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In adopting this illustration of his principle, Chaitanya followed the example of the Bhagavad Gita and the Bhagavat Pura.na, and he was probably also influenced in the sensual tone he gave to the whole by the poems of Jayadeva.
It was there that Jayadeva flourished in the last days of the Sena dynasty and the lyrical poet Chandîdâs at the end of the fourteenth century. About the same time the still greater poet Vidyâpati was singing in Durbhanga. For these writers, as for Caitanya, religion is the bond of love which unites the soul and God, as typified by the passion that drew together Râdhâ and Kṛishṇa.
Shakespeare, Valmiki, Madame de Staël, are its poets; as Kalidas, Byron, Jayadeva are of the other species of love. The effect on the heart produced by the sight of beauty is dulled by repetition. But love caused by the good qualities of a person does not lose its charm, because beauty has but one appearance, because virtues display themselves anew in every fresh act.
Its subject is the estrangement of Radha and Krishna caused by Krishna's love for other cowgirls, Radha's anguish at Krishna's neglect and lastly the rapture which attends their final reunion. Jayadeva describes Radha's longing and Krishna's love-making with glowing sensuality yet the poem reverts continually to praise of Krishna as God.
Both had already become centres of pilgrimage and although Jayadeva had written his great poem far to the East, on the other side of India, pilgrims had brought copies with them while journeying from Bengal on visits to the sites. The Gita Govinda of Jayadeva had become in fact as much a Western Indian text as the Balagopala Stuti of Bilvamangala.
When, at last, the poem has come triumphantly to its close, Jayadeva again exhorts people to adore Krishna and 'place him for ever in their hearts, Krishna the source of all merit. The poem begins with a preface of four lines describing how Krishna's romance with Radha first began. The sky, it says, was dark with clouds. All around lay the vast forest.
The next six are in praise of the sect itself, of Adwaita, and the principal disciples. That on Adwaita by his contemporary Brindaban Das gives a lively picture of the old Brahman, then follow seven in praise of the Kirtanias or the old master-singers Bidyapati, Jayadeva, Cha.n.di Das; then four on K.rish.na and Radha, containing only a succession of epithets linked together by jay! jay!
It was these conceptions which governed the cult of Krishna from the twelfth century onwards and, as we shall shortly see, informed the poems which were now to celebrate his love for Radha. The first poem to express this changed conception is the Gita Govinda the Song of the Cowherd a Sanskrit poem written by the Bengali poet, Jayadeva, towards the close of the twelfth century.
The second period, to which belong the two great epic poems, the "Ramayana" and the "Mahabharata," according to the best authorities ends with the sixth or seventh century B.C. The third period embraces all the poetical and scientific works written from that time to the third or fourth century B.C., when the language, having been progressively refined, became fixed in the writings of Kalidasa, Jayadeva, and other poets.
From the twelfth century onwards Bengal had constantly celebrated the loves of Krishna the poets Jayadeva, Chandi Das and Vidyapati being all natives of this part of India. Hymns to Krishna were sung in the villages and as part of this fervid adhesion, local manuscripts of the Bhagavata Purana and the Gita Govinda were often produced.
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