Between Text and Sect: Early Nineteenth Century Shifts in the Theology of Ram By Vasudha Paramasivan A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in South and Southeast Asian Studies in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Vasudha Dalmia, Chair Professor Monika Boehm-Tettelbach Professor Robert Goldman Professor Eugene Irschick Fall 2010 Abstract Between Text and Sect: Early Nineteenth Century Shifts in the Theology of Ram by Vasudha Paramasivan Doctor of Philosophy in South and Southeast Asian Studies University of California, Berkeley Professor Vasudha Dalmia, Chair This dissertation focuses on the two primary facets of Ram devotion in North India. The cult of Ram, which is not only central to the practice of modern Hinduism but is also the lynchpin of Hindu nationalist politics, emerged as a major devotional tradition in sixteenth century North India. The Ram tradition was propelled by two primary forces - the famous devotional composition of Tulsidas, the Rāmcaritmānas and the rapidly expanding monastic community, the Ramanandi sect. Modern scholarship on Ram devotion has either tended to treat each facet separately or has simply assumed that the text forms the theological core of the sect. My research shows that although text and sect emerged almost simultaneously in the sixteenth century, they represented distinct theologies until the late eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries, when they were united under the patronage of a rising Hindu polity. My dissertation focuses on the earliest literary-theological link between the Rāmcaritmānas and the Ramanandi sect. Through a study of early sectarian commentaries, I show how the Ramanandis shaped the contours of the Ram tradition by incorporating their distinct theology into the Rāmcaritmānas. The sectarian adoption of the devotional text, and the spurt in the production of exegetical literature among other genres, highlights the centrality of literary cultures to the formation of the Ram devotional community in early modern North India. This project thus not only makes an intervention into the history of Ram devotion, but also has wider implications for the study of the formation of modern Hindu religious traditions. 1 Table of Contents Acknowledgments……………………………………………………………. ii Introduction…………………………………………………………………… 1 Section I – The Text…………………………………………………………… 5 Chapter 1: The Poet…………………………………………………… 6 Chapter 2: The Rāmcaritmānas……………………………………….. 24 Chapter 3: Review of Scholarship…………………………………… 49 Section II: The Sect and its Commentaries…………………………………. 69 Chapter 4: The Ramanandi sampraday……………………………… 70 Chapter 5: The Theology of Sacred Space in the Ānand laharī…… 86 Chapter 6: The Theology of bhakti in the Ānand laharī……………. 109 Chapter 7: The Theology of bhakti in the Mānas mayaṅk………….. 126 Conclusion…………………………………………………………………….. 141 Bibliography…………………………………………………………………... 144 i Acknowledgments I have had the good fortune to have the support of many exceptional scholars and teachers. My first debt of gratitude is to Professor Vasudha Dalmia, who always encouraged me to follow my interests. I am exceptionally grateful for her for her faith in me and in this project. I also wish to thank my committee members Professors Eugene Irschick and Robert Goldman for their constant encouragement and advice, and Professor Monika Boehm-Tettelbach for her intellectual support, insightful critique and for many hours of pleasurable conversation in Heidelberg. I would also like to thank Professor George Hart who watched over me since the beginning. In Varanasi, I would like to thank Pathakji without whom this dissertation would not have been possible. Omji deserves my special thanks for his friendship and advice. I would also like to remember the late Modiji for being such an inspiration. Finally I would like to thank my friends for their constant cheering. To my family I owe more than I can ever express in words. ii Between Text and Sect: Early Nineteenth Century Shifts in the Theology of Ram Introduction On December 6th 1992, the sixteenth century Babri mosque in the North Indian city of Ayodhya was attacked and demolished by a mob claiming the site as the birthplace of Ram. The incident resulted in widespread violence between Hindus and Muslims that continues to grip India to this day. With the destruction of the mosque, Ram came to occupy center stage in Indian politics - he can start riots and win elections. Ram has become the “face” of Hindu nationalism. The Ram kathā, or the legend of Ram the prince of Ayodhya, is, of course, best known in Valmiki’s Sanskrit Rāmāyaṇa. Valmiki is known as the ādi kavi (the first poet of the Rāmāyaṇa tradition) and his Rāmāyaṇa is the earliest version of the legend. Since the composition of this work in the first few centuries of the Common Era, there have been numerous retellings, both in Sanskrit and in the many regional languages of India, so much so that it has become common to speak of the Rāmāyaṇas in the plural.1 These renditions of the Ram katha have placed the legend in a variety of literary and religious contexts. Invariably, the Ram katha became central to the medieval devotional traditions known as bhakti. Bhakti comes from the Sanskrit root bhaj, which means to share or participate. While the word is usually translated as “devotion”, bhakti takes on a very specific meaning in that it comes to represent the cultivation of an intense and personal relationship between devotee and God.2 Originating in South India, bhakti spread toward the North around the fifteenth century. In North India, bhakti is usually divided into two streams, saguṇ, or iconic bhakti and nirguṇ or aniconic bhakti. Sagun bhakti in North India in primarily Vaishnava in nature, as it focuses mainly on the worship of the two major avatars or incarnations of Vishnu- Ram and Krishna. Devotion to Ram, however also crosses over into the nirgun stream, but the Ram that is the object of worship in this stream is without qualities and aniconic in nature. Ram bhakti thus represents one of the major devotional streams, encompassing both nirgun and sagun traditions in North India.3 While Sanskrit texts placing Ram as the object of worship and ritual started to emerge in the eleventh and twelfth centuries, it was not until the sixteenth century that Ram 1 On the dating of the Valmiki Rāmāyaṇa, see Robert Goldman, The Rāmāyaṇa of Vālmīkī: Bālakāṇḍa (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1984), 20-23. On the diversity of the Rāmāyaṇa tradition, see Paula Richman, ed., Many Rāmāyaṇas Many Rāmāyaṇas: The Diversity of a Narrative Tradition in South Asia (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1991). 2 Recent scholarship has challenged the centrality of the “personal” in bhakti. See Christain Lee Novetzke, Religion and Public Memory: A Cultural History of Saint Namdev in India (New York: Columbia University Press, 2008). 3 The two incarnations of Vishnu, Ram and Krishna, dominate the sagun (with attributes) devotional tradition. 1 bhakti truly became a popular tradition in the sagun context. This occurred with the composition of the Rāmcaritmānas. Composed in 1574 in Avadhi by Tulsidas, the Rāmcaritmānas was the first authoritative rendition of the Ram katha into a vernacular language of the Gangetic plain of North India.4 The text was commenced in Ayodhya and finished in Varanasi, where the poet Tulsidas spent the greater part of his life. The Rāmcaritmānas is also considered the quintessential text of Ram bhakti in North India, as it was the first North Indian vernacular work to place the Ram katha within a devotional framework. The text presents a “syncretic” view of some of the key factions / positions of contention within North Indian bhakti - Shaivism and Vaishnavism, and nirgun and sagun bhakti. The text has been hailed as the ‘Bible of North India’ and was probably the most widely known text before the advent of print. The popularity and influence of this poetic work can be dated back to the poet’s own lifetime when he was eulogized by his contemporary Nabhadas in the hagiographical compendium the Bhaktamāl (ca. 1600). In this work, Nabhadas praised Tulsidas as Valmiki incarnate.5 Although Valmiki is still considered the adikavi, it is Tulsidas’s Rāmcaritmānas that is identified as the Rāmāyaṇa in large parts of North India. While Ram bhakti in North India is inevitably associated with this text and poet, there is another significant facet to this tradition - the Ramanandi sampradāy or sect.6 The Ramanandi sect, which represents devotion to Ram, is the largest religious community of its kind in North India. The sect traces itself back to Swami Ramanand, a Vaishnavite saint belonging to the lineage of the eleventh century South Indian philosopher-theologian Ramanuja. Recent anthropological work has shown that the Ramanandi sampraday comprises three distinct groups of practitioners – tyāgīs (probably the earliest and “original” Ramanandis – also known as bairāgīs), rasiks (sixteenth century), and nāgās (eighteenth century).7 Although the sect puts the dates of Ramanand as early as the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries, the earliest historical evidence of a settled lineage of Vaishnavas tracing themselves back to Ramanand, emerges only in the sixteenth century. This occurred in the towns of Raivasa and Galta, close to present day Jaipur, in Rajasthan. The community of Ramanandi ascetics that settled here is now known as the rasik sampraday. The rasiks, or self-styled “connoisseurs” of Ram bhakti are the most articulate branch of the Ramanandi sect, with several works of devotional poetry, theology and ritual (in Sanskrit and in vernaculars of 4 An earlier Braj bhāṣā version was the Rāmāyaṇ kathā of Viṣṇudās, composed in 1442. See R.S. McGregor, “An Early Hindi (Brajbhāṣā) Version of the Ram Story,” in Devotion Divine: Bhakti Traditions from the Regions of India, edited by Diana L. Eck and Françoise Mallison (Groningen: Egbert Forsten, 1991), 181-196. 5 Nabhadas, Śri Bhaktamāl, with the commentary of Priyadas, ed.