Early History of the Vaishnava Faith and Movement in Bengal, from Sanskrit and Bengali Sources c5.s1.10

c5.s1.10

In spite of much learned writing, the mediaeval expansion of the faith was essentially popular in character and appeal. After the epics and the philosophies came the popular Purāṇas, which set forth the Kṛṣṇa-legend against the exuberant and luscious background of myth, theology and mystical eroticism. They poetised and emotionalised the amorphous story, and thus came to occupy an important place in Vaiṣṇava sectarian literature. Sometimes they were even composed with an obvious sectarian purpose. Elaborate theologies arose out of them, and the earthly moment of the eternal divine sport of Kṛṣṇa was interpreted in terms of symbol and allegory. The Kṛṣṇa-Gopī legend naturally came to play an important part. Even if Draupadī in the Mahābhārata invokes Kṛṣṇa as "dear to the Gopīs" (gopī-jana-priya) in a passage which is now proved to be an interpolation, the Great Epic hardly takes into account the Gopī-legend, which assumes importance in the later cult. It develops, however, in the supplementary Hari-vaṃśa and in the Viṣṇu-purāṇa, and is embellished further in the Padma and the Brahmavaivarta Purāṇas; but it comes to full bloom in the Śrīmad-bhāgavata, whose chief purpose seems to be the glorification of Bhakti and Kṛṣṇa-līlā, and which therefore came to be regarded as one of the supreme scriptures of mediaeval Vaiṣṇavism.