She is the daughter of
the cowherd Vrishabhanu and his wife, Kamalavati, and is married to Ayana,
a brother of Yasoda. Like other cowgirls, her love for Krishna is
all-consuming and compels her to ignore her family honour and disregard
her husband. Krishna, for his part, regards her as his first love. In
place, therefore, of courtly adventures and battles with demons, Krishna's
adulterous romance is now presented as all in all.[47] It is the moods,
feelings and emotions of a great love-affair which are the essence of the
story and this, in turn, is to serve as a sublime allegory expressing and
affirming the love of God for the soul. With this dramatic revolution in
the story, we begin to approach the Krishna of Indian painting.

Such a change can hardly have come about without historical reasons and
although the exact circumstances must perhaps remain obscure, we can see
in this sharp reversal of roles a clear response to certain Indian needs.
From early times, romantic love had been keenly valued, Sanskrit poets
such as Kalidasa, Amaru and Bhartrihari celebrating the charms of womanly
physique and the raptures of sex. What, in fact, in other cultures had
been viewed with suspicion or disquiet was here invested with nobility and
grandeur. Although fidelity had been demanded in marriage, romantic
liaisons had not been entirely excluded and thus there was a sense in
which the love-poetry of the early Indian middle ages had been partly
paralleled by actual courtly or village practice. From the tenth century
onwards, however, a tightening of domestic morals had set in, a tightening
which was further intensified by the Muslim invasions of the twelfth and
thirteen centuries. Romance as an actual experience became more difficult
of attainment and this was exacerbated by standard views of marriage. In
early India, marriage had been regarded as a contract between families
and romantic love between husband and wife as an accidental, even an
unexpected product of what was basically a utilitarian agreement. With the
seclusion of women and the laying of even greater stress on wifely
chastity, romantic love was increasingly denied. Yet the need for romance
remained and we can see in the prevalence of love-poetry a substitute for
wishes repressed in actual life.[48] It is precisely this role which the
story of Krishna the cowherd lover now came to perform. Krishna, being
God, had been beyond morals and hence had practised conduct which