Twilight of the Sultanate c18.s4: Vallabhacharya
Twilight of the Sultanate c18.s4
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Vallabhacharya
c18.s4.1
Kabīr and Nānak had preached the path of Bhakti for self-realisation. They conceived God as Nirguna (attributeless) and Nirākār (formless). Love for Him took a mystic, Sūfī form. Their influence was greatest in the eastern Uttar Pradesh and the Punjab, but in the fifteenth century the whole of northern India was experiencing a religious ferment. In Bengal and western Uttar Pradesh also Chaitanya and Vallabhacharya helped give rise to a similar religious stir. But their love took the shape of an emotional, even erotic form. Though the two great sects of Chaitanya and Vallabhacharya have different geographical spheres, both adore Krishna as a child or young man. It is not the Nirguna Deity that is worshipped but a Saguna (anthropomorphic). Their almost simultaneous appearance in Bengal and Central India represents an unusually strong current of similar ideas and sentiments⁴⁴ throughout the country.
c18.s4.2
⁴⁴ Eliot, *Hinduism*, II.
c18.s4.3
Vallabhacharya was the son of Lakshmana Bhatt, a Telingana Brahman, and was born at Varanasi in A. D. 1479. At twelve, Vallabha had already discovered a new Vaishnava religion, and started on a pilgrimage to preach it. He is said to have gone to the court of Krishna Dēvarāya of Vijayanagar, where he defeated some Shaiva pandits in discussion. It is said that while at Vrindāvan, he was visited by Krishna in person.
c18.s4.4
Vallabha insisted on the "complete identity of both soul and world with the Supreme Spirit". His monism was known as *Suddha-* *adwaita* or "Pure Non-Duality". According to him Bhakti was both the means and the end; it is given by God; it comes by His grace. He conceived of Brahma as the material cause of the world, and believed that through His grace salvation could be achieved. His was the *Pushtī-Mārg*, or path of salvation through His Grace (*anugraha*). *Pushtī* in its highest form enabled one to attain God; in the ordinary way it enabled one to attain the objects of one's desires. Vallabha regarded the teacher on earth as divine, receiving divine honours.
c18.s4.5
Vallabha differed from Rāmānuja in so far that he believed in *Suddha-adwaita*, recognising no distinction between Soul and God—Soul was not His part but Him. Otherwise he also followed in the footsteps of the twelfth century master. Rāmānuja's advocacy of intense devotion to Vishnu is fully realised in Vallabh's faith. According to both, Gurū was comparable to God. Above all, to both of them, God was full of grace, and love for His creation.
c18.s4.6
In essence Vallabh's teachings were good, in practice they became "wordly". Eliot thinks that with Vallabh the vision which is generally directed Godwards and forgets the flesh, turned earthwards and forgot God. The literature of the Vallabhacharīs repeatedly states that the Gurū is the same as the deity, and often the worship tended to be licentious when women worshipped the deity in the form of the priest. In the sixteenth century the Rādhā-Vallabhīs, who gave pre-eminence to Rādhā, made the worship a farce bordering on TXobscenity. In the words of Monier Williams,⁴⁵ "Vallabhacharyaism became in its degenerate form the Epicureanism of the East".⁴⁶
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⁴⁵ Also cited in *An Advanced History of India* (Macmillan, 1953), 404.
c18.s4.8
⁴⁶ Today the Māhārāj of the Nathdwārā temple in Rajasthan is the chief of the Vallabhī sect.
c18.s4.9
In spite of the few weaknesses that had crept in the movement of Vallabhacharya, there were many redeeming features in it. Vallabha advocated the worship of Bāl Gopāl or the Child Lord. The idea is foreign to the western mind, but in India the worship of Bāl Bhagwān has an important place. Vallabha sect also attracted men of all castes and creeds including Muhammadans.