Hindu preachers after the Age of the Epics
This article is an excerpt from HINDU GODS AND HEROES STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF BY LIONEL D. BARNETT, M.A., Litt The Wisdom of the East Series Indpaedia is an archive. It neither agrees nor |
III. Some Later Preachers
With all its attractions and success, the new Kṛishṇaism did not everywhere overgrow the older stock upon which it had been engrafted. There were many places in which the early worship of Vishṇu and Vāsudēva remained almost unchanged. The new legends of Kṛishṇa's childhood might indeed be accepted in these centres of conservatism, but they made little difference in the spirit and form of the worship, which continued to follow the ancient order. In some of them the Bhagavad-gītā, Nārāyaṇīya, and other epic doctrinals still remained the standard texts, which theologians connected with the ancient Upanishads and the Brahma-sūtra summarising the latter; in other centres there arose, beginning perhaps about the seventh century a.d., a series of Saṃhitās, or manuals of doctrine and practice for the Pāñcharātra[31][ On this name see above, p. 86.] sect, which, though in essentials agreeing with the Nārāyaṇīya, taught a different theory of cosmogony and introduced the worship of the goddess Śrī or Lakshmī, the consort of Vishṇu, as the agency or energy through which the Supreme Being becomes active in finite existence; and in yet other places other texts were followed, such as those of the Vaikhānasa school.
This worship of Vishṇu-Vāsudēva on the ancient lines was peculiarly vigorous among the representatives of Aryan culture in the South, who had introduced the cults of Vishṇu and Śiva with the rest of the Aryan pantheon into the midst of Dravidian animism. Hinduism, transplanted into the Dravidian area, has there remained more conservative than anywhere else, and has clung firmly to its ancient traditions. There is nothing of Dravidian origin in the South Indian worship of Vishṇu and Śiva; they are entirely Aryan importations. But they have become thoroughly assimilated in their southern home, and each of them has produced a huge mass of fine devotional literature in the vernaculars.
In the Tamil country the church of Vishṇu boasts of the Nāl-āyira-prabandham, a collection of Tamil psalms numbering about 4,000 stanzas composed by twelve poets called Ālvārs, which were collected about 1000 a.d.; and the worship of 'Siva is equally well expressed in the Tiru-muṛai, compiled about the twelfth century, of which one section, the Dēvāram, was put together about the same time as the Nāl-āyira-prabandham. Both the Tiru-muṛai and the Nāl-āyira-prabandham breathe the same spirit of ecstatic devotion as the Bhāgavata-purāṇa; they are the utterances of wandering votaries who travelled from temple to temple and poured forth the passionate raptures of their souls in lyrical praise of their deities. Through these three main channels the stream of devotion spread far and wide through the land. Like most currents of what we call "revivalism," it usually had an erotic side; and the larger temples frequently have attached to them female staffs of attendant votaries and corps de ballet of very easy virtue. But this aspect was far more marked in neo-Kṛishṇaism, which often tends to intense pruriency, than in the other two cults. The Ālvārs pay little regard to the legends of Kṛishṇa, and concentrate their energies upon the worship of Vishṇu as he is represented in the great temples of Srirangam, Conjevaram, Tirupati, and similar sanctuaries.
About the beginning of the ninth century the peaceful course of Vaishṇava religion was rudely disturbed by the preaching of Śaṃkara Āchārya. Śaṃkara, one of the greatest intellects that India has ever produced, was a Brahman of Malabar, and was born about the year 788. Taking his stand upon the Upanishads, Brahma-sūtra, and Bhagavad-gītā, upon which he wrote commentaries, he interpreted them as teaching the doctrine of Advaita, thorough monistic idealism, teaching that the universal Soul, Brahma, is absolutely identical with the individual Soul, the ātmā or Self, that all being is only one, that salvation consists in the identification of these two, and is attained by knowledge, the intuition of their identity, and that the phenomenal universe or manifold of experience is simply an illusion (māyā) conjured up in Brahma by his congenital nature, but really alien to him—in fact, a kind of disease in Brahma.
This was not new: it had been taught by some ancient schools of Aupanishadas, and was very like the doctrine of some of the Buddhist idealists; but the vigour and skill with which Śaṃkara propagated his doctrines threatened ruin to orthodox Vaishṇava theologians, and roused them to counter-campaigns. Among the Vaishṇava Brahmans of the South who won laurels in this field was Yāmunāchārya, who lived about 1050, and was the grandson of Nātha Muni, who collected the hymns of the Ālvārs in the Nāl-āyira-prabandham and founded the great school of Vaishṇava theology at Srirangam. In opposition to Śaṃkara's monism, Yāmunāchārya propounded the doctrine of his school, the so-called Viśishṭādvaita, which was preached with still greater skill and success by his famous successor Rāmānuja, who died in 1137.
Rāmānuja's greatest works are his commentaries on the Brahma-sūtra and Bhagavad-gītā. In them he expounds with great ability the principles of his school, namely, that God, sentient beings or souls, and insentient matter form three essentially distinct classes of being; that God, who is the same as Brahma, Vishṇu, Nārāyaṇa, or Kṛishṇa, is omnipotent, omnipresent, and possessed of all good qualities; that matter forms the body of souls, and souls form the body of God; that the soul attains salvation as a result of devout and loving meditation upon God, worship of him, and study of the scriptures; and that salvation consists in eternal union of the soul with God, but not in identity with him, as Śaṃkara taught. The scriptures on which Rāmānuja took his stand were mainly the Upanishads, Brahma-sūtra, and Bhagavad-gītā; but he also acknowledged as authoritative the Pāñcharātra Saṃhitās, in spite of their divergences in details of doctrine, and it is from them that his church has derived the worship of Śrī or Lakshmī as consort of Vishṇu, which is a very marked feature of their community and has gained for them the title of Śrī-vaishṇavas. But Rāmānuja was much more than a scholar and a writer of books; he was also a man of action, a "practical mystic."
Like Śaṃkara, he organ ised a body of sannyāsīs or ascetic votaries, into which, however, he admitted only Brahmans, whereas Śaṃkara opened some of the sections of his devotees to non-Brahmans; but on the other hand he was far more liberal than Śaṃkara in the choice of his congregations, for he endeavoured to bring men of the lowest castes, Śūdras and even Pariahs, within the influence of his church, though he kept up the social barrier between them and the higher castes, and he firmly upheld the principle of the Bhagavad-gītā that it is by the performance of religious and social duties of caste, and not by knowledge alone, that salvation is most surely to be won. He established schools and monasteries, reorganised the worship of the temples, usually in accordance with the Pāñcharātra rules, and thus placed his church in a position of such strength in Southern India that its only serious rival is the church of Śiva.
Nimbārka, who probably flourished about the first half of the twelfth century, preached for the cult of Kṛishṇa a doctrine combining monism with dualism, which is followed by a small sect in Northern India. Ānanda-tīrtha or Madhva, in the first three quarters of the thirteenth century, propounded for the same church a theory of thorough dualism, which has found many admirers, chiefly in the Dekkan. Vallabhāchārya, born in 1479, founded a school of Kṛishṇa worshippers which claims a "pure monism" without the aid of the theory of māyā, or illusion, which is a characteristic of Śaṃkara's monism. This community has become very influential, chiefly in Bombay Presidency; but in recent times it has been under a cloud owing to the scandals arising from a tendency to practise immoral orgies and from the claims of its priesthood, as representing the god, to enjoy the persons and property of their congregations.
Besides these and other schools which were founded on a basis of Sanskrit scholastic philosophy, there have been many popular religious movements, which from the first appealed directly to the heart of the people in their own tongues. The first place in which we see this current in movement is the Maratha country. Here, about 1290, Jñānēśvara or Jñānadēva, popularly known as Jñānōbā, composed his Jñanēśvarī, a paraphrase of the Bhagavad-gītā in about 10,000 Marathi verses, as well as a number of hymns to Kṛishṇa and a poem on the worship of Śiva. To the same period belonged Nāmadēva, who was born at Pandharpur, according to some in 1270 and according to others about a century later.
Then came Ēkanātha, who is said to have died in 1608, and composed some hymns and Marathi verse-translations from the Bhāgavata. The greatest of all was Tukārām, who was born about 1608.[32][ The student may refer to Sir R. G. Bhandarkar's Vaiṣṇavas and Śaivas (in Bühler's Grundriss, p. 74 ff.,) J. N. Farquhar's Outline of the Relig. Liter. of India, p. 234 f., 298 ff., and my Heart of India, p. 60 ff., for some details on these poets.] In the verses of these poets the worship of Kṛishṇa is raised to a level of high spirituality. Rāmānanda, who apparently lived between 1400 and 1470 and was somehow connected with the school of Rāmānuja, preached salvation through Rāma to all castes and classes of Northern India, with immense and enduring success. To his spiritual lineage belongs Tulsī Dās (1532-1623), whose Rāma-charita-mānasa, a poem in Eastern Hindi on the story of Vālmīki's Rāmāyana, has become the Bible of the North. The same influences are visible in the poems of Kabīr, a Moslem by birth, who combined Hindu and Muhammadan doctrines into an eclectic monotheism, and is worshipped as an incarnation of God by his sect. He died in 1518. A kindred spirit was Nānak, the founder of the Sikh church (1469-1538).[33][ See Farquhar, ut supra, p. 323 ff.; Heart of India, p. 49 f., etc.]
By the side of these upward movements there have been many which have remained on the older level of the Bhāgavata. The most important is that of Viśvambhara Miśra, who is better known by his titles of Chaitanya and Gaurānga (1485-1533); he carried on a "revival" of volcanic intensity in Bengal and Orissa, and the church founded by him is still powerful, and worships him as an incarnation of Kṛishṇa.
