Krishnachuda

Krishnachuda in Vrindavan

In Vraja the krishnachuda is a foreigner. You will not find it in any Sanskrit scripture, nor in the old nighantus, the Ayurvedic lexicons of medicinal plants: the shrub came to India from the New World and settled into local gardens only in modern times. And so it is not the scriptures that tell of it but the Vrajavasis themselves — that is how stories gather around a plant already flowering at the doorstep.

The story runs like this. The krishnachuda blazed with colour brighter than most, but it had no scent at all — and this tormented it. In Vraja fragrance is the signature of love: the body of Krishna is fragrant, the garland on His chest is fragrant, and from a single breath of air the gopis know that He has passed by. It seemed to the flower that there was no place for it in this world, and it resolved on something desperate: as Radha and Krishna were walking a forest path, the krishnachuda threw itself under Their feet, to end its life at Their feet. But Radhika bent down, picked up the fallen flower and set it in Krishna’s hair. So a desperate act turned into the highest destiny, and the flower’s name — krishnachuda, “Krishna’s crown” — fixed its place forever at the very crown of His head. Among Bengalis the same shrub bears a twin name: radhachura, “Radha’s crown.”

The ending is no accident. A wild flower woven into the chuda, the crest-crown of the hair of the Divine Couple, is something the poets of Vrindavan love in a particular way. Srila Rupa Goswami has a verse in which Radha, in separation, grieves over a fresh karnikara on the bank of the Yamuna — grieves because Krishna once wove her a crown in her hair from the flowers of that tree:

A Flower Without Fragrance

The subtlest thing in this legend is what drove the flower to despair. It seemed to it that without fragrance Krishna had no use for it. But the scriptures answer the opposite, and answer with an example every Vrajavasi knows — tulasi. In the Yugala-gita of the Tenth Canto of the Srimad Bhagavatam the gopis sing of how swarms of bees go mad from the fragrance of the tulasi in Krishna’s forest garland:

Botany

The krishnachuda of the gardens of Vraja is Caesalpinia pulcherrima, the “peacock flower” of the legume family, a close relative of the gulmohar. The shrub is almost thornless, with large twice-pinnate leaves divided into a multitude of small leaflets. Its marks are the loose clusters on straight stalks: five wavy petals and very long, far-protruding stamens, which really do make the flower head look like a spread peacock’s tail. It blooms abundantly and almost without a break, flowering already in its first year. Scent it has practically none — despite one of its names, ratnagandhi, “jewel-fragrant”: the very trait around which the legend took shape. The plant is native to Central America; it was brought to India as an ornamental, and now it flowers all over the country, from village fences to the gardens by the Taj Mahal.

In the Bengali lands the name has become tangled. Krishnachura, “Krishna’s crown,” is there applied above all to the gulmohar — quite another tree, whose scarlet clusters are taken as the sign of the month of Boishakh. The Indian flower handbooks give both names to our species at once; the Bengali encyclopaedia gives it only “radhachura.” To whom the name belongs by right the sources do not settle: one and the same word sits on different plants in Vraja and in Bengal.

Folk Medicine

The krishnachuda did not make it into the classical nighantus — there was no room there for a shrub from overseas, and no Ayurvedic characteristics are recorded for it. In folk herbal practice, however, the whole plant is in use: the bitterish astringent root is applied for stomach upset, the leaf as a febrifuge and a tonic (in large doses it acts as an abortifacient), the flower to bring down fever and induce sweating, and infusions for constipation and urinary stones. The seeds of caesalpinias are generally poisonous and are used with caution.