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4 Introduction
The ancient Greek stories in which gods and humans mate do
not on the whole look like symbols of non-sexual love betweeen
thedivineandthehuman. A possible exception is the marriage
of the god Dionysus to the ‘Basilinna’, the wife of the Archon
Basileus (‘ruler-king’, literally, the member of the panel of rulers at
Athens most especially responsible for sacred a·airs). In this case
a marriage ritual may stand for the union of human and divine.
In Hindu India at least marriage can represent the union of
human and divine. There is even a specific name for this kind
of passionate devotion to a god: ‘Bhakti’. The love of Radha and
the god Krishna is particularly relevant. Radha would stand for
the human side. There is a problem: Radha herself has a ‘claim
to divinity’. Still, at least sometimes the idea of Radha seems
to gather up in it the idea of a devout person’s union with the
divine. As one historian of religion has commented: ‘As the feminine
worldward side of the masculine–feminine Radha–Krishna she is
the tie between deity and all souls, since she is one with the gopis
[milkmaids or cowgirls, co-lovers with Radha of Krishna] and thus
with those whom the gopis represent, namely all humankind.’ The
notion that the construct of Sacred Marriage implies’ (129; on the king’s prowess,
109–10). If she is right, one cannot use without reservation the conclusions of
Kramer. For further references on the debate about ‘sacred marriage’ in ancient
Mesopotamia see A. Kuhrt, ‘Babylon’, in E. J. Bakker, I. J. F. De Jong, and H.
van Wees (eds.), Brill’s Companion to Herodotus (Leiden etc., 2002), 475–96 at 492
n. 37. In the foregoing (not only on Mesopotamia) I have been helped by Kuhrt’s
clear distinction between two kinds of sacred marriage: ‘one is the marriage of two
gods, represented by their statues; the other a ceremony during which the goddess
of erotic love, Inanna/Ishtar (represented by a priestess?), and the king in the guise
of her mythical lover, Dumuzi, had intercourse’. It is the second kind which is the
subject of dispute.
On the whole subject see A. Avagianou, Sacred Marriage in the Rituals of Greek
Religion (Europ•aische Hochschulschriften, ser. 15, 54; Berne etc., 1991).
‘We could explain this strange and unique ritual in Greek religion as the legitimized
σµµειξις of divine and human via marriage’ (Avagianou, Sacred Marriage
in the Rituals of Greek Religion, 200).
Cf. Hawley, ‘A Vernacular Portrait: Radha in the Sur Sagar’, in Hawley and
Wul·, The Divine Consort, 42–56 at 56.
N. Hein, ‘Comments: Radha and Erotic Community’, in Hawley and Wul·,
The Divine Consort, 116–24 at 120, commenting on Hawley’s paper. Max Weber
has some good remarks on the love of Krishna, and his parallel with Pietism is helpful:
‘Was der alten klassischen Bhagavata-Religiosit•at zun•achst noch fehlte oder
jedenfalls—wenn es in ihr schon existierte—von der vornehmen Literatenschicht
nicht rezipiert wurde, war die br•unstige Heilandsminne der sp•ateren Krischna-
Religiosit•at. A• hnlich wie etwa die lutherische Orthodoxie die psychologisch gleichartige
pietistische Christus-Liebe (Zinzendorf) als unklassische Neuerung ablehnte’