Introduction to Śrī Gīta Govinda

translated by Sanātana Dāsa & Parameśvarī Devī Dāsī

The love-songs of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa in Jayadeva’s Gīta Govinda are wholly transcendental – yet only the spiritually qualified can see it; to the materialist they appear as mundane romance, “a picture created by māyā.” So argues this rare early work of 1868, written by the future Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura while he still signed himself Śacchidānanda Premālaṅkara – years before the name “Bhaktivinoda” – as an introduction bound into a copy of the Gīta Govinda. The essence-seeking (sāragrāhī) vision of his later writings is already fully formed here: he calls sādhus to read the poem with spiritual bhāva, to perceive Vṛndāvana with the mind’s eye, and to cultivate the pure prema that Jayadeva himself relished.