Bhakti and Embodiment
Page 37
In addition to the principal pilgrimage networks in Mathurā-maṇḍala—the city of Mathurā, twelve forests, Vṛndāvana, and Govardhana—the Mathurā Māhātmya of the Varāha Purāṇa mentions a number of tīrthas that are located on the east side of the Yamunā River and that are identified in later Māhātmyas as sites in the forest of Mahāvana associated with līlā episodes in Kṛṣṇa’s early childhood. The Mathurā Māhātmya of the Varāha Purāṇa mentions, for example, the Yamalārjuna-tīrtha, the site where, after Yaśodā bound the mischievous butter thief with a rope to a heavy mortar to restrain him, he dragged the mortar between a pair of arjuna trees (yamalārjuna) and uprooted them. In this same area it also locates the site where the baby Kṛṣṇa overturned a cart (śakaṭa), smashing many pots.95
Pilgrimage Fruits
In the course of its discussion of the various networks of pilgrimage sites in the different regions of Mathurā-maṇḍala, the Mathurā Māhātmya of the Varāha Purāṇa emphasizes the specific fruits (phala) to be attained by visiting each tīrtha along the pilgrimage path—whether tīrthas associated with particular episodes in Kṛṣṇa’s līlā, tīrthas centered around particular mūrtis of Kṛṣṇa or other deities, bathing tīrthas located on the bank of the Yamunā River, or kuṇḍas located throughout the pilgrimage terrain that also serve as sites for bathing. Two of the most important fruits that are repeatedly emphasized in the Māhātmya are purification of all sins (pāpas or pātakas) and liberation (mukti or mokṣa) from the endless cycle of birth and death. The purifying power of the land derives from the purifying power of Kṛṣṇa, who during his sojourn on earth in Mathurā-maṇḍala is held to have purified the entire ground by the touch of his feet, step by step, as mentioned earlier. In addition to emphasizing the purifying and liberating power of Mathurā-maṇḍala, the Māhātmya also maintains that through visiting particular tīrthas the pilgrim can attain the lokas of particular deities, with attainment of the loka of Viṣṇu extolled as one of the supreme fruits of circumambulating the pilgrimage circuit.
At a critical juncture in the conversation between Pṛthivī and Varāha that frames the Mathurā Māhātmya of the Varāha Purāṇa, Pṛthivī remarks that circumambulation (pradakṣiṇā) of the earth and pilgrimage to all its tīrthas yields greater fruits (phala) than the performance of sacrificial rituals (yajñas), the practice of austerities (tapas), or the giving of gifts (dāna). She then suggests that it is very difficult to traverse the entire earth and visit all of its tīrthas and asks Varāha if there is any means by which this feat might be accomplished. Varāha responds by noting that there are 660 billion (66,000 crores) tīrthas on earth and that it would be impossible for ordinary human beings to visit them all. However, he asserts, the benefits of visiting all the tīrthas on earth can be attained by visiting a single pilgrimage circuit: Mathurā-maṇḍala.96
The fruits (phala) attained by visiting all the tīrthas in the seven continents (sapta-dvīpa) that constitute the earth—even greater than those are [the fruits] attained by visiting Mathurā. One who, having arrived in Mathurā, circumambulates it has indeed circumambulated the entire earth consisting of seven continents, O Vasuṃdharā [Pṛthivī].… The fruits (phala) attained by circumambulation of Mathurā are declared to be even greater than the fruits (phala) and merit (puṇya) that are held to derive from all the gods, all tīrthas, all gifts, and all sacrificial rituals.97
Vraja as a Meditation Maṇḍala
The Bhāgavata Purāṇa, as we have seen, celebrates Vraja as a mythic space that provides the setting for Kṛṣṇa’s līlā on earth, while the Mathurā Māhātmya of the Varāha Purāṇa extols Vraja as a place of pilgrimage. The Vṛndāvana Māhātmya of the Padma Purāṇa presents a third perspective in which Vraja, or Vṛndāvana, is celebrated not only as a geographic place in North India that is the site of Kṛṣṇa’s earthly līlā and a center of pilgrimage but also as a transcendent space beyond the material realm of prakṛti that is the domain of Kṛṣṇa’s eternal līlā and an object of meditation.
The Vṛndāvana Māhātmya is an independent unit consisting of fifteen chapters (69–83) that forms part of the Pātāla Khaṇḍa in the Southern recension of the Padma Purāṇa and is generally considered one of the latest sections interpolated into this composite work. The Southern recension has been adopted by all printed editions of the Padma Purāṇa and appears to derive from the Śrīvaiṣṇava tradition in South India. The Bengali recension of the Padma Purāṇa, which is available only in manuscripts and is generally considered the older of the two recensions, does not include the Vṛndāvana Māhātmya chapters in its version of the Pātāla Khaṇḍa.98
The Vṛndāvana Māhātmya of the Padma Purāṇa is presented in the form of a conversation between Śiva and his consort Pārvatī that extols the glories of Vṛndāvana as both a geographic place and a transcendent domain. The Māhātmya celebrates Kṛṣṇa as the Lord of Vṛndāvana (Vṛndāvaneśvara), the Lord of Vraja (Vrajendra), and the Lord of Gokula (Gokuleśvara) and generally uses the terms Vṛndāvana, Vraja, and Gokula interchangeably to designate the encompassing pastoral region that surrounds the city of Mathurā and includes twelve forests.99 Vṛndāvana is distinguished from the cities of Mathurā and Dvārakā as the bucolic forested area where Kṛṣṇa abides in his essential form (svarūpa) as Govinda, the keeper of cows, and engages in līlā with the gopīs, gopas, and cows who are the residents of Vraja (vrajaukases or vraja-vāsins).
The Vṛndāvana Māhātmya represents the pastoral area of Vṛndāvana along with the city of Mathurā as a thousand-petaled lotus, which it calls Mathurā-maṇḍala or Gokula.100 It portrays Kṛṣṇa seated on a gem-laden throne on an octagonal yoga-pīṭha in the pericarp (karṇikā or varāṭaka) of the lotus.101 The Vṛndāvana Māhātmya presents two distinct iterations of the thousand-petaled lotus-maṇḍala, which I would argue serve separate but interrelated functions. In the first iteration, which is described in the opening section of chapter 69, the lotus-maṇḍala functions as a geographic maṇḍala that presents a hierarchized vision of the twelve forests and the līlā-sthalas, sites of Kṛṣṇa’s playful exploits, that together constitute the sacred geography of his earthly abode.102 In the second iteration, which is described in the closing section of chapter 69 and in chapter 70, the lotus-maṇḍala functions as a cosmographic maṇḍala that presents a hierarchized vision of the realms and retinues that together constitute Kṛṣṇa’s transcendent abode.103 Both of these iterations of the thousand-petaled lotus-maṇḍala—as a geographic maṇḍala and as a cosmographic maṇḍala—are intended to be used as meditation maṇḍalas to aid the process of visualization and thereby facilitate experiential realization of Kṛṣṇa in his transcendent abode.
Before turning to an analysis of the Vṛndāvana Māhātmya’s representations of the lotus-maṇḍala, I would like to briefly consider several issues pertaining to the text’s sources and relationship to the early Gauḍīya authorities. A number of scholars have noted that although Rūpa Gosvāmin and Jīva Gosvāmin frequently cite verses from the Padma Purāṇa, they only quote a few verses that correspond to verses found in the Vṛndāvana Māhātmya, all of which are located in one chapter (73). They do not cite critical sections of the Māhātmya, such as chapters 69 and 70 pertaining to the yoga-pīṭha in the center of the thousand-petaled lotus, which one would expect them to quote because the teachings in those sections closely agree with the Gosvāmins’ teachings. This has led Entwistle to conjecture that the Vṛndāvana Māhātmya may have been composed by the Gosvāmins, and more specifically “it is quite possible that the elaborate yogapīṭha description was written by one of the Vrindaban Goswamis some time in the middle of the sixteenth century and was then incorporated in the Padmapurāṇa.”104 I would take issue with Entwistle’s conjecture on two fronts. First, the Gosvāmins, when quoting from the Padma Purāṇa, were most likely referring to the Bengali recension of the text, as Entwistle himself acknowledges,1
05 and, as mentioned earlier, this recension does not include the Vṛndāvana Māhātmya chapters in its version of the Pātāla Khaṇḍa. Moreover, in the case of those few verses cited by the Gosvāmins that correspond to verses found in the Vṛndāvana Māhātmya, they identify these verses as coming not from the Pātāla Khaṇḍa but from an otherwise unknown Nirvāṇa Khaṇḍa (in the case of Rūpa) or Nirmāṇa Khaṇḍa (in the case of Jīva).106 This suggests to me that the Gosvāmins were referring to a Bengali version of the Padma Purāṇa that is no longer available and that differs not only from the printed editions of the Southern recension but also from the extant Bengali manuscripts. Second, and more important, based on my own analysis of the descriptions of the yoga-pīṭha in chapters 69 and 70 of the Vṛndāvana Māhātmya, I would argue that these descriptions were not composed by the Gauḍīya Gosvāmins, but rather they derive from the Bṛhadbrahma Saṃhitā, a work that belongs to the corpus of South Indian Pāñcarātra Saṃhitās and was most likely produced by the Teṉkalai school of the Śrīvaiṣṇava tradition in the fourteenth century CE.107
The second chapter of the third pāda (section) of the Bṛhadbrahma Saṃhitā contains the earliest known representation of Vṛndāvana as a lotus-maṇḍala with a yoga-pīṭha in the center.108 In its cosmography the Bṛhadbrahma Saṃhitā allots a central role to Vṛndāvana as part of the transcendent domain of Goloka, although in the final analysis the text betrays its Pāñcarātra orientation by subordinating Goloka, the abode of Kṛṣṇa, to Viṣṇuloka, the abode of Nārāyaṇa. Vṛndāvana is represented as a transcendent realm that can be visualized in meditation as a thousand-petaled lotus-maṇḍala arranged in concentric rings radiating out from the innermost ring of eight petals, with Kṛṣṇa enthroned on an octagonal yoga-pīṭha in the pericarp of the lotus surrounded by his female devotees and the other members of his divine entourage. Entwistle remarks regarding the Bṛhadbrahma Saṃhitā’s portrayal of Vṛndāvana:
The whole area of Mathura is described as a lotus with a thousand petals, arranged in seven concentric rings, the innermost having eight petals and each successive ring twice as many as the one it circles.… In the centre of the lotus, under a pavilion (maṇḍapa), is the octagonal yogapīṭha on which Krishna stands, surrounded by female devotees and with other members of his entourage round about. Such a visualization serves as a means of transporting the mind to the celestial Vrindavana in Goloka, for it is believed that those devotees who can imitate the divine sports and visualize themselves in the surroundings of Vrindavana will also attain eternal life in the company of Krishna.
The Bṛhadbrahmasaṃhitā has all the basic elements found in later elaborations of the yogapīṭha theme by the devotees of Braj: the lush and gem-encrusted paradise with its golden ground and wish-granting trees, the timeless environment where everything remains fresh and young, where nothing is subject to the degeneration and other constraints that affect the material world.109
The Vṛndāvana Māhātmya’s portrayal of the cosmographic lotus-maṇḍala in chapters 69 and 70 conforms closely with the Bṛhadbrahma Saṃhitā’s description of the thousand-petaled lotus with its seven concentric rings, as I will discuss later. Moreover, a substantial number of verses cited in this section of the Vṛndāvana Māhātmya also appear verbatim, or with slight variations, in the corresponding section of the Bṛhadbrahma Saṃhitā.110 In order to account for the similarities and differences between the two texts, I would contend that the Vṛndāvana Māhātmya has borrowed from the Bṛhadbrahma Saṃhitā’s description of the lotus-maṇḍala and has recast certain portions in order to re-orient the cosmography from a Pāñcarātra vision culminating in Viṣṇuloka to a Kṛṣṇa bhakta’s vision culminating in Vṛndāvana. The most plausible explanation for the parallels between the teachings of the early Gauḍīya authorities and those of the Vṛndāvana Māhātmya is thus not that the Gosvāmins composed the yoga-pīṭha material and then inserted it into the Padma Purāṇa but rather that both the Vṛndāvana Māhātmya and the Gosvāmins drew from common source material derived from the Bṛhadbrahma Saṃhitā. Indeed, as I will discuss in a later section, when Jīva Gosvāmin deploys the trope of the thousand-petaled lotus he explicitly cites the fifth chapter of the Brahma Saṃhitā, a work that is ascribed the authoritative status of a theological śāstra in the Gauḍīya tradition and on which Jīva himself wrote a commentary, the Digdarśanīṭīkā. This text appears to be a summary of the contents of the extant Bṛhadbrahma Saṃhitā, and, as we shall see, it presents a variant of the lotus-maṇḍala imagery found in the Bṛhadbrahma Saṃhitā that is critical to Jīva’s discussion of the transcendent structure of Goloka-Vṛndāvana.
Vṛndāvana as a Geographic Lotus-Maṇḍala
While the representation of Vṛndāvana as a cosmographic lotus-maṇḍala in chapters 69 and 70 of the Vṛndāvana Māhātmya of the Padma Purāṇa appears to have been directly influenced by the Bṛhadbrahma Saṃhitā’s portrayal of the thousand-petaled lotus, the opening section of chapter 69 diverges from the Bṛhadbrahma Saṃhitā in its representation of Vṛndāvana as a geographic lotus-maṇḍala. In contrast to the Bṛhadbrahma Saṃhitā, which focuses primarily on describing the transcendent Vṛndāvana as an object of meditation and does not appear to be acquainted with the specific tīrthas that mark the landscape of the earthly Vṛndāvana in North India, the Vṛndāvana Māhātmya not only maps the cosmography of the transcendent Vṛndāvana but also maps the topography of its terrestrial counterpart. In this context the Vṛndāvana Māhātmya’s representation of Vṛndāvana as a geographic lotus-maṇḍala can be fruitfully compared to the portrayal of the geographic region of Mathurā as a lotus-maṇḍala in the Mathurā Māhātmya of the Varāha Purāṇa.
The Mathurā Māhātmya of the Varāha Purāṇa, as discussed earlier, superimposes the image of a four-petaled lotus on the region surrounding the city of Mathurā and thereby invests the geographic place with the status of a maṇḍala—Mathurā-maṇḍala—that functions simultaneously as a pilgrimage maṇḍala, or circuit, and as a cosmic maṇḍala. Through this incipient maṇḍalization of the geographic area, the five manifestations of Kṛṣṇa who are assigned locations in the pericarp of the lotus-maṇḍala and on the four surrounding petals function simultaneously as mūrtis presiding over the major pilgrimage networks on the earthly plane and as guardian deities presiding over the cardinal directions on the transmundane plane. In contrast to the Varāha Purāṇa’s image of a four-petaled lotus, the Vṛndāvana Māhātmya of the Padma Purāṇa presents a much more complex maṇḍalization of the area in which it portrays Mathurā-maṇḍala as a thousand-petaled lotus that is both immanent and transcendent, existing as a geographic region on earth comprising the twelve forests that surround the city of Mathurā and as a transmundane domain encompassed by the discus (cakra) of Viṣṇu beyond the material realm of prakṛti.
The earth is celebrated as blessed among the three worlds because that [place] named Mathurā is absolutely dear to Viṣṇu. His own abode (sthāna), called Mathurā-maṇḍala, is his foremost abode, which is hidden (nigūḍha), multiform, and situated around a city. Mathurā-maṇḍala is in the form of a thousand-petaled lotus and is a wondrous (adbhuta) Vaiṣṇava dhāman because it is encircled by the discus (cakra) of Viṣṇu.111
Whereas the Mathurā Māhātmya of the Varāha Purāṇa presents the twelve forests as a major pilgrimage network but does not include them in its representation of the lotus-maṇḍala, the Vṛndāvana Māhātmya of the Padma Purāṇa, in its initial iteration of the thousand-petaled lotus as a geographic maṇḍala, portrays Mathurā-maṇḍala as incorporating the twelve forests. Moreover, in contrast to the Mathurā Māhātmya’s enumeration of the twelve forests, which is spatially ordered with reference to their location on the pilgrimage route, the Vṛndāvana Māhātmya presents a hierarchical ordering of the twelve forests in terms of their increasing ontological importance: Bhadravana, Śrīvana (Bilvavana),
Lohavana, Bhāṇḍīravana, Mahāvana, Tālavana, Khadīrakavana (Khadiravana), Bakulavana (Bahulāvana), Kumudavana, Kāmyavana, Madhuvana, and Vṛndāvana.112
In accordance with the standard lists of the twelve forests that are found in sources pertaining to Vraja from the fourteenth century CE onward, the Vṛndāvana Māhātmya thus includes Vṛndāvana as the culminating—and hence most important—forest in its enumeration of the twelve forests. However, the dominant view that is expressed throughout the Māhātmya is that Vṛndāvana, the greatest forest (mahāraṇya) among the twelve forests, ultimately incorporates the other eleven forests within it. Vṛndāvana, in its identification with the broader pastoral arena known as Gokula or Vraja, is celebrated as the great abode (mahat-pada) that encompasses the entire thousand-petaled lotus-maṇḍala, while at the same time, as the abode of Govinda, it is identified with the pericarp (karṇikā or varāṭaka) at the center of the lotus-maṇḍala. In contrast to the image of the four-petaled lotus-maṇḍala in the Mathurā Māhātmya of the Varāha Purāṇa, in which Mathurā is assigned primacy of place as the seat of Keśava in the pericarp of the lotus and Vṛndāvana is relegated to a subsidiary position as the seat of Govinda in the northern petal, in the Vṛndāvana Māhātmya’s image of the thousand-petaled lotus-maṇḍala the spatial hierarchy is reversed: Mathurā is relegated to a subsidiary position and Vṛndāvana is assigned primacy of place as the seat of Govinda in the pericarp of the lotus and also as the broader pastoral region that encompasses the surrounding petals of the thousand-petaled lotus.