The Bhagavata Purana: Sacred Text and Living Tradition

PREFACE

The Bhāgavata Purāṇa is one of the most beloved and versatile Hindu sacred texts. This work of over fourteen thousand Sanskrit verses resists easy categorization into any genre of Sanskrit literature, for it stands out among the Purāṇas in more ways than one. The narrative structure of the Bhāgavata holds it together tightly as a coherent literary work. Its language and poetical expression are on par with the best of Sanskrit poetry (kāvya). The theological message of the Purāṇa is consistently focused on devotion to Krishna, or Vishnu. And the philosophical content of the text is well developed and grounded solidly in the classical traditions of Vedānta and Sāṁkhya. Moreover, the Bhāgavata Purāṇa is unique among the Purāṇas in the amount of Sanskrit commentarial attention it has received over the centuries.

The Bhāgavata’s prominence and versatility, however, go beyond the written word. The text has permeated popular Hindu traditions, both in India and in diaspora communities, through its use in liturgy, ritual recitation, temple architecture, the fine arts, and film. The text forms the foundation for the religious practice of several major north Indian devotional (bhakti) traditions, as well as schools of dance and drama.

Considering the Bhāgavata’s ubiquitous presence in Hindu traditions, resources for its study are surprisingly few and far between. Most studies that are available today focus only on the tenth book of the text, ignoring the remaining eleven books. The purpose of this volume is to offer a well-rounded and multifaceted view of the Bhāgavata for scholars and students of Hinduism, serving to introduce the text for those unfamiliar with it and to present original scholarship from both seasoned and emerging scholars.

As we consider the modest limits of this book in relation to the great need and potential for scholarship on the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, we are reminded of a verse voiced by Sūta when addressing the Naimiṣāraṇya sages: Good friends! Questioned by you, I will narrate the Bhāgavata to the extent of my own understanding. As birds soar in the sky as far as they are able, so the wise traverse along the path to Vishnu (1.18.23).

We hope this volume will serve as a catalyst for further Bhāgavata studies. One such project is already in the wings, namely, the Bhāgavata Purāṇa Research Project of the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, based in Oxford, U.K. We are confident that this and similar efforts will open up an important dimension in understanding Indic culture in all its diversity.

Writing is often imagined as a solitary exercise, but it is rarely so. This book, in particular, was a collaborative enterprise from the beginning. We found that writing together made us more creative, careful, and cheerful. It was also a lot of fun. We enjoyed working with our contributors, and we are grateful for the patience they showed as this volume found its present shape.

We would like to thank the institutions that have provided us with facility and fellowship—the Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies, the Department of Cultural and Religious Studies at the Chinese University of Hong Kong, the Religion Program at Centre College, and the Department of Religious Studies at the College of William and Mary. We would also like to thank the College of William and Mary for providing financial support in the form of summer research grants.

Professor Graham Schweig and many others inspired, encouraged, and guided us from the early stages of the project. The Gupta family gave us a writing sanctuary for two summers of collaborative work in Boise, Idaho. Diana and Prentiss Alter, Arjuna Krishna-Das, Pierpaolo Marras, and Param P. Tomanec provided valuable technical assistance. We are grateful to all of them.

In keeping with standard South Asian scholarship, we follow the established system of diacritics for Sanskrit transliteration. Exceptions to this are proper names commonly seen in English usage. To pronounce Sanskrit words, the most important elements to keep in mind are as follows:

c is pronounced much like ch in chat.

ś and ṣ are pronounced much like sh in ship.

Vowels with a macron are pronounced twice as long—for example, ā should be pronounced like the a in father.

INTRODUCTION

Churning the Ocean of Līlā Themes for Bhāgavata Study

RAVI M. GUPTA AND KENNETH R. VALPEY

The world knows Hinduism as the religion of the Vedas, the ancient hymns used for sacrificial ritual; or as the wisdom of seers recorded in the Upani ṣ ads some two millennia ago; or indeed as the poetry of the Bhagavad G ī t ā , Krishna’s teachings on duty and devotion to the disheartened warrior Arjuna. No doubt these texts are widely revered by Hindus as the philosophical foundations of their tradition. And yet what Hindus know intimately, perform repeatedly, and teach their children are texts of a very different sort—the epic story of the R ā m ā ya ṇ a and the ancient lore of the Pur āṇ as.

Purāṇa is a genre of sacred literature that began as oral histories recited by bards in public assemblies, even as they are recited today. At nearly four hundred thousand verses in Sanskrit, the bulk of the material found therein reached stable form during the reign of the Guptas in the fourth and fifth centuries C.E., although dating particular Purāṇas has been difficult. There are eighteen major Purāṇas, and together they form the source material for much Hindu belief and practice.

The Purāṇas are repositories of narrative, cosmology, and theology centered on particular deities, most frequently Vishnu, Shiva, or Devi. In the words of Gavin Flood, the Purāṇas must not be seen as random collections of old tales, but as highly selective and crafted expositions and presentations of worldviews and soteriologies, compiled by particular groups of Brahmans to propagate a particular vision (1996:111). In the Vaiṣṇava Purāṇas, this vision is articulated through accounts of Vishnu’s salvific deeds when he descends to earth in various avatāras (avatars); accounts of the exemplary lives of his devotees as well as their demonic detractors; genealogies of kings in whose dynasties the Lord appears; descriptions of the cosmogony and cosmology of the universe; theologies establishing the preeminence of Vishnu; and prescriptions for the practice of yoga, especially the yoga of bhakti, or loving devotion. All this material is presented in the course of conversations between sages and kings, whereby typically the latter are looking for solutions to their own troubles and the ills of the world in general. As one narrator quotes another, conversations become nested within one another, many layers deep, lending an endless—and seemingly trackless—character to the text.

The Bhāgavata Purāṇa is the most widely heard and beloved of the Purāṇas. One can go to any major (and many a smaller) Indian city to find banners advertising upcoming recitations of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa. Narratives from this Purāṇa are regularly reenacted in both folk and classical traditions of dance and theater. Scenes from the Bhāgavata are carved permanently into the walls of stone temples and embedded in the landscape of pilgrimage sites. This is the Purāṇa that is most often retold in song, sculpture, painting, vernacular poetry, and, indeed, bedtime stories for children.

This focus on the Bhāgavata is not altogether surprising, for the text stands out among the Purāṇas in more ways than one. The Bhāgavata, traditionally said to have eighteen thousand verse couplets, is a Vaiṣṇava Purāṇa that gives preeminence to Krishna, the blue-hued deity whose playful and heroic activities predominate in book 10, by far the longest of the work’s twelve books. The word bhāgavata means related to Bhagavān, the Blessed Lord, referring primarily to devotees of Krishna. This Purāṇa offers a sophisticated Vaiṣṇava theology that is grounded in the philosophical traditions of Vedānta and Sāṁkhya, using them in the service of bhakti. The text’s delicate language is often closer to the styles of kāvya—classical Sanskrit poetry—than to the simple Sanskrit of other Purāṇas. The Bhāgavata sees itself as the ripe fruit of Vedic revelation, whose ambrosial juice can be fully relished only by those who are refined in taste and sensibility, but which anyone can learn to appreciate by diligently hearing or reading this Purāṇa.

There may be as many ways to hear or read the Bhāgavata Purāṇa as there are listeners or readers, yet we find that there are two broad categories of approach, and it is into these that the essays in this volume have been organized. Part 1, The World of the Bhāgavata, directs our attention to the web of meanings that creates and sustains the work’s dialogues, reasonings, and narratives, while part 2, The Bhāgavata in the World, focuses on the several ways this text has been shaped or represented in the world, and how it has shaped the world around it.

Especially for readers unfamiliar with the Bhāgavata Purāṇa (and the Purāṇic literature more generally), we have constructed the remainder of this introduction around two narratives—one from within the Bhāgavata, and one about the Bhāgavata in sixteenth-century Bengal—intermittently highlighting important themes that are taken up in greater detail by our authors. This structure reflects traditional Sanskrit commentarial practice, whereby readers of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa are pitched directly into the text, usually a few verses at a time, then assisted by a commentator in understanding the original text.

THE WORLD OF THE BHĀGAVATA

As long as anyone can remember, the gods and demons have been at war. But once, the Bhāgavata Purāṇa tells us, they declared a truce and decided to work together to extract the ambrosia of immortality from the sea. This story, the Churning of the Milk Ocean, may be seen as a microcosm of the Bhāgavata as a whole. It is one of the longest-running narratives in the Purāṇa, spanning eight chapters in book 8 (BhP 8.5–12). The themes latent within the narrative permeate the entire text; the values and anxieties expressed by the characters involved run throughout the Bhāgavata. Let us therefore paraphrase the story, paying attention to what it can tell us about the Purāṇa as a whole.¹ Let us enter the world of the Bhāgavata.

The universe is faced with a grave problem—the gods have been defeated and rendered powerless by the demons, who now rule heaven. The world is in the hands of corrupt leadership, and thus dharma—world order and the practices for sustaining that order—has been compromised. The gods seek help from the demiurge Brahmā, who takes them all to the Supreme God, Vishnu. Vishnu’s advice is surprisingly pragmatic: cooperate with the demons for a common purpose.

The preservation of dharma is the Bhāgavata’s concern from the beginning, in its outermost frame story. Long ago, the Purāṇa tells us, a group of sages gathered in a forest to find a solution to this problem: Krishna (identified as the primary form of Bhagavān, or Vishnu) has left the world, and dharma has departed with him. The terrible Kali age—a protracted period of cosmic darkness and degradation—is soon to commence. What hope is there for the people of the world? The answer, says the sage Sūta, can be found in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, which gives light to those who have lost their sight (1.3.43). Sūta reassures the sages that Krishna descends to earth repeatedly, in a variety of forms, to reestablish order and preserve dharma (1.3.28).

One significant component of dharma is social duty, and its preservation presupposes maintaining proper state leadership. Indeed, the anxiety over loss of enlightened monarchy is one of the most recurrent themes in the Bhāgavata. Whether it is the gods who have lost their posts in heaven, or human kings who terrorize their people, or natural disasters that threaten to destroy the world’s leadership, the loss of royal order is a perpetual problem that Vishnu must solve. At different times he appears in the world to destroy corrupt kings, or to protect righteous kings, or to become himself a king and demonstrate ideal leadership.²

Vishnu discourages the gods from fighting with the demons. Time, he says, is not on your side, and until the tides of time move in your favor, you should make peace with the demons. He explains the strategy: the demons will help with the work of churning the ocean, but only you will get the ambrosia, just as a snake inhabits a hole built by a mouse.

Despite the emphasis on world order, the Bhāgavata is well aware that the world tends toward disorder and degradation. Politics gets dirty, power can corrupt, and people are unfair. The righteous live in a world where many things are beyond their control, and none more so than time. Time’s movement is a salient marker of the human condition, and thus the Purāṇa shows concern to systematically describe time—the passing of ages, the genealogies of kings, the movements of the planets, and the cycles of creation. The Bhāgavata’s attention to these topics is not merely pedantic, for as Jonathan Edelmann shows (in chapter 3), the text sees cosmogony and cosmography as vital aids to yogic meditation. After all, the Bhāgavata is spoken at a crucial time in the history of the world: one age is ending and another, darker age is about to begin, when there is urgent need for delineation of practices conducive to human well-being and attainment of time’s transcendence. The Bhāgavata represents itself as having been spoken to a king who is bound by time: the righteous Parīkṣit has been cursed—for a breach of etiquette with a sage—to die in seven days, and so he resolves to spend these on the banks of the Ganges, listening to the Bhāgavata. This, he hopes, will give him release from this world of time (2.2.37). To show how the various valences of time function and interrelate in the Bhāgavata—creative time, narrative time, ritual time, relative time, and the timeless—Rick Jarow takes up this subject in chapter 2.

But why send the gods on this wild expedition, amid mountains and oceans, serpents and demons? If Vishnu is all powerful, why does he not destroy the demons himself, in one magical instant? The Bhāgavata tells us: Vishnu had a desire to play, to enjoy, and thus he arranged the grand plot—the churning of the cosmic milk ocean. This would mean more involvement for him, all the more opportunity for him to orchestrate a grand performance.

In telling us the underlying reason for the churning, the Bhāgavata Purāṇa reveals its greatest secret: the play of God—līlā—is the key principle of meaning in any effort to understand his ways. If Krishna has everything he needs, and whatever he wants becomes reality, why does he act in the world? The answer, the Purāṇa tells us, lies in the joyful, purposeless play of God (see, for example, BhP 1.10.24). Whether it is in creating the world, or destroying a demon, or playing with his friends at home in Vraja, Krishna’s purpose is to enjoy and to increase the joy of those who love him. The business of the world can be accomplished in an instant, but the story is in the līlā. And there is an added benefit to līlā. For we who are bound in the pains and pleasures of this temporal world, līlā serves as an invitation and gateway to Krishna’s world. By hearing and retelling his līlā, readers can participate in his play and thus find release from the tides of time. According to the Bhāgavata’s commentators, even the location of the līlā—the sacred region of Vraja—retains salvific power, mediating the material and the transcendent, as Barbara Holdrege shows in chapter 6. The crest jewel of all līlā, according to these commentators, is the rāsa-līlā, Krishna’s circle dance with the cowherd women of Vrindavan village (see BhP 10.29–33). In chapter 7, Graham Schweig guides us through this most famous of India’s sacred love stories, showing its dramatic structure and reflecting on the role of the feminine in the narrative.

The gods like Vishnu’s plan, and the demons are thrilled at the prospect of drinking nectar. So they all declare a truce and set out to make arrangements. For a churning rod, they uproot the giant Mandara Mountain. But the mountain is too heavy, and it falls along the way, crushing scores of gods and demons. Vishnu brings the dead back to life, lifts the mountain with one hand, and flies to the ocean on the back of his eagle carrier, Garuḍa.

But the failures of both gods and demons persist. When they begin churning (using the great serpent Vāsuki as the rope), the mountain promptly sinks into the sea, and so Vishnu takes the form of a turtle, dives into the water, and supports the mountain on his back. When it goes off balance, Vishnu sits atop and keeps it steady. When the gods and demons become tired, Vishnu takes up the churning himself.

Human beings are weak, and the Bhāgavata acknowledges this. Indeed, the Purāṇa studies human failure in its many varieties, to then uphold its precept that divine grace is what helps people cope with and overcome failure. So in book 6, for example, we meet the pious brāhmaṇa (priest) Ajāmila who, falling for a prostitute and then leading an impious life, is saved by merely repeating Vishnu’s name at the time of death. Also in book 6, we hear how Indra, king of heaven, becomes a pauper because he fails to honor his guru, Bṛhaspati. In his case, only after meditating for a thousand years is he reinstated in his post. In book 7 we see Jaya and Vijaya fall from Vishnu’s abode because they unwittingly offend visiting sages. Three lifetimes as demons for each of them is the sentence that prepares them for reinstatement. Why do even righteous souls suffer and fall, through apparently no fault of their own? This is the question that Gopal Gupta takes up in his exploration of the Bhāgavata’s response to the problem of evil (chapter 4).

Indeed, the Bhāgavata Purāṇa begins with a story of human weakness. Parīkṣit (the king who has only seven days to live) was traveling in the forest and became desperately thirsty. When he asked a sage for water, he received no response, for the sage was absorbed in deep meditation. In a flash of anger, Parīkṣit placed a dead snake around the sage’s neck and left. When the sage’s son came home and saw the insult, he cursed the king to die in seven days. The king was not evil, only weak, and yet weakness has its price. Parīkṣit made the best of it by using his remaining days to listen to the sacred Bhāgavata from the wandering sage Śuka. Surely Parīkṣit heard much that he could identify with, for the Bhāgavata is in part the story of spiritual athletes who stumble and fall, but then pick themselves up and keep going—by the grace of God. In chapter 5 of this book, James Redington shows us how an entire Vaiṣṇava tradition—the followers of Vallabha—builds its theology on this element of divine grace in the Bhāgavata.

Lord Vishnu appears extraordinarily beautiful as he churns the sea. His complexion is dark like a monsoon cloud and his earrings shine like streaks of lightening. He wears golden clothing and a garland of flowers, and his hair becomes charmingly disheveled as he pulls the serpent-rope.

What emerges from this exertion is quite the opposite of the desired ambrosia—a deathly poison that seeps in all directions. Panic ensues, and this time the gods run to the great lord Shiva for refuge, offering him eloquent encomia, and beseech him for protection. After discussing his plans with his wife Bhavānī (Pārvatī), Shiva decides to drink the poison and thus save the world. He retains the poison in his throat, thus earning the epithet Nīlakaṇṭha, the Blue-Throated One.

As we see here, the Bhāgavata takes every opportunity to burst forth in praise, pausing its narrative to describe the Lord’s beauty or to offer him verses of reverence. Indeed, nowhere is the Bhāgavata’s love for poetry more fully displayed than in the encomia that run through the text. Whereas the plotline may be told in brief (especially for well-known stories like the Rāmāyaṇa), the Bhāgavata takes its time to savor the words of praise spoken by devotees to their Lord. The text uses these prayers to convey emotion, discuss philosophy, and develop character portraits. Very often, prayers describe the beauty of Krishna’s form, painting images with words. Indeed, since Vedic times Hindus have praised God by praising the body of God.

Although the Purāṇas are not the first place one would look for poetic creativity, the Bhāgavata Purāṇa strains the neat classifications of genre. Although written primarily as an ancient history, it also reads in places like a dense philosophical treatise, replete with difficult and archaic vocabulary. Yet perhaps the most striking quality of the Bhāgavata is its exquisite poetry—interspersed throughout the text but reaching a crescendo in the tenth book’s depiction of Krishna’s life. Delicate metrical patterns, innovative literary ornamentation, and extended metaphors are very much the norm.³ The Bhāgavata, by its own admission, is written for aesthetes and people of taste (1.1.3).

With the poison contained, many desirable things now emerge from the churning: the magical cow Surabhī, a flying horse, a white elephant, valuable gems, a wish-fulfilling tree, the goddess of fortune Lakṣmī, and even the goddess of liquor. Each treasure goes to the most appropriate recipient—the sages take the cow, Indra, king of heaven, claims the elephant, Lakṣmī chooses Vishnu as her husband, and the demons take possession of the liquor.

At long last—the ambrosia appears! A handsome personage, Dhanvantari, avatāra of Vishnu, rises from the sea holding the vessel of ambrosia. Before anyone can think, the demons snatch the vessel from his hands and run away. The gods turn again to Vishnu for help, and so he takes the form of an enchanting woman, Mohinī. The demons, smitten by her charm the moment they see her, gladly surrender the ambrosia: We can’t decide who should drink first. Can you apportion it equally among us?

So Mohinī seats the gods and demons in separate lines and proceeds to serve ambrosia only to the gods. The demons, too dumbstruck by Mohinī’s charm to say anything, make no objection. Once the gods have finished drinking the ambrosia, Mohinī reveals her original form as Vishnu, shattering the demons’ reverie.

One may well ask: Is this not unfair of Vishnu? Were not the demons entitled to half the ambrosia? Is it proper for God to cheat? The Bhāgavata anticipates the reader’s concern and addresses the question directly. True, the gods and demons made a deal and gave equal effort to accomplish their goal. But the gods are devotees of Vishnu, whereas the demons are averse to him. Giving ambrosia to the cruel demons, the text says, would be like feeding milk to a snake—all one gets is more poison.

The Bhāgavata does not subscribe to categorical notions of morality or justice. Dharma depends on context; what works in one place for one person may not be appropriate for another person at a different time or location. For example, the Purāṇa admonishes us to never disrespect our teachers (as with Indra and Bṛhaspati in book 6) but then nods in approval when King Bali rejects his guru for giving him bad advice (book 8). The only golden standard for measuring rightness in the Bhāgavata is bhakti. When action is motivated by bhakti, when Krishna is pleased, then the fruit can only be good.

Theological justifications notwithstanding, the demons definitely find this unfair. They declare war on the gods, and the gods, nourished by ambrosia, beat back the demons. Despite the demons’ patent failure, they put up a good fight. The fiercest battle is fought between Indra and Bali, king of demons—a battle of words as much as of weapons. Just before the war’s climactic moment, Bali tells Indra, Everyone in this battle is impelled by the power of time toward victory, defeat, fame, or death. Thus, the wise do not delight in this time-bound world, nor grieve for it.

Words of wisdom from a demon king? Bali’s soliloquy is not just sour grapes from one who is about to lose. Saintly demons hold an important place in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, and the gods often find themselves upstaged by these unexpected heroes. Bali is one of the best. The Bhāgavata presents him as an ideal devotee, a paragon of virtue, whose demon heritage only makes his wisdom and devotion shine brighter. We meet him again a few chapters later where he willingly offers everything—wealth, kingdom, and his own body—to Vishnu.⁴

The Bhāgavata has several surprising role reversals that are essential to the text’s grand narrative—that bhakti, loving devotion to Krishna, trumps any kind of dominance in this world. So we meet demons who are better than gods, wives who are smarter than their husbands, out-castes who are purer than brāhmaṇas.⁵ The Bhāgavata acknowledges that in general demons are bad and gods are good, but demons such as Bali and Prahlāda are better than any god by virtue of their devotion. The Bhāgavata subscribes to stereotypical views of women (as temptresses, for example, as we saw earlier), but women such as Kuntī, Devahūti, and the Vraja vāsīs are ideals of devotion, interlocutors in philosophical discussion, and teachers of men.⁶ The Bhāgavata is no doubt a brahmanical text that repeatedly celebrates the privileged position of the priestly class, but brāhmaṇas such as Durvāsā find themselves outmatched by saintly kings and humble devotees (see BhP 9.4–5). And ancient Indian stories are turned on their head: In the battle between the god Indra and the demon Vṛtra (told in the Ṛgveda), Vṛtra becomes in the Bhāgavata the hero and Indra’s teacher (see BhP 6.12). The Bhāgavata Purāṇa is making a point, and makes it well—bhakti reigns supreme.

The Bhāgavata concludes its narration with the following words: The progress of those who repeatedly hear and recite this narrative (of the churning) is not thwarted at any time or any place. This is because describing the qualities of Lord Vishnu relieves all the troubles of this world. I bow to that Lord who fulfills the wishes of those who approach him.

Usually Puranic narratives end with a phala-śruti, a statement of benefit to the reader. Here, the Bhāgavata Purāṇa uses its statement to emphasize two essential practices of bhakti—hearing and speaking about God. These two practices are the first of nine limbs of bhakti that are discussed in book 7—hearing about Vishnu, repeating his names and activities, remembering him, serving his feet, worshipping him, praising him, becoming his servant, becoming his friend, and offering one’s very self (7.5.23). By referencing these actions at the end of the churning story, the Bhāgavata reminds us that reading its narratives serves a very practical purpose—cultivating devotion and thus ameliorating human suffering. Much of the Purāṇa is about persons who have fulfilled this purpose; these bhāgavatas serve as the text’s main protagonists and its ideal readers. We learn to read alongside them in chapter 1, by Kenneth Valpey.

As we set forth into the world of the Bhāgavata, it is worth reflecting for a moment on the one action that runs through the Ocean Churning narrative, namely, churning. Indeed, the act of churning is an apt metaphor for the practice of reading a sacred text, and for reading the Bhāgavata in particular. Like an ocean, the Bhāgavata is celebrated for being endless in meaning and encyclopedic in content. As the gods and demons repeatedly churned the waters to extract nectar, so the reader is encouraged to repeatedly churn the Bhāgavata in order to drink the nectar of līlā that relieves the troubles of this world (8.12.46).⁷ Indeed, the Purāṇa begins with a call to its readers: This Bhāgavata is the ripe fruit of the Vedic tree, mixed with the ambrosia from Śuka’s mouth. O people of taste, drink this juice again and again! (1.1.3). And the Purāṇa’s most revered early commentator, Śrīdhara, answers this call with a verse of his own, Where am I, so slow-witted? And where is this task of churning the ocean of milk? Indeed, what will an atom do where even Mount Mandara sinks?⁸ Nevertheless, Śrīdhara dives into the ocean, confident that he will be supported in his attempt to comment on the Bhāgavata, even as Lord Vishnu supported Mandara Mountain.

THE BHĀGAVATA IN THE WORLD

In the previous section we described the Bhāgavata Purāṇa as a world, and through the Ocean Churning narrative and the extended trope of churning we have called attention to some of this world’s important features. Our contributors in part 1 of this book bring us into the Bhāgavata world’s particular terrains and show in some detail how this world constitutes a totality of devotional (bhakti) thought and practice. Now we turn from viewing the world of the Bhāgavata to consider the variety of ways this text has functioned in the wider world: part 2 of this volume explores from various angles the Bhāgavata in the world, highlighting ways in which this particular text has lived and thrived, and how it continues to do so today.⁹

Having distinguished between the world of the Bhāgavata and the Bhāgavata in the world, we hasten to add that the borderline between these two dimensions of the text is by no means distinct. This is apparent from the Bhāgavata text itself, with its self-awareness as a cohesive work, and with its evidence of concern to exercise salvific presence in the wider world, even as it narratively and didactically articulates its own world. For example, early in book 1 (1.5.15–21, 1.7.3–6) we read of Vyāsa, the revered divider of the Veda and composer of the epic poem Mahābhārata, brooding over his failure to find satisfaction in his literary accomplishments thus far. When his teacher, Nārada, chides him for having neglected the subject of real import, namely, glorification of the supreme Lord, Vyāsa then withdraws to meditate, and in a state of trance he sees both the supreme Lord (the complete Person) and māyā (the magical or illusory power that manifests the temporal world of suffering). Prompted by this vision, Vyāsa composes the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, to mitigate the misery of ignorant humanity.

That the Bhāgavata was conceived as a means to uplift ailing humanity has given impetus to later generations of its devotees to compile, elaborate through commentary, translate, transcreate,¹⁰ perform, and in general propagate the text. And all these means of textual enactment—the shaping and reshaping of the Bhāgavata text as responses to specific circumstances and perceived needs—have in turn significantly shaped the world around it. It becomes appropriate to speak of communities of the text, and we find examples of narrative traditions about ways the Bhāgavata has created such communities of readers or listeners. An example of such a narrative bears recounting here, as it shows graphically just how the Bhāgavata in the world functions in a collective imaginaire.

This particular story of Bhāgavata influence emerges from and thrives in the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava tradition of Bengal, a tradition for which the Bhāgavata Purāṇa is of central importance (as some of our contributors note; see Stewart 2010:32–42). The historical background of the legend is that Śrī Caitanya (1486–1534), the ecstatic Krishna devotee and propagator of the Bhāgavata from Bengal, had commissioned some of his closest and most learned disciples to write commentaries and elaborations on the Bhāgavata Purāṇa.