Early History of the Vaishnava Faith and Movement in Bengal, from Sanskrit and Bengali Sources c7.s4.63

c7.s4.63

son of Nṛsiṃha, and belonged to Drāviḍa. It is not known what connexion he had with the Caitanya sect; but if the Trimalla-Veṅkaṭa-Prabodhānanda story is excluded, there are some facts in favour of his identification with the Gopāla Bhaṭṭa of the Caitanya sect. The absence of Namaskriyā to Caitanya in the Kṛṣṇa-vallabhā and other works, though suspicious in view of the profuse Namaskriyās in every chapter of the Hari-bhakti-vilāsa, is not decisive; for the two Dūta-kāvyas, the Dāna-keli-kaumudī and the Padyāvalī of Rūpa Gosvāmin do not also contain such Namaskriyā. The commentary Kṛṣṇa-vallabhā, if not the other works, gives ample evidence that this Gopāla Bhaṭṭa, son of Harivaṃśa Bhaṭṭa, was a devout Vaiṣṇava; and we have already stated that there is hardly anything in it which does not subscribe to the tenets of Caitanyaism. At the very commencement, the Kṛṣṇa-vallabhā refers, for instance, to the characteristic doctrine of the Bengal school that Kṛṣṇa is not an Avatāra but the Avatārin, the supreme deity himself in his essential character. It also believes in the other important doctrine of the Bengal school that the deity possesses a supersensuous and blissful form, which is adolescent (Kiśora) quasi-human (Narākṛti) and always sporting at Vṛndāvana, and which is the highest object of adoration; it is somewhat strange, on the other hand, that the Hari-bhakti-vilāsa, as we have noted above, does not fully subscribe to this doctrine. With very minor modifications, the Kṛṣṇa-vallabhā comments upon the Bengal recension of the text of the Kṛṣṇa-karṇāmṛta, and does not accept the South Indian text, in spite of the author's declared Dravidian origin. It also quotes directly from the two authoritative Rasa-treatises of Rūpa Gosvāmin. Against these arguments in favour of identity of the two Gopāla Bhaṭṭas, the somewhat curious fact may be urged that Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja, in spite of his homage to Gopāla Bhaṭṭa as one of his Śikṣā-gurus, does not anywhere refer to or make use of the Kṛṣṇa-vallabhā in his own Sāraṅga-raṅgadā commentary on the Kṛṣṇa-karṇāmṛta. This circumstance, however, need not present a serious difficulty; but it will be seen that the arguments for identity are not conclusive. They only prove that the author of the *Kṛṣṇa-vallabhā* and possibly of the *Kāla-kaumudī* was a Vaiṣṇava who accepted the views of the Bengal school, and nothing more.