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Yoga and Viyoga: Simple Religion in Hinduism*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 June 2011

John Stratton Hawley
John Stratton Hawley
Affiliation:
University of Washington, Seattle, WA 98195
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Extract

As the comparative study of religion has advanced in recent years, one of its most salutary effects has been the qualification, if not the removal, of old caricatures about other people's religions. It is increasingly recognized that only distance and ignorance make religious traditions seem homogeneous entities, and that the tensions they encompass within themselves are often at least as extreme as the gulfs that separate one tradition from another.

Type
Research Article
Information
Harvard Theological Review , Volume 74 , Issue 1 , January 1981 , pp. 1 - 20
Copyright
Copyright © President and Fellows of Harvard College 1981

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References

1 Bhāgavata Purāṇa 10.47.

2 A listing is provided by McGregor, R. S., Nanddas: The Round Dance of Krishna and Uddhav’s Message (London: Luzac, 1973) 47–48.Google Scholar

3 That of the Nāgarīpracāriṇī Sābha [hereinafter NPS] ‘Ratnākar’ et al., eds., Sūr Sāgar, vol. 2 (Kāśī: Nāgarīpracāriṇī Sabhā, 1976) 4029–4712.Google Scholar Another prominent example of the genre is the bhramargīt of Nand Dās, a poetic rendering of the story in Braj Bhāṣā, the dialect of Hindi which Sur also speaks, by a poet of the next generation after him. It has been translated by McGregor, Nanddas, 85–105. A contemporary dramatic recounting of the episode is recorded and translated by Hein, Norvin in the Miracle Plays of Mathurā (New Haven: Yale University, 1972) 179–221.Google ScholarBryant, Kenneth E. translates several poems from the Sūr Sāgar that are related to the incident in Poems to the Child-God (Berkeley: University of California, 1978) 201–4Google Scholar, and there is an abundant literature on the genre in Hindi, both commentarial and analytic. Examples are Rājnāth, Śarmā, Bharmar Gīt-Sār (Agra: Vinod Pustak Mandir, 1976)Google Scholar, and Devendrakumār, , Bhramargīt aur Sūr (Kanpur: Grantham, 1967).Google Scholar

4 For information about the Sūr Sāgar in its early form and the role of the poems of separation in it, see Hawley, , “The Early Sūr Sāgar and the Growth of the Sūr Tradition,” JAOS 99 (1979) 64–72.Google Scholar All poems cited below are from that early group unless explicitly indicated otherwise. In translating, however, I have retained the version given by the NPS, since the full collocation of the MS variations, upon which a critical edition will be based, is not yet complete. Since the Sūr Sāgar is a collection of poetry that only gradually grew over time and since much of its transmission, especially at the earliest stages, was oral, it is only a convenient approximation to speak of “Sūr” or “Sūr Dās.” In using such terms I intend only to connote the speaker(s) of the poems collected before vikram 1764, for there exists no reliable independent source to which one might turn in order to shape a profile of the poet.

5 The NPS edition includes several poems in which Ūdho argues his case, but none of them is represented in the old MSS: NPS 4103, 4157, 4224, 4303, 4484, 4666, 4696, 4711, and 4712.

6 It is true that several poems included in the NPS Sūr Sāgar present Ūdho as a yogi of a specific type, a member of the group of yogis that was most influential in medieval North India, the Nāth Yogīs. See NPS 4156.2–4, 4219.8–13, 4252.5–6, 4308.3, 4311.12, 4312.3–5, and 4430.3. The point has been noted by Hazārīprasād Dvivedī in Sūr Sāhitya (Delhi: Rājkamal Prakāśan, 1973) 61–63Google Scholar, and Nāth Sampra-dāy (Allahabad: Lokbhāratī Prakāśan, [1966]) 18Google Scholar, and has recently been investigated by Kenneth E. Bryant in “The Bhramargīt of Sūrdās,” unpublished paper delivered at the Berkeley conference on “The Sant Tradition” in May, 1978. Only three of the above cited poems, however, occur in MSS of the period we are considering (NPS 4303) and I think it safe to say that in the great majority of poems in the old Sūr Sāgar, where no specific qualifications are introduced, Ūdho represents yoga in general. On this point, see also Dvivedi, Sūr Sāhitya, 64–65. Even to identify Ūdho as a Nāth Yogī is to cast him as a yogi of what for that period was the most common type. Further information on the Nāth Yogīs may be found in Dvivedī, Nāth Sampradāy; Briggs, George Weston, Gorakhnāth and the Kānpaṭha Yogās (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1973 [1938])Google Scholar; and Vaudeville, Charlotte, Kabīr (Oxford: Clarendon, 1974) 1. 89–97.Google Scholar A catalogue of references to them in the NPS Sūr Sāgar may be found in Saksenā, Nirmalā, Sūrsāgar Śabdāvalī (Allahabad: Hindustānī Academy, 1962) 243–45.Google Scholar

7 In poems later added to the Sūr Sāgar it is said that Krishna sent Ūdho to Braj precisely in order to effect this transformation in Ūdho. See NPS 4031 and 4769:1–2.

8 E.g., NPS 4762.

9 They cluster particularly in commentaries on the Bhagavad Gītā, where jñāna, karma, and bhakti are set alongside one another. See, e.g., Yāmuna, Gītār-thasaṃgraha, śloka la. On Rāmānuja’s elaboration of the same point in his Gītābhāṣya, see van Buitenen, J. A. B., Rāmānuja on the Bhagavadgītā (Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass, 1968 [1953] 20–24;Google Scholar and Lester, Robert C., Rāmānuja on the Yoga (Madras: Adyar Library and Research Centre, 1976) 52–54, 64–141.Google Scholar Vallabh-ācārya’s commentary on the Gītā is not extant, if ever it existed, but clear evidence of his position comes from elsewhere in his writings. He classifies jñāna and karma as instrumental in nature (sādhana), as against bhakti which is sometimes not (niḥsādhana, siddha) and relegates the former two to the status of maryādāmārga, which in Vallabha’s parlance means the path of limitation, whereas the latter is the substance of the puṣṭimārga, the path of fulfillment. Cf. Pierre Johanns, S. J., Vers le Christ par le Vedanta (trans. Michael Ledrus; Louvain: Museum Lessianum, 1932) 2. 41–42.Google Scholar

10 Vallabha also takes this position. In his “Sannyāsanirṇaya” he rejects any form of renunciation other than the self-renunciation that is experienced naturally in the hearts of those who love Krishna when he is absent. Love in separation is held up as the true form of ascetic renunciation (sannyāsa). See Vallabhācārya, Kṛṣṇa-ṣodaśagranthāḥ (Bombay: Nirnaya Sagar, n.d.) treatise 14. An English summary is given in Marfatia, Mrudula I., The Philosophy of Vallabhācārya (Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal, 1967) 237–39.Google Scholar

11 Kaṭhor bajra, NPS 3623.2.

12 E.g., NPS 3734.

13 NPS 4174. Cf. NPS 4187, 4339. Kānh is a familiar vernacularization for Krishna. The buttermilk (chāch) tax refers to the episode of the dān līlā, in which Krishna refused to let the gopīs pass on the path to Mathura where they were bound in order to sell their milk products. They could do so only if first they let him taste their goods.

It is a convention of the pad form which Sūr employs that the poet will normally include his or her own name as a “seal” (chāp) or signature in the last or penultimate line. Normally its syntactical function is not specified, hence in translating I sometimes make use of the commonly understood verb “to say” or take it as a genitive construction with one of the names of Krishna, which is also frequent. Other times, however, I simply record the poet’s name apart from any syntax, as is also possible in the original. The italics in the first line indicate that this is a refrain to be repeated in performance at least once after the poem is recited, sometimes more often.

14 E.g., NPS 4343 and, among more recent poems, strikingly NPS 4548.

15 NPS 4408. Cf. NPS 4461. Hari is an appellation of Viṣnu/Krishna. Indra is the god most closely associated with rain. The phrase “he lifts not a finger” is a reference to the episode in which, to protect Braj from Indra’s rainy ravages, Krishna lifted up Mount Govardhan so that his cowherding friends and their animals could take shelter under it. Some versions of the story have it that he held the mountain up on a single finger. The line contains a double pun, however, on the words giri and añcal, and could also be translated “our garments wash away,” referring to the fact that as the gopis cry, their tears are so plentiful that the upper portion of the cloth wrapped about them slips down under the weight of the deluge.

The term I have translated with the words “yearning” and “[scorched with] separation” is viraha, a more common term than viyoga and slightly different in its connotation. Whereas viyoga indicates the fact of separation, viraha connotes its experience. The two are closely related, however: the women who experience this separation can be called viyoginī and virahiṇī almost interchangeably.

16 NPS 3599. Śyām, meaning “dark,” is a title of Krishna, as is Nandanandan, meaning “the joy of [his foster father] Nanda.” In most poems like this one, the comparison between yoga and viyoga is implicit, not spelled out in so many words. There are, however, exceptions, such as NPS 3399.4 in which it is said, apropos of the gopīs‘ experience, that “viraha-viyoga, like a great yogi, passes hours and ages constantly awake,” or NPS 4208.3–4 where Ūdho urges yoga on the gopīs to release them from the harshness of their viyoga. This explicit contrast between yoga and viyoga becomes quite standard in poems later added to the Sūr Sāgar, e.g., NPS 3910.1–2, 4172.2–3, 4316.1–2.

17 NPS 4004. Nandakumār means “the son of Nanda,” i.e., Krishna. Śiva’s foe is Kāma.

18 NPS 4184. “Those who are clad with the sky” are digambaras: naked, wandering Jain ascetics.

19 Ban, in this context brindā-ban, the luxuriant basil forest which the present town of Brindavan memorializes.

20 Cf. also, e.g., NPS 3870.

21 NPS 4184.5. On sahaj samādhi in the Nāth Yogī context, see Eliade, Mircea, Yoga: Freedom and Immortality (Princeton: Princeton University, 1969) 307Google Scholar, and Briggs, Gorakhnāth, 39–43.

22 NPS 4501. Line 4, in its mention of something made from an animal’s horn (singī) and of old cloth worn around the neck and/or waist (mekhalā selī), seems to contain another clear reference to the Nāth Yogīs. See Briggs, Gorakhnāth, 11–13. On viraha, see n. 15.

23 NPS 4231. The slighting reference to Vedāntin theology comes not only in line 10, where it is explicit (māyā), but in line 12, where one has the idea of advaita but not the word.

24 NPS 4346.

25 Ramanujan, A. K. has made this point in an essay “On Women Saints,” in Hawley, J. S. and Wulff, Donna M., eds., The Divine Consort: Rādhā and the Goddesses of India (Berkeley: Berkeley Religious Studies Series, 1981).Google Scholar

26 Subodhinī 10.14. The point, however, is not a simple one: see Marfatia, Vallabhācāiya, 222. David Kinsley has drawn attention to a similar pattern in the Devī Bhāgavata Purāṇa. Kinsley, “The Image of the Divine and the Status of Women in the Devī-bhāgavata-purāṇa,” unpublished paper delivered to the American Academy of Religion, 1979.

27 On bārahmāsā songs, see Vaudeville, Charlotte, Barahmasa (Pondichéry: Institut Français d'Indologie, 1965)Google Scholar; Zbavitel, Dusan, “The Development of the Bāromāsī in the Bengali Literature,” ArOr 29 (1961) 582–619;Google Scholar and Susan Snow Wadley, “The Rains of Estrangement: Understanding the Hindu Yearly Cycle,” unpublished paper delivered to the American Anthropological Association, 1978. Vaudeville records and translates a selection of bārahmāsās of various types. A helpful collection of Bhojpuri bārahmāsās is to be found in Kṛṣṇadev, Upādhyāy, ed., Bhojpurī Lok-Gīt (Allahabad: Hindī Sāhitya Sammelan, 1954 and 1966) 1. 407–28Google Scholar and 2. 165–93. Very little has been written on the caumāsā, a similar genre, and few examples have been presented in print. See, e.g., Cauhān, Vidyā, Lokgītõ kī Sānskṛtik Pṛṣṭibhūmi (Agra: Pragati Prakāśan, 1972) 239.Google Scholar The virahā genre, despite its name and the time of year in which it is sung, does not contain an especially high proportion of songs of separation. See, e.g., Upadhyāy, Bhojpurī, 1. 439–50 and 2. 270–98. Upādhyāy groups songs of women’s sufferings which do not easily fit in one of the standard genres under the heading “Pīdiyā ke Gīt” in ibid., 2. 62–83. On women’s songs generally, see also Bryce, Winifred, ed., Women’s Folk-Songs of Rajputana (New Delhi: Government of India, 1964)Google Scholar; Tripāṭhī, Rāmnareś, ed., Grām-Sāhitya (Sultanpur: Hindī Mandir, 1951) 1. 257–372;Google Scholar and various folklore collections.

28 The classical formulation is Mānavadharmaśāstra 5. 147–49, trans. Bühler, Georg, The Laws of Manu (New York: Dover, 1969 [1886]) 195.Google Scholar

29 Mānavadharmaśāstra 5. 154, trans. Bühler, Laws of Manu, 196.

30 A helpful index to scholarship on vrats can be found in Holland, Barron, ed., Popular Hinduism and Hindu Mythology (Westport, CT: Greenwood, 1979) 120–21.Google Scholar A recent addition to the literature is Freeman, James M., “The Ladies of Lord Krishna: Rituals of Middle-Aged Women in Eastern India,” in Falk, Nancy A. and Gross, Rita M., eds., Unspoken Worlds: Women’s Religious Lives in Non-Western Cultures (San Francisco: Harper & Row, 1980) 110–26.Google Scholar

31 In the rās līlā, the great circle dance. See Bhāgavata Purāna 10.22.25–27. On the relation between the gopīs vrat to the goddess kātyāyanī and the rās līlā as explained by Vallabhācārya, see Redington, James D., “The Meaning of Krṣna’s Dance of Love according to Vallabhācārya” (Ph.D. diss., University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1975) 18–19,Google Scholar 350. This framework of interpretation is sometimes assumed to be present in the Sūr Sāgar as well. See Vrajeśvar Varmā, Sūr-Mīmāṃsā (Delhi: Oriental Book Depot, n.d.) 110–23.

32 Wilfred Cantwell Smith has made a similar point in regard to Shinran’s interpretation of faith in lectures at Harvard University, 1969 and 1971. A parallel statement in the Indian context, focusing as does Shinran on the repetition of the divine name, can be found in poem 65 of the Vinaya Patrikā of Tulsī Dās. It is translated by Allchin, F. R. in The Petition to Rām (London: George Allen & Unwin, 1965) 134.Google Scholar

33 Abhinavagupta, , Dhvanyālokalocana, ed. Śāstrī, Paṭṭbhirāma in Ānandavardhana, Dhvanyāloka (Benares: Hāridas Sanskrit Series, 1940) 155,Google Scholar as quoted in Masson, J. L. and Patwardhan, M. V., Aesthetic Rapture (Poona: Deccan College, 1970) 2. 37–38,Google Scholar n. 234, and translated by Donna M. Wulff, “Rasa as a Religious Category: Aesthetics and Supreme Realization in Medieval India,” unpublished paper presented to the conference honoring Wilfred Cantwell Smith, Center for the Study of World Religions, Harvard University, 1979, p. 8.

34 See, e.g., Śarmā, Kṛṣṇadev, ed., Vidyāpati aur unkī Padāvalī (Delhi: Aśok Prakāśan, 1976)Google Scholarpad 210, p. 351. A translation is available in Hartz, Richard Alan, “A Metrical Translation of Selected Maithili Lyrics of Vidyapati” (M.A. thesis, University of Washington, 1979) 128.Google Scholar The poem goes on to show how Rādhā’s love leads her spontaneously to fulfill a number of acts of ritual punctiliousness. Thus her love supplants not only the yogi but also the Brahmin.

35 Rūpa Gosvāmī, Vidagdhamādhava 2.17, translated in Wulff, Donna M., “Drama as a Mode of Religious Realization: The Vidagdhamādhava of Rūpa Gosvāmin” (Ph.D. diss., Harvard University, 1977) 231.Google Scholar

36 A number of critics have noticed this transition from Sūr Dās to Nand Dās. E.g., Dvivedī, Sūr Sāhitya, 134–37; McGregor, Nanddas, 53.