Early History of the Vaishnava Faith and Movement in Bengal, from Sanskrit and Bengali Sources c7.s4.58

c7.s4.58

to Islam before becoming a Vaiṣṇava, had created a prejudice which stood in the way of its acceptance as an authoritative ritualistic work. Apart from the fact that there is no satisfactory evidence of Sanātana's alleged conversion to Muhammadanism (see above p. 97, note 2), we may assume from the testimony of orthodox records that Sanātana might have considered himself lowered in status because of his contact with and service in the Muhammadan court. But it is not intelligible why the alleged prejudice, arising from this circumstance, should have stood in the way of acceptance only of the *Hari-bhakti-vilāsa*, which was a work on Ācāra fortified at every step by profuse citation from scriptural authorities, and did not stand in the way of acceptance of Sanātana's more doctrinal and more fundamental *Bhāgavatāmṛta* and *Vaiṣṇava-toṣaṇī*, nor of his name being associated, officially and reverentially, with the works of Rūpa, Jīva, Kṛṣṇadāsa and others. If Sanātana's authorship of the *Hari-bhakti-vilāsa* was a matter of doubtful acceptance, how could have his authorship of its commentary been accepted? Sanātana's supposed "impurity," therefore, could not have been the motive of the alleged suppressing of his name and the declaring of Gopāla Bhaṭṭa's authorship; and there is no question of the genuineness of the verses which declare Gopāla Bhaṭṭa as the author. Sanātana was certainly a more important and authoritative writer of the group than Gopāla Bhaṭṭa. If there was any other reason (the question of "impurity" apart) for transferring authorship, the transfer would have been openly made from Gopāla Bhaṭṭa to Sanātana, and not otherwise; and Sanātana's name would have occurred in the work itself as its author, instead of that of Gopāla Bhaṭṭa. The supposition is unconvincing that Sanātana's authorship was suppressed by a deliberate addition (in the face of Jīva's express testimony) of verses naming Gopāla Bhaṭṭa as the author. It is also hardly amiable imagination which believes that Sanātana deliberately passed off his own composition in the name of Gopāla Bhaṭṭa, or that Gopāla Bhaṭṭa appropriated, whatever may have been the reason, a work of Sanātana. This would be imputing a shrewd motive and unworthy act to the Gosvāmins in question, whose purity of intentions is otherwise never disputed. If it is a fact that the sect for some time looked askance at the injunctions laid down in the *Hari-bhakti-vilāsa* (Amar Nath Ray in *Indian Culture*, v, 1938-39, p. 202), it goes only to strengthen the point acknowledged centre of inspiration of the Bengal Vaiṣṇava group at Vṛndāvana; but, if Gopāla Bhaṭṭa is presumed to have merely elaborated a previous work of Sanātana, it is extremely unlikely that he should have failed to acknowledge this basis of his labours and appropriated the work to himself, especially as he actually mentions that he wrote the work for the satisfaction of Sanātana and others. In a similar case, Jīva Gosvāmin does not fail to express his indebtedness to an outline prepared by an unnamed Dākṣiṇātya Bhaṭṭa (by which reference he is supposed to mean Gopāla Bhaṭṭa himself), on which he based his elaborate *Sat-samdarbha*. It seems probable, therefore, that Gopāla Bhaṭṭa, as stated in the work itself, was the actual author of the *Hari-bhakti-vilāsa*, but the attribution to Sanātana might have arisen from a kind of close collaboration, which will remain undetermined, between this doyen of the Vaiṣṇava Śāstra and Gopāla Bhaṭṭa, in making this voluminous compilation.