Devalok
Legend · 2 tellings · North India, Pan-India

The message and the bee

Who is in it

Places: Vrindavan · Texts: Bhagavata Purana

The story, beat by beat

  1. Krishna sends Uddhava from Mathura to Vraja.
  2. Uddhava tells the gopis Krishna is everywhere, to be met in meditation.
  3. A bee comes; one gopi takes it for Krishna's messenger and scolds it.
  4. Uddhava is humbled by their love.
  5. In Surdas the gopis reject his yoga outright.

separation devotion knowledge and love

How it is told, place by place

Base telling · Primary text (translation)

Bhagavata Purana 10.46 to 10.47

Pan-India Vaishnava

Krishna, in Mathura, sends his friend Uddhava to Vraja with a message: he is never really away from them. Uddhava comes to Nanda's village and the women gather round him. While they talk a bumblebee flies near, and one of them, lost in thought of Krishna, scolds it as his messenger: friend of a cheat, do not touch my feet. Uddhava gives Krishna's teaching and stays some months, and goes back saying their love is greater than his learning. The text never names the woman.

Srimad Bhagavatam 10.46 to 10.47 (Bhaktivedanta Book Trust)

Scholarly

Surdas, Bhramar Geet

North India Vaishnava

In the songs of Surdas the women take the bee for Uddhava himself, a black thing that flits from flower to flower like Krishna. They laugh at his yoga and his god without a form; they want the cowherd with the flute. Unlike the Bhagavata's women they are not consoled, and the messenger who came to teach goes back taught.

Ashtasakha Shri Surdasji (archive.org); Radha (Wikipedia)

Sources: Srimad Bhagavatam 10.46 to 10.47 (Bhaktivedanta Book Trust); Ashtasakha Shri Surdasji (archive.org); Radha (Wikipedia)

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