Caitanya's Followers and the Bhagavad-Gita
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CAITANYA'S FOLLOWERS AND THE BHAGAVAD-GITA: A Case Study in Bhakti and the Secular JOSEPH T. O'CONNELL The Bhagavad-gitti is a Vaiglava text that has enjoyed the widest currency in India for the last two millenia. It is thus reasonable to ask how the Gauriya Vai~Q.avas (i.e., those revering as their savior Kr~Q.a-caitanya of Bengal) understood the Bhagavad-gitti. It is a bit surprising to find that not until the end of the seventeenth century, more than a century and a half after the death of Caitanya, did any Gauriya V ai~Q.ava produce a commentary upon the Gitti that is extant today. There was available to the Gauriya Vaiglavas the commentary on the Gitti by Sridhara Svamin (fl. 140D) , whose commentary on the Bhtigavata Purtif.1a they so much admired. But while the latter com mentary receives praise and copious citation by Gauriyas, the former goes more or less unmentioned. Nor did the existence of Sridhara's respected commentary on the Bhtigavata dissuade several Gauriyas from trying their hand at comments of their own. It is said that Advaita A.ciirya, a senior contemporary and highly regarded associate of Caitanya, commented upon the Gitti, but had he produced a formal written document of this sort it is most unlikely that his descendants and spiritual successors, otherwise jealous of their heritage from Advaita, would have let it slip into oblivion.! Advaita had learned the devotional interpretation of the Bhagavad gitti, it is reported, from his preceptor, Madhavendra Puri (the guru's guru of Caitanya). But apart from the small circle of Mad havendra's disciples there were few students of Sanskrit texts at Navadvipa, the town in Bengal where Caitanya was born, who did not subordinate the teachings on devotion (bhakti) to the teachings on knowledge (of a gnostic and impersonal sort,jiitina) or on work 1 Krishna-dasa Kaviraja, Caitanya-caritamrta, ed. Bhakti Vilas Tirtha, 5th ed. (Mayapur, India: Caitanya Matha, G.A. 470 or A.D. 1956), 1:13:64. Hereafter cited as Cc. Nagendra Nath Basu, ed., Vifvakofa (Calcutta, B.A. 1318 or A.D. 1911), II, 138, mentions one Siirya-dasa Pal)9ita as author of a commentary on the Gita, but does not indicate if he was a Gauriya Vai~l)ava; standard Gaur1ya Vaisnava reference books mention no such text. 3 34 JOSEPH T. O'CONNELL (in the sense of traditional social and ritual performance, karma), or so one of the best of Cait any a's biographers, Vrndavanadasa, laments.2 The lament of the biographer points directly at the problem which the Gild posed for the Gauriya Vai~Qavas: it does not give unambi guous enough pre-eminence to devotion over the other spiritual disciplines of knowledge and work. In particular, the Gild is silent on the winsome sports of Kr~Qa as a child and on his amorous sports (lilds) as an adolescent young man, sports which the Gauriya Vai~Qavas confidently believe to reveal the essence of divine life arid the perfec tion of religious life, loving devotion (prema-bhakli). 3 Several of the biographers of Caitanya evidently were well-versed in the Gilii, since they quote it with some frequency. The famous six Gosvamins of Vrndaban, most of whom made substantial contri butions to the Sanskrit literature of the Gauriya Vai~Qava movement, were aware of the Bhagavad-gild, but generally were most sparing in their citation of it, according to the tables prepared by S. K. De. Only the second generation Gosvamin, Jiva, quotes the Gild with any profusion. None of the six is known to have authored a com mentary upon the famous text. Of much more importance to them and to the Gauriya Vai~Qavas generally were the Bhdgavala PlIrd1Ja and other Vai~Qava texts telling of the amorous pastimes of Kr~Qa.4 The first extant Gauriya Vai~Qava commentary upon the Bhagavad gild is the Sdrarlha-var.rilJi (also mentioned as Sarartha-darfini) of Visvanatha Cakravartin, a brahman born in northern Bengal in the second half of the seventeenth century. Most of his copious writing in Sanskrit was done as a recluse at or near V rndaban. He was steeped in the distinctive Gauriya Vai~Qava literature, especially that of Rupa Gosvamin dealing with the mood of loving devotion (prema bhakli-rasa). Even though his work appears too late to have had an impact upon the Gauriya Vai~Qavas' view of the polity and the societal community of Bengal prior to British rule, he is sufficiently typical of Gauriya Vai~Qava piety that it is worthwhile to consider briefly his treatment of the Bha/"avad-gild. There is another com mentary on the Gild by a Vai~Qava from Oris sa said to have been a 2 Vrndavana-dasa, CaitanYG-bhiigat'ata, cd. Bhakti KevaJa AU9ulomi, 3rd cd. (Calcutta: GaurIya Mission, 1961), 1: 2: 72-73. 3 Sushi! Kumar De, Early History of the Vaif!1aVa Faitb and Movement in Bml!,al, 2nd cd. (Calcutta: F. K. L. l\fukhopadhyay, 1961); Edward C. Dimock, Jr., The Place 6f the Hidden Moon (Chic~go: University of Chicago Press, 1966). Both arc valuable accounts of the GaurIya Vai~tlava movement. 4 Dc, Early Hi.rtGT'.Y, pp. 201, 220, 253, 414-15. .