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The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c14: Chapter XI. From Chandesvara to Rammohun (c. 1300-1833)

The Positive Background of Hindu Sociology c14

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Chapter XI. From Chandesvara to Rammohun (c. 1300-1833)

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During the period from the beginnings of the fourteenth to the end of the eighteenth century Hindu culture has to orient itself to two sets of foreign cultural agencies. The first are furnished by the Moslem *milieu*, and the second by the European, especially, the Portuguese, Dutch, French and British. The seventeenth century may be taken to be the real starting point of the influences from the European side. The virility of Hindu positivism is as manifest in these two milieux as in the previous ones.

Hindu Impacts on Islam

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The *Aitareya Brāhmaṇa* (VII, 15) philosophy of *charaiveti* (march on) should appear to have continued unhampered even in the epoch of Moslem intercourse with the Hindus. The tenacity of Hindu positivism made itself felt in Islamic circles. And if there were no converts to formal Hinduism among the Mussalmans there were at any rate signs of spiritual assimilation by them of the gifts of Hindu culture. The impact of Hindu arts and sciences on the Mussalmans was considerable.

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It is not perhaps possible to say in this instance as in many others that "captive Greece captured Rome." But there is no doubt that a large section of the Mussalmans,—rulers, scholars, authors, and the public,—came to be Hinduized in morals, manners and sentiments.

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Indianized Persian or Persianized Hindi evolved us Urdu in the fourteenth or even in the thirteenth century.

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Perhaps one of the first Urdu writers is Amir Khusru who flourished under the Khiljis (1290-1320) and is known to have died in 1325.

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The translation of Sanskrit works into Persian is at least as old as Sultan Firoz Shah Tughlak (1351-1388). It was on the strength of such translations that the Hindu physical sciences had a place in *Dalail-i-Firuz Shahi*,¹ a lengthy poem by Izzul-din Khalid.

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¹ *Maathirul-Umara*, Vol. II. p. 190, in M. Z. Siddiqi: "The Services of the Muslims to Sanskrit Literature" (*Calcutta Review*, February, 1933).

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While on the one hand Sanskrit texts were being rendered into Persian and mainly through Moslem interest and under Moslem auspices it is significant to observe that Sanskrit works were being rendered into the spoken languages of the Indian people,—the vernaculars,—and this also through Moslem interest. The first translation of the Sanskrit *Mahābhārata* into Bengali, for instance, was accomplished under the order of King Nasir Shah (1282-1325).

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The translation of the *Bhāgavata Purāṇa* into Bengali by Mālādhar Basu was done under the orders of Husain Shah (1493-1518). Parāgal Khān, a general of this ruler, as well as Parāgal's son Chhuṭi Khān are famous in Bengal as inspirers of the Bengali translation of portions of the *Mahābhārata* by Kavīndra Parameśvara and Śrī Karaṇa Nandi.²

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² D. C. Sen; *History of Bengali Language and Literature* (Calcutta, 1911), pp. 10-12, 14; N. N. Law: *The Promotion of Learning in India during Muhammadan Rule by Muhammadans* (London, 1916), pp. 107-111.

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Hindu-Moslem *rapprochement* was thus in evidence in Pre-Moghul India. The movement got a fillip under the Moghuls.

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The translation bureau of Akbar the Great published Persian renderings of the *Mahābhārata*, the *Rāmāyaṇa*, the *Gītā*, the *Atharva Veda*, the *Yogavāśiṣṭha*, the *Maheśamahānanda*, the *Harivamśa* and other treatises. Hindu texts had another great Moslem patron in Prince Dara Shikoh (1614-1659), the eldest brother of Aurangzeb or rather the eldest son of Shah Jahan (1628-1659). The translation and in certain instances the retranslation of the *Vedas* into Persian was undertaken on account of the interest of Dara Shikoh.

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With the help of Benares *Paṇḍits* Dara Shikoh is known to have translated several Hindu philosophical works into Persian. In 1657 was ready *Sirr-ul-Asrar* (The Secret of Secrets). This is the title of his rendering of the *Upaniṣads*. He was the translator also of the *Gītā*, the *Yogavāśiṣṭha Rāmāyaṇa* etc. His attempt to reconcile Sufism and Hindu pantheism found shape in the work *Majima-ul Bahrain* (1654).³

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³ N. N. Law : *Promotion of Learning etc.* (London, 1916), pp. 185-186.

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Interest in Hindu prosody, *kāmaśāstra* (sexology), *alamkāra* (rhetoric), music, physiognomy etc. was keen among the Mussalmans in the time of Aurangzeb (1659-1707) also. It was for his grandson, Prince Jahandar Shah, that these Hindu *vidyās* were incorporated in a Persian textbook entitled *Tuhfatul-Hind*.

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Hindu-Moslem cultural co-operation was manifest in the eighteenth century in the establishment in 1724 at Delhi under Muhammad Shah's orders of an observatory by the Hindu astronomer and ruler of Ambar (Jaipur), Jai Singh.

The Humanism of the Modern Indian Languages

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In the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries the *charai-veti* (march on) or expansion of Hindu culture was likewise in evidence in the new or "modern" Indian (vernacular) literatures. It was going on in Marathi-speaking regions through the development of the *abhangs* or folksongs of *bhakti* in honour of Viṣṇu. The *Gītā* was thereby rendered accessible to the people in their spoken language by poets like Jñāneśvara (c 1300) and Nāmadeva (1270-1350). The democratization of the *Gītā* is an achievement of first rate importance as furnishing the folk with the gospel of life's duties.

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By the beginning of the fifteenth century the Bengali translation of the *Rāmāyaṇa* by Krittivāsa was available to the people of Bengal as a fountain of the social philosophy of daily life. The work was inspired by the cult of *bhakti* (faith or devotion), an attitude of life such as became a passion with Chaitanya (1485-1553) two generations later.

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The equalitarian philosophy which sought to abolish the distinctions between the castes was a prominent characteristic of Hindu societal thinking in the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries,—with Nāmadeva as with Chaitanya. A founder of this movement is the Southerner Rāmānanda (c 1400?), who derived his cult of *bhakti* from another Southerner, Rāmānuja. Although a Southerner, he was a maker of Hindi language, and in point of social liberalism or radicalism was but distanced by one of his *chelās* or followers, namely, Kabīr (1470-1518?), a Mussalman weaver of Benares. It is wellknown that Kabīr called himself the child of both Allāh and Rāma. The annihilation of the distinction between Hinduism and Islam was the *Leitmotif* of his preachings and verses. Kabīr was by all means a pre-Moghul personality.

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Another pre-Moghul personality in whom socio-religious radicalism ran to greater extremes than even in Kabīr and who indeed was his *chelā* (disciple) was Nānak (1469-1538), the founder of Sikhism.

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Secular occupation was not discounted by Nānak. In his conception the state of a householder was no less acceptable to Hari (God) than retirement from the world.⁴ He did not consider secular business as an obstacle to the attainment of final emancipation. He preached likewise that emancipation was not confined to the higher castes but accessible to all men, including the Chaṇḍāl, the *pariah*. All men were received by him as disciples and the foundation of a popular religion was thereby laid.

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⁴ Trumpp: *Adi Granth*, Eng. transl. (London 1877), pp. cxi-cxii.

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In this system it is the duty of the disciple to destroy the enemies of his faith and to help in the diffusion of the Sikh religion.⁵ The disciple is strictly to obey the order of the *Guru* (preceptor or leader) and never to forsake him; he is also to minister to his brother Sikhs. He is to pay taxes, if demanded by the *Guru*.

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⁵ Nand Lal's *Rahitnama* (Rules of Conduct), pp. 9, 80, in Trumpp. cxv, cxvi.

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In the fourteenth and fifteenth centuries Hindu positivism was strong enough to express itself in the different regions of India in a manner such as might enable the people to energize in a spirit of hopefulness. The old texts were reinterpreted to assimilate new races, castes and creeds. Hinduism proved to be a going concern even under the conditions of the first two or three centuries of Moslem politics. And in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries Hindu positivism was once more in a flourishing condition. The age of Kavi-Kaṅkaṇa, the Bengali poet who wrote the *Chaṇḍī-maṅgala* in 1589, and Tulsīdās (1532-1624) who completed the Hindi *Rāmāyaṇa* about the same time is, as an era of the expansion and democratization of Hindu culture, not to be beaten by any epoch of Indian social achievements. Along with these two senior contemporaries of Northern India Tukārām (1608-1649), the Maratha writer of *abhangs*, constituted a triumvirate of extraordinary importance in the annals of Hindu humanism during the period of Indo-Moghul Renaissance.

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It is as an expression of the traditional democratic or socialistic strands in Hindu culture such as we have seen even in the earliest Vedic and post-Vedic milieux that we have likewise to assess the works of the great Telugu poet of the seventeenth century, namely, Vemana. The devotional or *bhakti* egalitarianism of the Tamil *Kurāl* is carried forward in Vemana's verses to a pitch verging on revolution. In his sarcasm on the inequalities of material possession he is no less radical and realistic than in his invectives against the disabilities engendered by caste distinctions.

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On one occasion we encounter this Telugu poet of equality and fraternity declaiming as follows:

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"Why should he constantly revile the Pariar? Are not his flesh and blood the same as those of our men? And of what caste is He who pervades the Pariar as well as all other men? Why should you plunge in water to purify yourself if a Pariar touches you?"

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Again, "call not him an outcaste who possesses a good disposition. Did not the hermit Vaśiṣṭha take a Pariar wife? How can he be called Brāhmaṇ whose qualities are those of a Pariar?"⁶

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⁶ Verses III, 227-229 (Brown) in B. A. Saletore: *Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire (1346-1646)*, Vol. II. (Madras 1934), pp. 8, 54, 58.

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In the same strain are the following lines: "If a man still has in his heart the principles of a Pariar, and yet scorns Pariars, why should he become twice-born, while devoid of any good quality?"

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Vemana's condemnation of socio-economic inequalities is no less emphatic. "If one be possessed of wealth," says he, "they look upon him as the god of love; but if he falls into poverty, and is unable to rise and help himself, be he as Cupid himself, they look upon him as a Pariar."

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The problem of the Pariar, of the untouchables and of the distinctions between the higher and the lower castes found in Vemana a powerful exponent. His place in Hindu positivism is of the same rank as that of Kabīr, Chaitanya and the others, if not even higher.

Democratic Strands in Hindu Social Thought

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It has been the custom to treat the social reform movements among the Hindus from the fourteenth to the eighteenth century as due to the impacts of Islam, monotheistic and democratic as this latter is. Sociologically, however, it is necessary to dive deeper into the phenomena. For one thing, it is patent to every student of the Hindu institutions and ideologies that both monotheism and democracy are coeval with the Hindu mind itself. Historically speaking, the concepts of the unity of Godhead and the equality of classes have never been absent in the Indian socio-religious and socio-economic tradition. The processes by which the non-Indians, non-Aryans, non-Brāhmaṇs, the Vrātyas, the Śūdras, the "wild tribes" and what not have got themselves Indianized, Aryanized, or Brāhmaṇized constitute the most solid realities of race-history and cultural development in every nook and corner of India and in every epoch of India's growth. In other words, it is not so much the *varṇāśrama* as the protests against the *varṇāśrama*, not so much the law and order, as the violations of law and order, not so much the alleged pure races or castes as the *varṇa-samkaras*, the "mixed colours", fusions of ethnic elements,—or rather the simultaneous operations of these two sets of forces that constitute the norm of Hindu cultural evolution. In the socialistic or democratic movements of Hindu India in the Moslem *milieu* we have but to read the continuations of the eternal society-making process, the millennium-old social metabolism, that has led to the vertical mobilization of groups from the lower to the higher strata. The very category, "expansion of Hindu culture," implies nothing but this democratization or rather impact of the masses upon the main stock of Hindu institutions and ideals.

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Thus considered, the history of Hindu social evolution can furnish evidences of socialism and democracy, understood in a general sense, such as have been analyzed by the Italian sociologist Salvatore Cognetti de Martiis in his *Socialismo Antico* (1889).⁷ The study of "economic ideals" as distinguished from economic realities is the subject matter of this treatise. And India is exhibited from the standpoint of the ideas of "social utopia" which came to evolve in its literature and folk-tradition.

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⁷ B. K. Sarkar: "Hindu Politics in Italian" in the *Indian Historical Quarterly*, September, 1925.

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He does not consider the struggle between the old and the new aristocracies to be a special phenomenon of any particular race-history, say, that of the Phoenicians. It is in his judgment a universal fact of civilization in the old and the new worlds, in Egypt, Greece and Rome as much as in India, China and Peru. The protests against private property, and glorifications of equality, fraternity, justice, peace and happiness are to be encountered, for instance, in the literature of every country, says he.

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Already even the Rig Vedic tradition of Yama (IX, 113, 8, X, 14, 13, X, 17, 1, X, 58,1) introduces us to conditions of bliss such as had existed in some golden age, after which therefore the social reformers of the day were aspiring. The Buddhist conception of equality and fraternity did not disappear with the so-called Buddhist ages. It reappeared in the Vaiṣṇava *milieu*. The *Viṣṇu Purāṇa* accords great importance to the Śūdras. The democratic spirit associated with Rāmānandism exercised a beneficial influence on the souls of the popular classes, leading to the energetic manifestation of the consciousness of self-importance. Viṣṇudās Kavi's *Svargārohaṇa* (Ascent to Heaven) dwells at length on the merits of the oppressed classes to the exclusion of the upper ten thousands who are exhibited in the worst colour. We are therefore in a position to assert that from the *Vrātya* Book of the *Atharva Veda* to the *Svargārohaṇa* of the Vaiṣṇava poet the Hindu democratic or egalitarian tradition has broadened down from precedent to precedent. And so far as the Moslem atmosphere is concerned, we should be prepared to admit that it did not kill the traditional Hindu spirit of expansion and social democracy as promoted by race-fusion.

Śilpaśāstras

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Most of the *Śilpaśāstras*, available in manuscript or in print, belong really to this period, nay, to its latter half, say, to the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. A few are being enumerated in the following statement.

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Maṇḍana (c. 1525) wrote *Rājavallabhamaṇḍana* (architecture)⁸ The author was an inhabitant of Udaypur.

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⁸ Edited with Gujarati translation by *Narayan Bharati Yasavanta, Bharati*, Baroda, 1891.

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By the sixteenth century the masters of *vāstu-vidyā* were known to be more numerous than the eighteen of the *Matsya-Purāṇa* as indicated in the period from Harṣa to Hemādri. The *Todarānanda* mentioned the following⁹ authorities:

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⁹ B. B. Dutt: *Town Planning in Ancient India* (Calcutta 1925), p. 17.

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1. Varāhamihira,
2. Chyavana,
3. Kāśyapa,
4. Vriddhagarga,
5. Utpala,
6. Māṇḍavya
7. Bharadvāja,
8. Vridhhavaśiṣṭha,
9. Lalla.

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Śrīkumāra's *Śilparatna* is a systematic and comprehensive treatise of large size in Sanskrit verse dealing not only with the construction of houses, villages and other allied things but also with iconography and things connected therewith. The last chapter deals with painting. The author was an inhabitant of Kerala in South India and may have flourished in the sixteenth century, as suggested by Gaṇapati Śāstri, the editor of the text.¹⁰

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¹⁰ Trivandrum Sanskrit Series, 1922.

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The author of the *Manuṣyālayachandrikā*¹¹ was an inhabitant of Kerala in South India. He acknowledges his debt to Nārāyaṇa's *Tantrasamuchchaya* (c. 1450). The first chapter deals with the examination of the soil, the second with the auspicious days, etc., the third with measurements, the fourth with classes of buildings and rooms. Out-houses, wells and tanks also have been discussed in the treatise which is entirely in verse.

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¹¹ Trivandrum Sanskrit Series, 1917.

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Viśvakarmā wrote *Bhūvanapradīpa*.¹² The text is partly in Sanskrit verse and partly in Oriya prose. It deals with temple architecture.

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¹² N. K. Bose: *Canons of Orissan Architecture* (Calcutta 1932).

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In the printed edition use has been made of five manuscripts in Sanskrit, which happen to be different recensions of *Bhūvanapradīpa*.¹³ The two other manuscripts used are copies of a book, entitled *Śilpipothi* in Oriya, which deals with the erection of thatched huts. Certain general matters regarding the selection of building sites, the classification of soils etc., are common to both the treatises. But the *Bhūvana-pradīpa* specialized in the architecture of temples. All the manuscripts appear to be quite recent in language and style.

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¹³ Bose, p. 5.

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An Oriya treatise entitled *Śilpaśāstra*¹⁴ is already in print. The author is supposed to have been Bauri Mahārāṇā.

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¹⁴ Published by Mohan Sahu (Cuttack fourth edition 1923).

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Among the works attributed to Viśvakarman is to be found in Gujarat the manuscript of the *Aparājita vāstu śāstra*,¹⁵ an architectural treatise.

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¹⁵ *Catalogue of Sanskrit Mss. contained in the private libraries of Gujarat, Kathiawad, Kach, Sindh and Khandesh* edited by G. Bühler, (Bombay 1872), p. 276.

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A treatise dealing with aviaries as well as houses is the *Pakṣimanuṣyālayalakṣaṇa*.¹⁶

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¹⁶ *List of Sanskrit Mss. in the private libraries of South India* edited by G. Oppert, Vol. II, p. 371.

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A treatise on tanks and wells is the *Kūpādijalasthānalakṣaṇa*, of which a manuscript is available in Travancore.

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A treatise on painting is the *Chitrasūtra*.¹⁷ Another work on the same subject is called *Chitrabhārata*.¹⁸

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¹⁷ Aufrecht: *Catalogus Catalogorum* (Leipzig), Vol. I. p. 187.

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¹⁸ Monier Williams *Sanskrit Dictionary*.

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A work on sculpture is known as *Tārālakṣaṇa*, another as *Mūrtti-dhyāna*.¹⁹

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¹⁹ Aufrecht, Vol .I. pp. 229, 464.

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Treatises on gems and precious stones are to be found under various names, e.g.,²⁰

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²⁰ Oppert, Vol. I., p. 478, Vol. II. p. 320; Aufrecht, Vol. I. p. 281, Vol. II. pp. 26, 138.

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1. *Ratnalakṣaṇa*
2. *Ratnaparīkṣā*
3. *Navaratnaparīkṣā*
4. *Ratnadīpikā* by Chaṇḍeśvara.

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The tradition of Hindu positive thinking in regard to the arts and crafts has then come down to our own times.

Purāṇas

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The entire *Purāṇa* literature should be taken as having assumed an almost final shape in the previous period, i.e., from Harṣa to Hemādri. But in the Moslem *milieu*, i.e., from the beginnings of the fourteenth to the beginnings of the nineteenth century new socio-cultural conditions must have furnished authors with inspiration for additions, alterations and modifications. It will take quite a long time to disentangle these new incorporations in each *Purāṇa* and assign to each its time and space value, i.e., the period and the region.

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We need not spend time over the *Purāṇas* in this period. But it is interesting to observe that the following *Purāṇas* are quoted in the *Vivādaratnākara* of Chaṇḍeśvara:²¹

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²¹ Text of the *Vivāda-ratnākara* (in the Bibliotheca Indica Series) edited by Dinanath Vidyalamkara, Calcutta 1887, Preface, p. vi.

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| 1. | *Devī Purāṇa* | 3. | *Matsya Purāṇa* |
| 2. | *Brahma Purāṇa* | 4. | *Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa.* |

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The following *Purāṇas* are quoted by Mādhava in his commentary on the *Āchārakāṇḍa* of *Parāśara Saṃhitā*:²²

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²² Text of *Parāśaradharma Saṃhitā* edited by V. S. Islampurkar (Bombay 1893), Vol. I, Part I., Preface, pp. 4-15.

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| 1. | *Agni Purāṇa*, *Āgneya* or *Vahni Purāṇa*, | 9. | *Viṣṇu Purāṇa* |
| 2. | *Kūrma Purāṇa* | 10. | *Śaiva Purāṇa.* |
| 3. | *Garuḍa Purāṇa* | 11. | *Kālikā Purāṇa* |
| 4. | *Nrisiṃha Purāṇa* | 12. | *Vāmana Purāṇa* |
| 5. | *Matsya Purāṇa* | 13. | *Skanda Purāṇa* |
| 6. | *Mārkaṇḍeya Purāṇa* | 14. | *Nandī Purāṇa* |
| 7. | *Linga Purāṇa* | 15. | *Nārada Purāṇa* |
| 8. | *Varāha Purāṇa* | 16. | *Parāśaropapurāṇa.* |

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These extracts furnish us with an idea as to the *Purāṇas* well known by the middle of the fourteenth century.²³

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²³ Vol. I. Part II. Preface, pp. 6-10; Vol. II. Part II. Preface, pp. xi-xvii.

The Positivism of Bengali Poetry

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Writings on the history of Bengali literature as on that of other Indian literature have been vitiated by a fundamental fallacy. In the story of a thousand years' literary development, for instance, people have managed to watch only the struggle for supremacy among the various orders of gods and socio-religious systems.²⁴ According to the methodology of literary historiography and art-criticism prevalent in and about Bengal or for that matter All-India, *Aeneid*, the great national epic of the Romans, would have no significance except what may be gathered from the ultimate triumph of Venus over Juno in the life-history of Aeneas. The method is not uninteresting, but when art-appreciation is obsessed by such a religio-theological "interpretation" the result is likely to be misleading, as in the case of Max Weber's *Religionssoziologie*.

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²⁴ D. C. Sen : *History of Bengali Language and Literature* (Calcutta 1911); T. C. Das Gupta : "Mediæval Bengali Literature" (c. 1250-1750) in the *Calcutta Review*, June, 1934.

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As an expression of this ultra-religiosity in the interpretation of literature and art is to be mentioned the attempt to exhibit the creations of poets, painters and sculptors in terms of *dhyāna* (meditation), *yoga* (communion with God) and what not. Love between man and woman has likewise been attacked by this method and presented as nothing but an allegory of the union between God and the soul.

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The successive stages in the evolution of Hindu literature,—in Bengali, Hindi, Marathi, Gujarati, Tamil, Telugu, etc.,—have been labelled with the hall-mark of one or other of the metaphysico-religious systems, e.g., Vedic, Upaniṣadic, Śaiva, Buddhist, Tāntric, Vaiṣṇava, Jaina, Śākta, etc. The entire literary material of India is generally presented to the world as the hand-maid of creeds, dogmas and rituals.

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The absurdity would be evident if one were to treat the whole course of Western literature as nothing but Hellenic and Roman paganism, Oriental Christianity, Roman Catholicism, Lutheranism, Pilgrim Fathers, Oxford Movement, Unitarianism, Christian Science and so forth in succession. Students of world literature who are obsessed by the influence of religious ideas on human achievements would read in the *Aeneid* only a *Purāṇa* of Latin mythology, in the *Divine Comedy* only an encyclopædia of mediaeval Christianity, and in the *Paradise Lost* just a Bible of the Puritans. Or, where in modern literature and art they find the treatment of subjects from Hellenic mythology they would be inclined to interpret it as "Back to Paganism!"

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It is necessary to cry halt to this sort of ultra-religious or metaphysical approach as has been done by the present author in *Love in Hindu Literature* (Tokyo 1916). A sober interpretation of the facts of Hindu literature is a desideratum. Even where the setting or scaffolding is religious or mythological and the *dramatis personae* divine or semi-divine one need not be tempted to mean by the texts "more than what meets the ear."

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Most of what has been passing in India for otherworldly literature and art is in reality the literature and art of human passions, human ideals, human interests and conflicts. To be more definite, it may be said that folk-life and sex-life have been the two chief *motifs* of a considerable portion of Indian literature and art. The medieval writings like the Rādhā-Kṛiṣṇa songs (*Padāvalī*) of Vidyāpati (c. 1450), the *Kavikaṅkaṇa-Chaṇḍī* (1589) etc. of Bengal ought to be approached as one approaches the literary creations of Eur-America with the methodology of modern art-criticism.

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Under the title of *Bāra-māsyā* or the "twelve month" story of men and women an extensive literature grew up in Bengal. Generally it was incorporated as a section in large works the titles of which end as a rule with *Mangala* (Welfare, Blessings). In the *Chaṇḍī* by Mādhava of East Bengal, available in manuscript one comes across a narrative of the joys and sorrows of the year. Such calendars of human vicissitudes constituted a stock in trade, so to say, of the poetry of creative Bengal.

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These stories are not always the stories of opulence and happiness. The hunter-girl Fullara, for instance, in the *Kavikankaṇa-Chaṇḍī* (pp. 199-202) describes her own *Bāramāsyā*, and this is nothing but a tale of woes, both physical and economic.

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Perhaps after the *Rāmāyaṇa* of Krittivāsa (c. 1450) no Bengali poetical work is more popular than Mukundarāma's *Kavikankaṇa-Chaṇḍī* (c. 1589), already referred to several times. This work *pro forma* should appear to be a treatise on *Chaṇḍī* the Mother, and therefore something like a contribution to religious poetry. But one has only to open the work, available in print, at any page and be convinced that no literary work in any language is more profane, secular and worldly than this Bengali composition, written as it is with the object of propagating the cult of Kālī. Every line in it breathes the spirit of living human beings, their daily exploits and ambitions, their hatreds and quarrels, their joys and sorrows. Mukundarāma is the poet *par excellence* of man's mastery over the things of this Earth, and the prophet born to accord an “Everlasting Yea” to life. It is of life and the world that he sings, of men and women in action and in struggle. He has furnished the Bengali masses with the well of *śaktiyoga* (energism), pure and undefiled. It is for a dose of inspiration in human endeavours and for the sunny atmosphere of human humour that one turns to this apostle of humanism in the sixteenth century.

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The establishment of a town by Kālketu belonging to the lowly and untouchable caste of *vyādha* (hunter or fowler) is an important item in this work.²⁵ And this furnishes the poet with an occasion for describing the diverse races and classes of population, the occupational structure of the people,—the milkmen, the Kāyasthas, the Brāhmaṇas etc., and the different wards of the city. The Moslems also come in for treatment and their manners and customs, marriage ceremony, and other social institutions have commanded the author’s attention. In this realistic account given over to the Moslem *mores* the Mollahs (Moslem priests) are described as officiating in the *jabāi* (i.e., ceremonial sacrifice) of hens and of she-goats for the Moslem householder. The poet is objective enough to mention that the fee obtained by the Moslem priest in connection with the hen-“sacrifice” is 40 cowries (=0-0-6 pies approximately) and that that for the she-goat “sacrifice” is *the head of the animal plus* 120 cowries (=0-1-6 pies approximately). It is interesting sociologically to observe that in sixteenth-century Bengal the Moslem householders are described in a manner which we of today should consider similar to the *āchāra* or practice of the Hindus in so far as the services of a priest in regard to the *jabāi* or sacrifice of animals are being requisitioned. The socio-religious *rapprochement* between Hindus and Moslems is a phenomenon that strikingly arrests our notice.

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²⁵ *Kavikaṅkaṇa-Chaṇḍī* (Calcutta University, 1924), Vol. I. pp. 258-261; J. N. Das Gupta: *Bengal in the Sixteenth Century A.D.* (Calcutta 1914), pp. 57-95.

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The animal world of Bengal has been the subject matter of a special section (pp. 99-101). The diverse animals are described in their relations with one another. And these relations are found to be identical with those obtaining in the human society. The king and his officers, priests, medical men, school masters etc., are all brought together in this survey.

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The movements and activities in which Mukunda-rāma is interested in this *Chaṇḍi* are not all confined to the home and the village. He knows the larger world too,—the cities, the merchants, law courts, battles, pilgrimages, boat life, social intrigues and what not. Nay, a considerable part of his poetry is given over to foreign lands, trade with distant countries,—Ceylon, for instance, and the exchange of goods (p. 814). The result of all this "world-sense," of wear and tear among diverse men and movements is noteworthy. His merchant, Dhanapati, is quite a reasonable man in whom sobriety has been engendered because of the experiences of life. While his wife Khullanā's character is being publicly impeached in his own gild he knows how to keep his head high. He is realistic enough to remember the stories of the *Mahābhārata* in which the morals such as can be questioned by the conventional standard have even been glorified. Nay, he tries to dissuade Khullanā herself from the determination to submit to the fire-test, famous in the Sītā-story of the *Rāmāyaṇa* (pp. 582-585).

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The author of the *Kavikankaṇa-Chaṇḍī* is a chastened man. He knows of all the excesses and vices of the *Kali Yuga* (pp. 992-996). But he does not get inspired to moralize over them or indulge in hysterics. He is a fine story-teller, an objective dramatizer, so to say, and endowed with the Chaucerian outfit.

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Moralizations do not belong to the grain of this poet's temperament. He is too human to be upset by the indiscretions of life, however grave they be. It is the sweet milk of human kindness that he administers to the people. His spiritual patents are very democratic, simple, naïve. Just the use of the divine name of Hari is enough to save anybody and everybody (997), he believes.

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Dvija Rāmachandra is the poet-singer of the narrative poem *Ambikā-Mangala*,²⁶ a work which is still in manuscript. Much of the material contained in this work resembles the contents of the *Kavikankaṇa-Chaṇḍī*. In point of literary excellence it should appear to be of at least the same merit as this famous *Chaṇḍī*, which happens to command the attention of the reading public perhaps on account of the sheer accident of being available in print.

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²⁶ It is accessible in the Calcutta University collection of Bengali manuscripts. The information is derived from Sj. Haridas Palit, author of *Ādyer Gambhīrā*, a treatise on the socio-religious history of Bengal, who

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At one point of the *Ambikā-Mangala* we have the description of the marriage ceremony of the heroine *Rambhāvatī*. Among the festivities are described the musical entertainments, dances by female dancers etc.

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At another point the merchant's wife Khullanā is being assisted by the maid Durvalā in the kitchen. The description of cooking points to the diverse items of household economy such as is prevalent in Bengal even today. One finds here among other things the jack-fruit seeds, pulse-cakes, prawn, *chitol* fish and *mān-kachu* so characteristic of Bengali dietary.

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The literature of creative Bengal has contributed untold springs of action for social energism. It is not surprising that a most remarkable emphasis on the dignity of man should be associated with the Vaiṣṇava poetry of Chaṇḍīdāsa (c. 1350).26a No two lines in the entire range of the world's classics can possibly vie with the following from this great poet of Bengal consecrated as they are to the apotheosis of man as the only reality or truth:

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26a See *Chaṇḍīdāser Padāvalī* ed. by N. R. Mukherji (Bangîya Sāhitya Pariṣat, Calcutta), p. 345, No. 809.

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"*Sabār upare mānuṣ satya*
*Tāhār upare nāi*."
(More real than all else is man,
Beyond or above him is nothing).

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Thus sings Chaṇḍīdāsa, who as the creator of this tiny verse can rank among the greatest *avatāras* of humanism and benefactors of mankind. And this is a bit of Bengali mind in the fourteenth century.

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Nothing short of an "Earthly Paradise" is furnished by Vidyāpati (c. 1450) in his *Padāvalī*,²⁷ thus:

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²⁷ Englished by A. K. Coomaraswamy as *The Songs of Vidyapati* (London 1915). See Sarkar: *Love in Hindu Literature* (Tokyo 1916).

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"Drunken are the honey-bees in honey-season
With the honey of the honey-flowers:
In Honey-Brindāban resides
The Honey-Lord of honey-love.

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Amid the companies of honey-maids
Is honey-honey-dalliance :
Honeyed are the blissful instruments of music.
Honeyed hands are beating honey-measures.
Honeyed is the dance's sway,
Honeyed are the movements of the dancers,
Honeyed are their happy songs,
And honeyed are the words of Vidyāpati."

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Pessimism and other-worldliness are the farthest removed from this mentality.

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A specimen of "dalliance in spring" is furnished below :

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"The new young maidens, maddened with new longings,
Are hurrying to the groves.
For ever and for ever new diversions such as these
Delight the heart of Vidyāpati."

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These are some of the delights with which Vidyāpati, the Bengali-Maithili or Maithili-Bengali poet of the fifteenth century, enriches the Bengali households from the lowliest upto the highest. Indeed, in the Chaṇḍīdāsa-Vidyāpati complex as in the *Chaṇḍī*-poems it is the masses that speak. We encounter here the direct delineations of the diverse incidents in the life that is actually lived by the folk,—the hunters, the milkmen, the cowherds, the traders, the boatmen, the cultivators. Bengali poetry is nothing if it is not democratic. It is life's urges, the *élan de la vie* in its thousand and one forms, that furnish the Bengali poets with the sunshine of Bengal's villages and towns.

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While dealing with the Vaiṣṇava love-poetry of the Bengali people it is appropriate to observe that humanism in India as in classical Hellas and in the modern West has ever been an expression of all-round secularism or positivism. And of this humanism sex-interest has been a great part. The sex-element is as important a factor in Hindu culture as the folk-element. Instead of starting with the hypothesis that Vaiṣṇava poetry is the metaphysics or allegory of God and the soul it should be more reasonable to begin with the objective anthropological foundations of daily sex-life among the cowherds, cultivators, and other teeming millions.

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The Rādhā-Kriṣṇa songs or sex-hymns of Vidyāpati have a background or context sufficiently wide and varied not only in India's art and literature but also in the incidents of her daily existence. They constitute indeed some of the specimens of actual folk-life, or folk-lore elevated to the status of "dignified" culture-lore. The worship of *lingam* or phallus as the creative male element is too deep-rooted in Bengali and other Hindu consciousness to be treated as an aberration. Nor is the male sex deified only in its generative function. Śiva "the Great God" stands for the thousand and one functions and aspects of the male principle, both beneficent and malevolent. If the Bengali and other Hindus know one Kriṣṇa to be a lover and a sweet-heart they know another Kriṣṇa as a statesman and a warrior. And there are the ideal husband, the ideal father, the ideal brother, the ideal ruler and so forth of the Rāma-stories.

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None the less prominent in Bengali and other Indian poetry is the deification or extollation of the female element. If Rādhā is a sweet-heart and a darling, Kālī, Chaṇḍī, Ambikā, Annadā, Bhavānī, etc. is the inspirer of a Perseus the Deliverer, of an Andreas Hofer, so to say, e.g., of a Pratāpāditya of Bengal or of a Śivāji the Maratha. If Rādhā enlivens maidenhood and young age, Sītā and Sāvitrī are the idols of the *Hausfrau's* daily life. The female sex as the embodiment of *śakti* or energy has been really accorded the highest and most comprehensive place in Bengali societal polity.

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Bengali positivism expressed itself also in democratic and socialistic forms. The *bhakti* (faith or devotion) movement associated with Chaitanya (1485-1533), which led somewhat to the annihilation of barriers between the castes as well as those between the Hindus and the Moslems, has been no less powerful in the pluralistic make-up of the Bengali mind than the cult of *śakti* which has come down to Rāmaprasāda (1718-75) and Rāmakriṣṇa in the nineteenth century (1836-86).²⁸

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²⁸ H. M. Mukhopadhyaya: *Bangabhāṣār Lekhaka* or "Writers in Bengali" (Calcutta 1904), pp. 210-227; B. K. Sarkar: *The Folk-Element in Hindu Culture* (London 1917), pp. 258-262; which is based in the main on H. Palit's Bengali work *Ādyer Gambhīrā*; S. K. De: *History of Bengali Literature in the Nineteenth Century 1800-1825* (Calcutta 1919), pp. 35-38, 412-419; J. N. Sarkar: *Chaitanya's Life and Teachings* (Calcutta 1922). *The Life of Sri Ramakrishna* (Advaita Asrama, Calctuta, 1925).

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While in the atmosphere of the Bengali poetry of *śakti* and *bhakti* it is desirable to observe once more that the external paraphernalia of gods and goddesses, rituals and ceremonies, i.e., the apparently religious or mythological scaffolding should not blind one to the genuine literary qualities of these productions. The authors are real artists, i.e., creators of characters and situations. Indeed, the gods and goddesses themselves are to be treated as the creations or inventions of these poets, representing as they do the folk-consciousness or rather the constructive capacities of the folk-imagination. The Hindu god-lore is essentially an item in the creative achievements of the human brain,—and hence an aspect of positivism in the most profound sense of the term.

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The Bengali *Śūnya-Purāṇa* (c. 1050) has created the semi-Buddhistic gods and goddesses of all sorts. Rāmāi Paṇḍit’s *Dharma-Pūjā-Paddhati* is likewise cast in the mould of folk-Buddhism. In the *Dharma-mangala* of Ghanarāma (c. 1350 ?), Māṇik Gānguli and others, again, is encountered the *rapprochement* of folk-Hindiusm and folk-Buddhism on a common Tāntric foundation. Among the other folk-deities prevalent in medieval Bengal may be mentioned *Śītalā*, the goddess to propitiate against small-pox, and *Manasā*, the goddess against snakes. Many of these are directly or indirectly associated with the Śiva and Kālī (Chaṇḍī, Tārā, Ādyā) complex.

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No matter what be the name, and what the formal affiliation of these gods and goddesses to the leading pantheons, their sociological significance is self-evident. The inventions or creations of these deities by medieval Folk-Bengal are calculated to annihilate the enemies and difficulties, both natural and human. In the second place, these are some of the agencies that are invoked to promote health, wealth, success in life and general prosperity. In Bengali folk-consciousness the gods and goddesses are but handmaids to human welfare. They are the instruments of man in the achievement of worldly success.

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One type of gods and goddesses is exhibited as incorporating *śakti* or energy. A second type of divinities was created by Folk-Bengal to furnish the masses with “Great Exemplars” from whom might be learnt the duties and obligations of life, individual, domestic and social. It is in and through this group of gods and goddesses that the people are instructed in the ideal relations between parent and offspring, husband and wife, brother and brother, ruler and subject and so on. The literature through which such gods and goddesses become the instruments of positive morality has its chief *forte* in *bhakti*, the emotional element in human personality. It is to love, faith and hope that this *bhakti*, devotional or emotional poetry appeals rather than to the practices of intellectual gymnastics and ratiocinative argumentation. Krittivāsa's *Rāmāyaṇa* has furnished the Bengali people with positive morality in and through the stories of Rāma and his consort Sītā as well as the ancestors and allies of the great hero. It is by this Bengali epic that Folk-Bengal is introduced to the "whole duty of man." The rôle of man as the creator of gods, goddesses and God has nowhere been so prominent as in Hindu Bengal, nay, in Hindustan through the ages. And this is an aspect of world-culture that remains yet to be assimilated to the investigations into the universal currents in positive philosophy.

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To come down to our own times, it may be said that Folk-Bengal of the nineteenth century has not cared much to inquire into the Sanskrit *Vedas*, *Samhitās*, *Purāṇas*, *Tantras*, etc. for the origins and legends of its faith and devotion, but has sought for the "whole duty of man" in Bengali treatises like Krittivāsa's *Rāmāyaṇa*, Vidyāpati and Chaṇḍīdāsa's *Vaiṣṇava Padāvalī*, and the *Kālī Songs* of Mukundarāma and Rāmaprasāda. Through all this literature there has been a steady increase in the number of gods and goddesses, saints and *avatāras*. In some cases a new interpretation has been imparted to the older deities and heroes, who have thereby acquired an altogether fresh significance in the people's thought and activity. There has been no generation of Bengali history without its own mythology, hagiology and anthology.

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This is perfectly natural: because the Hindu is fundamentally an agnostic, i.e., has never believed in the possibility of human intelligence ever to unravel the mysterious eternal truths of the universe, or to understand, except negatively, the nature and attributes of God; and therefore he has ever felt to be at complete liberty to *imagine* and invent whatsoever God or Gods he chooses to adore. He has not feared to conceive the Divinity as He, She, It or They. He has worshipped his Deity as father, mother, brother, sister, sweetheart, lover, friend, and what not; and has endowed his own creation or invention with any attributes he likes for the time being. He has borrowed his god-lore from the Mongols, he has taken his god-lore from the hill-tribes, he has imbibed his god-lore from the speechless message of sunshine and snows, and he has evolved his god-lore out of his own head and heart. His polytheism or heinotheism is based essentially on his agnosticism.

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An expression of this profound agnosticism and human creativeness in regard to the Divinity or Divinities is to be found in the intimacy and man-to-man familiarity with which Rāmakriṣṇa (1836-86), a modern saint, wants the peoples of the world to attitudinize themselves to God. "Why do you dwell so much upon the glories of God?" asks Rāmakriṣṇa, "Does a son when with his father think of his father's possessions,—his houses, gardens, horses and cattle? On the contrary, he thinks of his father's love. He knows that it is proper for a father to maintain his children and look out for their welfare. We are all children of God. So what is there to wonder at in His paternal care of us?’’²⁹

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²⁹ *Life of Sri Ramakrishna* (Advaita Asrama, Calcutta 1929), p. 310.

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According to Rāmakṛiṣṇa the ‘’real devotee never thinks about these things. He looks upon God as his very own,—his nearest and dearest,—and says boldly, ‘Thou must fulfil my desires—must reveal thyself to me’.’’ ‘’If you dwell so much upon His glories, you cannot think of Him as your own,’’ says Rāmakṛiṣṇa, ‘’nor can you feel intimate with Him. You are awed by His Majesty. He is no longer near. No, no, you must think of Him as your nearest and dearest. Then only can you realize Him.’’

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The Hindu tendency to deify the energies, Nature-forces or personal attributes and emotions has constructed all the gods and goddesses of India, practically speaking, as so many embodiments of the various phases of the Country itself and of the Culture it has developed through the ages. And the invention of deities has not yet ceased.

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Rabindranath Tagore, probably an iconoclast in socio-religious opinions, has been, however, pre-eminently an idolator, nay, a polytheist, in and through his art. His celebrated hymn (c. 1895) to Mother India is in the right orthodox strain which is noticeable in the psalms and songs in eulogy of Sarasvatī (Goddess of Learning), Lakṣmī (Goddess of Wealth), Durgā, Jagaddhātrī and other goddesses. With Tagore we sing as follows:

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‘’O Thou, who charmest all mankind!
O Thou, whose lands are ever bright

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With ray serene of pure sun-light!
Mother of fathers and mothers!
> With the blue deep's waters thy feet ever wash'd
> Thy scarf of green ever waving in breeze,
> Sky-kiss'd on high thine Himalayan brow,
> Crown'd white thy head with tiara of snows.
First in thy firmament appeared the dawn,
First rose *Sāma*-chants in thy holy groves,
First were revealed in thy forest-abodes
Wisdom and virtue and poesy's self.
> Ever beneficent! glory to Thee!
> From Thee flows food to countries far and wide;
> Jāhnavī and Jumna, streams of thy love;
> Giver of sweet sacred milk, O Mother!''

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It is again the traditional folk-imagination, saturated with the monism of Vedantic thought, that has inspired the following verses of Tagore:

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"O Thou Dust of my Motherland!
> Down to Thee alone do I bend my head.
> Upon Thee is the mantle spread
> Of universe-bodied Mother Divine!''

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The same deification of the Country is evident in the following outburst (1905) of Dwijendralal Roy:

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"Goddess mine! meditation's aim!
> Country mine! O Heaven on earth!''

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But the man who has started them all in this modern Bengali *bhakti*-literature is Bankimchandra Chatterji. According to him the ten-armed Durgā (consort of Śiva) with her whole family and retinue, the most popular goddess of Hindu Bengal in the nineteenth century and after, who was, historically considered, one of the Tārās (Energies) of Avalokiteśvara Bodhisattva in mediæval Mahāyānic India and still receives worship as Tārā in Buddhist China and Buddhist Japan, nay, can perhaps be traced back to the Mother Goddess of the Mohenjo Daro epochs, is none other than Motherland itself with all its resources and forces in natural agents and human arts. This synthetic interpretation, crystallized in the song *Vande Mātaram* (c. 1885), is bound to remain the greatest hymn of Folk-India during the twentieth century. Bengal, and with her India, sings as follows :

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Hail! Motherland!
*Vande Mātaram!*
> Thou art my muse, Thyself my creed;
> In Thee my heart and soul;
> And in my limbs the spirit Thou!
In mine arm Thou art strength (*śakti*);
Thyself heart's devotion (*bhakti*);
Thine the images bodied forth
In temples one and all, Mother!

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To worship Durgā is to worship Motherland, or to worship Motherland is to worship Durgā. This is the cult that in diverse forms has been invented by the brain and soul of creative India from the Vedic age of the adoration of World-Forces,—or rather, as just indicated, from the epochs of the Indus Valley Culture (c. 3500 B.C.), down to the present epoch of neo-Tantrism represented by Bankimchandra and Rāmakṛiṣṇa-Vivekānanda.

The Doctrine of Political Deliverers as Yugāvatāras in Vijayanagara

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In the imagination of the Hindus the Vijayanagara Empire (1346-1646) was like the subsequent Maratha Empire a bulwark of Hindu culture established against the avalanche of Islam. The founders of these Empires were therefore esteemed as veritable *avatāras* or incarnations of Lord Kṛiṣṇa. Bukka I. (1343-76), the virtual founder of the Vijayanagara State, is described in an inscription as one in whom the God "reappeared" to deliver the world of the Mlechchhas.³⁰ This account embodies the famous declaration of Lord Kṛiṣṇa in the *Gītā* to the effect that it is whenever *dharma* finds itself in jeopardy that he appears age by age.

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³⁰ B. A. Saletore: *Social and Political Life in the Vijayanagara Empire*, Val. I. (Madras 1934), pp. 8-10, Vol. II. (Madras 1934), pp. 1, 5, 272, 273.

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Folk-poetry as that embodied in the *Madhurāvijayam* associates the exploits of the Hindus with the interventions of the gods. The manner in which the magic sword of the prospective deliverer of the Hindus from the thraldom of the Moslems came into his hands is described in this Telugu poem in the mystical manner of the Irish poet Yeats. "O Sovereign, once upon a time the divine Viśvakarmā, gathering the splinters from the weapons of all the *Devas* (gods) and melting them together," says a strange woman to the son of Bukka I, "shaped this strange sword and presented it to Parameśvara for gaining victory over the *Daityas* (demons)." The fortunes of this magic sword,—like those of that in the Arthurian legend,—are then narrated briefly. The young prince is finally presented with it with the following words: "By wielding this weapon," says the strange woman, "you will attain unabating vigour and the weapons of the enemy will become powerless against you. Just as Kṛiṣṇa slew Kamsa in Mathurā in olden times, O king! do you proceed now to the southern Mathurā and slaughter the Mussalman king, the enemy of the world.''

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Equally deified in folk-imagination was Kṛiṣṇa Deva Rāya the Great (1509-20) under whom the Vijayanagara Empire witnessed the zenith of its expansion. In the *Vyāsayogacharitam* the poet Somanātha describes the monarch's death as the departure of Lord Kṛiṣṇa from the ken of mankind at the end of His *avatārahood*.

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A private Tamil inscription of 1380 has its chief item of prayer as the exercise of ''universal sovereignty'' by Bukka Rāya. ''Universal dominion'' is sought for Deva Rāya in an inscription of 1428 associated with merchants.

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We are to understand that Hindu positivism popularized in folk-tradition the doctrine of political deliverers or ''world-conquerors'' as being none other than *Yugāvatāras* or Gods in human form. The secularization of alleged religious texts or rather the interpretation of alleged god-lore in terms of worldly personalities and human exploits was in the very blood of the Hindu masses and classes. The records from Vijayanagara as from the Maratha annals should furnish concrete illustrations as to how a scientific and critical student of Hindu social institutions and theories ought to interpret them. Those who would follow the folk-tradition of India through the ages are not likely to be shunted off into misleading tracks by mere names of gods and goddesses and the atmosphere of religious ritualism or metaphysical speculations. It is the things ''human, all-too human'' that they would encounter in Hindu institutions and theories. Hindu religion is nothing if it is not in the main a handmaid to worldly progress and material prosperity.

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