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 keeping with the actual main theme of this blog (I separated blogs at one point in order to keep this one "pure", but as usual, things have gotten untidy). I picked up a book, which I had read before, and just opened randomly to the page that contained the following: The Vaishnava conception comes closest to the Western distinction between “sacred love” and “profane love” in the image of Krishna and Radha and the gopis. The great strength of the Krishna cult has been its truly all-embracing eroticism and the exploitation of all possible minutiae of physical passion. Indian scholasticism was at pains to see in the frank eroticism an allegory of the relationship of humanity to God, but it did not condemn the sensuality involved. Footnote. Contrast with this attitude the modern Western Krishna cult which under the influence of Victorianized Hinduism adopts an extremely negative and puritanical outlook and which is utterly devoid of the warm and humanistic feeling that p...