No episode in Jayadeva's life is told and retold within Gaudiya Vaishnavism as often as this one: the day, tradition says, that Krishna Himself picked up where the poet had stopped.
A Line Too Bold to Write #
Jayadeva was working on what would become one of the Gita Govinda's most tender passages. He reached a verse in which Krishna returns to beg Radha's forgiveness, after He had wandered among the other gopis and hurt Her. The line Jayadeva wanted to write had Krishna ask Radha to place Her foot on His head: dehi pada-pallavam udaram, "give me the tender blossom of Your foot." Jayadeva hesitated. Even to him, the poem's own author, it seemed that showing the Supreme Personality of Godhead bowing before a gopi's foot might lower Krishna's position. So he did not force the line. He set his palm leaf aside and left for his daily bath in the Ganges. He planned to come back to it, if at all, with a clearer mind.
Krishna Writes His Own Line #
Krishna did not wait for Jayadeva to decide. He appeared in the form of Jayadeva himself, sat down at the unfinished page, and wrote the line exactly as it stands today. Tradition says His handwriting could not be told apart from the poet's own. Before leaving, He also accepted prasadam that Padmavati served Him. She believed, and had no reason to doubt it, that her husband had simply come back early from his bath.
Padmavati Notices, Jayadeva Understands #
When the real Jayadeva returned home, he found the verse already finished. It read as though he himself had written it, but he knew he had not. His amazement turned to understanding only when Padmavati mentioned, in passing, that he had already eaten. Realizing what had happened, Jayadeva is remembered crying out in spiritual joy: Krishna Himself, he told her, had written this line and taken prasadam from her hand. A wife serving her husband a meal might otherwise seem an ordinary household detail. But in this telling, it becomes the moment the miracle is confirmed. Padmavati's small, simple remark is what reveals the whole story.
A Verse Vaishnavas Take Seriously #
Gaudiya Vaishnavas do not treat this story as a charming legend added on top of an ordinary poem. In 1977, in Bhubaneswar, Srila Prabhupada had a conversation with a film producer who wanted to adapt Krishna's pastimes for the screen. Without being asked, he brought up this very verse and called it "very confidential". He explained that Krishna is shown begging pardon at Radharani's feet. Outsiders, he said, easily mistake such deep humility for ordinary romance between a man and a woman, when it actually expresses the Lord's own surrender to His devotee's love. Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita treats the poem's other intimate verses just as seriously. In Antya-lila it quotes and explains one verse from this same canto, in which Radha remembers Krishna's playfulness during the rasa dance:
"Here in the arena of the rasa dance, I remember Krishna, who is always fond of joking and performing pastimes."
Chaitanya-charitamrita notes that in the poem this verse is actually sung by Radharani Herself. This means that Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and His associates did not read Jayadeva's poetry as clever literature about Radha and Krishna. They read it as Radha and Krishna's own words.
How the Story Is Understood #
At the simplest level, the story explains why the verse sounds so exactly like something Krishna would say that Jayadeva himself could hardly believe he had written it. But read more carefully, it makes a point that Gaudiya Vaishnavism returns to again and again. A devotee may hesitate to glorify Krishna's devotees when doing so seems to place the Lord in a lower position. Even then, that hesitation can itself be a kind of mistake, because in pure love there is no question of higher or lower at all. Jayadeva's doubt was sincere and respectful, not careless. The tradition does not answer it by mocking that doubt. Instead, it shows Krishna Himself settling the doubt gently, without a word of blame. Krishna simply wrote the line and took a meal from Padmavati's hand, as if nothing unusual had happened. What this poem, and this way of reading it, meant to Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu Himself is a story that takes place about three centuries after Jayadeva's own lifetime.
