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The Embodiment of Affirmation: Śiva in Tulsidas’ Rāmacaritamānas As a Symbol of Sectarian Unity

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The Embodiment of Affirmation: Śiva in Tulsidas’ Rāmacaritamānas As a Symbol of Sectarian Unity THE EMBODIMENT OF AFFIRMATION: ŚIVA IN TULSIDAS’ RĀMACARITAMĀNAS AS A SYMBOL OF SECTARIAN UNITY By DUSTIN HALL A THESIS PRESENTED TO THE GRADUATE SCHOOL OF THE UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA IN PARTIAL FULFILLMENT OF THE REQUIREMENTS FOR THE DEGREE OF MASTER OF ARTS UNIVERSITY OF FLORIDA 2019 © 2019 Dustin Hall To the community of scholars, friends, and family, whose patience proved unwavering in the composition of this thesis and who ensured its fruition with encouragement and inspiration ACKNOWLEDGMENTS I thank the Chair of my committee, Dr. Vasudha Narayanan, who is the very embodiment of patience, who is a ceaseless well of encouragement, and at whose feet Wisdom and Inspiration surely find comfort. I thank Dr. Whitney Sanford, who is a fountain of endless advice and a true viśvamitrā, friend of the universe. I give a special thanks to Dr. Michael Jerryson, without whom I would have never found the courage to pursue an academic career, who is my guide and mentor, and who is the gurupranetā, leader of gurus. I give an extended thanks to Dr. Philip Lutgendorf, whose conversations with me provided invaluable insight that propelled this project forward. I also thank Sarah Lowry, Christopher Nickel, Abby Kulisz, Joshua McKinley, Victoria Machado, Amanda Nichols, my brothers Brandon and Sharid Hall, and my Uncle Mickey for their unyielding support and often-times tough love that helped me in this endeavor. Lastly, but most importantly, I thank my mother, Mary Hall, who is the foundation on which I build my life, who is my eternal support, who is the incarnation of Love, and the embodiment of selflessness. Thank you all; again and again, thank you. "4 INVOCATION ॐ गंगणपतये नमः ॥ िवशेशं माधवं धुिणं दणपािणं च भैरवम् । वने काशी गुहां गङ् गां भवानी मिणकिणरकाम् ॥१॥ िशवं िशवकरं शानं िशवातानं िशवोतमम् । िशवमागरपणेतारं पणमािम सदािशवम् ॥२॥ नमः िशवाभां नवयौवनाभां परसरिशषवपुधरराभाम्। नगेनकनावृषकेतनाभां नमो नमः शङ् करपावरतीभाम्॥३॥ ॐ सतं िशवं सुनरम् ॥ "5 TABLE OF CONTENTS page ACKNOWLEDGMENTS ...................................................................................................4 INVOCATION ...................................................................................................................5 PROLOGUE .....................................................................................................................8 The R#macaritam#nas .............................................................................................10 Literature Review .....................................................................................................12 Methodology and Organization ................................................................................17 !IVA WITHIN THE R$MACARITAM$NAS .....................................................................24 The !ivacarita ..........................................................................................................26 Invocations to !iva ...................................................................................................28 Special Invocations: Brahman .................................................................................38 A R$M-BHAKT$ IN THE CITY OF !IVA ........................................................................43 A M#nas Disquieted .................................................................................................47 Contempt .................................................................................................................52 A Note on the bhakti Movement & bhakti: Reconsiderations .............................52 Competing Ideologies ........................................................................................56 Unification ................................................................................................................60 Hinduism as a Religious Category ....................................................................64 Inclusivism and Syncretism ...............................................................................73 CONCLUSION................................................................................................................ 77 BIBLIOGRAPHY .............................................................................................................79 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCH .............................................................................................81 "6 Abstract of Thesis Presented to the Graduate School of the University of Florida in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts THE EMBODIMENT OF AFFIRMATION: !IVA IN TULSIDAS’ RĀMACARITAMĀNAS AS A SYMBOL OF SECTARIAN UNITY By Dustin Hall May 2019 Chair Vasudha Narayanan Major: Religion This essay examines !iva’s role in Tulsidas’ Rāmacaritamānas. It seeks to answer why !iva has as much importance as the poem’s protagonist, R#m, the incarnation of Vi%&u. By means of textual & historical analysis, this work analyzes Tulsidas’ composition of !iva’s narrative frame and the socioreligious landscape of Ka'i contemporaneous to Tulsidas in order to understand why he emphasized !iva’s narration of and participation in his epic poem. I argue that !iva is not an extraneous character in the Rāmacaritamānas and treating him as such obfuscates the purport of the text as Tulsidas’ attempt to unify prominent Hindu sects during a reprieve of Mughal oppression in Ka'i. "7 PROLOGUE Hindu epics, such as the Mahābhārata and the Rāmāyaṇa, are arguably the most beautiful pieces of literature one may ever read. They are magnanimous texts that describe the feats of great kings, queens, and citizens of ancient Bhārat (India). They recount in extraordinary detail entire lineages of families and their heroic, or not so heroic, adventures. They discuss at great length politics, law, religion, familial piety, social propriety, and the inner workings of traditions and beliefs. They are rife with beasts and ghouls, riddles and paradoxes, and curses and blessings. Time and space appear to be afterthoughts: their settings occur in other worldly places from time out of mind or even in an instant.1 Most prevalently, they describe both in horrible and majestic detail the numerous incarnations of powerful gods and goddesses and the epic wars they wage with demons and demonesses of equal valor. Hindu epics often stand as authoritative texts for Hindu sects because they recount the extraordinary līlā-s (sportive, divine playings) in which gods and goddesses participate. Within the Mahābhārata, for instance, is the Bhagavadgītā, The Song of Bhagavan, the god K(%&a, which stands as one of the most popular references of Hindu literature—even the current Prime Minister of India, Narendra Modi, gifted the emperor of Japan with a copy of it when he visited in September, 2014.2 And if one travels anywhere in the Hindu world, she or he will not find a place nor person which does not or cannot reference the many deeds of King R#m from the Rāmāyaṇa, either in sculpture, theater, or recital. 1 This is in reference to a lot of stories beginning in the naimiṣa forest, with the word naimiṣa being a derivative of the Sanskrit word nimiṣa, meaning “in an instant” or “in the blink of an eye.” 2 “Narendra Modi Gifts G)t# to Japanese Emperor, Takes a Dig at ‘Secular Friends,’” The Times of India, September 2, 2014, http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/india/Narendra-Modi-gifts-G)t#-to-Japanese- emperor-takes-a-dig-at-secular-friends/articleshow/41530900.cms "8 The gods and goddesses who are characters in these epics are not limited by the mundane rules and modes of normal human life. K(%&a, for instance, as a child, kills demons from his crib, frees trapped souls from trees he brakes while dragging a millstone, and opens his mouth to show his foster mother the universe contained within him, while, simultaneously, stealing butter and sporting flirtatiously with the girls in his village. So much so do these rules and modes not apply to the gods and goddesses of these epics that even the popular canon cannot contain them. The Rāmāyaṇa, for instance, has at least five different retellings, wherein one would be surprised to learn that who they thought was the villain/villainess in one turns out to be the hero/heroine in another. If these gods and goddesses accomplish such extraordinary feats that they cannot be contained in one version of their own stories, imagine the seemingly incomprehensible behavior in which they may partake. One strange behavior is the worshiping of other deities despite being the incarnation of the Supreme Divine, themselves, as believed by their devotees. K(%&a, who is an incarnation of Vi%&u, for instance, praises !iva at length in the “Anu'#sana Parva” (The Book of Instruction) of the Mahābhārata: reciting the thousand names of !iva at the behest of Bh)%ma, glorifying !iva and his divine qualities, and singing of him devotional praises. Many versions of the Rāmāyaṇa illustrate the same trans-devotional behavior of its central god, R#m. In Valm)k)’s Rāmāyaṇa, R#m builds a sacred alter to and worships !iva at the cusp of the bridge he built in order to cross the ocean and save his wife, S)t#. In fact, there stands currently the R#me'waram Temple, a temple dedicated to !iva, on the Rameswaram Island in Tamil Nadu to mark the very location this took "9 place. Likewise, the Adhyātmā Rāmāyaṇa features !iva as a bhaktā (a devotee) of R#m. However, one retelling of the Rāmāyaṇa depicts an unusual trans-devotional relationship between R#m, the central god of the story, and !iva, the story’s
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