A modern offshoot of Vallabha's creed, formed with the avowed object of purging it of its objectionable features, was started, in the early years of the 19th century, by Sahajananda, a Brahman of the Oudh country, who subsequently assumed the name of Svami Narayana. Having entered on his missionary labours at Ahmadabad, and afterwards removed to Jetalpur, where he had a meeting with Bishop Heber, he subsequently settled at the village of Wartal, to the north-west of Baroda, and erected a temple to Lakshmi-Narayana, which, with another at Ahmadabad, forms the two chief centres of the sect, each being presided over by a Maharaja. Their worship is addressed to Narayana, i.e. Vishnu, as the Supreme Being, together with Lakshmi, as well as to Krishna and Radha. The sect is said to be gaining ground in Gujarat. Chaitanya, the founder of the great Vaishnava sect of Bengal, was the son of a high-caste Brahman of Nadiya, the famous Bengal seat of Sanskrit learning, where he was born in 1485, two years after the birth of Martin Luther, the German reformer. Having married in due time, and a second time after the death of his first wife, he lived as a "householder" (_grihastha_) till the age of 24, when he renounced his family ties and set out as a religious mendicant (_vairagin_), visiting during the next six years the principal places of pilgrimage in northern India, and preaching with remarkable success his doctrine of Bhakti, or passionate devotion to Krishna, as the Supreme Deity. He subsequently made over to his principal disciples the task of consolidating his community, and passed the last twelve years of his life at Puri in Orissa, the great centre of the worship of Vishnu as Jagannatha, or "lord of the world," which he remodelled in accordance with his doctrine, causing the mystic songs of Jayadeva to be recited before the images in the morning and evening as part of the daily service; and, in fact, as in the other Vaishnava creeds, seeking to humanize divine adoration by bringing it into accord with the experience of human love. To this end, music, dancing, singing-parties (_sankirtan_), theatricals--in short anything calculated to produce the desired impression--would prove welcome to him. His doctrine of Bhakti distinguishes five grades of devotional feeling in the _Bhaktas_, or faithful adherents: viz. (_santi_) calm contemplation of the deity; (_dasya_) active servitude; (_sakhya_) friendship or personal regard; (_vatsalya_) tender affection as between parents and children; (_madhurya_) love or passionate attachment, like that which the Gopis felt for Krishna. Chaitanya also seems to have done much to promote the celebration on an imposing scale of the great Puri festival of the Ratha-yatra, or "car-procession," in the month of Ashadha, when, amidst multitudes of pilgrims, the image of Krishna, together with those of his brother Balarama and his sister Subhadra, is drawn along, in a huge car, by the devotees. Just as this festival was, and continues to be, attended by people from all parts of India, without distinction of caste or sex, so also were all classes, even Mahommedans, admitted by Chaitanya as members of his sect. Whilst numerous observances are recommended as more or less meritorious, the ordinary form of worship is a very simple one, consisting as it does mainly of the constant repetition of names of Krishna, or Krishna and Radha, which of itself is considered sufficient to ensure future bliss. The partaking of flesh food and spirituous liquor is strictly prohibited. By the followers of this sect, also, an extravagant degree of reverence is habitually paid to their gurus or spiritual heads. Indeed, Chaitanya himself, as well as his immediate disciples, have come to be regarded as complete or partial incarnations of the deity to whom adoration is due, as to Krishna himself; and their modern successors, the Gosains, share to the fullest extent in the devout attentions of the worshippers. Chaitanya's movement, being chiefly directed against the vile practices of the Saktas, then very prevalent in Bengal, was doubtless prompted by the best and purest of intentions; but his own doctrine of divine, though all too human, love was, like that of Vallabha, by no means free from corruptive tendencies,--yet, how far these tendencies have worked their way, who would say? On this point, Dr W. W. Hunter--who is of opinion that "the death of the reformer marks the beginning of the spiritual decline of Vishnu-worship," observes (_Orissa_, i. 111), "The most deplorable corruption of Vishnu-worship at the present day is that which has covered the temple walls with indecent sculptures, and filled its innermost sanctuaries with licentious rites" ... yet ... "it is difficult for a person not a Hindu to pronounce upon the real extent of the evil. None but a Hindu can enter any of the larger temples, and none but a Hindu priest really knows the truth about their inner mysteries"; whilst the well-known native scholar Babu Rajendralal Mitra points out (_Antiquities of Orissa_, i. 111) that "such as they are, these sculptures date from centuries before the birth of Chaitanya, and cannot, therefore, be attributed to his doctrines or to his followers. As a Hindu by birth, and a Vaishnava by family religion, I have had the freest access to the innermost sanctuaries and to the most secret of scriptures. I have studied the subject most extensively, and have had opportunities of judging which no European can have, and I have no hesitation in saying that, 'the mystic songs' of Jayadeva and the 'ocean of love' notwithstanding, there is nothing in the rituals of Jagannatha which can be called licentious." Whilst in Chaitanya's creed, Krishna, in his relations to Radha, remains at least theoretically the chief partner, an almost inevitable step was taken by some minor sects in attaching the greater importance to the female element, and making Krishna's love for his mistress the guiding sentiment of their faith. Of these sects, it will suffice to mention that of the Radha-Vallabhis, started in the latter part of the 16th century, who worship Krishna as Radha-vallabha, "the darling of Radha." The doctrines and practices of these sects clearly verge upon those obtaining in the third principal division of Indian sectarians which will now be considered. Entry: A
Whether Ramanuja himself gave the preference to Rama against Krishna as the form of Vishnu most worthy of worship is uncertain. He dealt mainly with philosophic conceptions of the Divine Nature, and probably busied himself little with mythological legend. His _mantra_, or formula of initiation, if Wilson[9] was correctly informed, implies devotion to Rama; but Vasudeva (Krishna) is also mentioned as a principal object of adoration, and Ramanuja himself dwelt for several years in Mysore, at a temple erected by the raja, at Yadavagiri in honour of Krishna in his form Ranchhor.[10] It is stated that in his worship of Krishna he joined with that god as his _Sakti_, or Energy, his wife Rukmini; while the later varieties of Krishna-worship prefer to honour his mistress Radha. The great difference, in temper and influence upon life, between these two forms of Vaishnava faith appears to be a development subsequent to Ramanuja; but by the time of Jaideo (about 1250) it is clear that the theme of Krishna and Radha, and the use of passionate language drawn from the relations of the sexes to express the longings of the soul for God, had become fully established; and from that time onwards the two types of Vaishnava religious emotion diverged more and more from one another. Entry: 1
Although the Vaishnava sects hitherto noticed, in their adoration of Vishnu and his incarnations, Krishna and Ramachandra, usually associate with these gods their wives, as their _saktis_, or female energies, the sexual element is, as a rule, only just allowed sufficient scope to enhance the emotional character of the rites of worship. In some of the later Vaishnava creeds, on the other hand, this element is far from being kept within the bounds of moderation and decency. The favourite object of adoration with adherents of these sects is Krishna with his mate--but not the devoted friend and counsellor of the Pandavas and deified hero of epic song, nor the ruler of Dvaraka and wedded lord of Rukmini, but the juvenile Krishna, Govinda or Bala Gopala, "the cowherd lad," the foster son of the cowherd Nanda of Gokula, taken up with his amorous sports with the _Gopis_, or wives of the cowherds of Vrindavana (Brindaban, near Mathura on the Yamuna), especially his favourite mistress Radha or Radhika. This episode in the legendary life of Krishna has every appearance of being a later accretion. After barely a few allusions to it in the epics, it bursts forth full-blown in the Harivansa, the Vishnu-purana, the Narada-Pancharatra and the Bhagavata-purana, the tenth canto of which, dealing with the life of Krishna, has become, through vernacular versions, especially the Hindi _Prem-sagar_, or "ocean of love," a favourite romance all over India, and has doubtless helped largely to popularize the cult of Krishna. Strange to say, however, no mention is as yet made by any of these works of Krishna's favourite Radha; it is only in another Purana--though scarcely deserving that designation--that she makes her appearance, viz. in the Brahma-vaivarta, in which Krishna's amours in Nanda's cow-station are dwelt upon in fulsome and wearisome detail; whilst the poet Jayadeva, in the 12th century, made her love for the gay and inconstant boy the theme of his beautiful, if highly voluptuous, lyrical drama, _Gita-govinda_. Entry: HINDUISM
BIHARI-LAL, a name famous in Hindustani literature as the author of the _Sat-sai_, a collection of approximately seven hundred distichs, which is perhaps the most celebrated Hindi work of poetic art, as distinguished from narrative and simpler styles. The language is the form of Hindi called _Braj-bhasha_, spoken in the country about Mathura, where the poet lived. The couplets are inspired by the Krishna side of Vishnu-worship, and the majority of them take the shape of amorous utterances of Radha, the chief of the Gopis or cowherd maidens of Braj, and her divine lover, the son of Vasudeva. Each couplet is independent and complete in itself, and is a triumph of skill in compression of language, felicity of description, and rhetorical artifice. The distichs, in their collected form, are arranged, not in any sequence of narrative or dialogue, but according to the technical classification of the sentiments which they convey as set forth in the treatises on Indian rhetoric. Entry: BIHARI
The earliest of the sects which associate Radha with Krishna in their worship is that of the Nimavats, founded by Nimbaditya or Nimbarka (i.e. "the sun of the Nimba tree"), a teacher of uncertain date, said to have been a Telugu Brahman who subsequently established himself at Mathura (Muttra) on the Yamuna, where the headquarters of his sect have remained ever since. The Mahant of their monastery at Dhruva Kshetra near Mathura, who claims direct descent from Nimbarka, is said to place the foundation of that establishment as far back as the 5th century--doubtless an exaggerated claim; but if Jayadeva, as is alleged, and seems by no means improbable, was really a follower of Nimbarka, this teacher must have flourished, at latest, in the early part of the 12th century. He is indeed taken by some authorities to be identical with the mathematician Bhaskara Acharya, who is known to have completed his chief work in A.D. 1150. It is worthy of remark, in this respect, that--in accordance with Ramanuja's and Nimbarka's philosophical theories--Jayadeva's presentation of Krishna's fickle love for Radha is usually interpreted in a mystical sense, as allegorically depicting the human soul's striving, through love, for reunion with God, and its ultimate attainment, after many backslidings, of the longed-for goal. As the chief authority of their tenets, the Nimavats recognize the Bhagavata-purana; though several works, ascribed to Nimbarka--partly of a devotional character and partly expository of Vedanta topics--are still extant. Adherents of this sect are fairly numerous in northern India, their frontal mark consisting of the usual two perpendicular white lines, with, however, a circular black spot between them. Entry: HINDUISM
By this time the worship of Krishna as the lover of Radha _(Radha-ballabh)_ had been systematized, and a local habitation found for it at Gokul, opposite Mathura on the Jumna, some 30 m. upstream from Agra, Akbar's capital, by Vallabhacharya, a Tailinga Brahman from Madras. Born in 1478, in 1497 he chose the land of Braj as his headquarters, thence making missionary tours throughout India. He wrote chiefly, if not entirely, in Sanskrit; but among his immediate followers, and those of his son Bitthalnath (who succeeded his father on the latter's death in 1530), were some of the most eminent poets in Hindi. Four disciples of Vallabhacharya and four of Bitthalnath, who flourished between 1550 and 1570, are known as the _Asht Chhap_, or "Eight Seals," and are the acknowledged masters of the literature of Braj-bhasha, in which dialect they all wrote. Their names are Krishna-Das Pay-ahari, Sur Das (the Bhat), Parmanand Das, Kumbhan Das, Chaturbhuj Das, Chhit Swami, Nand Das and Gobind Das. Of these much the most celebrated, and the only one whose verses are still popular, is Sur Das. The son of Baba Ram Das, who was a singer at Akbar's court, Sur Das was descended, according to his own statement, from the bard of Prithwi-Raj, Chand Bardai. A tradition gives the date of his birth as 1483, and that of his death as 1573; but both seem to be placed too early, and in Abul-Fazl's _Ain-i Akbari_ he is mentioned as living when that work was completed (1596/7). He was blind, and entirely devoted to the worship of Krishna, to whose address he composed a great number of hymns (_bhajans_), which have been collected in a compilation entitled the _Sur Sagar_, said to contain 60,000 verses; this work is very highly esteemed as the high-water mark of Braj devotional poetry, and has been repeatedly printed in India. Other compositions by him were a translation in verse of the _Bhagavata Purana_, and a poem dealing with the famous story of Nala and Damayanti; of the latter no copies are now known to exist. Entry: 2
_Bihari Literature._--In all three dialects there are numerous folk-epics transmitted by word of mouth. Several have been published at various times in the _Journal of the Asiatic Society of Bengal_ and in the _Zeitschrift der deutschen morgenländischen Gesellschaft_. The only dialect which has any real literature is Maithili. The earliest writer of whom we have any record is Vidyapati Thakkura (Bidyapati Thakur), who lived at the court of Raja Siva Simha of Sugaona in Tirhut in the 15th century. He was a voluminous Sanskrit writer, but his fame rests chiefly on his dainty lyrics in Maithili dealing with the loves of Radha and Krishna. These have exercised an important influence on the religious history of eastern India. They were adopted and enthusiastically recited by the reformer Caitanya (16th century), and through him became the home-poetry of the Bengali-speaking Lower Provinces. Their language was transformed (we can hardly say translated) into Bengali, and in that shape they have had numerous imitators. A collection of poems by the old Master-singer in their Maithili dress has been published by the present writer in his _Chrestomathy_ of that language. The most admired of Vidyapati's successors is Manbodh Jha, who died in 1788. He composed a _Haribans_, or poetical life of Krishna, which has great popularity. Many dramas have been composed in Mithila. The fashion is to write the body of the work in Sanskrit and Prakrit, but the songs in Maithili. Two dramas, the _Parijata-harana_ and the _Rukmini-parinaya_, are attributed to Vidyapati. Among modern writers in the dialect, we may mention Harsanatha, an elegant lyric poet and author of a drama entitled _Usa-harana_, and Candra Jha, whose version of the Ramayana and translation of Vidyapati's Sanskrit _Purusa-pariksa_ are deservedly popular. Entry: I
Subsequently to Ramanuja his doctrine appears to have been set forth, about 1250, in the vernacular of the people by Jaideo, a Brahman born at Kinduvilva, the modern Kenduli, in the Birbhum district of Bengal, author of the Sanskrit _Gita Govinda_, and by Namdeo or Nama, a tailor[11] of Maharashtra, of both of whom verses in the popular speech are preserved in the _Adi Granth_ of the Sikhs. But it was not until the beginning of the 15th century that the Brahman Ramanand, a prominent _Gosain_ of the sect of Ramanuja, having had a dispute with the members of his order in regard to the stringent rules observed by them, left the community, migrated to northern India (where he is said to have made his headquarters Galta in Rajputana), and addressed himself to those outside the Brahman caste, thus initiating the teaching of Vaishnavism as the popular faith of Hindostan. Among his twelve disciples or apostles were a Rajput, a Jat, a leather-worker, a barber and a Musalman weaver; the last-mentioned was the celebrated KABIR (see separate article). One short Hindi poem by Ramanand is contained in the _Adi Granth_, and Dr Grierson has collected hymns (_bhajans_) attributed to him and still current in Mithila or Tirhut. Both Ramanand and Kabir were adherents of the form of Vaishnavism where devotion is specially addressed to Raama, who is regarded not only as an incarnation, but as himself identical with the Deity. A contemporary of Ramanand, Bidyapati Thakur, is celebrated as the author of numerous lyrics in the Maithili dialect of Bihar, expressive of the other side of Vaishnavism, the passionate adoration of the Deity in the person of Krishna, the aspirations of the worshipper being mystically conveyed in the character of Radha, the cowherdess of Braj and the beloved of the son of Vasudeva. These stanzas of Bidyapati (who was a Brahman and author of several works in Sanskrit) afterwards inspired the Vaishnava literature of Bengal, whose most celebrated exponent was Chaitanya (b. 1484). Another famous adherent of the same cult was Mira Bai, "the one great poetess of northern India" (Grierson). This lady, daughter of Raja Ratiya Rana, Rathor, of Merta in Rajputana, must have been born about the beginning of the 15th century; she was married in 1413 to Raja Kumbhkaran of Mewar, who was killed by his son Uday Rana in 1469. She was devoted to Krishna in the form of Ranchhor, and her songs have a wide currency in northern India. Entry: 1