Jagat

īśo’pi yasya mahimāmṛtavārirāśeḥ pāraṁ prayātumanalambata tatra ke’nye kintv alpam apy ahamatipraṇayād vigāhya syāṁ dhanyadhanya iti me samupakramo’yam Even God Himself could never cross the ocean of the Dham's divine grandeur, who else would even dare to try it? But, overcome by love intense, thinking fortune is there if I just dive, I undertake this daunting task. Commentary This statement of humility is not displaced. Sometimes we look at the works of prolific authors like Prabodhananda with amazement. Of course there are secular authors who produce great amounts of material through their habits of hard work and out of necessity. If they are gifted with great talent, then they can write literary marvels that stand the test of time. But the devotee who wants to glorify the Lord faces a daunting task. How to communicate that which is beyond the power of speech to describe? yato vāco nivartante aprāpya manasā saha . Kaviraj Goswami similarly shows the same ...

  According to Yadunandan Das’s Karṇānanda (dated 1612 CE), at some time after the Gopāla-campū (GC) had arrived in Bengal, a controversy arose in Jajigram between Vyasacharya, Narottam Das, Ramachandra Kaviraj, Govinda Das Kaviraj, and other Vaishnavas. The subject of contention was that of sādhya and sādhana . Narottama states in his Prema-bhakti-candrikā that "that which is desired for in the course of one's devotional practices is matched in the stage of perfection".(1) Jiva's GC appeared to contradict this by postulating a svakīyā rather than parakīyā state in the nitya-līlā . In other words, though the Bhāgavatam and other books like Rupa's Vidagdha-mādhava , etc., described the illicit loves of Krishna and the gopis, Jiva described their eternal marriage in Gopāla-campū and elsewhere. According to Yadunandan, the dispute was referred to Jiva Goswami for his final verdict and he wrote letters that were accepted as conclusive. (2) Whatever the truth...

From Jayadev Foundation Trust . (3) Radharani's māna viharati vane rādhā sādhāraṇa-praṇaye harau vigalita-nijotkarṣād īrṣyā-vaśena gatā'nyataḥ kvacid api latā-kuñje guñjan-madhu-vrata-maṇḍalī mukhara-śikhare līnā dīnāpy uvāca rahaḥ sakhīm|| When Radha saw Hari frolicking in the forest, treating all the women with equal affection, she felt her own special status had melted away. Envy and anger arose in her, and she went off. Somewhere, in a vine covered bower, where bees buzzed in circles overhead, she hid, and forlorn in her solitude, confided to her friend. If the first two verses of our five described Krishna as the viṣaya and then as the āśraya of love; now this verse points to the essential mechanism that transforms him from the one role to the other. This will be further explained in our analysis of the fifth verse. The third verse of the Gīta-govinda pañca-ślokī appears in the latter portion (verses 25-35) of BRS 3.5, the abbreviated chapte...

(1) Krishna, the Embodiment of the Erotic Rasa viśveṣām anurañjanena janayann ānandam indīvara- śreṇī-śyāmala-komalair upanayann aṅgair anaṅgotsavam | svacchandaṁ vraja-sundarībhir abhitaḥ praty-aṅgam āliṅgitaḥ śṛṅgāraḥ sakhi mūrtimān iva madhau mugdho hariḥ krīḍati || By his pleasure giving, he brings joy to all the worlds; With his limbs, as soft and dark as blue lotus flowers, he inaugurates the festival of love. O friend Radhe! Hari frolicks in the spring, like the embodiment of śṛṅgāra-rasa ; completely enchanted by the beauties of Braja, who surround him and wantonly embrace his every limb. Our first "essential" verse is GG 1.48, which as already stated above, is pivotal in the introduction both to the Gīta-govinda and to Rupa Goswami's treatment of the madhura-rasa . In GG, it comes after the scene has been set for the story by describing the springtime ( prabandha 3) and the rāsa dance as performed in the spring ( prabandha 4). The first two son...

I have written a fair amount about the Gīta-govinda on this blog, but mostly bits and pieces without a coherent argument. Or at least, the argument has been expressed repeatedly but without being fully defended with evidence. So I am in the process of doing so now. The general thesis is this: Prior to Rupa Goswami there are a number of different strands of the Radha-Krishna lila tradition. According to Krishnadas Kaviraj, who states it several times in his Caitanya-caritāmṛta , Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was particularly fond of five devotional works or authors through which he relished the rasas of bhakti to Krishna. To these five of course should be added the Bhāgavata itself. caṇḍīdāsa, vidyāpati, rāyera nāṭaka-gīti, karṇāmṛta, śrī-gīta-govinda svarūpa-rāmānanda-sane, mahāprabhu rātri-dine, gāya, śune — parama ānanda Night and day, in the company of Swarup Damodar and Ramananda Ray, Mahaprabhu would sing or listen to the songs of Chandidas, Vidyapati, the musical play of Ramamanan...

In an earlier post, Bankim Chandra and Sri Krishna Charitra , I started a discussion on a rather good book on Bankim by Sudipta Kaviraj, T he Unhappy Consciousness . Kaviraj is a historian and political scientist who teaches and writes mostly on Indian and Bengali politics. He is an excellent writer--dense in ideas and insight, and eloquent in expression. I hardly expect to do justice to his work and will have to be selective in what I quote and what I discuss. Kaviraj's primary interest is understandably Bankim Chandra's political thinking, but since Bankim was not actually a political actor, but a novelist and essayist, Kaviraj has done a great deal of thinking about literary theory, both Western and Eastern, in order to better understand his subject. The main theme is Bankim's imagining of history in the name of creating a vision of India. What is primarily interesting to me, and us, in all likelihood, dear readers, is Bankim's reshaping of the character of Kri...

I don’t think we can look at the vibhur api verse ( DKK 2 ) without being subliminally reminded of a similar one from Govinda-līlāmṛta , also quoted in Caitanya-caritāmṛta . This verse, in the same meter and beginning with the same word, was almost surely written with the earlier one in mind. It should be noted that like many other classic poets, Kaviraj Goswami has done this in other cases. Compare, for example, GLA 10.14 to Kāvya-prakāśa 5.128. And Rupa Goswami’s own pastiches of classical verses, such as the priyaḥ so’yaṁ kṛṣṇaḥ verse (CC 2.1.76, Padyāvali 383), are well known. In such cases, it is always an intriguing exercise to treat the latter verse as a commentary on the former. Kaviraj Goswami's verse goes like this: vibhur atisukha-rūpaḥ sva-prakāśo'pi bhāvaḥ kṣaṇam api rādhā-kṛṣṇayor yā ṛte svāḥ pravahati rasa-puṣṭiṁ cid-vibhūtīr iveśaḥ śrayati na padam āsāṁ kaḥ sakhīnāṁ rasajṣaḥ Although the love of Radha and Krishna is infinitely great, supremely...