Rūpa Gosvāmī's Dūta Kāvyas: (2) Dating Haṁsadūta and Uddhava-sandeśa



Dating Haṁsadūta and Uddhava-sandeśa[1]

Haṁsadūta and Uddhava-sandeśa are likely to be Rūpa Goswami's earliest written works. According to Sushil Kumar De, Rūpa wrote three works—Haṁsadūta, Uddhava-sandeśa, and Dānakeli-kaumudī—before meeting Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu at Rāmakeli in 1515.[2] His primary reason for making such a claim is that none of these have a dedication to Śrī Caitanya at their beginning, as is found in the greater number of Rūpa's writings.[3]

 

It should not be altogether surprising if this were the case, as Rūpa came from a South Indian brāhmaṇa family with a long history of Kṛṣṇa worship and Sanskrit scholarship. It also seems that the village of Rāmakeli, where he and his brothers resided, and its surroundings were something of a hotbed of literary Kṛṣṇaism. Two works written by contemporary residents of that district that likely predate the advent or floruit of Śrī Caitanya are the Haricarita of Caturbhuja, a Sanskrit text on the life of Kṛṣṇa, and the Gopāla-vijaya, one of the earliest Bengali poems on the life of Kṛṣṇa.

 

It could be argued that the Uddhava-sandeśa naturally precedes the Haṁsadūta for several reasons. The main reason for this is the primacy of the message from Uddhava in the sequence of events in the Bhāgavata (10.46-47). The Haṁsadūta speaks of Uddhava's visit to Vraja, while the opposite is not true, i.e., there is no indication that the gopīs sent a message to Kṛṣṇa prior to his commissioning of Uddhava as in the Uddhava-sandeśa. Furthermore, Rūpa's somewhat closer adherence to the dūta-kāvya genre's conventions as set by Kālidāsa’s Meghadūta in this work could be considered evidence for the priority of its composition.

 

However, of the three above-mentioned works, it is my feeling that only Haṁsadūta could possibly have been written prior to Rūpa's first encounter with Caitanya. In that work (verse 141), Rūpa refers to his elder brother and guru Sanātana as being known in the world as Sākara,”[4] this is commonly understood to have been Sanătana's title when working at the court of Shāh Hussain.[5] Rūpa himself was known as Dabīr Khāṣ (dabīr means simply “writer, secretary,” while khāṣ indicates “for the king's private use.”) In some texts, this latter title is applied to both Rüpa and Sanātana.[6] At any rate, the use of what is evidently a title from the Muslim court rather than the name bestowed upon him by Mahāprabhu supports the contention that the Haṁsadūta at least was likely composed prior to their encounter.

 

On the other hand, there are good reasons to believe that Uddhava-sandeśa was written when Rūpa and Sanātana were already living in Vraja, not long after meeting Caitanya. First of all, Rūpa uses a prototype of the poetic strategy found in his other works—the insertion of the name given to him by Caitanya into a dedication (maṅgalācaraṇa), here found in the poem's penultimate verse (130). In Uddhava-sandeśa, as elsewhere (Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu, Ujjvala-nīlamaṇi, etc.), this verse to the guru can also be read as a dedication to Kṛṣṇa, differing only in that there is no pun on the word rūpa (as it is difficult to read rūpāśraya-pada-sarojanmanaḥ as anything other than “whose lotus feet are the shelter of Rūpa”[7]), nor does it include the name of Sanātana. On the other hand, Rūpa refers to his guru (svāminaḥ) as kurvāṇasya prathita-mathurā-maṇḍale täṇḍavāni, “dancing madly in the circle of Mathurā, which was the theme [of this poem].” This would seem to indicate that Sanātana (and Rūpa) were living in the Vraja area at the time of its composition.

 

A further, even more convincing argument for the later composition of Uddhava-sandeśa is that it shows signs of a first-hand knowledge of the Vraja area, in particular the area around Nanda Grām where Rūpa is known to have lived. Knowledge of place names such as Rahelā, Saṭţīkara, etc., could not have been derived from any Purāṇic source. This is not true of Haṁsadūta, in which all site names can be traced directly to the Bhāgavata Purāṇa and which furthermore shows no knowledge of their relative placement.

 

Both poems demonstrate the interest in the geography of Vraja-maṇḍala which developed greatly during the Gosvāmīs' stay in Vraja. Indeed, it is said that Caitanya ordered Rūpa and Sanātana to discover the various sites of Kṛṣṇa's pastimes in the Vraja area. Rūpa is also credited with the authorship of a Mathurā-māhātmya, a selection of Purāṇic verses glorifying the Mathurā (Vraja) area. The words from verse 130 quoted above (prathita-mathură-maṇḍale) also indicate that the poem was written, at least partially, with the specific intention of glorifying the land of Mathurā.





[1] This article is based on the work I did for Mystic Poetry: Rūpa Gosvāmin’s Uddhava-sandeśa and Haṁsadūta. San Francisco, Mandala Publishing Group, 1999.

[2] Sushil Kumar De, Early History of the Vaishnava Faith and Movement (Calcutta: Firma KLM, 1961), 148.

[3] I find the arguments given by Dr. De to be only partially persuasive in the case of DKK. The work is dated 1495 AD in the colophon, but this unlikely date could be attributable to scribal error The work is dedicated to "a friend living in Govardhana" which tradition holds to be a reference to Raghunātha Dāsa, which indicates the likelihood that Rūpa was in Vraja when he wrote it. It is also fairly mature, and it is doubtful that a 17 or 18-year old Rūpa would have been able to write a work of this caliber. Other authorities have also found this date problematic and offer various other possible dates up to 1549. See Naresh Chandra Jana, Bṛndābanera Chaya Gosvāmī (Calcuttaː Calcutta University, 1970) 117–120.

[4] De, however, holds (without giving any particular reason) that this is an "ingenious substitution" for sat-kavi. De, Early History 647 fn. Nowhere else does Rūpa praise Sanātana for his particular qualities as a poet.

[5] Caitanya-caritāmṛta 2.1.183: rūpa-sākara mallika āilā tomā dekhibāre. This could mean Rūpa and Sākara Mallik; indeed, the context seems to confirm this. 2.1.174 has Dabīr Khās with no reference as to which of the brothers it means. Sākar cannot be found in the Persian or Arabic. Delmonico says that it is a title that means “respected sir.” Neal Delmonico, "Sacred Rapture: A Study of the Religious Aesthetic of Rūpa Gosvāmin" (Ph.D. diss., University of Chicago, 1990) 279.

[6] Caitanya-bhāgavata, 1.1.151-2, 1.9.192, 3.10.263. See Jānā, Vṛṇdāvanera, 37.



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