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Early History of the Vaishnava Faith and Movement in Bengal, from Sanskrit and Bengali Sources c8.s1: 1. General Characteristics

Early History of the Vaiṣṇava Faith and Movement in Bengal, from Sanskrit and Bengali Sources c8.s1

Language
English

1. General Characteristics

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Among the six immediate followers of Śrī-kṛṣṇa-caitanya, the so-called six Gosvāmins of Vṛndāvana, to whom was left the task of elaborating and defining the doctrines, creeds and practices of Bengal Vaiṣṇavism, the credit of first systematising its supreme religious emotion of Bhakti belongs to Rūpa Gosvāmin. Himself a poet and rhetorician, as well as a devout scholar and ascetic, he took up for treatment the emotional aspect of Vaiṣṇava Bhakti, and gave an authoritative exposition of its psychology, pathology and rhetoric with all the enthusiasm of a scholastic, yet devout, mind.

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In Rūpa Gosvāmin's two systematic Sanskrit works on the Vaiṣṇava Rasa-śāstra, namely, the *Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu* and its supplement the *Ujjvala-nīlamaṇi*, the religious sentiment of Bhakti has been approximated to the supreme relish of literary enjoyment, known as Rasa, of orthodox Sanskrit Poetics. A new turn was thus given not only to the old Rasa-theory of conventional Poetics but also to the religious emotion underlying the older Vaiṣṇava faith. Rūpa Gosvāmin gives an elaborate exposition of the mediaeval sentiment of Love, sublimated into a deeply religious sentiment, by bringing erotico-religious ideas to bear upon the general theme of literary Rasa, especially the Erotic Rasa. His two works, embodying what may be called the Bhakti-rasa-śāstra, constitute a kind of Rhetoric of Bhakti, with all its psychology, conceit and imagery. If the mediaeval Troubadours of France and Italy conceived the love of Christ as an aspect of the Law and wrote a Grammar of the amorous sentiment, the mediaeval Vaiṣṇavas of Bengal¹ conceived the love of Kṛṣṇa as an aspect of Psychology, and wrote a Rhetoric of the erotic sentiment. Since Bhakti is conceived as a Rasa, it was essentially of the nature of a subjective emotion. The literary Sahr̥daya, as the recipient connoisseur, was replaced by the religious Bhakta, the devotee of nice sensibility. The love of Kṛṣṇa (*kr̥ṣṇa-rati*) was installed as the dominant feeling (*Sthāyi-bhāva*) which, through its appropriate Excitants (*Vibhāvas*), as well as Ensuants (*Anubhāvas*) and Auxiliarie (*Vyabhicāri-bhāvas*), was raised to a supreme relishable condition in his susceptible mind as the Bhakti-rasa. For the working out of this novel idea the whole apparatus of orthodox Sanskrit Poetics was ingeniously utilised, although the orthodox rhetorician himself would not regard Bhakti as a Rasa, but as a Bhāva.¹ Our poet rhetorician, who was also an

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¹ There are three other rhetorical works produced by Bengal Vaiṣṇavism, viz. *Nāṭaka-candrikā* of Rūpa Gosvāmin, *Alaṃkāra-*

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¹ The terms Rasa and Bhāva are difficult to translate, but they have been rendered respectively by the terms 'sentiment' and 'emotion'. For the distinction, as well as for the difficulty of rendering these terms by modern critical vocabulary, see S. K. De, *Sanskrit Poetics*, 2nd ed. II. pp. 135, 259-60 and 278-80. These remarks also apply to the rendering

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*kaustubha* of Kavikarṇapūra and *Kāvya-candrikā* of Kavicandra. Although they occasionally bring in Vaiṣṇava ideas and choose illustrative verses of a Vaiṣṇavite character, they are not directly concerned with Bhakti-rasa, but are regular rhetorical treatises composed on conventional lines (see S. K. De, *Sanskrit Poetics*, 2nd Ed. I. pp. 253-255). As such they need not be taken into account here. Jīva Gosvāmin also devotes a considerable part of his *Prīti-samdarbha* to the subject of Bhakti as a Rasa, following in general the analysis of Rūpa Gosvāmin. Jīva's treatment, however, is somewhat different, for he brings in a great deal of theological and metaphysical matter to explain the subject. The same remark applies also to his *Bhakti-samdarbha*, which occasionally refers to the topic of Bhakti as a Rasa. As he keeps closely to Rūpa's exposition of the subject in its general outline, it is not necessary for us to analyse Jīva's treatment in detail here; but it will be dealt with below in connexion with our analysis of the respective Samdarbhas. We shall content ourselves here with noting occasionally only striking points from it, relevant to our subject. Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja's exposition of the doctrine of Bhakti in his *Caitanya-caritāmṛta* Madhya xix, is nothing more than a summary of Rūpa Gosvāmin's two works, and need not therefore be separately considered.

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ardent devotee, follows very closely (even though his peculiar theme makes him depart in detail) the general outlines of the orthodox scheme of Poetics, adopting its main ideas and technicalities but making them applicable to the conception of emotional Bhakti. Not content with theoretical analysis, Rūpa Gosvāmin also took the trouble of writing a number of devotional poems and dramas and compiling an anthology on Kṛṣṇa-līlā for the special purpose of illustrating his theme. In the two Rasa-treatises every detail of elaborate analysis is freely illustrated by more than six hundred quotations from current sentimental and religious literature, as well as from these illustrative poems and dramas composed by Rūpa himself and his associates.

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of other technical terms of the Rasa-śāstra, which often indicate shades of meaning or concepts for which it is sometimes difficult to find a modern equivalent. Such terms have been translated or explained, as far as possible, in accordance to their actual definitions in the texts. The question whether Bhakti is Rasa or Bhāva is more or less academic, but it has been discussed at some length by Jagannātha in his Rasagaṅgādhara (ed. Kāvyamālā, 1913, p. 45). In the opinion of orthodox rhetoricians, it is devādi-viṣayā rati and therefore a Bhāva, and not a complete Rasa. Some advanced thinkers, however, would admit the Vātsalya, Preyas, Śraddhā, and even Bhakti as a Rasa; but this admission was probably made in later times through the influence of Vaiṣṇava theory itself. Jagannātha, one of the latest writers, however, represents the general orthodox attitude. He adds further that, being based on Anurāga or attachment, Bhakti cannot, as some maintain to the contrary, be comprehended in Śānta Rasa. Replying to this, Jīva Gosvāmin (Prīti-sandarbha, ed. Prangopal Gosvami, Calcutta B.E. 1337, p. 673-74) remarks that the phrase devādi means "ordinary gods" and does not apply to the supreme Kṛṣṇa; and that Bhakti, along with its Vibhāvas etc., is in its own nature alaukika, and therefore conforms to the rhetoricians' requirements (yat tu prākṛta-rasikai rasa-sāmagri-virahād bhaktau rasatvam neṣṭam, tat khalu prākṛta-devādi-viṣayam eva sambhavet.....tathā tatra kāruṇādayaḥ svata evālaukikādbhutarūpatvena darśitā darśitāś ca). Madhusūdana Sarasvati also discusses this question in the same strain in his Bhagavad-bhakti-rasāyana (ed. Benares 1927), ii. 75-80, but he adds that Bhakti as a Rasa is svānubhava-siddha and therefore incapable of direct proof.

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For a proper understanding of this Vaiṣṇava Bhakti-rasa, as expressed in its literary and religious productions, it would be necessary, therefore, to appreciate the fundamentals, as well as the details, of this presentation of Bhakti as a psychological entity, as a literary-erotic emotion transmuted into a deep and ineffable devotional sentiment, which is intensely personal and is yet impersonalised into a mental condition of disinterested joy. But the attitude is a curious mixture of the literary, the erotic and the religious, and the entire scheme as such is an extremely complicated one. There is an enthusiasm, natural to the analytic scholastic mind, for elaborate and subtle psychologising, as well as for developing and refining the inherited rhetorical traditions; but the attempt is also inspired very largely by an antecedent and still living poetic experience (Jayadeva and Lilāśuka), which found expression also in vernacular poetry (Vidyāpati and Caṇḍidāsa), as well as by the simple piety of popular religions which reflected itself in the conceptions of such Purāṇas as the Śrīmad-bhāgavata, the fountain source of mediaeval Vaiṣṇava Bhakti. But it goes further and rests ultimately on the transcendental in personal religious experience of an emotional character, which does not indeed deny the senses but goes beyond their pale.

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In the following pages we propose to give a general survey of the Rasa-śāstra of Caitanyaism by a rapid analysis of the two works of Rūpa Gosvāmin mentioned above, which form the chief original authorities on the emotionalism of Bengal Vaiṣṇavism. The quaint figurative title of the first work, which means "The Sea of the Nectar of Devotional Sentiment" (Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu), is fairly appropriate in designating an abstruse treatise of bewildering proportions and of boundless depths of analytical acumen. The quinta essentia of the devotional sentiment is the Ujjvala or Madhura Rasa, by which is meant, in terms of Vaiṣṇava emotionalism, the Śṛṅgāra or Erotic sentiment of Kṛṣṇa as the ideal hero, the term Ujjvala (=bright) having been apparently suggested by Bharata's description¹ of the Rasa, and Madhura characterising its sweet and intoxicating character. But sufficient justice could not be done to this essential sentiment in a work which crowds in its broad scope the various subtle moods and aspects of Bhakti in all its maze of sinuous detail. The next work, the *Ujjvala-nīlamaṇi*, therefore, is offered as a supplement, which strictly confines itself to this topic of Vaiṣṇava amatory psychology; and its strange poetical title, with its obvious pun, indicates that the Ujjvala Rasa, being the bright sapphire (*nīlamaṇi*) borne out of the depths of the Sea of the Nectar of Religious Devotion, is to be embalmed as a name or symbol of the Lord of sapphire-like radiance in a work bearing this blessed name.

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¹ *Yat kiñcil loke śuci medhyam ujjvalam darśanīyam vā tac chṛṅgāreṇopamīyate*, Nāṭya-śāstra, ed. Grosset, pp. 89-90. The term Mādhurya is employed advisedly in contradistinction to the Aiśvarya aspect of Kṛṣṇa's Līlā.

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