Did Jayadeva Goswami introduce eroticism is krishna-bhakti?
Historians say that Jaidev Goswami introduced eroticism in Krishna Bhakti is that true? how do you understand this? there is the transcendental and there is the historical academic scholars don't accept the existence of anything transcendental that means that they try to when different kinds of academic scholars, they see they analyse religion from different frames so one of the frames from which they analyse is the historical frame so now from a literal or a historical perspective it is true that there is not much evidence of of the erotic aspect of Krishna Bhakti being depicted either in a textual form or in an architectural form or in a musical form before Jaidev Goswami's Gita Govinda so what does this mean? this simply means that the transcendental that means that which exists eternally in the spiritual realm that transcendental became manifest at the material realm at a particular time in history and after it became manifest at a particular time it existed for some time and then it was lost so similarly it was lost in the sense that not lost in the sense of not being known but lost in the sense of being covered over by certain misconceptions just as we have Chaitanya Mahaprabhu saying that what he has given it was not given before so this does not mean that it did not exist at all in the Vedic literature or did not exist at all in the transcendental realm, it simply means that in a historical progression in recent history Chaitanya Mahaprabhu manifested that Parakiya Bhav Prem for the first time similarly we can say that historically it is Jaydev Goswami who is the forerunner of the forerunner of the literary depiction of the erotic aspect of Krishna Bhakti so we understand this not as just a poetic imagination of Jaydev Goswami but we see it as a as his poetic creativity being used in the service of Krishna and Krishna using him to reveal certain aspects of his pastime that had not been revealed earlier so it's not that the historical sequence the problem with historical dating is that it cannot take into account the trans-historical aspect of what it is dating so the trans-historical aspect refers to that which is available through that which is eternally existing at a higher spiritual level and that can manifest at particular time at this level of reality so yes it is true that Jaydev Goswami did not did not directly quote Shastra when he composes Gita Govinda. It is not so much a Shastric book as it is a work of art and there is much in his work of art that is not found directly in previous literature but the broad character that are there the stage that is said, the depiction of Vrindavan that is there, of Krishna Gila that is there, there is artistic creativity used by Krishna for a particular purpose of revealing certain past times of his.