Chaitanya Movement | History | VII - 6

Hymnology

By far the greater part of the Vaishnava literature produced in Bengal falls under the head of what we should call religious lyrics, or hymns.

This poetry of the movement is enormous in extent; undoubtedly it is one of the sect's chief contributions to Bengali literature. Great claims are made for its beauty and charm.

Here, manifestly, a non-Bengali, and particularly a Westerner, is ruled out as a judge. But perhaps a word of comment on general grounds is permissible.

It would seem that much of this poetry is doomed to mediocrity, because of the severe restrictions laid upon poetic genius by the nature of these songs:

They are all limited to the Krishna legend as it is set forth in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa and other Vaishnava scriptures, and most of them are confined to certain episodes in that legend.

Therefore the action is strictly limited, the sentiments are all prescribed, the very metaphors and figures of speech are stereotyped.

Over and over again, a thousand times, the poets traverse this ground, with the result that imitation and monotony is inevitable.

The best of the singers used their limited material in masterly fashion; but it is doubtful how far truly great poetry may be expected under such circumstances.

It cannot be said that the Chaitanya movement created the Vaishnava pāda (song):

The precursors of the Chaitanya singers are to be found in the early Vaishnava poets of Bengal and Bihar.

Jayadeva, the famous twelfth century author of the Sanskrit Gītā Govinda, whose melodious love verse is the earliest surviving Rādhā-Krishna poetry, and Chaṇḍī Dās and Vidyāpati, of the 15^th century, are the great names.

They all wrote of Rādhā-Krishna. Here, then, was a Vaishnava tradition and a lyric model clearly established before Chaitanya's day.

When the religious revival that owed its life to Chaitanya burst forth, and began to spread in tides of emotion across Bengal, its poetic expression naturally followed the path marked out by earlier singers.

In other words, the Vaishnavas of Chaitanya's following found a literary vehicle ready to hand when their new religious experience drove them to song.

But they did not leave the pāda as they found it: Into it they poured their very hearts, and for two centuries the flow of music did not cease.

In the process the Vaishnava pāda became distinctively an expression of the Chaitanya movement. It was moulded to new uses and coloured by the new tide of life sweeping through it.

Although a sectarian expression, it ministered to the life of all, and gave music new forms and meaning and larger entrance into the common life of the people.

The various collections of these pādas, each of them numbering many hundreds of songs, bear testimony to the striking lyric expression of the Chaitanya movement.

The classification of these songs is both chronological and sentimental:

The whole material of the legend is dramatized and divided into periods, each period being treated fully in song. These periods are roughly as follows:

1. The Gopāla songs, in praise of the childhood of Krishna.

2. The Goṣtha songs, glorifying the cowherd boy, full of marvellous exploits, loved and revered alike by the fun-loving boys and the anxious mother. These songs, again, are variously subdivided.

3. The Gopī-līlā cycle, songs of Krishna's dalliance with the milkmaids, among whom Rādhā is the central figure.

4. The Māthura songs of bereavement and anguish, arising out of Krishna's departure from Māthura to go to Dwārkā.

The great mass of the songs, however, are devoted to the amours of Rādhā and Krishna. This is the all-absorbing theme that never seems to fail in interest.

These songs fall under somewhat different categories.

Here the classification is an emotional one, by which the songs are grouped according to the phase or stage of love's emotion with which they deal. The main divisions of this classification are:

1. Pūrva Rāg, the dawn of love. In this group are all the songs descriptive of the first effects upon Rādhā of the divine passion after her first sight of Krishna.

2. Dautya, the message of love. This is the state of love conscious of itself and taking every means at hand for covert expression of its passion.

3. Abhisāra, stealing forth in secret. This is a favourite theme with the Vaishnava singers, and is dealt with at length.

4. Sambhoga-Mīlana, the secret meeting. Here are grouped the numberless songs treating of the dalliance in the groves of Vrindāvan and the amorous play between Krishna and Rādhā together with the gopīs.

5. Māthura, separation, as above.

6. Bhāva-Sanmīlana, union in spirit. The songs of this group express the effort to rise above bodily separation and realise oneness in spirit with the beloved.

Many of these songs, slightly altered, have had a devotional use outside of Vaishnava circles, as in the Brāhmo Samaj.

In the main this is the classification to which all the Vaiṣṇava pādas conform.

Within these principal groups there are other divisions and minute subdivisions, according to the rules of rhetoric by which fine grades of feeling are discriminated from one another and analysed with great subtlety.

Each of these numerous sub-divisions is illustrated by many songs.

We have noted elsewhere that as many as 360 of these fine shades of love's emotions have been described by the theologians of the sect.

The outstanding fact about these songs of the Vaishnavas, according to their interpreters, is that they are more than lyric poetry:

They are that indeed, and their charm has been sufficient to make them a potent influence in Bengali literature. But their significance is largely missed, so we are told, if their claim to be more than what they seem is not recognised.

For to these interpreters, as well as to the Vaishnava devotee, they are essentially mystical and religious, the outpouring of devout hearts in adoration and spiritual aspiration.

However sensuous they may appear, however glowing their description of physical passion, however evident may seem their taste for erotic pleasure,

these things are held to be but the ardour of the soul's thirst for God, the effort to express the spirit's unappeasable longing for the divine by means of the burning language of the senses.

The whole of the literature connected with the Rādhā-Krishna legends has been allegorized so persistently and completely as to have become a dogma.

The sensuous garb, we are told, "is the mere language of human love, without taking recourse to which the spiritual joy cannot be conveyed to ordinary people."

We are to accept it on authority that the great mass of the Vaishnava pādas are mystic expressions of the religious consciousness.

As with all dogmas, however, the truth refuses to be so confined:

It is simply asking too much of the general reader to accept the sweeping statement, that, while dealing so largely with physical passions as these poems admittedly do, they have always a door open heavenwards.

The plain truth is that many of these poems, especially of the earlier period, while highly artistic, are gross and sensual in spirit and treatment, and suggest nothing but erotic interest.

There is nothing to be gained in attempting to clothe songs of sex in celestial garb, or in hiding their frank naturalism under the guise of spirituality.

A healthy critical standard that applies generally accepted literary tests without fear or favour is a far more salutary method, and one more likely to come at the truth.

No doubt there were many among the pāda-karttās (masters of song) for whom their songs were in truth expressions of religious feeling.

The nobler spirits among the Vaishnavas certainly were in earnest in their acceptance of the Vrindāvan stories, whether as literal fact or as allegory,

and, however difficult it may seem to minds otherwise trained, we have no right to impugn the sincerity with which they sought the things of the spirit by such means.

There surely is a world of difference, however, between such a statement about the best minds of the sect

and the throwing of a mantle of spirituality over all who, through several centuries, have sung of themes as provocative of fleshly treatment as those of the Rādhā-Krishna legends.

The influence of Chaitanya worked a marked change in the pādas:

His own life became the theme that inspired the poets, and soon there were large numbers of songs concerned with him and his disciples alone.

Furthermore, there developed a tendency to interpret the Rādhā-Krishna stories in the light of Chaitanya's life; in his passionate bhakti his followers saw the reality of that which they had sought to extract by allegory from the story of Rādhā.

Out of these influences rose the Gaurachandrikā, the very considerable body of song which treats of Chaitanya, and which is used invariably in all kīrtans to precede the singing of the songs of Rādhā-Krishna:

Their function is interpretative; they set the pitch, as it were, for the music to follow; they give the key to the meaning of the whole performance and make clear its motive.

It is worth noting that the influence of Chaitanya's life of bhakti upon the whole of Vaishnava song served to purify the stream somewhat.

The grosser and, more distinctly sensual forms were subordinated to those which could more readily respond to a spiritual interpretation.

So far does this interpretation of Rādhā-love by the emotions of Chaitanya go, that Rādhā often seems to become to the poets little more than a name for the ecstasies and trances of Chaitanya.

So much so, says Dr. Sen, that

The number of the Vaishnava singers is almost legion:

Dr. Sen gives a list of 159 poets whose pādas he has himself collected. The known songs of these writers make a total of 4,600.

It is almost certain that there are many more songs in manuscript which have never been collected, and also that others have been handed down orally and continue in popular use, although never written down.

Of these poets we can only name a few:

Govinda Dās, of the generation following Chaitanya, seems to have been the leading singer of the sect:

He did not become a Vaishnava until middle age, when he came under the influence of Śrīnivāsa, but his late start did not seem to hinder his poetic output.

His songs number well towards 500. He modelled his songs upon those of Vidyāpati, and wrote in an unspoken dialect, called Brajbuli, made up of Maithili and Bengali mixed, probably in imitation of his master.

Contemporary with him were Balarāma Dās and Jñāna Dās, second only to Govinda in popularity, although not so prolific in song.

Of those who sang chiefly of Chaitanya, two names stand out pre-eminently, those of Narahari Sarkār and Vāsudeva Ghosh. These men were both personal friends and disciples of Chaitanya:

Narahari was the first disciple to compose songs about Chaitanya in the vernacular, the language of the people; he is, therefore, the pioneer of the immense hymnology treating of Chaitanya.

His example inspired his friend, Vāsudeva, whose passionate songs about Chaitanya are acknowledged to be the best, and are in constant use in the collections of Gaurachandrikā mentioned above.

Various collections of the Vaishnava songs have been made through the centuries. The most extensive was made in the 16^th century, and was said to have contained 15,000 songs.

Little is known of this huge collection, except that a manuscript copy is known to have been in existence comparatively recently:

The best known is the Padakalpataru by Vaishnava Dās, compiled early in the 18^th century:

It contains more than 3,000 songs, and is carefully arranged in sections and sub-divisions according to the classifications already described.