The 15th century in India is remarkable for the
rise of a unique Krsnaite devotional movement that arose in the region now
known as Assam. In the face of almost insurmountable odds, Sankaradeva, a
spiritual and social reformer and a charismatic figure, founded a school of
devotion known as eka sarana hari nama
dharma or ‘the religion of doing pure devotion to God taking sole-refuge in
Him,’ that promised to redefine the shape of Hinduism and to re-cast it in a
devotional mould. [FOOTNOTE: The effort of Sankaradeva may be seen as
representing the effort of the entire community of proponents of pure devotion
in the world, cutting across time and place, to challenge the false
interpretation of scripture and to re-interpret it in the light of the
philosophy of pure devotion.] On mere superficial glance, this school of eka-sarana might appear similar to the
other bhakti movements that took root
in the India of the same time. But the great characteristic that marked the
rise of this new school was its insistence on basing its theology on a purely
bhaktic philosophy rather than the conventional dharmic one. [FOOTNOTE: As a
result, it came into direct conflict with the ruler-sacerdotalist nexus and the
extreme brutality of the persecution which it faced at the instance of the
dharmic orthodoxy is perhaps matched only by the cruelties inflicted on the
followers of the early Christian faith by the Roman authorities.] It followed
the Bhagavata Purana, which is famous
for espousing the message of pure Vedantic bhakti, as its canonical text. To a
beginner, the most apt picture to conjure up in one's mind regarding this pure
bhakti would be perhaps that of a system like Kabir's fused with the intense
flow of the juice (rasa) of love for
God. This is also known as rasamayi
bhakti or ‘nectar-flavored’ devotion—exclusive, pure, desireless, love-for-love’s-sake.
Sankaradeva was a very versatile personality. During his
entire lifetime, he concentrated his energies on bringing home to the lay
populace the message of the Vedantic-Puranic system through diverse media that
made easy the comprehension of the philosophico-scientific truths contained in the
Upanisads. The story (‘kahini’) of
Krsna in Sankaradeva is thus not one of an ‘epic hero’ or historical
personality taking birth in a certain province of India in ancient times but,
rather, the ‘story’ of the supreme immanent personality
(Paramatma) within the micro-cosmic setting actuating and animating the
material entities for the sake of facilitating the development of consciousness
in the pure personalities (purusas)
who have now, fallen into matter (prakrti),
become dead and extremely matter-like (jadapraya).
There is an intense paramatmic flavor in all of the Sankaradeva-ite literature,
the best example of which is surely the Nama
Ghosa (The Proclamation of Pure Devotion) of Madhavadeva in which the
abstruse metaphysical truths of the Vedanta have ‘melted into sheer poetry.’
And this paramatmic spirit of Sankaradeva's faith is reflected in the
day-to-day practices of the adherents of the faith. It is a great reason why
the eka-sarana faith distinguishes
itself greatly from the conventional stream of ‘mainstream’ Vaisnavism. About
this paramatmic basis of Sankaradeva, we will have more to say in a later
section.
He wrote trendsetting popular plays, composed classical
songs of the devotional genre as well as numerous devotional poems (kirttanas)
and also encouraged the art of manuscript illustration and painting. He even
got built large prayer houses for the masses to pray together in a whole-souled
manner in front of the text of the Bhagavata.
As a result there was a sort of a distillation of the essence of the Vedanta in the vernacular
language, essentially Assamese of the old variety and Vrajawali, which like the
Hindi of today seems to have been the then lingua
franca (although Sankaradeva also authored a highly influential text in
Sanskrit known as the Bhakti Ratnakara).
Madhavadeva, his foremost disciple, has described him as a ‘mine
of all qualities.’ He has brought down the ‘river of the nectar of the love of God’
from Vaikuntha, the transcendental society. In fact so deep is the impact of
Sankaradeva on the spiritual (and also social, there being in this context an
intimate connection between the two) landscape of Assam that the entire corpus
of medieval Assamese literature is resonant with his praise.
Paralleling this spiritual reform, and as a by-product of it,
was a strong surge of social reform which swept away the dharmic conception of
society and sought to remodel it on bhaktic lines. This made the preaching of
the eka-sarana faith also very much a
social movement. In the modern period, some scholars have glossed over this
important social angle; in their view, Sankaradeva sought merely to establish
equality for all on the spiritual plane without seeking to disturb the status quo in the social order. This is
a mistake of epic proportions. The society in Sankaradeva's time was organized
into a hierarchy on the basis of a system of varna and asrama which
laid down separate duties (dharmas)
for the different categories and castes. This was essentially born of a
philosophy of bheda or intrinsic
difference which saw man as a part of material nature rather than as a
spiritual personality and sought to simulate the material units of the cosmos.
However, Sankaradeva’s philosophy which runs counter to such a philosophy of
difference is that of intrinsic equality.
In fact the very doing of pure bhakti is predicated on the existence of a transcendental
society in which all members are essentially of one kind; all are purusas or pure personalities; they are
by nature immutable and hence not subject to placement at different levels on a
material scale. Therefore, the bhaktic philosophy envisages a kind of society
which is modeled on Vaikuntha, the transcendental society, in which the
governing ideal is one of equality. The embracing of such a philosophy by
Sankaradeva and its widespread dissemination among the masses automatically put
the conception of the dharmic society at peril and in threat of diminution, if
not eventual extinction.
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