Reading section 26

FOOTNOTES:

[Footnote 564: Such as the Vishnu Purana, Vishnu Dharma, said to be a section of the Garuda Purana and the Bhagavad-gita.]

[Footnote 565: The Hindus are well aware that the doctrine of Bhakti spread from the south to the north. See the allegory quoted in _J.R.A.S._ 1911, p. 800.]

[Footnote 566: Thus Ramanuja says (Sri Bhashya, II. 2. 43) that the Vedanta Sutras do not refute the Sankhya and Yoga but merely certain erroneous views as to Brahman not being the self.]

[Footnote 567: It has been described as the earliest of the Vishnuite Churches and it would be so if we could be sure that the existence of the doctrine called Dvaitadvaita was equivalent to the existence of the sect. But Bhandarkar has shown some reason for thinking that Nimbaditya lived after Ramanuja. It must be admitted that the worship of Radha and the doctrine of self-surrender or prapatti, both found in the Dasasloki, are probably late.]

[Footnote 568: See Grierson in _E.R.E._ vol. II. p. 457.]

[Footnote 569: The Church of the Nimavats is also called Sanakadi-sampradaya because it professes to derive its doctrine from Sanaka and his brethren who taught Narada, who taught Nimbarka. At least one sub-sect founded by Harivamsa (born 1559) adopts a doctrine analogous to Saktism and worships Radha as the manifestation of Krishna's energy.]

[Footnote 570: Called the Dasasloki. It is translated in Bhandarkar's _Vaishn and Saivism_, pp. 63-5.]

[Footnote 571: Also spelt Alvar and Azhvar. The Tamil pronunciation of this difficult letter varies in different districts. The word apparently means one who is drowned or immersed in the divine love. Cf. _Azhi_, the deep sea; _Azhal_, being deep or being immersed.]

[Footnote 572: An educated Vaishnava told me at Srirangam that devas and saints receive the same homage.]

[Footnote 573: It is possible that the poems attributed to Namm'arvar and other saints are really later compositions. See _Epig. Ind_. vol. VIII. p. 294.]

[Footnote 574: XI. 5. 38-40.]

[Footnote 575: Bhandarkar (_Vaishn. and Saivism_, p. 50) thinks it probable that Kulasekhara, one of the middle Arvars, lived about 1130. But the argument is not conclusive and it seems to me improbable that he lived after Nathamuni.]

[Footnote 576: The first called Mudal-Ayiram consists of nine hymns ascribed to various saints such as Periyarvar and Andal. The second and third each consist of a single work the Periya-tiru-mori and the Tiru-vay-mori ascribed to Tiru-mangai and Namm'arvar respectively. The fourth part or Iyar-pa is like the first a miscellany containing further compositions by these two as well as by others.]

[Footnote 577: Nityanusandhanam series: edited with Telugu paraphrase and English translation by M.B. Srinivasa Aiyangar, Madras, 1898.]

[Footnote 578: The best known is the Guru-parampara-prabhavam of Brahmatantra-svatantra-swami. For an English account of these doctors see T. Rajagopala Chariar, _The Vaishnavite Reformers of India_, Madras, 1909.]

[Footnote 579: Agamapramanya. He also wrote a well-known hymn called Alavandar-Stotram and a philosophical treatise called Siddhi-traya.]

[Footnote 580: He states himself that he followed Boddhayana, a commentator on the Sutras of unknown date but anterior to Sankara. He quotes several other commentators particularly Dramida, so that his school must have had a long line of teachers.]

[Footnote 581: See _Gazetteer of India_, vol. XXIII. s.v. There is a Kanarese account of his life called Dibya-caritra. For his life and teaching see also Bhandarkar in _Berichte VIIth Int. Orient. Congress_, 1886, pp. 101 ff. Lives in English have been published at Madras by Alkondaville Govindacarya (1906) and Krishnaswami Aiyangar (? 1909).]

[Footnote 582: He also wrote the Vedartha Sangraha, Vedartha Pradipa, Vedanta Sara and a commentary on the Bhagavad-gita.]

[Footnote 583: _S.B.E._ XLVIII. p. 3.]

[Footnote 584: II. 2. 36-39.]

[Footnote 585: II. 2. 43 _ad fin._]

[Footnote 586: Ramanuja's introduction to the Bhagavad-gita is more ornate but does not go much further in doctrine than the passage here quoted.]

[Footnote 587: This fivefold manifestation of the deity is a characteristic Pancaratra doctrine. See Schrader, _Int._ pp. 25, 51 and _Sri Bhashya_, II. 242.]

[Footnote 588: See Br. Ar. Up III. 7. The Sri Vaishnavas attach great importance to this chapter.]

[Footnote 589: Only relatively northern and southern. Neither flourish in what we call northern India.]

[Footnote 590: Hence the two doctrines are called markata-nyaya and marjara-nyaya, monkey theory and cat theory. The latter gave rise to the dangerous doctrine of Doshabhogya, that God enjoys sin, since it gives a larger scope for the display of His grace. Cf. Oscar Wilde in _De Profundis_, "Christ, through some divine instinct in him, seems to have always loved the sinner as being the nearest possible approach to perfection in man.... In a manner not yet understood of the world, he regarded sin and suffering as being in themselves beautiful holy things and modes of perfection.... Christ, had he been asked, would have said--I feel quite certain about it--that the moment the prodigal son fell on his knees and wept, he made his having wasted his substance with harlots, his swine herding and hungering for the husks they ate beautiful and holy moments in his life."]

[Footnote 591: Also called Venkatanatha. For some rather elaborate studies in the history of the Sri-Vaishnavas see V. Rangacharis' articles in _J. Bombay R.A.S._ 1915 and 1916 and _J. Mythic Society_, 1917, Nos. 2 ff.]

[Footnote 592: Prapatti and acaryabhimana.--The word _prapatti_ seems not to occur in the Sri Bhashya and it is clear that Ramanuja's temperament was inclined to active and intelligent devotion. But _prapatti_ is said to have been taught by Nathamuni and Sathagopa (Rajagopala Chariar, _Vaishnavite Reformers_, p. 6). The word means literally _approaching._]

[Footnote 593: The Artha-pancaka and Tattva-traya are the best known. See text and translation of the first in _J.R.A.S._ 1910, pp. 565-607.]

[Footnote 594: Ramanuja set less store than Sankara on asceticism and renunciation of the world. He held the doctrine called _samucchaya_ (or combination) namely that good works as well as knowledge are efficacious for salvation.]

[Footnote 595: Also called Anandatirtha and Purnaprajna. According to others he was born in 1238 A.D. See for his doctrines Grierson's article Madhvas in _E.R.E._ and his own commentaries on the Chandogya and Brihad Ar. Upanishads published in _Sacred Books of the Hindus_, vols. III. and XIV. For his date Bhandarkar, _Vaishn. and Saivism_, pp. 58-59 and _I.A._. 1914, pp. 233 ff. and 262 ff. Accounts of his life and teaching have been written by Padmanabha Char. and Krishna Svami Aiyer (Madras, 1909). His followers maintain that he is not dead but still alive at Badari in the Himalayas.]

[Footnote 596: See Padmanabha Char. _l.c._ page 12. Madhva condemned the worship of inanimate objects (_e.g._ com. Chand. Up. VII. 14. 2) but not the worship of Brahman _in_ inanimate objects.]

[Footnote 597: In a work called the _Pashanda capetika_ or _A Slap for Heretics_, all the adherents of Madhva are consigned to hell and the Saurapurana, chaps. XXXVIII.-XL. contains a violent polemic against them. See Jahn's _Analysis_, pp. 90-106 and Barth in _Melanges Harlez_, pp. 12-25. It is curious that the Madhvas should have been selected for attack, for in many ways they are less opposed to Sivaites than are other Vishnuite sects but the author was clearly badly informed about the doctrines which he attacks and he was probably an old-fashioned Sivaite of the north who regarded Madhvism as a new-fangled version of objectionable doctrines.

The Madhvas are equally violent in denouncing Sankara and his followers. They miswrite the name Samkara, giving it the sense of mongrel or dirt and hold that he was an incarnation of a demon called Manimat sent by evil spirits to corrupt the world.]

[Footnote 598: See his comment on Chand. Up. VI. 8. 7. Compare Bhag.-g. XV. 7. The text appears to say that the soul (Jiva) is a part (amsa) of the Lord. Madhva says it is so-called because it bears some reduced similitude to the Lord, though quite distinct from him. Madhva's exegesis is supported by a system of tantric or cabalistic interpretation in which every letter has a special meaning. Thus in the passage of the Chand. Up. mentioned above the simple words _sa ya eshah_ are explained as equivalent to Sara essence, yama the controller, and ishta the desired one. The reading atat tvam asi is said not to have originated with Madhva but to be found in a Bhagavata work called the Samasamhita.]

[Footnote 599: In his commentary on the opening of the Chand. Up. Madhva seems to imply a Trinity consisting of Vishnu, Rama (=Lakshmi) and Vayu.]

[Footnote 600: This is expressly stated at the end of the commentary on the Brih. Ar. Upan.]

[Footnote 601: _Life and teachings of Sri-Madhvacharyar_ by Padmanabha Char. 1909, p. 159. Some have suspected a connection between Madhva's teaching and Manicheism, because he attached much importance to an obscure demon called Manimat (see Mahabh. III. 11, 661) whom he considered incarnate in Sankara. It is conceivable that in his Persian studies he may have heard of Mani as an arch-heretic and have identified him with this demon but this does not imply any connection between his own system (or Sankara's either) and Manicheism.]

[Footnote 602: Brih. Ar. Upan. III. 7. 2.]

[Footnote 603: Among them are the Manimanjari, the Madhvavijaya and the Vayustuti, all attributed to a disciple of Madhva and his son.]

CHAPTER XXX

LATER VISHNUISM IN NORTH INDIA

1

With the fifteenth century Hinduism enters on a new phase. Sects arise which show the influence of Mohammedanism, sometimes to such an extent that it is hard to say whether they should be classed as Hindu or Moslim, and many teachers repudiate caste. Also, whereas in the previous centuries the centre of religious feeling lay in the south, it now shifts to the north. Hinduism had been buffeted but not seriously menaced there: the teachers of the south had not failed to recognize by their pilgrimages the sanctity and authority of the northern seats of learning: such works as the Gita-govinda testify to the existence there of fervent Vishnuism. But the country had been harassed by Moslim invasions and unsettled by the vicissitudes of transitory dynasties. The Jains were powerful in Gujarat and Rajputana. In Bengal Saktism and moribund Buddhism were not likely to engender new enthusiasms. But in a few centuries the movements inaugurated in the south increased in extension and strength. Hindus and Mohammedans began to know more of each other, and in the sixteenth century under the tolerant rule of Akbar and his successors the new sects which had been growing were able to consolidate themselves.

After Ramanuja and Madhva, the next great name in the history of Vishnuism, and indeed of Hinduism, is Ramanand. His date is uncertain.[604] He was posterior to Ramanuja, from whose sect he detached himself, and Kabir was his disciple, apparently his immediate disciple. Some traditions give Prayaga as his birthplace, others Melucote, but the north was the scene of his activity. He went on a lengthy pilgrimage, and on his return was accused of having infringed the rules of his sect as to eating, etc., and was excommunicated, but received permission from his Guru to found a new sect. He then settled in Benares and taught there. He wrote no treatise but various hymns ascribed to him are still popular.[605] Though he is not associated with any special dogma, yet his teaching is of great importance as marking the origin of a popular religious movement characterized by the use of the vernacular languages instead of Sanskrit, and by a laxity in caste rules culminating in a readiness to admit as equals all worshippers of the true God.[606] This God is Rama rather than Krishna. I have already pointed out that the worship of Rama as the Supreme Being (to be distinguished from respect for him as a hero) is not early: in fact it appears to begin in the period which we are considering. Of the human forms of the deity Krishna was clearly the most popular but the school of Ramanuja, while admitting both Rama and Krishna as incarnations, preferred to adore God under less mythological and more philosophic names such as Narayana. Ramanand, who addressed himself to all classes and not merely to the Brahman aristocracy, selected as the divine name Rama. It was more human than Narayana, less sensuous than Krishna. Every Hindu was familiar with the poetry which sings of Rama as a chivalrous and godlike hero. But he was not, like Krishna, the lover of the soul, and when Ramaism was divested of mythology by successive reformers it became a monotheism in which Hindu and Moslim elements could blend. Ramanand had twelve disciples, among whom were Kabir, a Raja called Pipa, Rai Das, a leather-seller (and therefore an outcast according to Hindu ideas) as well as Brahmans. The Ramats, as his followers were called, are a numerous and respectable body in north India, using the same sectarian mark as the Vadagalais from whom they do not differ materially, although a Hindu might consider that their small regard for caste is a vital distinction. They often call themselves Avadhutas, that is, those who have shaken off worldly restrictions, and the more devout among them belong to an order divided into four classes of which only the highest is reserved to Brahmans and the others are open to all castes. They own numerous and wealthy maths, but it is said that in some of these celibacy is not required and that monks and nuns live openly as man and wife.[607]

An important aspect of the Ramat movement is its effect on the popular literature of Hindustan which in the fifteenth and even more in the sixteenth century blossoms into flowers of religious poetry. Many of these writings possess real merit and are still a moral and spiritual force. European scholars are only beginning to pay sufficient attention to this mighty flood of hymns which gushed forth in nearly all the vernaculars of India[608] and appealed directly to the people. The phenomenon was not really new. The psalms of the Buddhists and even the hymns of the Rig Veda were vernacular literature in their day, and in the south the songs of the Devaram and Nalayiram are of some antiquity. But in the north, though some Prakrit literature has been preserved, Sanskrit was long considered the only proper language for religion. We can hardly doubt that vernacular hymns existed, but they did not receive the imprimatur of any teacher, and have not survived. But about 1400 all this changes. Though Ramanand was not much of a writer he gave his authority to the use of the vernacular: he did not, like Ramanuja, either employ or enjoin Sanskrit and the meagre details which we have of his circle lead us to imagine him surrounded by men of homely speech.

One current in this sea of poetry was Krishnaite and as such not directly connected with Ramanand. Vidyapati[609] sang of the loves of Krishna and Radha in the Maithili dialect and also in a form of Bengali. In the early fifteenth century (c. 1420) we have the poetess Mira Bai, wife of the Raja of Chitore who gained celebrity and domestic unhappiness by her passionate devotion to the form of Krishna known as Ranchor. According to one legend the image came to life in answer to her fervent prayers, and throwing his arms round her allowed her to meet a rapturous death in his embrace. This is precisely the sentiment which we find later in the teaching of Vallabhacarya and Caitanya. The hymns of the Bengali poets have been collected in the _Padakalpataru_, one of the chief sacred books of the Bengali Vaishnavas. From Vallabhacarya spring the group of poets who adorned Braj or the Muttra district. Pre-eminent among them is the blind Sur Das who flourished about 1550 and wrote such sweet lyrics that Krishna himself came down and acted as his amanuensis. A somewhat later member of the same group is Nabha Das, the author of the Bhakta Mala or Legends of the Saints, which is still one of the most popular religious works of northern India.[610] Almost contemporary with Sur Das was the great Tulsi Das and Grierson[611] enumerated thirteen subsequent writers who composed Ramayanas in some dialect of Hindi. A little later came the Mahratta poet Tukaram (born about 1600) who gave utterance to Krishnaism in another language.

Tulsi Das is too important to be merely mentioned as one in a list of poets. He is a great figure in Indian religion, and the saying that his Ramayana is more popular and more honoured in the North-western Provinces than the Bible in England is no exaggeration.[612] He came into the world in 1532 but was exposed by his parents as born under an unlucky star and was adopted by a wandering Sadhu. He married but his son died and after this loss he himself became a Sadhu. He began to write his Ramayana in Oudh at the age of forty-three, but moved to Benares where he completed it and died in 1623. On the Tulsi Ghat, near the river Asi, may still be seen the rooms which he occupied. They are at the top of a lofty building and command a beautiful view over the river[4].

His Ramayana which is an original composition and not a translation of Valmiki's work is one of the great religious poems of the world and not unworthy to be set beside _Paradise Lost_. The sustained majesty of diction and exuberance of ornament are accompanied by a spontaneity and vigour rare in any literature, especially in Asia. The poet is not embellishing a laboured theme: he goes on and on because his emotion bursts forth again and again, diversifying the same topic with an inexhaustible variety of style and metaphor. As in some forest a stream flows among flowers and trees, but pours forth a flood of pure water uncoloured by the plants on its bank, so in the heart of Tulsi Das the love of God welled up in a mighty fountain ornamented by the mythology and legends with which he bedecked it, yet unaffected by them. He founded no sect, which is one reason of his popularity, for nearly all sects can read him with edification, and he is primarily a poet not a theologian. But though he allows himself a poet's licence to state great truths in various ways, he still enunciates a definite belief. This is theism, connected with the name Rama. Since in the north he is the author most esteemed by the Vishnuites, it would be a paradox to refuse him that designation, but his teaching is not so much that Vishnu is the Supreme Being who becomes incarnate in Rama, as that Rama, and more rarely Hari and Vasudeva, are names of the All-God who manifests himself in human form. Vishnu is mentioned as a celestial being in the company of Brahma,[613] and so far as any god other than Rama receives attention it is Siva, not indeed as Rama's equal, but as a being at once very powerful and very devout, who acts as a mediator or guide. "Without prayer to Siva no one can attain to the faith which I require."[614] "Rama is God, the totality of good, imperishable, invisible, uncreated, incomparable, void of all change, indivisible, whom the Veda declares that it cannot define."[615] And yet, "He whom scripture and philosophy have sung and whom the saints love to contemplate, even the Lord God, he is the son of Dasarath, King of Kosala."[616] By the power of Rama exist Brahma, Vishnu and Siva, as also Maya, the illusion which brings about the world. His "delusive power is a vast fig-tree, its clustering fruit the countless multitude of worlds, while all things animate and inanimate are like the insects that dwell inside and think their own particular fig the only one in existence."[617] God has made all things: pain and pleasure, sin and merit, saints and sinners, Brahmans and butchers, passion and asceticism. It is the Veda that distinguishes good and evil among them.[618] The love of God and faith are the only road to happiness. "The worship of Hari is real and all the world is a dream."[619] Tulsi Das often uses the language of the Advaita philosophy and even calls God the annihilator of duality, but though he admits the possibility of absorption and identification with the deity, he holds that the double relation of a loving God and a loving soul constitutes greater bliss. "The saint was not absorbed into the divinity for this reason that he had already received the gift of faith."[620] And in a similar spirit he says, "Let those preach in their wisdom who contemplate Thee as the supreme spirit, the uncreate, inseparable from the universe, recognizable only by inference and beyond the understanding; but we, O Lord, will ever hymn the glories of thy

incarnation." Like most Hindus he is little disposed to enquire what is the purpose of creation, but he comes very near to saying that God has evolved the world by the power of Maya because the bliss which God and his beloved feel is greater than the bliss of impersonal undifferentiated divinity. It will be seen that Tulsi Das is thoroughly Hindu: neither his fundamental ideas nor his mythological embellishments owe anything to Islam or Christianity. He accepts unreservedly such principles as Maya, transmigration, Karma and release. But his sentiments, more than those of any other Indian writer, bear a striking resemblance to the New Testament. Though he holds that the whole world is of God, he none the less bids men shun evil and choose the good, and the singular purity of his thoughts and style contrasts strongly with other Vishnuite works. He does not conceive of the love which may exist between the soul and God as a form of sexual passion.

2

The beginning of the sixteenth century was a time of religious upheaval in India for it witnessed the careers not only of Vallabhacarya and Caitanya, but also of Nanak, the founder of the Sikhs. In the west it was the epoch of Luther and as in Europe so in India no great religious movement has taken place since that time. The sects then founded have swollen into extravagance and been reformed: other sects have arisen from a mixture of Hinduism with Moslem and Christian elements, but no new and original current of thought or devotion has been started.

Though the two great sects associated with the names of Caitanya and Vallabhacarya have different geographical spheres and also present some differences in doctrinal details, both are emotional and even erotic and both adore Krishna as a child or young man. Their almost simultaneous appearance in eastern and western India and their rapid growth show that they represent an unusually potent current of ideas and sentiments. But the worship of Krishna was, as we have seen, nothing new in northern India. Even that relatively late phase in which the sports of the divine herdsman are made to typify the love of God for human souls is at least as early as the Gita-govinda written about 1170. In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the history of Krishna worship is not clear,[621] but it persisted and about 1400 found speech in Bengal and in Rajputana.

According to Vaishnava theologians the followers of Vallabhacarya[622] are a section of the Rudra-sampradaya founded in the early part of the fifteenth century by Vishnusvami, an emigrant from southern India, who preached chiefly in Gujarat. The doctrines of the sect are supposed to have been delivered by the Almighty to Siva from whom Vishnusvami was fifteenth in spiritual descent, and are known by the name of _Suddhadvaita_ or pure non-duality. They teach that God has three attributes--_sac-cid-ananda_--existence, consciousness and bliss. In the human or animal soul bliss is suppressed and in matter consciousness is suppressed too. But when the soul attains release it recovers bliss and becomes identical in nature with God. For practical purposes the Vallabhacaris may be regarded as a sect founded by Vallabha, said to have been born in 1470. He was the son of a Telinga Brahman, who had migrated with Vishnusvami to the north.