Jagat

With great amusement Radha and Krishna pick so many kinds of flowers and fruits from Vrindavan's trees and vines, praising the forest. They bathe and sport in the lakes of Vrindavan and play with the birds and other creatures there. Who then would not serve the Vrindavan forest, and dwell in this supreme, transcendental abode? rādhā-kṛṣṇau parama-kutukād yal-latā-pādapānāṁ citvā puṣpādikam uru-vidhaṁ ślāghamānau juṣāte | snānādyaṁ yat-sarasi kurutaḥ khelato yat-khagādyair vṛndāraṇyaṁ carama-paramaṁ tan na seveta ko vā ||2.10|| Commentary In my comments to the previous verse, I took a bit of a detour into my investigations of Prabodhananda Saraswati's identity and his relationship to Hit Harivansh, as well as the problem of the authorship of Rādhā-rasa-sudhā-nidhi . This is a pretty touchy subject and I would not go into the details of the whole debate. My conclusion in the end was that Prabodhananda had indeed written RRSN, but he gave it to Harivansh in a ...

Sorry about the lack of content here over the past little while. I have a half-dozen posts in the works, but haven't been able to bring them to the publishable stage. For whatever standard this blog aspires to. Currently I have taken on a further task which may be the proverbial drop that makes the vase overflow. That is a Rādhā-rasa-sudhā-nidhi class at the local Radha-vallabhi temple, which is within cycling distance on the road to Rishikesh. The idea to do this came to me when I first came to Rishikesh and discovered that this ashram was started by the same sadhu who published the edition of RRSN I had just purchased, and who coincidentally also comes from Satya Narayan's home village. Too many coincidences. But recently I decided I had to do this, or I would be forever mired in Yoga-sūtra and Bhagavad-Gītā . Even now, my Saturday and Sunday classes at Madhuban are pretty loosely connected to the Gita--since the words kṛṣṇa-bhāvanāmṛta appear so often in Prabhupada...

Unique features of Hit Harivansh’s method of worship. This discussion is based on Hita Dasji Maharaja’s commentary of Harivansh’s Caur ā si-pada. To be retained here, Radhavallabhis consider Rādhā-sudhā-nidhi to be HHV's writing. Other works by HHV are Caur ā si-pada and Sphuṭa-vāṇī. Hitadasji says that according to the other Vaishnava sampradayas (Rupa Goswami is obviously the source of the pūrva-pakṣa ), Krishna is the object ( vi ṣ aya ) of love and Radha and the sakhis are the  āśrayas . In HHV, this is reversed and Radha is seen as the object of love, with Krishna and the sakhis being the  āśrayas . I am curious about the difference between Krishna and sakhis as  āśrayas of love. I.e. It doesn't really make sense to consider Radha the  vi ṣ aya  because of the way she is defined, even in RRSN. (Verses to follow). As pramāṇa , he points to this verse from RRSN— premṇaḥ san-madhurojjvalasya hṛdayaṁ śṛngāra-līlā-kalā vaichitrī-paramāvadhir bhagavat p...

Well I am having a grand old time in Vrindavan. I really should have someone to take care of me, because I just slip into avadhuta mode so easily. Yesterday I decided to walk to Athkhamba and check out the bookstores and dropped into the Radha Vallabha temple on the way. I have some feeling of affinity with Radha Vallabhis for some reason, don’t ask me to explain. Their cheerful jai radha-vallabha hita-hari-vamsa kirtan rattles around in my brain. So Harivams ate pan on ekadashi... and if Radha gave it him the pan, well who could object? Gopal Bhatta, I guess. Anyway, they were having kirtan of Chaurasi Pada and I joined in. After it was over, the lead singer took me to his room and gave me a box of prasad and we talked for a while. He (and others there) kept asking me if I was Mr. Rupert, meaning Rupert Snell, who wrote his doctorate on the Chaurasi Pada and, as it happens, is the source of most of what I know about it. He is now, if I am correct, head of Indology at SOAS. So th...

Continuing in the same volume by Sharan Bihari Goswami, there are a number of other quotes from 19th and 20th century scholars. Goswami mentions Growse with approval, but does not quote him. For those who do not know F.S. Growse, he wrote a Mathura: A District Memoir in which he describes the various Vaishnava sampradayas living in the region, which he compiled during his tour as collector between 1872 and 1885. Next on the list is J.N. Farquhar, whose Outline of the Religious Literature of India (Oxford University Press, 1920) was a noted authority in his time. Goswami picks a bone with him for identifying the Haridasis as related to the Gaudiya sampradaya, figuring that the confusion arose out of the similarity of names with Yavan Haridas. He also objects to the sentence "They [Radha-vallabhis] are Shaktas, placing Radha above Krishna." The main quote, though, relates to the Vallabhi sampradaya: Whether they be men or women, they look forward to becoming Gopis and sportin...

Since this blog is really a personal notebook, I thought I would copy some quotes that I found in the Hindi book, Kåñëa bhakti kāvya meà sakhī bhāva by Sharan Bihari Goswami (1966). In the introduction, he quotes three early European scholars opinions of sakhī bhāva . It is hard, out of context, to know what else these scholars said, or if they had any further information about those who practised devotion in the mood of the gopis, as it seems that the term sakhī bhāva is being confused with what we know as sakhī bhekhī . The author appears to think that the Haridāsī sect of Vrindavan, the principal subject of his book, is specifically being discussed. This might just be a confusion of names, as the Haridāsīs are known as the Sakhībhāvas. In A Sketch of the Religious Sects of the Hindus (1862, page 177), Prof. H. H. Wilson wrote: Sakhī-bhāvas . This sect is another ramification of those which adopt Radha and Krishan for the objects of their worship and may be regarded as more pa...