Who Radha is
Radha is the cowherd girl of Braj whom Krishna loved. She grew up at Barsana, near his village, and the poets of the north have sung their meetings in the forest by the Yamuna, their quarrels and reconciliations, and her grief when he left for Mathura and did not come back, for more than eight hundred years.
She was not his wife. That is the heart of it. In the devotional traditions of Braj, her love is the highest love there is, because it asked nothing and was given in spite of everything.
Radhe Radhe: the greeting of Braj, where people say her name to each other in place of hello.
Over time Radha grew from a figure in a poem into a goddess. In the Brahma Vaivarta Purana she is Krishna's own left half, divided from him in heaven so that he would have someone to love. To the Gaudiya Vaishnavas of Bengal, she is Krishna's own power of joy, and Chaitanya was Krishna and Radha in one body. In the Radha Vallabh tradition of Vrindavan she is honoured even above him.
In Braj she is everywhere. People greet each other with her name. Her temple at Barsana stands on top of the hill, and every spring the women of Barsana meet the men of Krishna's village with sticks, in the Lathmar Holi, to settle an old score on her behalf.
