“This, my dear Socrates,’ said the stranger of Mantinea, ‘is that life above all others which man should live, in the contemplation of beauty absolute…” (Plato, 225)   

This paper attempts a conceptual leap in trying to co-locate two foundational thinkers/texts in world literary and cultural history. Such an attempt is both challenging and rewarding. Whereas Plato, and through Plato Socrates has always been seen as part of a Western intellectual heritage, the inspiring Ramayana authored by the great sage Valmiki (our Adi Kavi) has always been read as part of an oriental heritage. In these difficult times that the world is facing, it is important that we forget the mere geographical distance and seek the roots of a fundamental, indivisible human heritage. This heritage is as much about faith and courage, as it is about love in its various manifestations.

This paper attempts a conceptual leap in trying to co-locate two foundational thinkers/texts in world literary and cultural history.

While doing this comparative study of conventions of love, I will be drawing upon two essays that deal with the related themes. The first one is, “Courtly Love and Ancient India,” by Zacharias P. Thundy, and the second one is, “Everyday Expressions of Love as Described in Early Sanskrit Literature (c. 2nd Century BCE to 7th Century CE)” by Aradhana Singh.   What Thundy has done in the essay is interesting, since he has tracked a convergence in the concept of courtly love in Sanskrit Literature wherein, he has dealt with classical examples from Sanskrit poetry marking the convention of courtly love.  He has tried to locate the tradition of courtly love in the larger frame of the Indo-European context and tried to trace the presence of courtly love in ancient Indian literature thereby expounding the courtly ideals of love in the comprehensive framework of the West and the East.

Aradhana Singh on the other hand, has tried to explore the role of Sanskrit language and Indian culture on the everyday expressions of love in early India.  She has also gone into delineating the rasa theory expounded in the Natyashastra by Bharat Muni and registered the associations and intersection of different seasons and festivals corresponding to Sringara rasa or the Erotic sentiment.

Thundy begins his enquiry by underlining the key ingredients of courtly love: “(1) love as game played by lovers, (2) the worship of the beloved as someone highly exalted, (3) the infinite disproportion between the lover and the loved one, (4) the effort of the lover to make himself worthy of his beloved by the practice of virtues such as valor and courtesy, and (5) the grace granted by the lady to her lover.” (Thundy 45) He also mentions Father Denomy who according to him puts the definition rather clearly, “The novelty of Courtly Love lies in three basic elements: first, in the ennobling force of human love; second, in the elevation of the beloved to a place of superiority above the lover; third, in the conception of love as ever unsatiated, ever-increasing desire.” (Thundy 45) Both definitions of Courtly Love mention that the lover used to treat the beloved as somebody who is exalted, at a higher pedestal than the lover and the desire for love never settles or kind of gets quenched. This reminds one of Plato’s conceptions of love in his dialogue, Symposium wherein, he makes a sharp distinction between a lover and the beloved, which is taken up later in this paper. Plato also talks about the exalted position of the beloved in the eyes of the lover, but for him, the lover is more divine since he is inspired by the god of love, Eros. Thundy talks about the fulfillment of courtly love being achieved through the marriage, sometimes outside the marriage and sometimes also before marriage. He mentions Denomy again saying something significant about the moral question of courtly love; “Courtly Love is neither moral nor immoral. It is amoral.” (Thundy 46) According to him, poets in different times have written and composed the idea of love according to their own persuasions or leanings. Thundy traces back the origin of Courtly Love lyrics and chivalrous stories back to the classical Sanskrit period from 500 BCE to 1200 CE. He not only parallels the chivalrous tales of Greek heroes to that of the classical heroes from Indian epics but also gives instances from Indian epics of amorous relationships in the following words,

The tales of chivalry, like the stories of Achilles, Odysseus, Aeneas, Arthur, Roland, Lancelot, and Gawain, are found in the two great epics of Rãmãyana and Mahãbhãrata, composed between 500 B.C. and A.D. 800. These epics contain not only tales of valor but also stories of love such as those between Rama and Sita, Sita and Ravana, Nala and Damayanti, Satyavan and Savitri, the Pandava Brothers and Panchali. However, these epics celebrate rather the exploits of heroes than the amorous adventures of the heroes. (Thundy 46)

Thundy mentions how these amorous adventures are not explored much in these epics but are taken up by later poets and playwrights who wrote extensively on these themes. Aradhana Singh talks about the superiority or the prominence of Sringara Rasa or the Erotic sentiment above others which is considered as the principal rasa from which the Hasya rasa also originates. She mentions all the major rasas,

According to the Nāṭyaśāstra, the soul of poetry or kāvya has been rasa or aesthetic experience and the śṛṇgāra rasa or Erotic Sentiment is considered the principal rasa. It is one of the eight sentiments (bhāvas) in a drama, alongside the hāsya (Comic), karuṇa (Pathetic), raudra (Furious), vīra (Heroic), bhayānaka (Terrible), bibhasta (Odious) and adbhuta (Marvelous). (Singh 296)

 Therefore, it is not at all surprising that in the classical period, Sanskrit poets used to deal with this sentiment a lot. Thundy then goes on to talk about how these love lyrics entered Sanskrit literature. He observes that,

These love lyrics found their way to Sanskrit anthologies compiled during the medieval period (A.D. 1000-1200). Three of the best-known anthologies are: the Subhãsitaratnakosa (A Treasury of Fine Verses), compiled by Vidyãkara at the end of the eleventh century; the Subhãsitãvali (A Necklace of Fine Verses), ascribed to Vallabhadeva, probably" of the twelfth century; and the Padhati (anthology) of Sãrangadhara of the fourteenth century.6 These are very large collections containing respectively 1,738, 3,527, and 4,620 verses, where each verse is made up of several lines. These verses are arranged not according to author but by subject matter. (Thundy 46)

There are several examples that are quoted by Thundy for Sanskrit poetry that talk about themes related to love or Erotic sentiment. Love was not only considered as a play or a game to be played but also it was considered a serious occupation of men and women in classical Sanskrit literature. Thundy quotes from Bhrtihari,

In this vain world, when men of intellect

Must soil their souls with service, to expect

A morsel at a worthless prince's gate,

How could they ever hope to renovate

Their spirits? —were it not that fate supplies

The swinging girdles and the lotus eyes—

Women, with swelling breasts that comfort soon,

Wearing the beauty of the rising moon. (Thundy 47)

Another instance from Bhrtihari only is also worth paying attention to mentioning the second-best choice being love in this mutable universe; which is taken from his Sringara Shataka, Thundy quotes him,

In this vain fleeting universe, a man

Of wisdom has two courses: first, he can

Direct his time to pray, to save his soul,

And wallow in religion's nectar-bowl;

But, if he cannot, it is surely best

To touch and hold a lovely woman's breast,

And to caress her warm round hips and thighs,

And to possess that which between them lies. (Thundy 47)

Aradhana Singh in her essay has also mentioned the ten different stages of love propounded by Bharata Muni in his Natyashastra, which according to her are as follows:

abhilāṣa (Longing); cintā (Anxiety); anusṛṃti (Recollection); guṇakīrtana (Enumeration of Merits); udvega (Distress); vilāpa (Lamentation); unmāda (Insanity); vyādhi (Sickness); jaḍatā (Stupor); and maraṇa (Death). According to kāmatantra or Science of Erotics, all these stages, except the last one of Death are to be represented for both the nāyaka and nāyikā. (Singh 297)

 Aradhana Singh in her essay talks about a very subtle distinction between love or Kama and Sringara or Erotic sentiment. Aradhana Singh mentions this distinction from Natyashastra,

The text draws out a subtle distinction between love or kāma and eroticism or śṛngāra. While the union of a man and a woman in love may end in joy and sorrow for all people and is mostly to be observed as leading to happiness even in unhappy situations; an Erotic affair is something which benefits only the man and the woman involved. (Singh 297)

Natyashastra also gives a kaleidoscopic insight into the mechanics of sringara rasa along with its colour and presiding deaity. Aradhana Singh notes,

According to Bharata, śṛṇgāra rasa proceeds from the sthāyibhāva of love (ratī). But śṛṇgāra rasa featuring in the peculiarly Indian rasa doctrine is not just restricted to love between two people, but has as its basis everything that is white, pure, bright and beautiful. It is one of the four original sentiments and is the source of the hāsya (Comic). The Erotic Sentiment is associated with light green or śyāma color and has Viṣṇu as its presiding deity. It is to be represented on the stage by means of serenity of the eyes and the face, sweet and smiling words, satisfaction and delight, and graceful movement of the limbs. (Singh 297)

The concept of Platonic love is as old and prevalent in the Western philosophy and world as is the tale of Rama, that is the Ramayana in the eastern world especially in India. The present paper would begin by first answering the obvious question of why there is a parallel between Plato’s conception of love propounded in his dialogue Symposium and Valmiki’s Ramayana. The paper shall then establish the connection between Plato’s doctrine of love and the concept of Bhakti^[1], which is the highest form of love in the spiritual realms, and the scriptures of Hinduism. It will also argue how Plato seems to be unfolding the same transcendental nature of love that is given the name of the highest degree of consciousness, which a yogi of the highest order attains well documented in the Bhagavad Gita and other Yogic texts like Patanjali’s Yoga sutra. The third and final section of the paper shall deal with the Ramayana, as an embodiment of ideal models of love which were only conceptually dealt with by Plato in his doctrine of love, but are manifested in the lifelike characters of the Ramayana; which have become a part of the psyche of the people of this nation so much so that they have ceased to be characters only of an epic but have gained almost a mythological authenticity and universality which is characteristic of their popularity and acceptance.

The rationale behind the probable parallel between Plato’s works in question and Valmiki’s is the probable time frame of the composition of these works. There are always differences in the opinions of the scholars regarding the dates of composition of literary works which go beyond more than two thousand years from now, but there are studies that ascertain the centuries if not the exact dates and years of their composition. Plato’s time is affirmed to be somewhere between 428/427 BCE to 348/347 BCE, whereas Valmiki’s time is believed to be somewhere between the 5^th century BCE to 1^st century BCE. The composition of Plato’s Symposium falls somewhere in the fourth century BCE and that of Ramayana also somewhere around the third-fourth century BCE. This temporal proximity in the composition of these texts though in two completely different and geographically detached territories seems to have some linkage, which I have taken as my reference point to enter the enquiry that I wish to conduct in the following sections of this paper.

In fact, there are obvious reasons for parallels between these two distant but far closer or similar cultures in many ways. To quote a few, Greek culture also had a pantheistic belief system in Gods and Goddesses, like that of Hinduism. Greeks were also nature worshippers, as have been the inhabitants of this land called Bharat Varsha, as documented in the earliest texts like Rigveda. Greeks have a rich mythology of thousands of Gods and Goddesses, who are believed to be supervising and sometimes directly or indirectly influencing and partaking in the human world, affecting the course of their destiny and actions. Homer’s Iliad, has many such instances wherein Greek Gods and Goddesses participate in the Trojan War, some taking the side of the grieved Achaeans, others that of the Trojans. Similarly, in Hinduism, we have as many as thirty-three crores of Gods and Goddesses who are assigned different duties and they also are sometimes portrayed as affecting human fates as depicted in the epic Mahabharata. Another parallel can be drawn from the thematic engagement of these great authors like Plato and Valmiki. Plato’s three dialogues, Lysis, Symposium, and Phaedrus deal with the conception of love and friendship. The first shloka of Ramayana, believed to be the first verse of Sanskrit literature, written by the Adi Kavi also has a little association with love. As is well known, the tale of how Valmiki on his way to morning ablutions in the Ganges, saw at the bank of Tamasa, another stream, a crane couple mating; at the sight of which the sage poet was pleased. Suddenly, hit by an arrow the male bird died on the spot. Filled with sorrow, its mate screamed in agony and died of shock. Valmiki’s heart melted at this pitiful sight, seeing the hunter with bow and arrows, his lips opened and he cried out,

“Ma nisada pratistha tvamagamah sasvatih samah

Yat krauncamithunadekamavadhih kamamohitam^[2].”

“You will find no rest for the long years of Eternity

For you killed a bird in love and unsuspecting^[3].”

Plato’s love is a kind of ladder that through different stages of love, takes the lover to the highest goal which according to him is the contemplation of the beauty itself. There is an interesting distinction between a lover and a beloved in Plato.  Lover, for which erastes is the Greek term, is the one who initiates love, or is inspired by the God Eros; whereas the beloved, eromenos in Greek, is the one who reciprocates the lover. There is a clear-cut distinction between the two. A lover cannot be understood as a beloved, since the lover is the one who is infected with the stings of love; hence experiences an altogether different realm of feelings and emotions, very different from the ones the beloved goes through. The beloved can be a little indifferent if it is not the case with the beloved that he or she (a male for Plato though) suffers the same extent of the pangs of love. The beloved only reciprocate the love that is shown or offered to him or her by the lover. Perhaps because of that Plato says something very interesting about whether a lover or a beloved is more divine or rewarded by the Gods. Plato observes in his dialogue, Symposium, “And greatly as the gods honour the virtue of love, still the return of love on the part of the beloved to the lover is more admired and valued and rewarded by them; for the lover is more divine, because he is inspired by God” (Plato, 193).

According to Plato, a lover is first attracted towards the physical beauty of the beloved, that is the beloved’s body and then realizing that there are other beautiful bodies too, he develops a love for all the beautiful bodies. At the next stage, he realizes that the beauty of the soul is more precious than that of the body, then through further succession, he will be led to the love of the ultimate form of beauty, which is the beauty absolute. The contemplation of this absolute beauty which according to Plato, is the highest goal of a lover or an initiate brings forth something very interesting. Plato describes the nature of this wondrous beauty in the following words in his Symposium,  

A nature which in the first place is everlasting, knowing not birth or decay…but beauty absolute, separate, simple, and everlasting, which is imparted to the ever growing and perishing beauties of all other beautiful things, without itself suffering diminution, or increase, or any change. (Plato, 225)              

Plato has talked about the nature of the universal soul here, which I argue can be equated with the concept of Brahma, or the absolute being in Hinduism, of which all the other souls are just a reflection. When Plato describes the nature of absolute beauty in the terms quoted above such as, “everlasting, knowing not birth or death, growth or decay,” it immediately reminds us of the famous verse no. 23 from Chapter 2, of the Bhagavad Gita, wherein the nature of the immortality of the soul is described in the following words,

“nainaṃ chindanti śastrāṇi nainaṃ dahati pāvakaḥ

na cainaṃ kledayantyāpo na śoṣayati mārutaḥ^[4].”

This roughly means that “No weapon can cut the soul into pieces, nor can it be burned by fire, nor moistened by water, nor withered by the wind.”

It seems as if Plato is describing the state of a yogi or an initiate in the path of love of the supreme (Bhakti), who when attains the state of super consciousness, that is, samadhi; lives in the contemplation of the supreme, in Plato’s terms, the beauty itself. Plato gives a vivid description and a detailed path of how such a state can be achieved, undoubtedly in his own terms using ‘beauty’ for the absolute being, and ‘lover’ for the yogi or the initiate. He prescribes his path thus in Symposium, 

He who, ascending from these earthly things under the influence of true love, begins to perceive that beauty, is not far from the end. And the true order of going, or being led by another, to the things of love, is to begin from the beauties of earth and mount upwards for the sake of that other beauty, using these as steps only, and from one going on to two, and from two to all fair bodily forms, and from fair bodily forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair sciences, until from fair sciences he arrives at the science of which I have spoken, the science which has no other object than absolute beauty, and at last knows that which is beautiful by itself alone. This is that life above all others which man should live, in the contemplation of beauty absolute… (Plato, 225)    

There are four kinds of madness that Plato talks about in his dialogue, Phaedrus, one of which is the madness of love. According to him, “Love is a species of madness; but there are two kinds of madness, human and divine, and correspondingly two kinds of love” (Intro 240). Human love is madness because it is passion overmastering reason, like drunkenness or gluttony; divine love is madness because it is inspiration overmastering reason, like prophecy or poetry, which are irrational but blessed talents given to us by the gods.

There are four kinds of love in Greek culture. Paul W. Ludwig in his Desire and Polis, also talks about this distinction. The Online Etymology Dictionary also mentions ancient Greek distinction of four ways of love, being: “erao ‘to be in love with, to desire passionately or sexually;’ phileo ‘have affection for;’ agapao ‘have regard for, be contented with;’ and stergo, used especially of the love of parents and children or a ruler and his subjects^[5].”

The Ramayana portrays almost all the forms of love in their ideal manifestation, that the Greeks distinguish. It presents the ideal love of a son towards his parents. Shri Rama is a son who not only renounces his own throne just at the bidding of his father but also does not even question his mother Kaikeyi or King Dashrath despite being all-powerful and capable of overthrowing the King himself. He is ready to live in exile for fourteen years in the forest, observing the life of an ascetic. The following lines from Goswami Tulsidas’ Shri Rama Charita Manasa, illustrate how King Dashrath also could not bear the separation from his beloved son, Rama. Tulsidas in his Shri Rama Charita Manasa, “Ayodhya-kanda” couplet no. 155, observes thus,

rama rama kahi rama kahi rama rama kahi rama,

tanu parihari raghubara biraha rau gayau suradhama.

“Crying Rama, Rama and again Rama and yet again Rama, Rama, Rama, the

King cast off his body in his agony of separation from the Chief of Raghu’s line and

ascended to the abode of gods.”

There are rare examples of such a brotherly love as the Ramayana puts forth in front of the world, wherein a brother like Bharat, is fighting his elder brother Rama not for winning the throne as has been the course of history for many centuries, but for renouncing it and to hand it over to the rightful King, that is Shri Rama his own brother. And Shri Rama’s staunch association with observance of dharma is worth paying attention to, who despite the request of the whole kingdom of Ayodhya, does not return from exile so that his deceased father’s promise or pledge may not prove false.

The Ramayana portrays the tale of an ideal love within marriage between Rama and Sita. An ideal husband like Rama who promised Sita never to marry again and he kept his promise until the end. Rama, who even dares to build a bridge over an ocean to bring his wife back from Ravan. Sita, also by following her husband into the forest of her own accord and not giving in to Ravan’s temptations proved a worthy beloved and wife.

Ravan’s abduction of Sita and his desire for making her his queen can be seen as an example of eros wherein the love between Rama and Sita is that of a sacred sacrament called vivah- samskara which is sacred like the pure water of Ganges.

Rama, an ideal king, a true democratic king if he can be called so, was so much concerned with the wellbeing of his subjects that he gave more value to the opinion of his subjects rather than his own comforts and the happiness of his family. He even had to leave Sita, his own wife, for whom he fought the deadly war and killed Ravan. He valued public opinion more than anything else.   

I would like to conclude by stating that though Plato was a Western philosopher, he had already imbibed within himself the synthesis of Bhakti yoga and Gyan yoga. His dialogical method of argumentation reminds us of the Nyaya philosophers. It is important today for Indian scholars to seek co-relations between our ancient spiritual traditions, as represented by the Ramayana and Puranic texts and the illustrious gems of Western philosophy and literature. This comparative study of the conventions of love especially that of Courtly Love in the West and classical Sanskrit literature and the concept of Sringara or the Erotic sentiment with special reference to Plato’s Symposium and Valmiki’s Ramayana has been rewarding in the sense that it highlighted the convergences and divergences between these two different culture and civilizations which opens up further research in the field.

1. Plato. The Symposium, translated by Christopher Gill and Desmond Lee, Penguin   Books, 2006.

2. Plato. Phaedrus, translated with an Introduction and Notes by Christopher Rowe, Penguin Books, 2005.

3. Harvey, Paul. The Oxford Companion to Classical Literature. Oxford University Press, 1937.

4. Sheffield, Frisbee C. C. Plato’s Symposium: The Ethics of Desire. Oxford University Press, 2006.

5. Ludwig, Paul W. Eros and Polis: Desire and Community in Greek Political Theory. Cambridge University Press, 2002.

6. Valmiki. The Ramayana of Valmiki, tr. by Ralph T. H. Griffith, M.A., 2016.

7. Gupta, Ruchir. Ramayana: A Poetic Translation. M.E. Publishers, 2013.

8. Tulsidas, Goswami. Shri Rama Charita Manasa. Gita Press Gorakhpur, 1633.

9. Tulsidas. The Ramcharitmanas (Vol. I, II, III), tr. by Rohini Chowdhury, Penguin Random House India Private Limited, 2019.

10. Singh, Aradhana. “Everyday Expressions of Love as Described in Early Sanskrit Literature (c. 2nd Century BCE to 7th Century CE).” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, vol. 80, 2019, pp. 295–303. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/27192884. Accessed 4 June 2023.

11. Thundy, Zacharias P. “Courtly Love and Ancient India.” Journal of South Asian Literature, vol. 16, no. 1, 1981, pp. 45–59. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/40873621. Accessed 4 June 2023.

12. Shah, Shalini. “The Philosophy of ‘Kama’ in the Classical Sanskrit Literature, 7^th-13^th Centuries C.E.” Proceedings of the Indian History Congress, vol. 68, 2007, pp. 153–61. JSTOR, http://www.jstor.org/stable/44147827. Accessed 4 June 2023.

13. Singh, Aradhana. “Conventions and Representations of Love in Early Sanskrit Kāvyas: A Gendered Reading.” Social Scientist, vol. 49, no. 3/4 (574-575), 2021, pp. 69–80. JSTOR, https://www.jstor.org/stable/27027158. Accessed 4 June 2023.