Page:EB1911 - Volume 13.djvu/525

Rh would naturally tend to modify the character of the relations between worshipper and worshipped, and to impart to the modes and forms of adoration features of a more popular and more human kind. And accordingly it is exactly in connexion with these two incarnations of Vishnu, especially that of Krishna, that a new spirit was infused into the religious life of the people by the sentiment of fervent devotion to the deity, as it found expression in certain portions of the epic poems, especially the Bhagavadgita, and in the Bhagavata-purana (as against the more orthodox Vaishnava works of this class such as the Vishnu-purana), and was formulated into a regular doctrine of faith in the Sandilya-sutra, and ultimately translated into practice by the Vaishnava reformers.

The first successful Vaishnava reaction against Sankara’s reconstructed creed was led by Ramanuja, a southern Brahman of the 12th century. His followers, the Ramanujas, or Sri-Vaishnavas as they are usually called, worship

Vishnu (Narayana) with his consort Sri or Lakshmi (the goddess of beauty and fortune), or their incarnations Rama with Sita and Krishna with Rukmini. Ramanuja’s doctrine, which is especially directed against the Linga-worship, is essentially based on the tenets of an old Vaishnava sect, the Bhagavatas or Pancharatras, who worshipped the Supreme Being under the name of Vasudeva (subsequently identified with Krishna, as the son of Vasudeva, who indeed is credited by some scholars with the foundation of that monotheistic creed). The sectarial mark of the Ramanujas resembles a capital U (or, in the case of another division, a Y), painted with a white clay called gopi-chandana, between the hair and the root of the nose, with a red or yellow vertical stroke (representing the female element) between the two white lines. They also usually wear, like all Vaishnavas, a necklace of tulasī, or basil wood, and a rosary of seeds of the same shrub or of the lotus. Their most important shrines are those of Srirangam near Trichinopoly, Mailkote in Mysore, Dvaraka (the city of Krishna) on the Kathiawar coast, and Jagannath in Orissa; all of them decorated with Vishnu’s emblems, the tulasi plant and salagram stone. The Ramanuja Brahmans are most punctilious in the preparation of their food and in regard to the privacy of their meals, before taking which they have to bathe and put on woollen or silk garments. Whilst Sankara’s mendicant followers were prohibited to touch fire and had to subsist entirely on the charity of Brahman householders, Ramanuja, on the contrary, not only allowed his followers to use fire, but strictly forbade their eating any food cooked, or even seen, by a stranger. On the speculative side, Ramanuja also met Sankara’s strictly monistic theory by another recognizing Vishnu as identical with Brahma as the Supreme Spirit animating the material world as well as the individual souls which have become estranged from God through unbelief, and can only attain again conscious union with him through devotion or love (bhakti). His tenets are expounded in various works, especially in his commentaries on the Vedanta-sutras and the Bhagavadgita. The followers of Ramanuja have split into two sects, a northern one, recognizing the Vedas as their chief authority, and a southern one, basing their tenets on the Nalayir, a Tamil work of the Upanishad order. In point of doctrine, they differ in their view of the relation between God Vishnu and the human soul; whilst the former sect define it by the ape theory, which makes the soul cling to God as the young ape does to its mother, the latter explain it by the cat theory, by which Vishnu himself seizes and rescues the souls as the mother cat does her young ones.

Madhva Acharya, another distinguished Vedanta teacher and founder of a Vaishnava sect, born in Kanara in 1199, was less intolerant of the Linga cult than Ramanuja, but seems rather to have aimed at a reconciliation of

the Saiva and Vaishnava forms of worship. The Madhvas or Madhvacharis favour Krishna and his consort as their special objects of adoration, whilst images of Siva, Parvati, and their son Ganesa are, however, likewise admitted and worshipped in some of their temples, the most important of which is at Udipi in South Kanara, with eight monasteries connected with it. This shrine contains an image of Krishna which is said to have been rescued from the wreck of a ship which brought it from Dvaraka, where it was supposed to have been set up of old by no other than Krishna’s friend Arjuna, one of the five Pandava princes. Followers of the Madhva creed are but rarely met with in Upper India. Their sectarial mark is like the U of the Sri-Vaishnavas, except that their central line is black instead of red or yellow. Madhva—who after his initiation assumed the name Anandatirtha—composed numerous Sanskrit works, including commentaries on the Brahma sutras (i.e. the Vedanta aphorisms), the Gita, the Rigveda and many Upanishads. His philosophical theory was a dualistic one, postulating distinctness of nature for the divine and the human soul, and hence independent existence, instead of absorption, after the completion of mundane existence.

The Ramanandis or Ramavats (popularly Ramats) are a numerous northern sect of similar tenets to those of the Ramanujas. Indeed its founder, Ramananda, who probably flourished in the latter part of the 14th century,

according to the traditional account, was originally a Sri-Vaishnava monk, and, having come under the suspicion of laxity in observing the strict rules of food during his peregrinations, and been ordered by his superior (Mahant) to take his meals apart from his brethren, left the monastery in a huff and set up a schismatic math of his own at Benares. The sectarial mark of his sect differs but slightly from that of the parent stock. The distinctive features of their creed consist in their making Rama and Sita, either singly or conjointly, the chief objects of their adoration, instead of Vishnu and Lakshmi, and their attaching little or no importance to the observance of privacy in the cooking and eating of their food. Their mendicant members, usually known as Vairagis, are, like the general body of the sect, drawn from all castes without distinction. Thus, the founder’s twelve chief disciples include, besides Brahmans, a weaver, a currier, a Rajput, a Jat and a barber—for, they argue, seeing that Bhagavan, the Holy One (Vishnu), became incarnate even in animal form, a Bhakta (believer) may be born even in the lowest of castes. Ramananda’s teaching was thus of a distinctly levelling and popular character; and, in accordance therewith, the Bhakta-malā and other authoritative writings of the sect are composed, not in Sanskrit, but in the popular dialects. A follower of this creed was the distinguished poet Tulsidas, the composer of the beautiful Hindi version of the Ramayana and other works which “exercise more influence upon the great body of Hindu population than the whole voluminous series of Sanskrit composition” (H. H. Wilson).

The traditional list of Ramananda’s immediate disciples includes the name of Kabir, the weaver, a remarkable man who would accordingly have lived in the latter part of the 15th century, and who is claimed by both Hindus

and Moslems as having been born within their fold. The story goes that, having been deeply impressed by Ramananda’s teaching, he sought to attach himself to him; and, one day at Benares, in stepping down the ghat at daybreak to bathe in the Ganges, and putting himself in the way of the teacher, the latter, having inadvertently struck him with his foot, uttered his customary exclamation “Ram Ram,” which, being also the initiatory formula of the sect, was claimed by Kabir as such, making him Ramananda’s disciple. Be this as it may, Kabir’s own reformatory activity lay in the direction of a compromise between the Hindu and the Mahommedan creeds, the religious practices of both of which he criticized with equal severity. His followers, the Kabir Panthis (“those following Kabir’s path”), though neither worshipping the gods of the pantheon, nor observing the rites and ceremonial of the Hindus, are nevertheless in close touch with the Vaishnava sects, especially the Ramavats, and generally worship Rama as the supreme deity, when they do not rather address their homage, in hymns and otherwise, to the founder of their creed himself. Whilst very numerous, particularly amongst the low-caste population, in western, central and northern India, resident adherents of Kabir’s doctrine are rare in Bengal and the south; although