Early History of the Vaishnava Faith and Movement in Bengal, from Sanskrit and Bengali Sources c7.s2.8

c7.s2.8

His literary works,¹ which deal in impassioned Sanskrit verse and prose, with the mystic-erotic aspects of Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa worship, are not very extensive. They are mostly in the nature of fervent lyrical hymns, Stavas or Stotras, which have been collected together and published under the title *Stavāvali*.² They are either devout praises of Caitanya (e. g. Caitanyāṣṭaka, nine stanzas in Śikhariṇī; Gaurāṅga-stava-kalpataru, twelve stanzas also in Śikhariṇī), but most of them give an emotional treatment in highly erotic imagery of the various aspects of Kṛṣṇa-līlā. The total number of these hymns is twenty-nine, and they are of varying lengths and are composed in a variety of metres, although Śikhariṇī and Mālinī appear to have been the author's favourite metres. Some of the longest and best known are: the Vilāpa-kusumāñjali (104 stanzas in diverse metres), Rādhā-kṛṣṇojjvala-kusumakeli (44 stanzas in Śikhariṇī), Viśākhānanda-stotra (134 verses in Śloka metre) and Vraja-vilāsa-stava (107 stanzas in various metres¹). The purely poetic merit of these Stavas cannot be estimated very highly, but their evident erotic mysticism, consisting of a deeply emotional spiritualisation of sensuous forms, gives them a rich and luscious charm and a sweet ring of passion, which bear a striking testimony to an interesting feature of Bengal Vaiṣṇavism. The original inspiration of these poems comes, of course, from the Śrīmad-bhāgavata, and from Jayadeva's highly finished lyrical Gita-govinda, which, we are told, were the constant sources of the ecstatic emotions of Caitanya himself; but the Śrī-kṛṣṇa-karṇāmṛta of Līlāśuka, which Caitanya is said to have discovered in his Southern tour and commended in superlative terms to his disciples, must have had a great deal of influence on this type of writing in Bengal. Raghunātha's only sustained composition, however, was his *Muktā-caritra*,¹ a Sanskrit Kāvya of the Campū type written in prose and occasional verse, but interspersed with witty dialogues. The theme is Kṛṣṇa's early sports at Vṛndāvana, its object being to show the superiority of his free love for Rādhā over his wedded love for Satyabhāmā. On Satyabhāmā's somewhat naïve enquiry as to whether pearls grew on trees, Kṛṣṇa himself relates a fanciful story of his sowing pearls at Vṛndāvana and producing pearl-creepers, which bore pearls as fruits, of the failure of Rādhā and her companions at a similar effort, of their offer to buy Kṛṣṇa's pearls, of their subsequent raillery, of the witty repartee, amorous dialogues and adventures following upon the incident. In this work, as well as in some of the Stotras mentioned above, Raghunātha pays homage to the kindness and affection shown to him by Rūpa, Sanātana and Jīva, and in the last verse of the *Muktā-caritra* he speaks of Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja in whose company at Rādhā-kuṇḍa he passed his last days in Vṛndāvana. Raghunātha probably wrote some other poetical works, for the three verses cited with his name in the *Padyāvali* are not traceable in the poems mentioned above. A work called *Dāna-carita*,² is ascribed to him in the Bhakti-ratnākara (ch. i, p. 59). This appears to be the Dāna-keli-cintāmaṇi,¹ which in 175 highly erotic stanzas in different metres, gives an imaginary account of the Dāna-līlā of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa, a theme which is also treated under the caption Dāna-khaṇḍa by Baḍu Caṇḍīdāsa² in a somewhat different strain and which finds another expression in Rūpa’s Dāna-keli-kaumudī. Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja tells us (C-C Antya xiv. 7) that like Svarūpa Dāmodara, Raghunātha also wrote some biographical account of Caitanya in the Kaḍacā form,³ but of this there is no information. There are also three Bengali Padas assigned to him in the Bengali Vaiṣṇava anthology, Pada-kalpataru of Vaiṣṇava-dāsa.⁴