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Early History of the Vaishnava Faith and Movement in Bengal, from Sanskrit and Bengali Sources c10.s3: 3. Ethics of Bengal Vaiṣṇavism

Early History of the Vaiṣṇava Faith and Movement in Bengal, from Sanskrit and Bengali Sources c10.s3

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3. Ethics of Bengal Vaiṣṇavism

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No account of the Bengal Vaisnava faith would be complete without some idea of its ethical outlook on life. But there are difficulties in the way of a critical examination of the subject. There is nowhere in the authoritative works of the Bengal school a systematic exposition of its ethical position, although moral rules are inculcated and aberrations condemned. As we find it in the general history of Indian thought, ethics is not a subject of independent speculation; and ethical principles, which underlie theory and practice, are expressed, in the main, only incidentally in connexion with religious and theological exposition. Morality is regarded as necessarily religious and religion as necessarily moral, so that the bearings of religious doctrine on moral life never receive independent or adequate treatment. Since ethics, in this theistic system, is regarded as a divinely inspired institution, the question of right or wrong does not seriously arise; for it is solved in the terms of the postulate. The ethical and the devotional are inseparable; right is right because it is divine, there is no further need for a search of its basis or sanction. This peculiar merging of religion and ethics is a feature which Bengal Vaisnavism shares with the general trend of Indian religious thought; but it renders difficult the disentangling of the strands of ethical and religious speculation.

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The difficulty is increased by the fact that Bengal Vaisnavism inherits and blends into its texture much of the recognised ethical and social ideas of larger Indian thought. Although evolved within the fold of orthodoxy, the Bengal faith is not strictly orthodox; but it is not heterodox in the sense that it rejects the Veda or ignores the institution of caste or Karman. If it does not accept Vedic rites and deities, it is because they have long since been replaced by those of Puranic worship and mythology. But it still accepts the social prestige and divinely appointed duties of caste, although its rigidness is tempered, at least in devotional matters, by a growing sense of equality and fellowship and by a belief in the levelling grace of divine mercy. The doctrine of Karman and rebirth also mitigates the sense of injustice in human relations; for it is no longer regarded as a blind and mechanical dogma, but as an intrinsically ethical idea of a cosmic, but divinely directed, power of righteousness, devotion alone being regarded, theistically, as supremely capable of nullifying the inexorable fruits of action.

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Although emotional and ecstatic devotion and worship are exalted over everything else in human endeavour, the necessity of morality in religious life is not denied, both for its preparation and continuance. There is, therefore, a great deal of positive moral precepts. The universally accepted principles of right living and the lauded virtues are admitted without question, and long-recognised errors of conduct are deprecated. We have a fairly long list of such cardinal virtues as alms-giving, hospitality, reverence for parents and elders, gratitude, faithfulness, service, humility, kindness, non-injury, liberality, beneficence shown in public works for general good, cultivation of gentle and amiable qualities, practice of self-restraint and frugality, truthfulness, tranquillity, contentment, uprightness, resolution, purity of body and mind, and so forth. On the other hand, one should avoid the six forms of passion (anger, lust, delusion, greed, arrogance and jealousy), theft, gambling, drunkenness, murder, violence, adultery, as well as negations of the virtues mentioned above. In a well known passage Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja briefly indicates (Madhya xxii) the qualities of a true Vaiṣṇava thus¹: "These excellences are the signs of a Vaiṣṇava; they are indicated only, as they cannot be exhausted: compassionate, free from

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¹ For the characteristics of a Vaiṣṇava, see also Gopāla Bhaṭṭa's *Hari-bhakti-vilāsa*, x, summarised above p. 480-81.

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एइ सब गुण हय वैष्णवलक्षण । सब कहा ना याय करि दिगदरशन ॥
कृपालु अकृतद्रोह सत्यसार सम । निर्दोष वदान्य मृदु शुचि अकिंचन ॥
सर्वोपकारक शान्त कृष्णैकशरण । अकाम निरीह स्थिर विजितषड्गुण ॥
मितभुक् अप्रमत्त मानद अमानी । गम्भीर करुण मैत्र कवि दक्ष मौनी ॥

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spite, being of the essence of truth, equable, faultless, generous, gentle, pure, possessing nothing, doing good to all, tranquil, wholly surrendered to Kṛṣṇa, desireless, harmless, steadfast, victorious over the six passions, eating sparingly, never unbalanced, honouring others, not desiring honour for himself, grave, tender, friendly, poetic, skilful and silent." The inspiration of the ideal is clearly the life of Caitanya as idealised by his followers. There is also a well known Sanskrit verse¹, attributed to Caitanya himself, which briefly summarises the outstanding moral excellences of a Vaiṣṇava by stating that a true devotee should be more humble than a blade of grass, forbearing like a tree, not caring for honour himself but rendering honour where honour is due. All this, no doubt, implies an exalted moral ideal and must have helped to promote some of the traditional, but great, virtues of the human mind. It is recognised that moral training is an essential requisite for purifying oneself in order to attain the supreme being, who is presupposed to possess all moral excellences and to be absolutely pure and free from moral defects. It is believed that, however imperfect, man is essentially divine, and can, by divine grace, as well as by his own exertions, mental and moral, enter into communion with the divine being. The faith is, therefore, not inconsistent with an elaborate ritualism of worship, in so far as ritualism tends to the discipline and purification of the mind and body, and becomes a step to the attainment of a higher devotional attitude which discards outward form and ceremony.

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¹ tṛṇād api sunīcena taror iva sahiṣṇunā| amāninā mānadena kīrtanīyaḥ sadā hariḥ||

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All this is in accord with the general trend of traditional piety and morality, but the theistic system brings in peculiar modifications. Morality, in this system, is recognised only as a means, and not as an end in itself. It is, therefore, not imperative nor indispensable, at least in a stage in which one attains the spirit of true devotion, necessarily involving a moral attitude; what is indispensable is divine grace, which no amount of morality or immorality can supersede. It is maintained that the fully emancipated cannot but be moral; even at a lower stage, one may dispense with morality if one is blessed with divine grace, which instantaneously brings salvation. If sin is a stain and morality is a process of cleansing, the attainment of divine grace (Prasāda) by self-surrender (Prapatti) is a much quicker process and does not necessarily presuppose moral training or purification. It should be noted in this connexion that sin being regarded as the effect of divine Māyā, human responsibility is reduced to the minimum; it is merely a fetter or an obscuration which the motiveless divine grace alone can remove in order to manifest itself in its blissful omnipotence; human sinfulness, therefore, is hardly an ethical problem. It follows that religious deeds *per se* are more important and more potent than moral acts. This point will become clear if we consider, for instance, one of the fundamental dogmas of the Bengal school, namely, the power of the blessed name¹. A profession of faith by a mere mention of the divine name is enough to efface all sins, somewhat in the manner of Christian death-bed absolution, even though the person affected is indifferent to morality. It is true that mere mechanical performance of ritual and observance of outward forms of morality, though acknowledged as necessary at a certain stage and up to a limit, are never taken to possess the highest efficacy, exclusive stress being laid on inward realisation of the deity in the individual consciousness; but it is also clear that the idea of divine grace ousts, if it does not negate, the moral idea or the categorically imperative necessity of morality. In a religious system, which believes in an all-exclusive and essentially emotional devotion to the absolute power of a personal god, it cannot be otherwise. Moral earnestness, like intellectual conviction, can never have its proper place in a religious attitude of emotional excess. The moral results of the devotional attitude are taken for granted, but morality is not the primary interest. It is believed that by his ecstatic devotion a man can rise above all activity and all moral obligation. All ethics becomes lost in religious rapture, and no act, except devotional act, counts.

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¹ See above p. 289-

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It may by conceded that the Bengal Vaisnava faith firmly believes that happiness, in the sense of earthly enjoyment, can never be the end of life, but that self-realisation, in the form of devotional joy, is alone the *summum bonum*. Not mere Vaidhi Bhakti, which derives its authority from Sastric injunction and can therefore be transcended, but Prema-bhakti, which arises spontaneously through man's surrender and God's grace, is the exclusive object of all human activity. It may be urged that all this necessarily implies an ethical attitude, for service to divinity is as much a moral as a religious necessity. But it should not be forgotten that self-realisation, as well as happiness, is understood by Caitanyaism in a peculiar sense. It is not meant to constitute the foundation of a higher or larger ethical life, but to imply an exaltation of purely individual religious emotion as the entire goal of human existence. The highest mode of spiritual emotion undoubtedly implies purity and intensity of faith, but the Prema-bhakti resolves itself into a form of religious sentimentality, a continuous frenzy of divine madness (Divyonmada), an all-engrossing mystic state of yearning, trance, rapture and vision, which may remain morally pure but ethically insufficient. This emotional, even sensuous, realisation may be harmless and beautiful in its mystic form, but it is entirely individual and self-centred; and being extremely personal in ardour and concrete in expression, it tends naturally towards a devout orgy of ecstatic excess. It is not an escape from the bondage of the senses because it lands one in another kind of refined sensuousness.

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For, in this attitude of devotional rapture, intellectual satisfaction is not considered essential. It is said to be an escape also from the bondage of Karman, and it takes no interest in socialised human life. It is described as a kind of mystic intuition, not of the nature of Upaniṣadic Jñāna or Yoga, but derived essentially from detached emotional exaltation. Its feelings and ecstasies are all inward : they live in and for themselves. But being unrelated and isolated, they lose virility, and become liable to delirious abandon and consuming excess of passionate sentimentality. Emotion in itself is not to be deprecated ; it should take its proper place in every religious system; but, to save it from morbidity, it must be related to will and intellect, to life and reality. There is enough of intellectual subtlety in Caitanyaism, but not much intellectual virility ; the fundamental motive to will and fuller living seldom vitalise its capricious and subjective joys of mystic vision. We are not concerned here with the question whether emotional elation is right or wrong in itself, or whether it can become a mystic channel of communion with the divine ; but it should be admitted that no full and rounded type of religion can be broad-based on emotionalism alone, inasmuch as it fails to satisfy the entire personality of man.

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It is believed that the ultimate source of this devotional attitude of Bhakti is divine grace (Prasāda) ; but since the human self is said to have affinities with the divine, a limited freedom of will and action is not denied. But the idea of complete surrender (Praptatti) to divine will and grace, to which man is, by his very nature, taken to be predisposed, makes this freedom only nominal or illusory by divesting it of its power of fully asserting itself. Individuality is indeed acknowledged, but individuality is regarded as a limitation which should be transcended, not by intellect, or by will, in which lies the root of all evil, but by emotional susceptibility, which is inborn, but which can operate only through divine grace, incomprehensible (Acintya) in its divine sportiveness (Līlā). The divine grace, again, is not connected with any ethical purpose, or ethical conception of sin, suffering and forgiveness ; it is merely an act of divine omnipotence. It is, therefore, clear that the idea of divine sportiveness (Līlā) and divine grace (Prasāda), as understood by the Bengal school, leaves little room for moral activity, if the term moral is taken in its wider application and not identified with the religious. There is, no doubt, the belief in the ultimate rationality of a well ordered universe, but what is conceivably well ordered need not be morally constituted. From the ethical point of view, such an attitude of devotion is not immoral but unmoral, being essentially negative, except in its relation to the deity. It is not outright passivism, but it fails to furnish the motive for any strenuous social or individual morality. There are indeed frequent admonitions to exert oneself, to overcome evil, to engage in good works; but it is difficult to reconcile ecstasy with activity, the emotional aspiration 'to be' with the volitional effort 'to do', the doctrine of non-resistance and surrender with the exercise of personality, which is not personal, and incentive to worldly activity, which is not worldly. The injunctions to service are indeed not futile, nor in actual practice does the spontaneous spring of human sympathy ever run dry; but the trend of a doctrine of devotional exaltation of emotion, which believes that all activity except religious activity is misery, is towards an unmoral, if not positively immoral, isolation.

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But the doctrine is not unmoral in the sense that it predicates an unmoral or attributeless deity. The Bengal theistic faith conceives of its personal god as possessed of divinely human qualities, and fashions its man-like god in the light of human relationships. The Bhakti, in this system, is not an austere concentration of the mind on absolute reality, but the loving contemplation of a benign and blissful personal god, who is felt to be remote, but whom the worshipper desires to bring nearer to his feeling than to his understanding. It is also an experience capable of ascending scale of emotions. From this point of view, the mystic feeling resolves itself into a series of exceedingly familiar and authentic sentiments of a human being as a parent, friend, servant or lover. But the danger of such an attitude is also clear. If the object is the attainment of some kind of intimate relationship, whatever the nature of the relationship may be, it is a matter of great importance how the god is conceived. The problem is not merely religious but also ethical. In other words, the god should be fully ethicised, and not merely placed in a sportive surrounding of merely emotional or sensuous appeal.

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It cannot be said that Kṛṣṇa, as conceived by the emotional Bengal faith, is fully ethicised in this sense. The precarious Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa legend, on which its whole system of devotion is based, is taken not as a symbol but as a reality, not as religious myth but as religious history. A strenuous attempt is, therefore, made to explain and fit in all its details and implications; and theological justification for it is found in the dogma that the Vṛndāvana sports are those of the supreme deity, viewed as the Śaktimat, with his own energies, viewed as the Śakti. But the detailed working out of the Vṛndāvana-līlā, both in the theological and poetical works¹ of the sect, clearly shows that it is never taken in the sense of an allegory (which modern thought would delight to find in it) but in a vivid and literal sense. These blissful, but purposeless, sports are supposed to go on eternally; but the deity, who cannot be anything but blissful, is made entirely engrossed in them. It is a delightful devotional fancy, but it is wholly unethical. The slaying of demons in the divine Līlā indeed implies the upholding of a moral order, but it is only a diversion, which, we are told², is accomplished not by the deity's self but by the countless Avatāras who appear simultaneously with him. His essential erotic Mādhurya is not to be obscured by such acts of heroic Aiśvarya. The Kṛṣṇa of Vṛndāvana alone counts; the Kṛṣṇa of Kurukṣetra is deliberately effaced. The heroic acts, in the theory of the school, are justifiable only because they evoke softer sentiments; for instance, they excite parental affection in Nanda and Yaśodā, friendly solicitude in Kṛṣṇa's companions, and, above all, erotic feelings in Rādhā and her Sakhīs¹.

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¹ See below, ch. vii.

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² See above p. 320.

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¹ This is the interpretation of Viśvanātha Cakravartin in his Rāga-vartma-candrikā (Prakaraṇa ii), but it is also implied by the treatment of the legend in Rūpa's dramas and Jīva's Campū.

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Although the devotional sentiments admit of gradation in the form of the feelings of servitude, friendship or parental affection, there can be no doubt that the erotic alone is canonised by the Bengal sect. The mystic experience of the divine sports is almost entirely governed by the erotic feeling and wholly steeped in it, the other sentiments only touching its fringe. The highest object of religious adoration and worship is conceived and moulded, after the Purāṇic legend, in a frankly erotic cast, and there is nowhere any suggestion of allegory in the circumstantial working out of its minute sensuous details. The glorification of the sex-impulse is supreme. In the gorgeous expansion of the legend, for instance, in the Kāvya, Nāṭaka and Campū of the sect, composed by its venerable teachers, there is nothing but a series of erotic situations, described with the evident relish of sensuous enjoyment, and never symbolised into spiritual truths. It is plainly and emphatically the language of the senses, even if one may make a desperate attempt to read a supersensuous meaning into it. The spiritual foundation is too flimsy for its overwhelming excess of palpable eroticism. The cult of the infant and adolescent Kṛṣṇa need not be sweepingly characterised as vulgar² or immoral³, nor need the emotionalism of the Vaiṣṇava devotee be superficially deprecated as sensual delirium⁴ or serenity induced by exhausted passion⁵; but such strong language of critics undoubtedly implies, not without reason, that the conception and the attitude, in spite of scriptural or metaphysical justification, possess dangerous possibilities or demoralising tendencies. It may be suggested that it does not matter about the deficiency or questionable character of the means so long as it leads ultimately to the end; but, granted the spiritual end, can it justify the sensuous means?

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² E. Washburn Hopkins, *Ethics of India*, Yale University Press, New Haven 1924, p. 200.

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³ John McKenzie, *Hindu Ethics*, Oxford University Press, 1922, pp. 177, 178.

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⁴ Barth, *Religions of India*, p. 228.

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⁵ Melville T. Kennedy, *Chaitanya Movement*, Oxford University Press, 1925, p. 256. The phrase is actually used by Hopkins, but Kennedy speaks of "sensuality and lust."

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It is not always true that religious rapture, however erotically inclined, leads to moral default; it is also admitted that in a mystic attitude of emotional exaltation, even of the erotic type, the senses and the spirit can meet; but there can be little doubt that eroticism as a devotional principle is perilously liable to religious and moral excess. The erotic apotheosis of the legendary Kṛṣṇa and Rādhā in a background of highly sensuous charm is given a mystic, and even an austere, significance; and however much the mentality of such erotic emotionalists be criticised, the devout saints of Vaiṣṇavism have been, in actual life, morally irreproachable. Caitanya himself was susceptible to such emotional rapture, but personally he held to an ascetic type of morality and expressed strict views regarding sexual relationship. All this is freely admitted; but it should also be admitted that the danger comes not so much from erotic portrayal of the divine sport, which may be (but is not) symbolically understood, as from the excess of exclusive emotional strain involved in the imaginative experience of the erotic sentiment, and from actual practice of erotic situations as a religious rite. The Bengal school of Caitanya, no doubt condemns direct erotic practice, but it encourages vicarious erotic contemplation. It emphasises the inward realisation of the divine sports in all their erotic implications as the ultimate felicitous state, and thereby promotes the abnormal satisfaction of a highly refined erotico-religious sensibility. The dogma is implicitly accepted that Kṛṣṇa is the only male in the universe, and that the highest ideal of the devotee, like that of Rādhā, is the desire of a woman eternally seeking to satisfy her lover who, frankly, but divinely, thirsts after womanly charms of adolescence and youth. If this were only a symbol or allegory of the soul's longing for the divine lover, it would be a legitimate use of erotic imagery and erotic impulse in the service of religious symbolism. But the works of the sect make it quite clear that the erotic contemplation is not merely symbolical or figurative but, as we have said, vivid and literal. The dogma is carried further when the devout attitude becomes identical with that of Rādhā's companions¹, the highest mystic experience being in this case the detailed imaginative participation, in a vicarious mood, in the erotic sports of the deity. All this has been severely condemned by some critics as an emasculated ritual of emotional debauchery; but without going so far, it should be admitted that the intimate subtilising of erotic details, however mystically transfigured, is bound to be characterised as a psychological and ethical aberration rather than as a healthy ennobling religious mood.

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¹ Apart from actual practice, this is made clear by the important role played by Rādhā's Sakhīs in the detailed amplification of the legend in the poetical works of Rūpa, Raghunātha, Jīva and Kṛṣṇadāsa, as well as by elaboration of the dogma in the hagiology of the sect to the effect that the great Vaiṣṇava devotees are incarnations of various Sakhīs of the Vṛndāvana-līlā.

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It may be properly urged that even if the actual or implied ethical teaching of Caitanyaism is scanty and unsatisfactory, the spirit of Caitanya's life, which inspired saintly and selfless men to great devotion, stands above the body of its tenets. There is indeed a great deal of religious appeal in Caitanya's devotional personality, in his passionate and sincere adoration; but it must be said that the excess of mystic emotionalism and the ardent pursuit of a sublime erotic fancy, which left him almost a nervous wreck in his later years, do not bear witness to great service. Nor could they have been a great ethical force, inasmuch as his practice of the devotional faith, as it is recorded, was essentially an individual, and not a social, experience. Caitanya, in these years, lived entirely in and for the ecstasies, trances and visions of Bhakti; they, as well as his daily worship and adoration, consumed all his energies. There is no evidence of restraint, no fear of excess, no self-criticism, no rational test, nor ethical consideration in these mystic indulgences, occurring continuously day after day and marked more and more by nervous unsteadiness and suggestibility. All this may be the consummation of the spiritual aspiration of the faith, but from the ethical point of view, Caitanya’s life of ‘divine madness’ at Puri is singularly empty. No larger problem of the welfare of man and the world impinges upon his ecstatic consciousness; his devotion is unworldly also in the sense that it moves in a world unconnected with all that we mean by the term ethical. Modern knowledge tells us that there is nothing mysterious or miraculous in such trances, visions and ecstasies; they are phases of nervous sensibility, rather than of spirituality, even if induced by spiritual causes; they are found, more or less, in all excessively emotional religious practice of all ages and climes. But even assuming their spirituality, one must face the fact that they do not satisfy the ethical demand. The experience of divinity, which is only possible in mystic trances and raptures, is of little value to mankind, however much it may spiritually stimulate the mystic himself; and the question may be legitimately asked whether a religious attitude should entirely consist of such erotico-mystic susceptibilities.

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Except to an extremely pious imagination, the records of the sect undoubtedly give the impression that neither the movement nor its leaders possessed any social vision or idealism, any other absorbing concern than emotional worship and adoration. Caitanya himself never pretended to be a moral teacher or social reformer, but he considered himself to be only a seeker after Kṛṣṇa.¹

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¹ Even a very enthusiastic modern follower of Caitanya admits this: “Lord Gauranga never posed as a teacher, but only as one among his fellows, seeking Krishna. ...His followers never preached moral doc-

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Caitanyaism removed the barriers of caste in matters of worship by the free and unritualistic reciting of the divine name, and effectively utilised group-emotion by its lusty and contagious method of Saṃkīrtana, it is by no means correct to state that Caitanyaism taught or practised universal, or even democratic, brotherhood. It is true that it tried to create a new grouping of men united by a common religious impulse; it certainly gave, at least in its earlier stages, a larger place to women and outcasts by recognising their inherent religious capacity; but it never aimed at nor attempted any dissolution or change of the established social order.¹ It did not break through conventional priestcraft, nor did it depart from orthodox social duties. In its earlier stages, it brought religious freedom and fellowship in a certain measure, but hardly social freedom and fellowship. Its social conservatism is distinctly shown in its retention of caste restriction in ritualistic worship,² as well as in social usages and relations; and even in religious matters it did not show much toleration towards non-Vaiṣṇavas or Vaiṣṇavas of other sects. Hedged in by such limitations, its doctrine of good will and humility becomes merely negative, and the vision of fellowship extremely provincial. The social insufficiency of Caitanyaism may be one of its religious assets in its ‘unworldliness’, but it is, precisely for that reason, one of its ethical weaknesses. The fundamental conception of a world-order, viewed as the manifestation of divine sport which is essentially erotic in character, can hardly form the foundation of any healthy and free ethical endeavour. While the erotic symbolism, presented as a fact, becomes an uncomfortable creed by its direct conflict with the sober ideas of established society, there is also a self-centredness about the conception and a lack of

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¹ For a reference to Caitanya's social ideas, see above pp 108 fn.

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² See above pp. 412.

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trines to their fellows, knowing full well that moral life must follow a religious life” (Shishir Kumar Ghosh, *Lord Gauranga*, vol. ii, App. xx, note).

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moral purpose which, as we have pointed out, leave little scope for the moral struggles and aspirations of mankind. The whole literature of Caitanyaism, its elaborately composed theology, poetry and drama, is callously unmoral ignoring this aspect of humanity, with the result that the larger humanity in its turn has practically ignored it. In the literary productions there is, no doubt, a curious blend of the personal and the mystic, but we have pictures only of ordinary human emotions of the softer and more luscious kind; of sterner virtues there is not a trace, nor is there any tremendous spectacle of the spiritual struggles of the human soul and its deeper agonies. The great precepts of deliverance, redemption or salvation become meaningless from the ethical standpoint, being emptied of their ethical content and undirected towards an ethically conceived world, man or god.

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