Story of Birth of Srimati Radharani

There’s a story mentioned in the Puranas about the birth of Radha, the eternal consort of Shri Krishna. Radha is considered to be an incarnation of Goddess Lakshmi. Goddess Lakshmi was hesitant to take birth on Earth before the birth of Lord Vishnu as Shri Krishna. Lord Vishnu tried to convince her but she didn’t want to appear on Earth while Vishnu was still in Vaikuntha Lok. She finally agreed upon the condition that after her birth, she will open her eyes for the first time only when Krishna appears before her. Vishnu agreed to this condition. The day of her appearance on the Earth is known as Radhashtami.

On a half-moon night in the month of Bhadra, Vrishabhanu Maharaja went to the bank of the river Yamuna at around noon to take a midday bath. At that moment he saw a huge lotus floating on the water with a golden aura as bright as a thousand suns emanating from it. When Vrishabhanu went closer to the lotus, he saw the most beautiful and radiant form of a baby girl lying within the petals of the lotus. Vishabhanu was happy to see the baby girl and took her home. His wife Kirtida was delighted when she saw the beautiful baby and immediately arranged for all kinds of religious rites to be performed and donated thousands of cows to the Brahmanas. He and his wife named the baby girl Radha.

Soon they noticed that Radha is not opening her eyes. Vrishabhanu and his wife feared that their baby girl was perhaps blind from birth. At that time, Narada Muni appeared and advised him to make arrangements for a lavish birth celebration and send out invitations to all the residents of Raval and Gokula and especially to his dear friend Nanda Maharaja and his family.

On the day of the celebration, the guests assembled and everyone was very happy. Nanda Maharaj(Krishna’s father), Yashoda(Krishna’s mother) and Rohini(Balaram’s mother) also arrived along with little Krishna and Balaram. Yashoda met with her best friend Kirtida and congratulated her on having such a beautiful baby girl. Meanwhile, baby Krishna was crawling around the courtyard on his hands and knees. He crawled up to the cot in which Radhika was lying and pulled Himself up and looked in and His gaze fell upon the beautiful moon-like face of baby Radhika. At that moment, Srimati Radharani’s eyes fluttered and opened wide and blossomed like lotuses for the very first time and looked directly at Krishna, who was the first person that She had ever seen. It seems that she did not want to see anything of this world, only the form of Sri Krishna. Vrishabhanu and Kirtida were overjoyed to find out that their beloved daughter Radhika, was not blind after all. Everyone was delighted.