Kṛṣṇakarṇāmṛtam, with the Suvarṇacaśaka Ṭīkā of Pāpayallayya Sūri - Introduction

The following is an exhaustive introduction by Sundararama Iyer to Kṛṣṇakarṇāmṛta, published by Vani Vilas Press, Srirangam, Pub. 1911.

INTRODUCTION. 

The Krishna-Karnamrita is, as the name itself denotes, a book of living and passionful songs in praise of the beauties and glories of Sri Krishna's physical form and its limbs which fill the ear with the rapture of their melody. The Hindus have always delighted to fill their hearts and ears with the ineffable joy and sweetness of listening to the musician who can catch and convey to them the perfection of perfervid emotion and passionate love which filled the soul of the poet who, becoming immersed in the fathomless depths and drunk with the delicious nectar of his faith in the Lord, poured forth these marvellous and stirring strains so as to enable those who came after him to realise, as he himself had done, the wondrous and bewitching charm of the Lord's perfect form and person. There is only one other Indian "Song of Songs," Jayadeva's Gita-Govinda, also devoted to Sri Krishna-which has equally won the heart and captured the imagination of every part of this land of Bharatavarsha and every section of its people. The Hindus have always claimed that their Vedic faith is so unique that they alone as a community can truly appreciate its offers and profit by its values;—they hold that its methods of practice and the resulting inner spiritual experiences can carry their appeal only to those who, after having been unsatisfied and unenlightened rovers amidst many lands and communities, have, through the Lord's saving grace, gained the privilege of birth in this Holy Land of Bharatavarsha so that they might be enabled to end their weary round of pilgrimage and find its goal in the blessed feet of Sri Krishna and in his own world of Heaven. The purity and perfection of the Supreme Love which is the Lord's own Personality (Svarupa), comprehending within its sweep and embrace the entire universe of existence, was manifested here alone in human form, but also as the soul of all embodied souls in that universe. The Bhagavata-Purana states this latter fact as follows:- "एते चांशकला पुंस: कृष्णस्तु भगवान् स्वयम्-१/३/२८". "These incarnations (previously mentioned) are either merely sparks (fractions) of the Supreme Being, or striking manifestations of his might and majesty; but Krishna is verily the Lord Himself.” This is the most important and central fact to be remembered in connection with Sri Krishna. That He is the Supreme Lord and Creator is made clear not only in the Bhagavata which claims to be specially intended to proclaim to the world the nature of his personality and the import of his incarnation on earth, but is also explained in the Bhagavad-Gita which purports to be a revelation by himself of his own nature and appearance and a proclamation of the leading principles of eternal truth and righteousness. He there explains not only his aim in his Incarnation on earth as "the protection of the good, the destruction of the doers of wickedness, and the establishment of Dharma" (IV. 7. 8), but also that his birth and deeds on earth are divya i.e. that they have not, like those of ordinary men, a material origin and significance, but are spiritual and divine (IV. 9). He further tells us in this same connection about those who truly comprehended and realised the divine quality of his person and deeds on earth, that "after leaving the body they would have no further birth, but reach Himself” (IV. 9). Vidura too, when asking Maitreya to narrate to him the story of Sri Krishna, speaks as follows (Bhagavata, Third Skandha, Chap. V. 15, 16):—'Narrate to us, even as the bee gathers honey from flowers, for our (everlasting) happiness, the story—the most excellent of all of the life of this Hari of spotless glory, of Him who bestows the joy (of salvation) on all and who is the friend of all who are distressed in heart. Narrate to me 

the deeds, surpassing all human capacity for achievement (कर्माण्यतिपूरुषाणि), which He—the Supreme Lord—performed, (He) who, having already invested himself with his supreme might for the purpose of creating, preserving and destroying the universe, has (now) made his incarnation on earth." Furthermore, Sri Krishna says, in the Bhagavad Gita (Chap. IX, 11), that "because he was working with what appeared a human form, those fools who did not know that he was the Supreme Being Himself treated him with disdain.” The meaning is that, though he seemed to others to have a human form owing to the spell of his magic power of Maya over their minds, he did not cease, even on earth, to be the Supreme Lord, too, of the universe, untouched by matter and free from all egotistic attachment to the deeds he wrought or the resulting fruits as they affected the lives and destinies of all beings. Hence, also, he could not have any of the emotions of ordinary human beings, though he seemed to have such to superficial observers, even as he seemed to them to have only a human form or engage in various activities like one of themselves. 

The impression ordinarily made on his contemporaries by the sight of Sri Krishna's person and form is described by Uddhava in the Bhagavata, Skandha II (Verses 12-14) as follows:—"That form, assumed, in the exercise of his power of Maya, as fit for his position as Supreme Lord while performing his functions on earth;—a form, too, which was such as to provoke astonishment even from the supernal, sempiternal Self (in the Vaikuntha-Heaven) and which reached the maximum limit of the charm of beauty and in which the limbs were so beautiful as to set off the most shiningly-brilliant of ornaments;—that form filling the eyes with intense delight which, when at the Rajasuya Sacrifice of Dharmaputra the visitors from the three worlds beheld it, made them feel that even the genius of Brahman, in fashioning this lower world of men, could not reach such a height of creative imagination as to produce a form superior to it in Beauty;—(that form) whose smile, full of tender love and whose sportive pranks and cheerful glances made the women of Vraja proud of the privilege of joining him in his diversions and following him in all his activities with hearts bent in harmonious response to their eyes.” Thus Sri Krishna, both in his outer human form and inder divine essence, reached a combination of sublimity and beauty so absolutely unique that the impression of it has never since faded from India. It is this unique and harmonious combination of the two perfections of Sri Krishna's divinity and humanity that the great Indian philosopher, Sri Madhusudana Sarasvati, has in view when he says in his commentary on the Bhagavad-Gita: 

पराकृतनमद्बन्धं परं ब्रह्म नराकृति । सौन्दर्यसारसर्वस्वं वन्दे नन्दात्मजं महः ॥ 

"I offer my adoration to the shining form of the son of Nanda, the Absolute Reality appearing in human form, the consummation of what constitutes the essence of all the elements of Beauty, which confers redemption from (Samsaric) bondage on all who offer him their (heart's) homage.” 

What Madhusudana Sarasvati suggests in the expression सौन्दर्यसारसर्वस्वं in the verse just quoted is that the marvellous beauty of Sri Krishna's person and form was not what we regard as beauty in our aesthetic experience of life. Truly aesthetic beauty in any act or object within our expecrence is based on a careful constructive effort of the imagination in which the conclusion is reached after considering and rejecting, at every stage of the process, various imagined alternatives. The renowned Italian philosopher of today, Benedetto Croce, whose thought has been described as "potent in its influence upon criticism, upon philosophy and life, and famous throughout Europe," says:—"Art represents only desires, and is therefore all fancy and never perception, all possible reality and never effectual reality. But, since, to art is wanting the distinctive criterion between desires and actions, it in truth represents actions as desires and desires as actions,—the real as possible and the possible as real; and hence it would be more correct to say that art is on the near side of the possible and the real, it is pure of these distinctions, and is therefore pure imagination or pure intuition Desires and actions are, we know, of the same stuff, and art assumes that stuff just as it is, careless of the new elaboration that it will receive in an ulterior grade of the spirit, which is indeed impossible without that first and fantastic elaboration." Imagination is the process of artificially "cutting up and combining" the fantastic representations of volitional facts so that it ceases to accord with reality, even though there is continuity introduced into it through the constructive effort of the artist. As Mr. Collingwood says in his recent manual on "The Philosophy of Art":—"Nothing can go into it or come out of it; whatever is in it must have arisen from the creative act which constitutes it.” And again:—"The mere act of imagination, by being itself, by being this act and not a different act, generates in its object that unity which is beauty.” Benedetto Croce further says: -"We do not ask the artist for a philosophical system nor for a relation of facts (if all this is to be found in his work it is per accidens) but for a dream of his own, for nothing but the expression of a world desired or abhorred, or partly desired or partly abhorred. If he make us live again in this dream, the rapture of joy or the incubus of terror in solemnity or humility, in tragedy or in laughter, that suffices. Facts and concepts, and the question as to the metaphysical construction of reality are all things that we shall ask of others.” “Art affirms itself as a manifestation of feeling, and does not possess value save from its lyrical character and from the imprint of the artist's personality.” Collingwood gives a further luminous explanation of the difference between imagination and thought as follows:—"To imagine is to isolate the object; to think is to place it in a world of objects with which it is continuous. The coherence of imagination is merely internal coherence; the coherence of thought is an external coherence, self-transcending as the other is self-contained." 

In the case of Sri Krishna, his person and activities in the world, as already pointed out, are divya,—they transcend the plane of matter, the blended totality of a world whose parts are diverse, yet related to one another. Therefore his person and activities could not be classed among the things of beauty through which an artist's constructive imagination makes its appeal to those who have kindred tastes and emotions. His form of beauty was not an image created by an individual's uncommon powers of "combining or cutting up" facts of experience. Nor had it its genesis merely in human emotion and imagination— i.e., in an individual's effectual desire or aspiration, and the illuminative action and reaction to which it gives rise. Hence we see how appropriately Sri Sankara, in his Gita-Bhashya, asks us to understand how Sri Krishna “appeared as if he was born" (जात इव), “as if he had a body" (देहवानिव). The combination in Sri Krishna of the sublimity of power and the fascination of beauty was so unique that to all beholders — and to the Gopis, too, on whom it exercised that witchery which, originally recorded in the Bhagavata, is now worked out in all the abundance of enrapturing detail in this wonderful Song of Songs, the Krishna Karnamrita, — he alone was, as it were, the beginning and the end, the ne plus ultra, of the essence of beauty, power, prosperity, virtue, knowledge and good repute — i. e., in one word, of what we Hindus call ऐश्वर्य, the Supreme Lordship or Godhead. None who knew or beheld him could discover any similar object in their world of experience or imagination. All were impressed and overwhelmed by the absolute novelty of their experience, emotion, and impression, — and the resulting soul-enjoyments were ever so full and fresh, and so sustained, that the relation in which Sri Krishna was understood and felt to stand towards one and all was only to be likened to, but never identical with, that of a lover to the object loved.

In Narada's Bhakti Sutras, the following pro positions are put forth regarding the emotion of Bhakti: — तदर्पिताखिलाचारता तद्विस्मरणे परमव्याकुलतेति ॥ —Sutra 19.

“Dedicating all purificatory rites and observances whatsoever to Hiin, and feeling extreme misery in forgetting Him."

अस्त्येवमेवं — Sutra20. 

"There are such instances, as we shall show 

below" 

यथा व्रजगोपिकानाम् — Sutra 21. 

"As in the case of the cow-maids of Vraja."

तत्रापि न माहात्म्यज्ञानविस्मृत्यपवादम् — Sutra 22

"Even in their case no imputation can be made that the knowledge of (Sri Krishna being) the Supreme Self was forgotten." 

तद्विहीनं जाराणामिव — Sutra 23. 

“If that (knowledge) had been wanting, it would have been like the illicit relation between paramours." 

नास्त्येव तस्मिन्तत्सुखसुखितम् — Sutra 24. 

“In it (the latter) there is not the happiness arising from partaking of the Infinite Bliss 

which is His (the Lord's).” 

The explanation given in the above Sutras is exactly what is given in the Bhagavata by Sri Suka, the narrator of the story of Sri Krishna's sports in Brindavana. The Gopis were fully aware that Krishna was the Creator and Lord of the Universe who was आप्तकाम, the Being who was the summit and perfection of all joy and so could gain nothing more by the company of, and lose nothing by separation from, the Gopis. Sri Krishna, as the Supreme Being Himself, was the final desire and goal of the entire world, and, therefore, also of the Gopis. Arjuna, addressing Sri Krishna (Bhagavad-Gita, Chap. XI), speaks of three relations between the Supreme Being and the living soul of man—

पितेव पुत्रस्य सखेव सख्युः प्रियः प्रियाय, "Like a father towards his son's (mistakes), a friend towards his friend's, & lover towards his beloved's" (sl. 44). Further, Sri Krishna says (Gita, XIV. 3, 4) — "The undifferentiated Prakriti (Nature or Matter) is the receptacle (womb) in which I deposit my seed. From it, o descendant of Bharata, proceeds the birth of all objects. Of the bodies, O Son of Kunti! which are born in all the different kinds of wombs, Prakriti is the great womb (source) and I am the giver of seed, the father (for them).” Furthermore, we have the following famous sloka: —

स एव वासुदेवोऽसौ साक्षात्पुरुष उच्यते ।

स्त्रीप्रायमितरत्सर्वं जगद् ब्रह्मपुरस्सरम् ॥ 

"He—this Vasudeva—is alone spoken of directly as the male principle; the rest—the entire universe, from Brahma downwards—is related to him as the female principle." 

The conception is somewhat similar to the Christian conception of the Church as the Bride of Christ. According to the Bhagavata (and all other Hindu authorities), all living souls must finally reach the Lord in Heaven. The Gopis, having their place among those souls and knowing, too, that Sri Krishna was the Creator and the all pervading sustainer of life and individuality, approached him,- but in the relation (to use the words of Arjuna already referred to) of "प्रियः प्रियाय," "of one who loves towards his beloved." An American lady lecturer, —Annie C. Macqueen—speaking to a Western audience about the love of the Gopis toward the blessed Bhagavan, said:—"Is it anymore scandalous to look upon God as the Husband of all than as the Father of all? Love is one kind in Essence,—the earthly forms are only varying embodiments of the same essence: and when we realise this and hold fast to the life, not the form, what does it signify what term we apply to the one we love? God is to the loving soul, whatever it wills, for God is Love in Essence." This is clearly the meaning of the three verses in the Gita (IX. 16-18) which enumerate the various relations in which Isvara's worshippers regard him as standing towards them, and includes the relation of Husband (भर्ता) among them (IX. 18). For, in the verse 15 in the same context he has said:— "Others, again, offering the sacrifice of knowledge, worship me as one (with them), as separate (from them), and as all-pervading in numerous forms,"— and thus the inquiry arises, what are the various forms of worship and the relations between the Deity and the worshipper which those forms imply?—Mr. Sakes, too, a Roman Catholic Missionary who has written it work named "Christ and Krishna" has avowed:—"The love of Krishna by and for the Gopis is a pure and holy love." We see also that in the Bhagavata itself, Sri Krishna, after he had left Gokula, sent Uddhava with a message to the Gopis:—"Never can there be any separation for you from me,—for I am the all-pervading cause (of the effected material universe). Even as the five elements exist in all things (moving or stationary), so I am the basal support of all effected things such as the perceiving mind, the life-breath, the reasoning faculty, the senses, and the properties (or constituents) of matter (the three Gunas) from which they originate.” Krishna goes on to inform them that he was staying far away from them so that they might be constantly meditating on his form and he might reveal himself in their minds when they did so and thus enable them ultimately to attain his abode in Heaven, even as, during the night of the Rasa-dance in the forest of Vraja, some Gopis, who had been shut out and remained within their homes absorbed in deep meditation on his sweet and beautiful form, had been for the time being enabled to gain his highest self, leaving (all consciousness of) their bodies behind. This fact is mentioned in the Bhagavata account of what happened during the night of the Rasa-dance. The author explains why the Supreme Being can be approached without the feeling of guilt, compunction, or hesitation, even with the emotion of sexual love, शृङ्गाररस. Some Gopis, who were inside their homes and had not been able to get out in time and who previously used to be constantly thinking of Krishna now closed their eyes in deep and devout meditation of him. They got rid of (the bondage) of all their (previous) sins by the sensation of burning caused in the heart by the unendurable excess of their passion of love (उत्कण्ठा) for their beloved (Lord); and the bondage, too, of their (previous) meritorious acts was similarly destroyed by the sensation of pleasurable enjoyment (माधुर्य) arising from the experiences due to their mentally imagined contact with his body. As Sri Krishna was the परमात्मा Supreme Self (of all beings), even by their feeling and passion for him as (if he was their) paramour, they were immediately enabled to get liberated from the bondage of sin and cast off their body composed of material qualities and substances,—" i.e., they gained, without dying, a perfectly sinless and spiritual body. Sridharaswami here makes the following illuminating comment:— 

न हि वस्तुशक्तिर्बुद्धिमपेक्षते । अन्यथा मत्वापि पीतामृतवदिति भावः, "The nature of an object must operate on us, even though we may not have an intellectual under standing of what it is,—even as the effect follows when we drink the nectar of immortality, thinking that it is some other kind of drink.” From the Bhagavata passage just quoted which asserts that the material body changed into the spiritual in the case of the Gopis who were shut out of the Rasa-dance, we can infer that the bodies of those who had gone out in time from their homes and joined it had got similarly transformed and their souls too bad become liberated thereby from Samsara. Thus we see that the sweetly tender passion (madhurya) of the Gopis for Sri Krishna's sublimely beautiful Form and Person combined with their conscious realisation of the all-pervading immanence of His divinity as the Supreme Being could not but soon become freed from all impurities attaching to any similar passion of sex between merely human beings, and thus lead to the attainment of the ultimate aim of life, the everlasting bliss of the immortal and divine sages in Heaven (the Divyasuris).

K, S.

The reasoned portraiture, above attempted, of the supreme majesty and the ineffable sweetness uniquely combined in Sri Krishna's marvellous personality cannot be closed without dwelling for a moment upon one feature, phenomenon, or accompaniment inseparably associated with it,  — viz., his flute and its rapture of divine song. We have dwelt upon the surpassing beauty which attracted men and women to him as a saviour come down from Heaven to carry solace and liberation to all who were weighed down and felt crushed under the load of the world's woes and sorely needed the consolation, comfort, and joy of redemption which his personality by itself, — not to speak of the wondrous and ecstatic music of his flute and the spreading fragrance of the eternal wisdom of the spirit which fell from his lips and flowed all round in a vast flood and has for all time helped to quench the thirst in all human hearts—conveyed to all to whom was granted the priceless boon and privilege of merely beholding it or touching it at close quarters as during the night of the Rasa dance or elsewhere. Women clasped his heart 

and hand, or kissed his lips and cheeks in whole hearted ecstasy. Children, and even cows, and birds, and the entire animal kingdom at large regarded him and his form and voice as the supremest wonders or miracles of their time on earth and followed him wherever he went with the transports of the inexpressible joy of sustained and bubbling emotion in their aching hearts. 

It may be asked,— could such a being and person have possibly lived, and moved, and had his being at any time and epoch in this work-a-day world?— anywhere except in the other-worldly social atmosphere prevailing in a land peopled by superstitious, credulous, and gullible men and women whose judgments have been warped, and whose consciences have been perverted, by their belief in the legends of miracle and marvel taught in our Itihasas and Puranas? In reply, we shall refer to a contemporary British work of romance in which is portrayed—as is done, or expected to be done, in all modern works of fiction at least, some aspect of life or personality as it actually is, or understood to be, in the moving and changing environment which we call society, however coloured the presentation and portraiture of the same might be under the influence and working of the literary artist's imagination. A character in that work is described in the following terms in two passages which we shall quote here in full. 

“Was that an angel's voice he heard? What was that sweet sound that rang through the furs like some heavenly ecstasy? "He drew up his horse the better to listen, and always more rapturous came the sound; a sweet wave of joy it suddenly seemed, wrapping him round, so that closing his eyes, self-forgotten he listened...... "Was it a heavenly host passing by? Was it a pilgrim's chorus threading its way to some holy site? Was it echoes of some spirit world circling through the thickets where unforgettable memory chained its sound to earth? 

“No! It was a human voice! There was a wild joyous ring of reality about the wonderful notes that floated like enchanted birds towards the spot where he stood ; what magic did it contain that stilled all suffering, cleared his eye and deadened his soul's great anguish? 

“Ah! it was the ring of a glorious gladness which gave it wings, and made it soar, higher and higher, till the very air thrilled with exquisite, unspeakable happiness. Light and colour seemed to flow together and become one with the sound, as though each sense were exalted to the highest pitch of pleasure, melted into one, blended into undreamed-of perfection. 

“Even the great charger seemed to feel the spell; he stood with ears pricked, nostrils wide open, whilst a curious tremor ran like little shivers all over his skin." 

“And then another great wonder is his—a voice does he possess so overpoweringly sweet that any sword raised to do him a harm, sinks to the ground before notes so rapturous, to which one and all harken with beating pulse, for verily his songs are but a ringing call of love, and before we can regain our senses, he is gone! as though melting into the air; but the echo of his song remains in our hearts as though all our most shadowy fantastic dreams had for a moment taken shape."

And thus, like a ray of light, he passes from place to place, from forest to forest, from field to field, and where'r he goes he drives away our herds, fells our trees, frightens our wenches, and out of sheer spirit of deviltry has he set fire to the roofs over our heads." Cannot we conceive the idea or ideal just port rayed by a western mind raised in our Sri Krishna, —in Him who verily was, and is today, the Supreme Lord Himself, and moved about everywhere amidst his loving, adoring, devoted contemporaries and companions of all ranks, classes, and conditions of being—to the power of infinity and realised to the fullest extent of his surpassing and perfect beauty, attraction, and loveliness through the super-abundant flow of his illuminating grace flooding the entire land, and entering all hearts, and stirring to the inmost depths the emotions of the entire mass of humanity on earth for all time?

What, we ask too, was that strange and wonder-working tool in his hands—that divine flute (Venu) of his, marvellous, mysterious—which, touching his lovely lips, drew all creation to him as by an irresistible and inexorable law of fate? It is not alone the ringing, ravishing, enchanting,

intoxicating melody which, issuing from it at his inspiring and enrapturing and imperative call of all-embracing love, gave form and shape to these longing aspirations of the human spirit which hitherto had remained mere dreams or shadows,— but it produced, by its magic power and its weird enchantment, the liberation from bondage and the extinction of those transformations of the mind which the Vedantin who practices the methods of meditation known as Nadanusandhana attains as the immediate precursor of the highest knowledge of the Self, absolutely free from all the tainting contacts of the life of sense-perception in any part of the world of matter. These methods are taught in the Hamsa, Mandala-Brahmana, and other Upanishads; but they cannot be understood or practised without the gracious help of practical yogins. When, with their help, we experience the delights of listening to the Pranavadhvani (the sound of Omkara) which becomes Manifested in the cerebro-spinal system in the human body, the mind gets finally dissolved into the Venu-nada— the sweet and ringing and coursing melody of, flute-like sound—hitherto lying silent, unknown, uncared-for in the interior depths of our being and personality. Sri Krishna's flute and its divine melody represented to such of his contemporaries as were able to understand him truly—the Rishis, Munis, Yogis of his time,— and represents to all others who, since his time, have known how to scale the heights and fathom the depths of spiritual realisation, one at least of the highest paths to what is known as Jivanmukti, the liberation of the soul even while still living. Sri Krishna himself is the supreme and all-pervading self of the universe realised as the Innermost Light and Bliss, of Divine Love dwelling in the illuminated hearts of the highest and most perfected of the Jnanis and Bhaktas of all times and climes.

आत्मागमाविहितरतयो निर्विकल्पे समाधौ ज्ञानद्रेकाद्विघटित तमोग्रन्थयः सत्त्वनिष्ठाः ।

यं वीक्षन्ते कमपि तमसांं ज्योतिषां या परस्तात् तं मोहान्धः कथमयममुं वेत्तुं देवं पुराणम् ॥ “How is this fellow (Duryodhana), who is blinded to the truth through delusion, to recognise this Primeval Effulgence of Divinity, whom great sages realise as pure Existence lying beyond all regions of darkness (in mere sense-perception) and all regions of light (in mere intellectual cognition), — the sages who experience the joys arising from their knowledge of their own inner self, and have made it their one absorbing occupation to practise that higher kind of mental abstraction which is entirely beyond the sphere of the experiences of relativity and who have dissolved the knots of ignorance by the plenitude of their knowledge and become firmly established in the equilibrium and equanimity which is above all the ups and downs characteristic of the sensations and emotions of our ordinary life-experience? (Venisamhara, Act I, Sloka 23).

K. Sundararaman.