Jagat

I had a break yesterday and plunged back into Chandidas. I was reading Biman Bihari Majumdar's edition, which has much to say for it, as he has gone deeply into the Chandidas mystery, sorting out which Chandidas is which. There are so many Chandidasas -- minimum four, probably five or more. Majumdar divides his book into four sections: definitely Chandidas, not so sure, definitely Baru Chandidas and Dina Chandidas, and ones that though ascribed or attributed are definitely not the original Chandidas. Many of the latter are signed Dvija Chandidas, who is definitely post-Chaitanya, though he shows no direct knowledge of or devotion to Chaitanya. The  rāgātmikā-padas  of the Sahajiya Chandidas are left out entirely, since everyone seems to agree that they are post-Chaitanya. Majumdar also thinks Baru Chandidas is at least contemporary with Chaitanya, which I don't agree with. Basically all the students of early Bengali literature pick over each  pada  and...

In November, I got a nice present from Brahmachari Brajvihari Sharan at Golok Dham Ashram in Delhi: An annotated copy of Harivyas Devacharya’s Mahāvāṇī (ca. 1573 CE). Of late, there has been a rather unappetizing scandal surrounding the sex tapes of a popular Bhagavata speaker, which raises doubts again about the appropriateness of discussing or repeating Radha and Krishna’s “confidential”, i.e., erotic, pastimes. It seems that such worries are well-founded when such prurient interest in what appear to be mundane sexuality is dressed up in Vrindavan garb and then marketed for profit to those who have little or no appreciation for Braja rasa in its purest and most transcendental form. Nevertheless, we must, against all criticism, reaffirm our own faith in madhura-rasa, the erotic mood of love, as the king of the “mellows” and in Radha and Krishna, the divine embodiment of that mood, in two moieties as Rasarāj and Mahābhāva. Vrindavan is unique in that it is the ...

sevā vṛndāvana-stha-/ sthira-cara-nikareṣv astu me hanta ke vā devā brahmādayaḥ syus / tata uru-mahitā vallabhā ye vrajendoḥ | ete hy advaita-sac-cid-/ ghana-vapuṣo dūra-dūrātidūra- sphūrjan-māhātmya-vṛndā / bṛhad-upaniṣad-ānandajānanda-kandāḥ || May I always render service to the creatures of Vrindavan, moving or still. Ah! What are great gods like Brahma to me? Those dear to the Moon of Braj are far greater in glory than they! All have non-dual bodies of condensed spiritual being and consciousness and their wonders have burst forth to the far, far corners of the universe! They are the roots of the joy born of the joy of the great Upanishads. ( Vṛndāvana-mahimāmṛta 1.61) The words bṛhad-upaniṣad-ānandajānanda-kandāḥ are probably a reference to Bṛhad-āranyaka Upanishad 3.9.28(7), where Shankara goes into a prolonged discussion of the word ānanda and how it means Brahman. Prabodhananda is here saying that the joy spoken of in the "Brihad Upanishad" is thus Br...