Early History of the Vaishnava Faith and Movement in Bengal, from Sanskrit and Bengali Sources c8.s1.2

c8.s1.2

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