Early History of the Vaishnava Faith and Movement in Bengal, from Sanskrit and Bengali Sources c6.s2.26

c6.s2.26

1 He is said, for instance, in the two orthodox biographies of Vrndāvana and Kṛṣṇadāsa to have vanquished in disputation Keśava Bhaṭṭa Kāśmīrī, the well-known scholar and commentator of the Nimbārka school. What really happens in Viśvambhara's so-called disputation with this formidable scholar, who was the author of commentaries on the Bhagavad-gītā, the Vedānta-sūtra and other works, is somewhat strange. Viśvambhara requests Keśava to compose a hymn to the Ganges, on the banks of which they meet, and on Keśava's reciting extempore an astonishing series of verses on the subject, all that Viśvambhara does to silence him is to pick rhetorical flaws of a somewhat fastidious kind in one of the verses recited! This is the whole extent of the learned disputation, and the account in its triviality is extremely disappointing. In the same way Viśvambhara is represented elsewhere as picking trivial grammatical flaws in Īśvara Purī's poem. No concealment is made here of the fact that Viśvambhara was chiefly a teacher of grammar with some stray knowledge of rhetoric. The disputation is omitted in other biographies. It is mentioned for the first time by Vṛndāvana-dāsa, from whom Kṛṣṇadāsa obviously elaborates the legend. One might even suspect sectarian loyalty in making a veteran champion of the Nimbārka school suffer defeat at the hands of the youthful Caitanya; but apart from pious credulity, the attempt is poorly represented. Keśava of Kashmir was the son of Śrīmaṅgala, pupil of Mukunda and pra-śiṣya of Sundara Bhaṭṭa, as he himself tells us in his various Sanskrit works. He was the author of commentaries on the Brahmopaniṣad, the Bhagavad-gītā, the Śrīmad-bhāgavata (sk. x) and other works; but his most well known work for his school was the Prabhā sub-commentary on Śrīnivāsa's Kaustubha commentary on Nimbārka's Vedānta-pārijāta (ed. in the Pandit vill. ix ; also ed. Nitya-svarup Brahmachari, Brindaban 1906). Keśava could not have been, as Aufrecht notes, a pupil of Śrīnivāsa (on whose Kaustubha he commented), for Śrīnivāsa's date would be about the 13th century, while Keśava lived in the latter part of the 15th and the beginning of the 16th century. The meeting with Caitanya, as a fact, is not unlikely, but the account has been grotesquely exaggerated. On this question, see also S. K. De in IHQ, 1934, pp. 302-3 ; B. Majumdar, op. cit., pp. 206-10. For an analysis of the academic aspect of this episode, see Calcutta Oriental Journal, December 1933, pp. 91-99, in which the writer of the article comes to the conclusion that "the entire episode looks very filled at this time with the scholastic spirit and pride of learning characteristic of his native place; and the sprightliness of his boyhood had developed into the pedantic, but harmless, arrogance of a young Pandit. His personal charm, handsome presence, social standing and promise of scholarship, however, disarmed all resentment, and made him a marked figure in the city.