Influence of the Sect on Bengal Society
Before concluding this survey of the history of the sect, it may be well to attempt a brief estimate of its varied influence on the life and thought of Bengal society.
The Bengali language itself owes no small debt to the Chaitanya movement:
For by it the vernacular of the people was lifted to a place on a par with Sanskrit as the medium of works of scholarship.
Previous to the literature of the sect, Sanskrit was the language used for serious and dignified work. Bengali was looked upon as beneath the level of scholarship, to be used with apologies.
The great output of the Chaitanyas changed all that. In their hands the language of the people was seen to be a fit vehicle for the poet and the philosopher.
When we consider the influence of the sect upon the literature of Bengal, it is difficult to appraise it at its full value. Its effects were far-reaching.
The movement was an outburst of religious enthusiasm, vital and real. Its effect upon literature was life giving. It broke away from forms and customs, literary as well as social, and made for itself new modes of expression.
In the songs which sprang forth in such profusion the lyrical feeling of the poets invented new metres and enriched the poetic possibilities of the language.
In the Vaishnava writings, we find a freedom from the rigidness of classical models - not to be mistaken for the inartistic and unrestrained excesses of the vulgar,
but which is prompted by a superior poetic faculty, conscious of its art, making light of restrictions, though keenly alive to the natural rhythm of metre and expression.
Biography was peculiarly a gift of the sect to Bengali literature. There was no such thing before the Vaishnava narratives.
Mythology there was, monstrous fables, as remote from history as any fiction, and stories of the gods, but none of that portrayal of contemporary human events as seen in the actual facts of a man's life.
To have introduced so vital an element into the literature of a race, and brought a whole people's interest down out of the clouds of supernatural phantasy to the solid earth of our common humanity, is no slight distinction for a religious movement.
This note of reality likewise marked the brilliant outpouring of song which was so distinctive a feature of the sect's development.
The Vaishnava poetry was full of reality. It was the expression of feeling, the voicing of the heart's experience, vital and transforming. Poetry hitherto, being too much the handmaid of royal courts, had lacked this quality.
The amount of these Vaishnava songs is amazing. They are a lyric ocean in themselves, and from this ample source the stream of poetic inspiration in Bengal has been flowing ever since.
In its influence upon the Hindu social order, as we have seen, the Chaitanya movement in the days of its first exuberance came near being a social revolution.
It created a new spirit within the lower ranks of society that threatened the spiritual supremacy of the Brahman priesthood and their vested interests.
In proclaiming the faith that in common worship and devotion men were bound together in a relationship that transcended caste and family distinctions, Chaitanya came near the truth, proclaimed long before in Galilee, that underlies all true democracy.
The work of later leaders, in admitting to Vaishnava fellowship caste groups that had no standing in the social order, especially the great mass of degraded Buddhist mendicants, was courageous social pioneering directly in line with Chaitanya's principles.
Furthermore, the success with which, in the face of unceasing social pressure, the sect upheld and maintained for a century the validity of spiritual leadership, entirely irrespective of caste convention and priestly authority, was in itself no mean social contribution.
These social heterodoxies succumbed in the end; for the sect lacked n spiritual dynamic sufficient for the task of transforming society. But to set up the ideals it did, and to have upheld them, if only for a time, was a fact of social significance.
To this day, in Bengal, Vaishnavism is the last resort of the social outcaste.
Degraded though this idea of asylum may be, and bereft of all spiritual significance, there yet remains in it something of its nobler origin.
As an educational influence of no mean value, a good word can be said for this movement. As the counterpart of its offer of common religious privilege to all alike, it also brought something of intellectual enlightenment to the masses.
The stimulus of the new faith and its exaltation of the Vaishnava scriptures led many a humble and illiterate devotee to become literate enough to possess and enjoy something of the sect's literature.
At least, this is the evidence of the ancient MSS. that have been collected in large numbers in recent years.
A large proportion of them have been recovered from very humble homes, where they have been preserved for centuries with religious veneration, the ability to read them having long since been lost. Many of these MSS. were themselves written by low caste men.
The kīrtans and kathakatās of the sect were a potent educational force in themselves. They are the singing and reciting, respectively, of the great themes and the familiar stories of religion.
It is true that these forms of popular instruction were not entirely original with the Vaishnavas, but their vigorous use of them and the new life and content put into them by the Chaitanyas made of them a distinctive feature of the sect's activity.
Let the historian of Bengal's literature speak of the influence of these popular modes of education:
The kīrtana songs were once madness in Bengal, and even now they carry great favour with a certain section of our community.
The singers are generally acquainted with scholarly Vaishnava works:
They commit to memory most of the pādas of the Vaishnava masters, and it is the people of this class who have been supplying the noblest ideas of self-sacrificing love to rural Bengal for more than 350 years.
Of the Kāṭhakas he has this to say:
It is impossible to exaggerate the great influence which they wield over the masses...
The manner in which the modern Kāṭhakas deliver stories with the object of imparting religions instruction and inspiring devotional sentiments in Bengal is derived from the Vaishnavas...
The Kāṭhakas of the old school were scholars, poets and finished singers. The effect which their narration produced was wonderful.
Born story-tellers as they were, their oration was coupled with power of music, the effect of all of which was heightened by their command over language and their great scholarship.
All this made them the most popular figures in Bengali society, and it is impossible to describe the hold which they had upon the women of our country.
When their day's work was done, they would hasten in the evenings to bear the stories narrated by Kāṭhakas at the house of someone, who was generally a man of means and of religious temperament.
The stories inspired the minds of women by instances of the lofty sacrifice that Hindu wives have made for the sake of virtue, chastity and faith...
It was the Vaiṣṇavas to whom the kathās, or stories, owe the elegant form in which we at present find them. The Vaishnava Gosvāmīs, or priests, have up to the present day the monopoly of this profession.
Thus it can be claimed for the Chaitanya movement that it served to stimulate these educational processes for the masses of the population, and also made possible the rising into real scholarship of men of ability from low castes.
Śyāmānanda, for instance, who, as we have seen, was the preacher who proclaimed the faith across Orissa, rose to scholarship and honoured Guruship in Vaishnavism from a very humble caste.
Ordinarily the portals of Sanskrit scholarship would have been shut to such as he, but in the tols of the Vaishnava scholars caste was no bar.
In this broadening out of life's possibilities women also shared:
They were not merely the gainers from the stimulation to education generally which we have noted, but there seems, also, to have been in this Vaishnavism an embryonic recognition of the inherent dignity and worth of woman's personality which must be called distinctive.
In the descriptions given by Mukundarāma, who vividly portrays every detail of social life in Bengal in the 16th century, we find the women of the lower castes receiving a fair education, not to speak of those who belonged to the higher castes.
It is interesting to note that the education of girls continued to mark the sect, to some extent at least, up to the modern era.
In a report on vernacular education in Bengal for 1835-38, by the Rev. W. Adam, special Government Commissioner, it is pointed out
that the only exception to the universal illiteracy among females was found among the mendicant Vaishnavas, who could read and write and instructed their daughters.
Time and again in the records of this sect mention is made of women who were honoured for their learning and sanctity. Such a one was Jāhṇavī, the wife of Nityānanda.
After his death she became widely known through her pilgrimages, but also because of her character and attainments. In the Vaṁśīśikṣā we find the interesting fact recorded that Jāhṇavī gave dīkṣā (initiation) to two young men.
Another instance is that of Hemalatā Devī, a daughter of Śrīnivāsa of the famous trio:
She seems to have been something of a guru also, as the author of the well-known historical work, Karṇānanda, is spoken of as her disciple.
Chaitanya's own wife, Viṣṇupriyā, was for many years an honoured figure in the sect, honoured alike for her sanctity and for her relation to Chaitanya.
Just when the ascetic order of the sect was thrown open to women we cannot say, but it is clear that, disreputable as the terms vairāginī and Vaiṣṇavī have become today, women did find in the freedom of the mendicant life something besides inducements to irregular relations.
At one time these female ascetics played some real part in the community as a type of zenāna teachers.
In the autobiography of Devendra Nāth Tagore we find mention made of unwelcome visits of Mā-Gosāins to the household of his childhood, evidently meaning the vairāgīnīs of the Chaitanya Vaishnavas.
In Hunter's work on Orissa there is an interesting reference to the part played by these Vaishnava vairāgīnīs in zenāna education in Bengal.
It is true, he refers to a sub-sect of the Vaishnavas of whom no trace is to be found today:
He speaks of them as holding the theory of women's independence, evidently a sort of Bengali suffragette group born out of season.
The women were trained as teachers of women-folk for the purpose of spreading the sect, and in the early years of the 19th century were an educational asset.
So much so, that at one time the Government had in mind a normal school for these Vaishnava vairāgīnīs with a view to using them in educational work.
A word should be included here about the educational influence of what seems to have been a distinctively Vaishnava product - the village Hari Sabhā.
This was a regular meeting for reading and discussion of the scriptures, lectures, kirtan, and the development of bhakti generally.
Meetings were monthly as a rule. Often a building was erected for the purposes of the sabhā by common subscription, and, failing this, it was held in private houses.
The emphasis was distinctly educational, and it must have had a real influence in the life of the village. It was a democratic institution uniting all and supported by all.
This sabhā probably has no parallel in Hinduism, and it comes nearer to the Western type of congregational worship and teaching than anything else in Hindu practice.
Today these village sabhās have largely given place to the larger assemblies known as sammilanīs, which meet only occasionally and rotate from place to place. They are modelled upon the Congress type of meeting, which is a political product of modern India.
This hasty review of the influence of the sect upon Bengal life would not be complete without a brief mention of its contribution to art.
We have already seen how the treasures of Vrindāvan, its four oldest temples, unrivalled in north India, were built under the supervision of Chaitanya's disciples, Sanātana and Rūpa.
It is noteworthy that the best of the old temples in Orissa and Bengal are Vaishnava:
Those in Orissa are in ruins, but in Bengal, thanks to the work of the Archaeological Department, the Vishnupur temples still stand as striking examples of the Bengal type of temple architecture.
These temples are all built of brick.
The fine carving on the brick front of the Mādan Mohan temple is especially noteworthy, each one of the panels representing a group of figures. The construction of the Jot Bangla temple draws attention by its curious effect as of two huts joined together.
The characteristic which is peculiar to the Bengal temple generally, and of which the Vishnupur temples are the best examples, is the curving roof, evidently in imitation of the village hut. All of these temples bear inscriptions.