Lecture tag: Vaiṣṇavism

A Persistence of Vision: The Development and Spread of Illustration of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa in North India from the 16th to the 18th Century

There is a long tradition of depicting the story of Kṛṣṇa in sculpture dating at least from the Gupta Period (4th-6th centuries CE). The compositions are quite consistent over time and place, and, with only a few exceptions, are simple and straightforward.

In the early 16th century, coinciding with a great revival of Kṛṣṇa worship, the earliest surviving painted Bhāgavata Purāṇa illustrations appear (c. 1520-30), and, though not unrelated to the earlier examples, the compositions are strikingly lively and inventive. The lecture examines this development, offers speculation on a possible source, and considers the long influence of this new compositional tradition on subsequent Indian painting.

Daniel Ehnbom is Associate Professor at the McIntire Department of Art of the University of Virginia. He is the author of Indian Miniatures: The Ehrenfeld Collection (1985), articles on painting and Indian architecture, and contributions to various exhibition catalogues. He was with the Macmillan/Grove Dictionary of Art (1996) in London as a contributor and consultant from 1984 and as South Asia Area Editor for Painting and Sculpture from 1988. His recent publications include Realms of Earth and Sky: Indian Painting from the Fifteenth to the Nineteenth Century (Charlottesville: The Fralin Art Museum at the University of Virginia, 2014).

Is Yogic Suicide Useless? The Practice of Utkrānti in Some Tantric Vaiṣṇava and Śaiva Sources (MT17)

The aim of this lecture is to discuss the practice of yogic suicide, as it occurs in some Tantric Vaiṣṇava sources, as well as in the Mālinīvijayottaratantra, particularly as concerns the affinities between the latter and certain Pāñcarātra saṃhitā-s. After a summary account of the contents of the text-passages where this practice is either described or alluded to (passages which are given in full in the Handout), some of the problems raised by these texts are discussed and provisional working hypothesis are put forward. In the first place, the question of how and why the practice of yogic suicide is treated in different ways in the texts where it occurs is examined. In the second place, the issue of whether and how this practice harmonizes with the visions of liberation advocated by the texts in question is discussed.

Dr Silvia Schwarz Linder has lectured in the past at the Leopold-Franzens-Universität in Innsbruck and at the University Ca’ Foscari in Venice, and is presently Research Associate at the Institut für Indologie und Zentralasienwissenschaften of the University of Leipzig. Her interests focus on the Tantric religious traditions of the Śrīvidyā and of the Pāñcarātra, specifically on the philosophical and theological doctrines expressed in the relevant South Indian Sanskrit textual traditions. She has also translated into Italian texts from the Sanskrit narrative and devotional literature, for editions aimed at a general readership. She is affiliated with the Śākta Traditions project at the OCHS led by Professor Gavin Flood and Dr Bjarne Wernicke-Olesen.

Caitanya and the Gosvāmīs of Vṛndāvana (TT17)

The writings of the Gosvāmīs of Vṛndāvana have, since the early seventeenth century, been the foundation for all Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava theology, and it is hard to find in the tradition any figure that is invested with greater authority than these authors. Some of the best scholars of the Gauḍīya tradition, such as Sushil Kumar De, Ramakanta Chakravarti, and Hitesranjan Sanyal, have argued that unlike the Vaiṣṇavas of Bengal, who composed several hagiographies of Caitanya, the Gosvāmīs of Vṛndāvana cared little for Caitanya, at least theologically. Though the Gosvāmīs of Vṛndāvana offer homage to Caitanya in most of their writings, their theology centres on Kṛṣṇa not Caitanya, and it is not until the early seventeenth century, when their student Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja composed the Caitanya–caritāmṛta and used their ideas to develop a comprehensive theology of Caitanya’s life, that the Bengali tradition of Caitanya devotion was synthesised with the Kṛṣṇa theology of Vṛndāvana.

This lecture aims to challenge this view. First I will attempt to demonstrate that these authors did indeed have a theology of Caitanya, and will examine how Caitanya figures into their theology of devotion to Kṛṣṇa. In the light of this, I will then explore the reasons why the Gosvāmīs sometimes chose not to emphasise Caitanya’s divinity in their writings. Drawing on their own works as well as other early historical sources, I will argue that they envisioned a non-sectarian Vaiṣṇava culture in Vṛndāvana, that included the various other Vaiṣṇava groups active in the region at the time.

Rembert Lutjeharms (DPhil, Oxford 2010) is the Librarian at the OCHS and a Tutor in Hinduism at the Faculty of Theology and Religion.

Uddanda as One and Many: Meditation, Ecstasy, and Time in Vaishnava Aesthetic Experience (TT19)

Simultaneity has been a critical analytical issue in studies of Bengal-Vaishnavism and the theology of achintya-bhed-abhed (concurrent sameness-and-difference between devotee and god), but its exact phenomenology has not been duly developed. In this paper, I offer a meditative analysis of the term, uddanda, and also chitram and shavalya, to analyse whether Vaishnava emotional and aesthetic experience is one or many or both simultaneously. I develop the philosophy of simultaneity through the phenomenology of Vaishnava ecstatic dance, in particular. I primarily focus on a significant episode described in the Chaitanya Charitamrita, Madhya Lila, Chapter 13, of Chaitanya’s ecstatic dance (uddanda nrtya) with his followers in Puri (1512), before the deity Jagannath, on Rathyatra day. I use the term danda and specific connotations of it, to argue that they tell us of complex ideas of simultaneity: the dancing body as both meditative and mad, divine and human, and of times contemporary and others.  While the ecstatic dimension of uddanda nrtya has been highlighted in the said passage itself and in several commentaries, I am adding the issues of meditation and time in uddanda, for the first time. The linguistic and phenomenological universe of uddanda, as the creative interplay of meanings worlds including pole/stick, discipline, yogic concentration or mental stillness, momentum, emotional medley, excess, and time, produces tensions in the dancing body which are productive, essential, and impossible to overcome. The uddanda state has become exemplary in the world of bhakti mysticism, and been passed down through devotional texts and practices. So the paper also theorises the critical orthodox Vaishnava practice of manjari sadhana as an uddanda state, where the phenomenology of imagination produces simultaneities of times, selves, discipline, and affects. Finally, I reflect on exemplary incidents from lives of ecstatic saints, and ways in which they contribute to the discourse of uddanda.

Sukanya Sarbadhikary works at the interface of the anthropology of religion, religious studies, and philosophy. In her first work she did an intensive ethnography among different kinds of Bengal-Vaishnavas, focusing on diverse experiences of religious place and sensory affective discourses. Her book, The Place of Devotion: Siting and Experiencing Divinity in Bengal-Vaishnavism’ (University of California Press) was published in 2015. She is also passionately interested in the sociology and philosophy of aesthetics and music, and their relations with sacred embodiment. She is currently working on a range of devotional instruments and traditions of sonic metaphysics.

Caitanya Vaiṣṇavism in Bengal: A Symposium in Honour of Prof. Joseph T. O’Connell (TT19)

Prof. Joseph O’Connell was one of the pioneers in the Western study of Caitanya Vaiṣṇavism, the devotional tradition that emerged in sixteenth century Bengal and, in subsequent centuries, profoundly shaped the religious culture of Bengal, Orissa, Mathura, and Rajasthan. His interest in the ethics of the Vaiṣṇavas of Bengal and his deep concern for human flourishing have profoundly shaped the field. His recently, posthumously published book, Caitanya Vaiṣṇavism in Bengal: Social Impact and Historical Implications (Routledge, 2019)—a summation of his research—exemplifies his lifelong interest in “the relationship between the ‘transcendent’ intentionality of religious faith of human beings and their ‘mundane’ socio-cultural ways of living”, as he put it. It explores the way Caitanya Vaiṣṇavas’ theology and practice informed their varied engagement with both the non-Vaiṣṇava world and their own religious community, from the early sixteenth century to the twentieth century, and addresses such topics as forms of institutionalisation and identity, attitudes to caste and gender, the negotiation of heterodoxies, engagement with changing political regimes, and the interactions with Muslim.

At this symposium, co-organised by The Gosvāmī Era Research Project and the Bengali Vaiṣṇavism in the Modern World Research Project at the OCHS, scholars from across the globe will gather to discuss the themes of the book and O’Connell’s academic work more broadly.

Speakers include: Dr. Måns Broo, Prof. Ravi M. Gupta, Prof. Brian A. Hatcher, Dr. Rembert Lutjeharms, Prof. Kathleen O’Connell, Dr. Jeanne Openshaw, and Prof. Tony K. Stewart.

Attendance is free, but registration is required. To register, please email <info@ochs.org.uk>.

Ritual Visualization and Imagination: Representation or Reality (TT19)

In his treatise, Ṣaṭ-sandarbha, the sixteenth century Indian religious thinker Jīva Gosvāmī presents a brief description of a set of pan-traditional ritual visualization practices. Whereas in traditions other than his Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism the visualizations in these rituals are often accepted as being imaginative, his description couches their imaginative content in a paradox, namely: practicing them involves visualizing an imaginal of an object that is non-imaginative. Determining the reasoning for Jīva’s inclusion of this paradox and reconciling it in this way is the strategy I use to illuminate an underlying positive role for imagination in his expression of meditation on a real object. A seemingly straightforward resolution would be to distinguish the mind-dependent image, or imaginal, of this ritual visualization as representing a mind-independent object insomuch as the latter need only be considered real. However, this route to reconciliation is insufficient because Jīva further classifies the mental-image as a non-visually manifest reality. For clarity on this issue, I subsequently turn to the relationship between the mental-image and the real object of this ritual praxis. A relationship of representation between the two cannot be discounted since this is implied in Jīva’s writing. However, what turns out to be important is that reality also applies to the relationship itself. The exploration of this relationship will take us beyond mere mental-images. It leads us to Jīva’s appeal to an ancient dramaturgical theory which his tradition has mapped onto his theology. This theory defines imagination in terms of an aspect of the real participation of audience and actors in a play. For Jīva, this real participation is in an imaginatively enacted cosmic play, the object of which is the deity’s original theatre of activities.

Alan Herbert is a D.Phil. Student in the Faculty of Theology and Religion at the University of Oxford.

Readings in Middle Bengali Devotional Literature: Female Gurus IV

In these sessions we read and discuss prominent Middle Bengali religious texts. This term we will focus on sections from key texts among the Vaiṣṇava hagiographical corpus that portray women as leaders in the early modern Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava tradition. Some proficiency in the Bengali language is a requirement for attending these sessions.

Readings in Middle Bengali Devotional Literature: Female Gurus III

In these sessions we read and discuss prominent Middle Bengali religious texts. This term we will focus on sections from key texts among the Vaiṣṇava hagiographical corpus that portray women as leaders in the early modern Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava tradition. Some proficiency in the Bengali language is a requirement for attending these sessions.