[S]eeing the place of the rāsa, he fainted with prema. Again regaining consciousness, he rolled around on the ground, and laughed and danced and wept and fell, and sang in a loud voice. In such play he passed that day there.…163
According to Kṛṣṇadāsa’s account, Caitanya also bathed at Cīra Ghat in Vṛndāvana, the site where Kṛṣṇa stole the gopīs’ garments, and he rested at the foot of an ancient tamarind tree that had been there since the time of Kṛṣṇa’s līlā. Kṛṣṇadāsa concludes his account by emphasizing that Caitanya’s attendants became concerned about his welfare, due to his increasing absorption in the madness of devotion as well as the crushing crowds pressing for his attention, and they eventually succeeded in convincing him to leave his beloved Vṛndāvana and return to Purī.161
While Kṛṣṇadāsa’s hagiographic account of Caitanya’s pilgrimage to Vraja thus presents him as the paradigmatic bhakta whose behavior is to be emulated by Kṛṣṇa bhaktas who undertake a pilgrimage to Vraja, at the same time Kṛṣṇadāsa reminds us at various points in the narrative that Caitanya is no ordinary bhakta but is an “avatāra of Kṛṣṇa” and the “all-knowing Bhagavān” himself.162 As discussed in Chapter 4, in the Caitanya Caritāmṛta Kṛṣṇadāsa celebrates Caitanya as the Kali Yuga avatāra who is Kṛṣṇa and Rādhā together in a single body, and as such he is both the object (viṣaya) of devotion in his essential nature as Kṛṣṇa, the supreme Godhead, and the vessel (āśraya) of devotion in his identity as Rādhā, the paradigmatic bhakta. At the close of his narrative of Caitanya’s visit to Vraja, Kṛṣṇadāsa recounts a conversation between Caitanya and a discerning man in which he attempts to conceal his identity by insisting that he is simply an ordinary jīva,163 but the man pierces through the veil of illusion and recognizes his true identity as Vrajendranandana, the son of Nanda the lord of Vraja.
The man said [to Caitanya]: “You are not like a jīva. Your person and your nature are those of Kṛṣṇa. I see you in the form of Vrajendranandana, though hidden beneath a golden complexion. By tying musk in a cloth it cannot be hidden; so your Īśvara-nature cannot be concealed. Your nature is not of this world, and is imperceptible to [ordinary] intelligence; and seeing you, the world is mad with Kṛṣṇa-prema.”164
By reminding us of Caitanya’s special status, Kṛṣṇadāsa invests his narrative with another layer of signification in which Caitanya’s engagement with the land of Vraja and with the mūrtis in its temples can be (re)read as the self-interacting dynamics of Bhagavān’s divine play: as he circumambulates Vraja-maṇḍala, Kṛṣṇa’s yuga-avatāra, embodiment in the form of a human being, revels in his own dhāman, embodiment in the form of a place, and reveres his own arcā-avatāras, embodiments in the form of ritual images, as he rediscovers the sites of his own līlā.
The Six Gosvāmins of Vṛndāvana
As discussed in the Introduction, Caitanya is represented in Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja’s Caitanya Caritāmṛta and other hagiographies as instructing Rūpa Gosvāmin and Sanātana Gosvāmin to go from Bengal to Vraja, recover the lost līlā-sthalas of Vraja-maṇḍala, and establish temples and shrines to visibly mark the sites of Kṛṣṇa’s playful exploits as tīrthas.165 The two brothers, in accordance with Caitanya’s instructions, settled permanently in Vraja—Rūpa in 1516 and Sanātana in 1517—and established two of the most important temples in Vṛndāvana: the Govindadeva temple and the Madanamohana temple.
Rūpa is credited in hagiographic accounts with discovering the black stone mūrti of Govindadeva, the presiding deity of Vṛndāvana, which, as mentioned in the Introduction, is revered as a svayam-prakaṭa (self-manifested) mūrti that revealed itself to him in 1533 or 1534 at the site of the original yoga-pīṭha where Kṛṣṇa and Rādhā enjoyed their nightly trysts. Rūpa then established the Govindadeva temple to house the mūrti. A new Govindadeva temple in red sandstone was subsequently built on the site in 1590 by Rājā Mān Siṅgh of Amber (r. 1589–1614 CE), who was the highest ranking Hindu officer in the court of the Mughal emperor Akbar (r. 1556–1605 CE). The largest of the Hindu edifices built during the reign of Akbar as part of his court’s royal patronage of Vraja, the Govindadeva temple is described by Frederick S. Growse, in his 1883 district memoir of Mathurā, as the “most impressive religious edifice that Hindu art has ever produced, at least in Upper India.”166 In the latter half of the seventeenth century iconoclastic attacks were made on the temples of Mathurā and Vṛndāvana at the behest of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb (r. 1658–1707 CE), and the original mūrti of Govindadeva was removed from the temple in Vṛndāvana and taken to a series of safer locales, eventually becoming established in a new temple built by Mahārājā Jai Siṅgh II (r. 1700–1743 CE) at the center of his palace in his newly constructed royal city of Jaipur.167
Sanātana Gosvāmin is credited in hagiographic accounts with recovering the mūrti of Kṛṣṇa as Madanamohana, enchanter of the god of love, from the wife of a Chaube brahmin and installing the deity for worship on the Dvādaśāditya mound above the Yamunā. Sanātana subsequently oversaw the establishment of the Madanamohana temple at the site, another impressive edifice in red sandstone that was constructed with funds provided by a wealthy merchant. During the iconoclastic raids of the late seventeenth century, the original mūrti of Madanamohana, like that of Govindadeva, was removed from Vṛndāvana and was eventually established in a new temple built by Mahārājā Gopāla Siṅgh opposite his palace in Karauli, a small town southeast of Jaipur.168
Rūpa and Sanātana were joined in Vraja by four other disciples of Caitanya, who together are renowned as the “six Gosvāmins of Vṛndāvana” and are credited with recovering many of the lost līlā-sthalas of Vraja, particularly in the areas of Vṛndāvana and Rādhā-kuṇḍa. According to hagiographic accounts, Gopāla Bhaṭṭa Gosvāmin, the son of a Śrīvaiṣṇava brahmin priest at the Śrīraṅgam temple in South India, became a disciple of Caitanya and was eventually instructed by him to move to Vṛndāvana and assist Rūpa and Sanātana in reestablishing the tīrthas of Vraja. In 1542, soon after Gopāla Bhaṭṭa moved to Vṛndāvana, a svayam-prakaṭa mūrti of Kṛṣṇa as Rādhāramaṇa, the beloved of Rādhā, is held to have spontaneously appeared out of a śālagrāma stone worshiped by him, and he subsequently performed the formal abhiṣeka ceremony establishing the worship of the deity. As mentioned in the Introduction, Rādhāramaṇa is unique among the mūrtis established by the six Gosvāmins in that it is the only mūrti that remained in Vraja and was not removed from the area in response to the iconoclastic attacks of the late seventeenth century.169
Raghunāthadāsa Gosvāmin, the son of a wealthy Bengali landowner, moved from Purī to Vraja to assist Rūpa and Sanātana in the reclamation of Vraja following Caitanya’s death in 1533. According to hagiographic accounts, he settled at Rādhā-kuṇḍa and was instrumental in establishing it as a major center of pilgrimage for the Bengali followers of Caitanya. In his role as the first mahanta (custodian) of Rādhā-kuṇḍa, he is credited with excavating the two conjoining ponds—Rādhā-kuṇḍa, Rādhā’s pond, in 1546 and Śyāma-kuṇḍa, Kṛṣṇa’s pond, in 1553—at the site of the small pool that Caitanya himself, during his visit to Vraja, had identified as the place where Kṛṣṇa played every day with his beloved Rādhā.170
Raghunātha Bhaṭṭa Gosvāmin, the son of Tapana Miśra, a brahmin disciple with whom Caitanya stayed in Vārāṇasī, is represented in hagiographic accounts as studying the Bhāgavata Purāṇa for four years in Vārāṇasī at the behest of Caitanya, after which he was instructed to join Rūpa and Sanātana in Vṛndāvana. As mentioned in Chapter 3, he became renowned for his expertise in Bhāgavata-paṭhana and dedicated his life to reciting and expounding the Bhāgavata in the assembly of Rūpa and Sanātana before the mūrti at the Govindadeva temple established by Rūpa. According to the Caitanya Caritāmṛta, Raghunātha Bhaṭṭa eventually arranged for one of his disciples to build a temple in honor of Govinda—a statement that is traditiona
lly understood as a reference to the Govindadeva temple built by Rājā Mān Siṅgh—and he himself provided a flute and other ornaments for the mūrti. For the rest of his life he remained blissfully absorbed in reciting and recounting stories of Kṛṣṇa from the Bhāgavata.171
Jīva Gosvāmin joined his uncles Rūpa and Sanātana in Vṛndāvana by 1541 and assisted Rūpa in editing the Bhaktirasāmṛtasindhu, which was completed that year. According to hagiographic accounts, in 1542, soon after Jīva’s arrival in Vṛndāvana, Rūpa gave him a mūrti of Kṛṣṇa as Rādhādāmodara that he himself had carved, and in 1558 Jīva bought land for the Rādhādāmodara temple and installed the mūrti in the temple. He eventually succeeded Rūpa and Sanātana as the institutional leader of the Gauḍīya Sampradāya in Vraja. Some years after his uncles had passed away, in an imperial edict (farmān) dated 1568, the Mughal emperor Akbar officially recognized Jīva as the custodian of the Govindadeva temple built by Rūpa and the Madanamohana temple established by Sanātana. In addition, at the time of his passing in 1584, Raghunāthadāsa bequeathed his property to Jīva in his final testament. Jīva succeeded Raghunāthadāsa as the custodian of Rādhā-kuṇḍa, and in his role as the second mahanta he secured title to the land around the complex and inspired Rājā Mān Siṅgh to build brick containments for the two ponds in 1591.172
Nārāyaṇa Bhaṭṭa and the Vana-Yātrā
Besides the six Gosvāmins of Vṛndāvana, the other Gauḍīya authority who assumed a pivotal role in the process of “myth-mapping” and reclamation of the lost sites of Vraja in the sixteenth century is Nārāyaṇa Bhaṭṭa, a brahmin from Madurai in South India who arrived in the area in 1545. Revered as the great “Ācārya (teacher) of Vraja,” he is credited with creating the Vana-Yātrā (Hindi Ban-Yātrā), the encompassing pilgrimage circuit that encircles the entire region of Vraja, and with providing in his Vrajabhaktivilāsa (1552) the first detailed itinerary for the circuit, which he determined to have a circumference of eighty-four krośas (approximately 168 miles). More than any other figure, Nārāyaṇa Bhaṭṭa is credited with “rediscovering” the līlā-sthalas of Vraja, the sites of Kṛṣṇa’s playful exploits recounted in the narratives of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa—with locating the forests, groves, hills, ponds, and other sites that bore the traces of his footprints but had been lost sight of—and making them visible once again through establishing a network of temples and shrines to identify these sites as tīrthas. Haberman remarks regarding Nārāyaṇa Bhaṭṭa’s contributions to the cultural reclamation of Vraja:
More than any other figure he was responsible for the intricate mapping process whereby the mythical realm of Braj as expressed in Vaishnava literature and oral tradition was physically imprinted on the topographical region of Braj. For these accomplishments Narayan Bhatt is remembered as the great Acharya of Braj. The Vraja Bhakti Vilasa describes an overwhelming number of sacred sites in the area, including all the major forests and shrines of the contemporary pilgrimage. The text identifies the story associated with each site and provides a description of the appropriate ritual action for participating in it. The Vraja Bhakti Vilasa also maps out a detailed procedure and itinerary for the performance of the pilgrimage through the twelve forests of Braj, which is called for the first time the Ban-Yatra.173
As I will discuss in a later section, Nārāyaṇa Bhaṭṭa’s contributions to Gauḍīya constructions of Vraja involved not only mapping the myths of Kṛṣṇa’s līlā onto the topography but also mapping the image of Kṛṣṇa’s body onto the landscape, in which he correlated the twelve forests and other important sites in Vraja-maṇḍala with specific parts of Kṛṣṇa’s body.
Vraja as Pilgrimage Place and Beyond
Among the works ascribed to the Gosvāmins, the most extensive treatment of Vraja as a pilgrimage place is found in the Mathurā Māhātmya attributed to Rūpa Gosvāmin. Before turning to an analysis of the text’s representations of Mathurā-maṇḍala, I would like to briefly consider several issues pertaining to the text’s authorship, sources, and relationship to earlier Māhātmyas such as the Mathurā Māhātmya of the extant Varāha Purāṇa.
Jīva Gosvāmin and Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja include a Mathurā Māhātmya among their respective lists of Rūpa Gosvāmin’s works.174 The 1958 printed edition of the Mathurā Māhātmya published by Kṛṣṇadās Bābā, which accords with the manuscript versions of the text apart from minor variants, attributes it to Rūpa Gosvāmin. Although Rūpa Gosvāmin’s name does not appear on all the manuscripts and we cannot therefore establish conclusively that he is the author of the extant version of the Mathurā Māhātmya contained in the manuscripts and Kṛṣṇadās Bābā’s printed edition,175 I would nevertheless argue that this version derives from the Gauḍīya authorities in Vṛndāvana in the middle of the sixteenth century and most likely coincides with the version of the Mathurā Māhātmya that Jīva and Kṛṣṇadāsa ascribe to Rūpa. As I will show in the following analysis, the extant version of the Mathurā Māhātmya has clearly been shaped to accord with the Gauḍīya project, and all of the key verses from Purāṇic sources that Rūpa invokes in the Bhaktirasāmṛtasindhu when discussing the importance of residing in Mathurā-maṇḍala are also found in this Māhātmya. Moreover, as we shall see, a number of the verses that Jīva invokes in the Kṛṣṇa Sandarbha as critical prooftexts to support his arguments regarding the ontology of Kṛṣṇa’s dhāmans are also found in this Māhātmya, some of which are not found in any other versions of the Mathurā Māhātmya.176 The evidence thus strongly suggests that both Rūpa and Jīva made use of this version of the Mathurā Māhātmya and that Rūpa himself is the author of the text.
The Mathurā Māhātmya of Rūpa Gosvāmin is a compendium of 467 verses extolling the greatness of Mathurā-maṇḍala and delineating the most important tīrthas to be visited when circumambulating the region. As in the Bhaktirasāmṛtasindhu and the Laghubhāgavatāmṛta, in the Māhātmya Rūpa uses the term Mathurā-maṇḍala to designate the city of Mathurā and the surrounding pastoral area of Vraja, which he also calls Gokula or Vṛndāvana.177 All but the opening lines of invocation and the concluding verses of Rūpa’s Māhātmya are attributed to Purāṇic sources, with the exception of two passages that are ascribed to the Gautamīya Tantra and the Bṛhadgautamīya Tantra, respectively.178 With respect to the Purāṇic sources cited in the Māhātmya, according to Entwistle’s enumeration, 193 of the verses are attributed to the Ādivarāha Purāṇa, nineteen to the Varāha Purāṇa, 121 to the Padma Purāṇa, sixty-three to the Skanda Purāṇa, and sixteen to the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, with the remaining verses ascribed to a variety of other Purāṇas. However, as Entwistle notes, many of the verses attributed to particular Purāṇas are not found in the extant editions of those Purāṇas.179
The relationship of the Mathurā Māhātmya of Rūpa Gosvāmin to the Mathurā Māhātmya of the extant Varāha Purāṇa, discussed earlier, is of particular interest. Many of the verses that Rūpa’s Māhātmya ascribes to the Ādivarāha Purāṇa are variants of verses that are also found in the Mathurā Māhātmya of the extant Varāha Purāṇa, which suggests that the two Māhātmyas drew independently from a common collection of verses concerning Mathurā and at least some of the material in this collection was derived from the original, or Ādi-, version of the Varāha Purāṇa that is cited in Lakṣmīdhara’s Mathurā Māhātmya but is no longer available.180 As discussed earlier, the Mathurā Māhātmya of the extant Varāha Purāṇa is a randomly ordered compilation of verses based on older material that provides a litany of pilgrimage sites in the region of Mathurā as they existed around the beginning of the sixteenth century, prior to the reclamation of Vraja by the Gauḍīyas. Rūpa’s Māhātmya, in contrast, is a more systematically arranged compendium of verses in which the older material has been reshaped to conform with a Gauḍīya vision of Mathurā-maṇḍala that reflects mid-sixteenth-century transformations of the pilgrimage circuit. Entwistle remarks regarding the relationship of R
ūpa’s Māhātmya to the Mathurā Māhātmya of the Varāha Purāṇa:
It names a little less than two thirds of the number of places and deities mentioned in the Varāhapurāṇa, but the presentation of them is more systematic, especially with regard to the bathing places along the river at Mathura, and their location is in closer conformity with the modern situation. The work is more in tune with mid-sixteenth [century] developments since emphasis is given to Govinda, the tutelary deity of Vrindaban and the epithet given to an image that Rup Goswami established there; some places that were obsolete or of no importance to Krishna devotees… are omitted.…181
Rūpa, in formulating his Mathurā Māhātmya, departs in two ways from the standard format of a Purāṇic Māhātmya, as represented in particular by the Mathurā Māhātmya of the Varāha Purāṇa. First, whereas the Mathurā Māhātmya of the Varāha Purāṇa presents itself as the sole source of all the verses in its compilation and does not include attributions to other sources, Rūpa’s Māhātmya provides attributions identifying the source of each of its verses and presents itself as a compendium invested with the canonical authority of the multiple Purāṇic sources that it invokes. Second, in contrast to the unstructured format of the Mathurā Māhātmya of the Varāha Purāṇa, Rūpa provides a structural framework for his Māhātmya by organizing the verses under headings, according to themes or pilgrimage clusters. The interjection of headings is one of the most important of the literary strategies adopted by Rūpa to reshape the traditional Māhātmya genre, for it allows him to reconfigure the inherited traditions from various Purāṇic sources in distinctive ways and to lift up and make visible the programmatic concerns of the Gauḍīyas. In the following analysis I will focus on three strategies that Rūpa deploys in his discursive reshaping of the inherited traditions to accord with Gauḍīya interests: (1) his development of a hierarchical taxonomy of the fruits of pilgrimage to Mathurā-maṇḍala; (2) his hierarchical ordering of the principal pilgrimage networks; and (3) his highlighting of themes that emphasize the special status of Mathurā-maṇḍala as a geographic place that is simultaneously a transcendent space.
Bhakti and Embodiment Page 40