the status of saints” and support for “the cultivation of personal experience as against external or ritual punctiliousness”.4 While these defining qualities give bhakti the impression of a single, unified movement, there are in fact “many kinds of bhaktis”5 which differ in their preferred deities (Vishnu, Shiva, Devi), conceptualization of the divine (nirguna, saguna), time period (early, late) and regional focus (South, North). Among the saguna bhakti poets of North India, Surdas occupies a singular position. According to the earliest document that records his life, Caurasi Vaisnavan ki Varta (Conversations with eighty-four Vaishnavas), Surdas was a 16th century blind poet who lived in the Braj area. Having become a disciple of the Vaishnavite philosopher Vallabha, Surdas started to compose poems about the divine plays (or lilas) of Krishna.6 While the existing sources provide only limited information about Surdas’s personal life, the numerous old manuscripts that contain his poetry provide a deep understanding of his identity as both a philosopher and poet. Surdas is praised not only for “continuing the rich tradition of a highly erotic poetic utterance rippling down the writings of Jayadeva, Chandidasa, Vidyapati and Namadeva”, but also for making “the wisdom of the Gita”7 accessible to people by composing his poems in their local language of Braj Bhasha. His poems, compiled under the name Sur Sagar (Sur’s Ocean), are not only pieces of a literary genius but also windows into the deep internal world of this poet’s religious outlook. One of the poems worth analyzing, 1 Karen Penchilis, The Embodiment of Bhakti (US: Oxford University Press, 1999), 24. 2 Monier-Monier Williams, Monier-Williams Sanskrit English Dictionary (New Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal Publishers, 2005), “Bhakti.” 3 John Stratton Hawley, A Storm of Songs. India and the Idea of the Bhakti Movement (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015), 2. 4 Hawley, A Storm of Songs, 7. 5 A. K. Ramanujan, “Talking to God in the Mother Tongue,” India International Centre Quarterly 19 (1992): 1. 6 John Stratton Hawley, Sūr Dās: Poet, Singer, Saint (Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1984), 5. 7 Vijayendra Snatak, “Surdas’ Concept of Bhakti,” in Suradasa: A Revaluation, ed. by Nagendra (New Delhi: National, 1979): 54, 56.
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especially for its unique depiction of Surdas’s worldview, is the poem numbered 2490 in the edition of Sur Sagar, published by the Kashi Nagaripracarini Sabha. The most distinctive feature of this poem is Surdas’ overcoming of a number of boundaries using his stylistic and thematic devices. These include the fluidity of narrative voice, the unconventional depiction of the gopi (cowherd girl), and the central role which he gives to the theme of thievery. All of these exemplify various forms of overstepping and disregarding physical, literary and social boundaries. By breaking the established rules and conventions in his poem, Surdas encourages his readers to question the rules they adhere to in their lives, especially in terms of their role in human-divine interaction. One of the first and most prominent examples of how Surdas overcomes boundaries in his poem NPS 2490 is the specific fluidity of his narrative voice through which he reshapes notions of identity. The very first line of the poem makes it clear that the poem is told in the voice of a gopi, a cowherd girl living in the land of Braj. The gopi refers to Krishna with the name Gopal, and complains to her friend that he has “slipped in and stolen [her] heart”. In the following twelve lines, the narrator is still the gopi, and she reminisces about the barriers that she had erected to keep Krishna out of her life and her heart. These lines do not provide the clue about the specific identity of the gopi: while there is the possibility that she is Radha, Krishna’s most beloved gopi, she might as well be any other gopi of Braj. Hawley makes the following observation about gopis as narrators in Surdas’ poetry: So intense is the subjectivity of these poems, in which the speaker either ruminates to herself or addresses some friend, that Sur refuses to answer any question we might have as to whether this is Radha or some other woman of Braj... The reason, it seems to me, is that he understands the voice through which he speaks to be potentially of any gopi. Her words express the satisfactions and longings – particularly the longings – of them all.8 In the poems of Surdas which have Krishna as their object, the narrator is either Surdas or a gopi, which is made clear by the poem’s context, theme and style. If the narrator is a gopi, the poem doesn’t give the reader any clue about the gopi herself which might allow identification. In this case she would be completely anonymous. This stands in contrast to those poems in which the object is a gopi and the narrator is either Surdas or Krishna. In the latter type of poems, the gopi is referred to as Radha, and her physical attributes are described in minute detail. The anonymity of the gopi-narrator in the former type not only makes her the spokesperson for every single gopi – in fact, for every person whose hearts have been stolen by Krishna – but also serves to pull the reader into the poem. When the narrator is devoid of attributes the reader can easily identify himself/herself with the narrator and enjoy a firsthand experience of the feelings expressed in the poem. The possibility of identifying with the gopi-narrator is in fact realized within the poem NPS 2490 by Surdas himself. In the thirteenth line, just as Krishna steals the gopi’s heart, Surdas also steals her narrative role. Thievery is indeed the most accurate word to express the subtlety of this switch in narrative voice: the poem continues to flow smoothly even at this moment of transition in narration, while the only indicator of the change is the 8 Hawley, Sūr Dās, 89.
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phrase “says Sur”. In fact, the last two lines carry ambiguous references whether the narrator is Surdas or the gopi. While one is inclined to think that following the narrative switch in line thirteen, Surdas continues to narrate the poem in his own voice references to the act of thievery connect these two lines to the beginning of the poem in which the gopi is the narrator. This formal literary alteration makes us wonder whether it is Surdas’ or gopi’s body that is scorched with remorse? While the poem does not provide a straightforward answer to this question, a possible interpretation is offered by pushtimarga (path of grace), the Vaishnavite cult founded by Vallabhacharya to which Surdas belonged. One of the principal concepts in pushtimarga is shuddh-advaita, the belief that there is no difference between the creator and the created: the individual soul and the cosmic soul which pervades the entire universe are one. In line with this teaching, “while ascertaining the relationship between Brahma and individual soul, Surdas cited the example of the analogous relationship between fire and spark and declared the individual soul to be part of Brahma”.9 Therefore, pushtimarga holds that all humans – including Surdas, the gopi and the reader of the poem – are made up of the same divine essence, and are essentially the same. This philosophical claim suggests that the boundaries of identity which separate one individual from the other are in fact artificial, purely profane human inventions; they are unrecognized and invalid in the divine realm. By denying any boundaries of identity through his play with the narrative voice, Surdas raises questions about the general, conventional boundaries which organize and govern our material world. Simultaneously, he points to a different type of religious thinking, according to which humanity and divinity are of the same essence; the devotee and the divine are in direct contact, and there is no room for strict limits. Another example of how Surdas overcomes boundaries can be found in his unusual description of the gopi. In the poem NPS 2490, Surdas’s concept of the gopi differs from the one found in Bhagavata Purana, as well as in most bhakti poems of the North, including even other poems of Surdas himself. The crucial point of difference between the ordinary gopi and the gopi in this poem is her attitude towards social rules and conventions. Sharma explains the position of a gopi in relation to social conventions, as it is commonly described in Northern bhakti poetry, as following: ...when the quiet atmosphere of transparent nights, flooded with silvery autumnal moonlight, is filled with the melodious notes of Mohan’s flute signifying the commencement of the Divine Dance, the milkmaids rush out to the bank of the Yamuna, leaving all their routine domestic chores, crossing their traditional family bounds and transgressing all kinds of hurdles on their way. For who could withstand the call of the melodious flute? ... they throw all their familial modesty to the winds and rush out to Krishna.10
In this passage, Sharma indicates that the gopis’ attitude towards social conventions is reluctant obedience. Gopis don’t show any particular attachment to social rules and 9 Snatak, “Surdas’ Concept of Bhakti,” 68. 10 B. B. L. Sharma, “Radha of Suradasa,” in Suradasa: A Revaluation, ed. by Nagendra (New Delhi: National, 1979): 122.
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conventions, but they don’t question or challenge them either. They carry out their domestic chores and social duties, but they do it out of necessity rather than individual choice. This is ascertained by the fact that as soon as they hear Krishna’s call, they leave aside their social duties without hesitation and run to him. Therefore, it can be stated that in certain North Indian bhakti traditions, gopis do not rebel against social conventions, but they do not show any particular support or respect for them either. They are willing to ignore all duties and break every rule only for the purpose of reaching Krishna. The gopi in Surdas’s poem NPS 2490, on the other hand, embraces a completely different attitude towards social conventions. She follows social conventions not because she is forced to do it by external factors but because it is her own personal decision. Unlike the ordinary gopi, she shows strong adherence to the duties and moral values ascribed to her by the society. The following lines summarize the gopi’s stance on this point: The door was protected by all that was proper; not a corner, nothing, was left without a guard. Decency, prudence, respect for the family-these three were locks and I hid the keys.
As indicated in these lines, the gopi has internalized society’s understanding of what is considered “proper” for a married woman: “decency, prudence, respect for the family”. While in most other Northern bhakti poems these social conventions are forced onto the gopis by external players such as their parents and husbands, in this poem it is the gopi who imposes the rules onto herself – she is the one who hides the keys. Therefore, the gopi in this poem has much more agency in determining her position in relation to social conventions, and she makes a conscious decision of adhering to social and moral norms. Unlike the other gopis who, upon hearing Krishna’s call, cast aside their duties and run out of their homes, she hides behind doors that she herself has firmly locked. The difference between the attitudes of gopis as they are usually depicted in Northern bhakti poetry and that of the gopi of the poem NPS 2490 stems from the differing attitudes of the gopis towards Krishna. In most bhakti poems including those of Surdas, gopis are portrayed as being “attached to Krishna by the silken threads of eroticism right from the moment of his birth”11 and a union of desire with Krishna. The extent of the gopis’ love for Krishna can be clearly understood from the following description by Hawley: In the Krishna story one such vrat (vow) has an especially honored place: the gopis vow to bathe in the chill waters of the Jumna each morning for a month so as to be granted Krishna as their husband. [...] Sur seems to extend the mood of the vrat far beyond this one incident. The fasting and waiting that the gopis endure for the sake of the man in their lives, and the songs they sing in the process, are like a vrat that has been extended to encompass all of life, one that has deepened from the voluntary to the involuntary level.12 This passage shows the depth of the attachment, desire and longing that gopis feel for 11 Rama S. Tiwary, “The Bhagavata and Surasagara,” in Suradasa: A Revaluation, ed. by Nagendra (New Delhi: National, 1979): 96. 12 Hawley, Sūr Dās, 115.
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Krishna, and the effects of this immense love in their daily lives. The ultimate purpose of life for these gopis is to unite with Krishna; thus they spend their days engaging in activities which they believe will make this union possible. When this is the case, the gopis see domestic duties as preventing them from fulfilling their other set of duties such as bathing in the Yamuna, fasting and singing for Krishna, which will bring them closer to their ultimate goal. It is worth pointing out that it is not only unmarried girls who perform these vows to gain Krishna as their husband: married women desire union with Krishna as well, and this desire is strongly against the standard conventions of the society which dictate women to stay loyal to their husbands. Therefore, as the ultimate goal of life for these gopis is to become one with Krishna, they see no point in adhering to social conventions which are either irrelevant or detrimental to this goal. As compared to gopis in other poems – who go out of their ways to attract Krishna – the gopi of NPS 2490 struggles to avoid encounter with him. Although there is no indication as to why this is the case, certain expressions in the poem suggest that her adherence to social rules is an attempt to keep her distance from Krishna. The line “not a corner, nothing, was left without a guard” makes it explicit that the gopi’s purpose in surrounding herself with “all that is proper” is to protect herself from some sort of danger, which in this case is Krishna the thief. Similarly, the gopi’s likening of “decency, prudence and respect for the family” to locks suggests that for her, these moral rules serve as guardians against certain external threats. Thus, the gopi’s strong adherence to social conventions seems to stem less from agreement with those conventions than from the need for protection. What she sees as a threat is Krishna, who “slips into” not only the houses but also the bodies of gopis and engages in acts of thievery. While the other gopis dislike social rules for preventing their encounter with Krishna, this particular gopi embraces them for precisely the same reason. Another difference between the ordinary conceptualization of the gopi and the gopi of NPS 2490 is related to what the gopi symbolizes in religious context. In Vaishnava theology, gopis are the exemplars of bhakti philosophy; that is, as loving devotion to God. In their pursuit of union with the divine, gopis follow the path of devotion as opposed to the path of formal religion, the latter as ascribed by the Vedas. Surdas, too, uses the gopi figure in his poetry to “contrast the simple religion of the heart that the gopis’ actions epitomize with the elaborate contortions of formal religion of which yoga is the exemplar and culmination”.13 It should be noted, however, that gopis, with their insistence on imagining Krishna in physical form, represent a particular branch within the bhakti tradition in terms of their understanding of the nature of the divine: saguna bhakti, “the concept which perceives God as one having physical form or attributes”.14 This conceptualization stands in contrast to nirguna bhakti, “the concept which perceives God as unmanifest, formless, and as an experience that is beyond the limits of human expression”.15 Therefore, while the gopi image can be used to represent bhakti philosophy as opposed to ritually-oriented Vedic traditions, it can also be 13 Hawley, Sūr Dās, 97. 14 Neeti M. Sadarangani, Bhakti Poetry in Medieval India: Its Inception, Cultural Encounter and Impact (New Delhi: Sarup & Sons, 2004), 270. 15 Sadarangani, Bhakti Poetry in Medieval India, 270.
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used in debates within the bhakti milieu to represent saguna bhakti over nirguna bhakti. The latter contrast is particularly apparent in the bhramargit (the songs of/to the bee) poems of Surdas in which gopis argue with Udho, the scholar and yogi whom Krishna sends from Mathura after leaving Braj. Hawley explains Udho’s role in these poems as follows: Udho, the well-educated, well-placed expert in yoga, comes to them from Mathura with words of consolation [...] He is to console the gopis by raising their consciousness, by persuading them that in truth they have nothing to lament, for they must understand that in this world of illusion it is only the outer manifestation of Krishna who has left them. The real Krishna – the pervasive, divine, spiritual Krishna – is with them still, embedded in their inmost souls. What they need to do is adopt yoga, a discipline of concentration that will make them aware of the fact, and their troubles will be over.16 The values that Udho represents become all the more clear when the context in which Surdas wrote his poems is taken into account. Snatak writes that in the age when Surdas composed his poems, “yoga, crude and perverse and unrelated to the teachings of the shastras, was in vogue” and the mystic mode of meditation adopted by Sufi saints “gave rise to a new Nirguna school of devotional saint poets”.17 Udho’s insistence on the “pervasive, divine and spiritual” nature of Krishna, as well as his emphasis on knowledge and yogic exercise as a means of reaching the divine, echo the tenets of these trends that were on the rise during Surdas’s era. Standing in stark contrast are the gopis, who represent Surdas’s philosophy of a saguna conceptualization of the divine and love as a means for reaching the divine. In Surdas’s bhramargit poems, gopis ridicule Udho’s religious philosophy and eventually persuade him of the superiority of love to yogic exercise in interacting with the divine. The following lines exemplify gopis’ mockery of the yogic ways of life: Follow your own advice, why don’t you? Deck yourself out in your splended yoga for a ten-day trial: let’s see if Hari comes. Don your coiled coiffure, your yogic rage; slather your face and body with ash; Take your staff and whistle, your antelope skin, keep those unanointed eyelids closed, And tell us, Udho, of the truth we know is true: love’s dominant tone that thunders through the monsoon When one’s lover is lost.18
It can be inferred from this poem that gopis find the ritualistic and complex teachings of yoga to be both impractical and insufficient for enabling union with the divine. According to the gopis, the possession of unwavering love for god is the mere requirement as well as most effective means – for concentrating on the divine and feeling the divine presence. At the end of the debate between the gopis and Udho, Udho accepts the superiority of love over yoga, and returns to Mathura. Snatak writes that “the abandonment by Uddhava of the path of knowledge and the acceptance of the cult of devotion to 16 Hawley, Sūr Dās, 100. 17 Snatak, “Surdas’ Concept of Bhakti,”56. 18 Hawley, Sūr Dās, 108.
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a deity with attributes is evidence enough that, in spite of being dominated by something like conjugal love, its devotees could attain the highest state of absorption”.19 As demonstrated in the bhramargit poems, gopis in Surdas’s poetry symbolize the religion of the heart with its focus on loving devotion to a deity with attributes, as opposed to the religion that emphasizes yogic rituals and concentration on a deity without attributes. In this sense, too, the gopi in NPS 2490 stands in contrast to the ordinary gopi figure. While gopis in most bhakti poems ridicule the importance of knowledge in both their daily and religious lives, the gopi in this poem holds an opposing position, as expressed in the following lines: “And secure in my heart, a mountainous treasure: / insight, intelligence, fortitude, wit.” In most bhakti poems of the North, the hearts of gopis overflow with love for Krishna. This is true for almost all of Surdas’s poems, as previously demonstrated in the the analysis of his bhramargit poems. In these poems, the vocabulary of love is used by the gopis while words such as “knowledge” and “wit” are employed by Udho, depicting the opposite side of the debate. These two sides represent the two different perspectives through which the Brahman can be viewed: “one from nirguni knowledge-focus and other from saguni lovefocus”.20 In the poem NPS 2490, however, it is the gopi who associates herself with the values of “insight, intelligence, fortitude, wit”. This conceptualization of the gopi breaks literary conventions in two different ways. Firstly, the concepts of intelligence and wit, which are commonly associated with the mind, are here attributed to the heart. Secondly, the gopi figure which is normally depicted as an embodiment of saguna bhakti is portrayed as adhering to concepts usually associated with nirguna bhakti. Therefore, in these two lines the poet inverts the meanings of two major symbols used in bhakti poetry: the heart and the gopi. In addition to demonstrating fluidity in narrative voice and going against literary conventions about the depiction of the gopi, Surdas plays with the idea of overcome boundaries through his focus on the particular theme of thievery. The act of thievery, which is at the center of this poem, is an epitome of the overstepping of both physical and ethical boundaries. It should be noted, however, that this is not the only poem in which Surdas explores the theme of thievery: in fact, among Surdas’s poems describing Krishna’s infancy, the most highly praised are those about the butter thievery game (makhan chori lila or navanitacaurya). They tell how Krishna stole butter from his foster mother Yashoda and other gopis. There are two other variations of this theme of butter thievery, namely the dan lila and cir haran lila. Hawley explains that in dan lila poems, “a slightly older Krishna blocks the rod as the gopis make their way to nearby Mathura to sell their milk products”, and demands a tax or a gift (dan) before letting them pass; and in cir haran lila poems, “Krishna spirits away the gopis’ clothes as they perform their early morning ablutions in the Jumna river”.21 A tracing of this theme in the wider Hindu literary tradition reveals that among the “three incidents that issue out of Krishna’s propensity to steal - the tax on the road, the clothes at the river, and the butter thievery -”22, only the last is in detail described in the earlier texts such as the Harivamsa, Vishnu, Brahma and Bhagavata Puranas. In the bhakti literary tradition, however, the theme of Krishna’s thievery plays a central role. The myth about baby Krishna’s butter thievery which gave rise to a large corpus of poems is still widely told, sang, and acted out all over South Asia. According to this myth, baby Krishna has an 19 20 21 22
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Snatak, “Surdas’ Concept of Bhakti,” 68. Jeaneane D. Fowler, The Bhagavad Gita (Portland: Sussex Academic Press, 2012), 211. John Stratton Hawley, Krishna, the Butter Thief (New Jersey: Princeton University Press, 1983), 22. Hawley, Krishna, the Butter Thief, 28.
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insatiable appetite for butter. Whenever his foster mother Yashoda is busy doing housework, he sneaks into the room where she churns butter and digs into pots and pots of butter. Not only does he eat the butter but he also smears it all over himself and the room. At other times, Krishna sneaks into the houses of gopis and eats the butter that they had churned and carefully hidden. Even if the gopis return home to witness the thievery, they become so transfixed by Krishna’s beauty that they can’t intervene. In a number of instances both Yashoda and the gopis attempt to tie up baby Krishna, but even this fails to pacify him: he slips out of the boundaries of the rope and resumes his thievery. Later on as he grows into an adolescent, the object of his thievery changes from butter to the hearts of the gopis. The poem NPS 2490 by Surdas is one such poem in which Krishna is depicted as the thief of hearts. Starting from the very first line, the gopi accuses Krishna of thievery: “Gopal has slipped in and stolen my heart”. In order to reach the object of his thievery, the gopi’s heart, Krishna overcomes a number of boundaries. The first set of boundaries that he overcomes are “exterior guardians, the guarantors of propriety”23: he walks past the parents and husbands crowding the courtyard, slips through doors protected by all that is proper, breaks open the locks of decency and finally enters through the gopi’s eyelids. The next set of obstacles that he just as easily overcomes are the “innermost guards” of insight, intelligence, fortitude and wit, which Hawley interprets as the “faculties that have been steeled by years of experience to protect the heart’s treasure”.24 In the end, Krishna steals this vast treasure and invades the gopi’s breast. What makes Krishna’s act of breaking in all the more impressive is the ease with which he does it. It doesn’t seem to take him any effort to get through the barriers which the gopi has erected with utmost care: he breaks through the doors “simply by looking”, and steals the heart’s treasure only “with a thought and a laugh and a look”. The spontaneity of Krishna’s movements is reflected in the language that the gopi uses to describe him: the phrases “slipping in”, “stealing through” and “invading” emphasize Krishna’s fluid, flowing, pervading attributes. Eventually, all the boundaries are overcome and all that remains is an endless love and longing for Krishna. The poem NPS 2490 as well stories about Krishna, the butter thief, demonstrate that Krishna overcomes a number of physical and ethical boundaries at the moment of his thievery. He slides through house gates, enters through room doors, digs into butter pots, slides through eyelids and dives into women’s breasts. While engaging in these acts, he not only disregards social rules about privacy and propriety, but also entices others, especially the gopis, to disregard them as well. Even when his mother Yashoda or the gopis tie him up, he slips out of the rope and continues with his acts of thievery: he cannot be bound for he knows no boundaries. The poems and stories which tell of the ease with which Krishna slips through physical or human-made boundaries demonstrate his divine nature and underline his immense power. In addition to this, it could be said that they suggest that the physical and social boundaries that organize the lives of humans are not recognized by Krishna. In other words, a different set of rules underlies the actions of the divine. Krishna engages in acts of thievery not with the intention of defying the rules of the human realm, but because he adheres to a transcendent set of rules – the rules of the divine realm. What is considered as transgression from the perspective of the human realm is perhaps the norm in the divine realm. Hawley writes the following interpretation of the idea of alternative organizational systems: 23 Hawley, Krishna, the Butter Thief, 149. 24 Hawley, Krishna, the Butter Thief, 149.
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Maryada (propriety) is the realm of structure, the realm in which boundaries are indices of meaning. Prem (love) is the realm that defies structuring, the realm where something altogether different determines the lines of force. Prem is thought of as the medium defined by ras (mood, taste, liquidity). It is the liquid medium, whereas maryada, by implicit contrast, is the realm of the solid. Boundaries apply in the latter case but not in the former.25 Using this terminology, it could be said that although Krishna physically inhabits maryada, the realm of structure, he adheres to the values of prem, the realm of love. While from the maryada point of view Krishna’s acts are seen as acts of thievery, the prem point of view considers them as Krishna’s reclaiming of what is already his.26 Therefore, the theme of Krishna’s thievery serves to demonstrate that there is more than one way of viewing and organizing the world, and living one’s life. Krishna’s portrayal as adhering to the principles of prem, not only in this particular poem by Surdas but also in most other Northern bhakti poems, seems to suggest a preference for love and devotion over structure and discipline in religious practice. In conclusion, it can firmly be stated that in his poem NPS 2490, Surdas plays with the idea of overcoming all boundaries. He portrays this theme by using his own literary and stylistic devices that put specific emphasis on the central themes he explores. His unusual conceptualization of the gopi opposes literary conventions of how the gopi is usually depicted and what the gopi represents in Northern bhakti literary tradition. The fluidity of the narrative voice in his poem raises questions about the boundaries of identity that separate the gopi from Surdas, one individual from the other, and human from divine. His focus on the theme of Krishna’s thievery brings up the idea of a different, alternative realm, in which boundaries are not the indices of meaning. By returning to the idea of breaking rules and overcoming boundaries in multiple aspects of his poem, Surdas forces his readers to question the physical, social and ethical rules that operate in their daily and religious lives. He makes us wonder questions such as: How many of these boundaries are natural, and how many are artificial, erected by humans? How many of these rules are useful in defining one’s relationship with other humans, and with the divine? What is the merit, in the divine realm, of abiding by the physical, social and moral rules that structure human realm? Is there a different way of conceptualizing the human realm that is more in line with the laws of the divine realm? Krishna’s depiction as a thief, the principal rule-breaker, suggests that the divine is in fact indifferent to the rules of human realm. Consequently, adhering to these rules does not necessarily imply being bestowed with divine grace. As an alternative way for earning this divine grace, Surdas suggests the nurturing of an all-pervading love which renders all humanmade rules insignificant and instills one with the power to overcome all artificial boundaries. Thus, Surdas imagines a fluid world pervaded by a love for the divine, in which every heart is invaded by the divine and every soul is indeed the divine.
25 Hawley, Krishna, the Butter Thief, 275. 26 Hawley, Krishna, the Butter Thief, 277.
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Works Cited “Bhakti.” Monier-Williams Sanskrit English Dictionary. 2005. Print. Fowler, Jeaneane D. The Bhagavad Gita. Portland: Sussex Academic Press, 2012. Print. Hawley, John Stratton. A Storm of Songs. India and the Idea of the Bhakti Movement. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2015. Print. Hawley, John Stratton. Krishna, the Butter Thief. Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1983. Print. Hawley, John Stratton. Sūr Dās: Poet, Singer, Saint. Seattle: University of Washington Press, 1984. Print. Hawley, John Stratton, and Mark Juergensmeyer. Songs of the Saints of India. New York: Oxford UP, 1988. Print. Penchilis Prentiss, Karen. The Embodiment of Bhakti. US: Oxford University Press, 1999. Print. Ramanujan, A. K. “Talking to God in the Mother Tongue.” India International Centre Quarterly 19 (1992): 53–64. Web. Sadarangani, Neeti M. Bhakti Poetry in Medieval India: Its Inception, Cultural Encounter and Impact. New Delhi: Sarup & Sons, 2004. Print. Sharma, B. B. L. Radha of Suradasa.” Suradasa: A Revaluation. Ed. by Nagendra. New Delhi: National, 1979. 122. Print. Snatak, Vijayendra. “Suradasa’s Concept of Bhakti.” Suradasa: A Revaluation. Ed. by Nagendra. New Delhi: National, 1979, 54-68. Print. Tiwary,Rama S. “The Bhagavata and Surasagara.” Suradasa: A Revaluation. Ed. Nagendra. New Delhi: National, 1979. 96. Print.
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