'If the trees and rocks, the thunder and the sea, the frightful avidity of
animal life and the loveliness of flowers are so many hints of the God who
made them, how much more obviously are the things of humanity analogues of
the things of God? And among all such things, the union of man and woman
takes the highest place and is the most potent symbol. Therefore it is
that outside the commercial civilizations of the western world, love and
marriage take their place as types of divine union and everywhere love and
marriage are the subject matter, the theme of religious writers, singers,
painters and sculptors. It is true that love is the theme of western
writers also but with them the idea of love is entirely free from divine
signification. (As a corollary), the more the divine background
disappears, the more the prudishness of the police becomes the standard of
ethics and aesthetics alike. Under such an aegis the arts are necessarily
degraded to the level of the merely sentimental or the merely sensual and
while the sentimental is everywhere applauded, the sensual is a source of
panic.'


Note 16, p. 73.

In later poetry as well as in popular worship, Radha's position is always
that of an adored mistress--never that of a beloved wife. And it is
outside or rather in the teeth of marriage that her romance with Krishna
is prosecuted. Such a position clearly involved a sharp conflict with
conventional morals and in the fourteenth century, an attempt was made,
in the _Brahma Vaivarta Purana_, to re-write the _Bhagavata Purana_,
magnifying Radha as leader of the cow-girls, disguising or rather denying
her adultery and finally presenting her as Krishna's eternal consort. For
this purpose, three hypotheses were adopted. Radha was throughout assumed