romantic love was increasingly denied.  Yet the need for romance remained and we can see in the prevalence of love-poetry a substitute for wishes repressed in actual life.[48] It is precisely this role which the story of Krishna the cowherd lover now came to perform.  Krishna, being God, had been beyond morals and hence had practised conduct which, if indulged in by men, might well have been wrong.  He had given practical expression to romantic longings and had behaved with all the passionate freedom normally stifled by social duty, conjugal ethics and family morals.  From this point of view, Krishna the prince was a mere pillar of boring respectability.  Nothing in his conduct could arouse delight for everything he did was correct and proper.  Krishna the cowherd on the other hand, was spontaneous, irresponsible and free.  His love for the cowgirls had had a lively freedom.  The love between them was nothing if not voluntary.  His whole life among the cowherds was simple, natural and pleasing and as their rapturous lover nothing was more obvious than that the cowgirls should adore him.  In dwelling, then, on Krishna, it was natural that the worshipper should tend to disregard the prince and should concentrate instead on the cowherd.  The prince had revered Brahmans and supported established institutions.  The cowherd had shamed the Brahmans of Mathura and discredited ceremonies and festivals.  He had loved and been loved and in his contemplation lay nothing but joy.  The loves of Krishna, in fact, were an intimate fulfilment of Indian desires, an exact sublimation of intense romantic needs and while other factors must certainly have played their part, this is perhaps the chief reason why, at this juncture, they now enchanted village and courtly India.

The results of this new approach are apparent in two distinct ways.  The Bhagavata Purana continues to be the chief chronicle of Krishna’s acts but the last half of Book Ten and all of Book Eleven fall into neglect.[49] In their place, the story of Krishna’s relations with the cowgirls is given new poignancy and precision.  Radha is constantly mentioned and in all the incidents in the Purana involving cowgirls, it is she who is given pride of place.  At the river Jumna, when Krishna removes the cowgirls’ clothes, Radha begs him to restore them.  At the circular dance in which he joins with all the cowgirls, Radha receives his first attentions, dancing with him in the centre.  When Krishna is about to leave for Mathura, it is Radha who heads the cowgirls and strives to detain him.  She serves, in fact, as a symbol of all the cowgirls’ love.  At the same time, she is very far from being merely their spokesman or leader and while the later texts dwell constantly on her rapturous love-making with Krishna, they also describe her jealousy when Krishna makes love to other girls.  Indeed the essence of their romance is that it includes a temporary estrangement and only after Krishna has neglected Radha, flirted with other cowgirls and then returned to her is their understanding complete.