Early History of the Vaishnava Faith and Movement in Bengal, from Sanskrit and Bengali Sources c5.s3.1

c5.s3.1

From what has been said above there can be no doubt about the independent origin of the Bengal sect, like that of other Vaiṣṇava sects, from the Śrīmad-bhāgavata tradition, and about its debt to the mystic emotionalism interpreted and established by a class of emotional Saṃnyāsins from the time of Śrīdhara. But into the complex texture of Bengal Vaiṣṇavism were also woven ideas from various other non-Vaiṣṇava sources which coloured, to some extent, its inherited Vaiṣṇava tradition. Tenets and practices, left behind by decadent Buddhism and already deep-set in current Hinduism, must have gone far into the religious thoughts and practices of the time.² Vajrayāna and Sahajayāna, characterised by theories of self-fulfilment and consequent corrupt practices, developed early as an obvious protest against the rigours of the Mahāyāna discipline and its difficult ideal of self-denial. Allied with these were all the coarsening features of decadent Tāntra, in both its Hindu and Buddhist guises, which were probably exotics in Bengal, but which had at this time a wild and luxuriant growth on its congenial soil. The teachings of the Vāmācārin (Left-handed) Tāntric schools, with their mystic exaltation of the female principle in the universe, and their emphasis upon the religious value of sexual passion and sexual use of women, formed an undesirable legacy of a great system, and exposed Vaiṣṇavism, with its high erotic possibilities, to considerable temptation. Milder but equally mystic cults, like the Sahajiyā and Nāthism (the former of which became strangely Vaiṣṇavised), had also dangerous erotic tendencies. They preached a doctrine of "naturalism" (*sahaja*) and self-realisation, which in actual practice meant an idealisation of the sensuous, the finding of salvation in and through the senses. Apart from their questionable ideas and mysterious rites, all these hybrid cults encouraged a mixture of mystical metaphysics, emotionalism and sensuality; and if we are to judge from contemporary Vaiṣṇava records, they had hardly any spiritual or aesthetic influence on the religious life of Bengal. Although Caitanya, himself an ascetic and a man of great personal purity, does not appear to have lent countenance to these strange ideas and practices, they yet created the environment into which the Vaiṣṇava tradition entered, and possibly had some general influence on its erotic dogmas.