Trouble in Paradise

Trouble in Paradise: A Seventeenth Century Conflict in the Caitanya Vaiṣṇava Tradition by Neal Delmonico Iowa State University May 17, 1999 January 20, 2015 Rūpa Kavirāja, who is not to be confused with Rūpa Gosvāmin (16th cent.), the author of some of the Caitanya tradition's classic works on religious aesthetics, was a later Bengali member of the same tradition who lived in the first half of the seventeenth century. He and his teacher, Mukundadāsa, are examples of a certain daring and freedom of thought that resulted in the development of a schism within the Caitanya tradition of profound impact for the later history of the sect. Behind the surviving works of Mukunda and Rūpa Kavirāja one can detect something of the atmosphere of learned discourse that existed in the years following the deaths of the Six Gosvāmins of Vṛndāvana in which the heirs of their thought struggled with several of the seminal ideas and problems encountered in their writings. To be more specific, one can find incipient forms of later, highly developed and polished arguments in favor of the doctrine of parakīyā-vāda (the theological position that claims that the primary relationship between the divine lovers, Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa is extra-marital) and detailed discussions of whether passionate devotion (rāga-bhakti) should be performed with the physical body or a mentally conceived body, called the “perfected” or “accomplished” body (siddha-deha, i.e. an internally visualized body representing the practitioner's identity in the līlā of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa) or both. In the context of 1

the latter discussion Rūpa Kavirāja and Mukundadāsa developed some subtle distinctions and terminology to better characterize different stages in the unfolding of rāga-bhakti. Who were Mukundadāsa and Rūpa Kavirāja? We fortunately have several texts that provide us with some biographical information on them. One of the most reliable of these texts is the Narottama-vilāsa (Nv) written in the 18th century by Narahari Cakravartin whose other works include the Bhakti-ratnākara. Narahari's works are generally conscientious accounts of the history of the sect after the deaths of Caitanya and his close associates. Mukunda and Rūpa Kavirāja are discussed in an appendix of the Nv entitled "Introduction to the Author."1 Another source of information on Mukunda is a manuscript entitled, Concerning Rūpa Gosvāmin and Kavirāja Gosvāmin, in the Pāṭhabāṛī manuscript collection2 which tells the story of how Mukunda came to Vṛndāvana and became a disciple of Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja. A second version of Mukunda's story which differs in a few details from the Pāṭhabāṛī one is found in the Sahajiyā work, the Vivarta-vilāsa (Vv) by Akiñcanadāsa.3 Mukundadāsa, strangely enough, was neither a Bengali nor a South Indian, the two main groups from which members of the Caitanya Vaiṣṇava community usually came. He was the son of a wealthy merchant of Multan near Lahore in the Punjab. He was a brāhmaṇa according to the Nv and the Vv informs us that he came to his teacher, Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja, later than Kṛṣṇadāsa's other disciples, probably when Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja was near the end of his life.4 The Pāṭhabāṛī ms. tells us that one day, the youthful Mukunda outfitted a fleet of boats with goods and, like most merchants of his time, set off on a trading trip. On the way, his boats were struck by a storm in the vicinity of Vṛndāvana. He landed and went to pay his respect to the deities enshrined there: Madanamohana, Gopīnātha and Govinda. According to this account, he became filled with devotional feelings when he saw Govindajī. Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja was present at the time and spoke to him about Kṛṣṇa-bhakti and Mukunda became converted to Caitanya Vaiṣṇavism. He became a disciple of Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja, gave away all the goods in his boats to the Vaiṣṇavas of Vṛndāvana and spent the rest of his life at Rādhākuṇḍa in Vraja (Vṛndāvana and its surrounding regions). He studied all the bhakti texts under Kṛṣṇadāsa and became his favorite disciple. Just before Kadāsa died he passed on to Mukundadāsa the worship of the Govardhana śilā (a piece of stone from the sacred mountain of Govardhana in 1 Narahari Cakravartin, Narottama-vilāsa (Nv), pp. 200-206. (Murśidabāda: Rādhāramaa Press, 1894 ?) 2 Cited and summarized in Caitanya-parikara by Ravīndranātha Māiti, p. 475. and identified in his bibliography as Pāṭhabāṛī manuscript number 195. (Calcutta: Bookland Private Ltd., ?) 3 Akiñcanadāsa, Vivarta-vilāsa (Vv), pp. 29-33. (Kalikātā: Tārācanda Dāsa Sons, ?) 4 ibid., p. 30.

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Vraja) that Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja himself had received from Raghunāthadāsa Gosvāmin. Mukunda apparently wrote a number of Sanskrit texts, few of which have survived. His commentary on Rūpa Gosvāmin's Bhakti-rasāmtasindhu, called the Artha-ratnālpa-(āvali?)-dīpikā, has survived in only one complete manuscript.5 This commentary was apparently the main vehicle for his discussion of the two questions mentioned above. Another work which has survived is the Siddhānta-candrodaya which alternates between Sanskrit and Bengali (the Bengali being essentially a translation of the Sanskrit portions). Other works attributed to him, such as the Bhṛṅga-ratnāvalī and the Amṛta-ratnāvalī, exist only in the Bengali translations of his Bengali disciples.6 The Mānavi-vilāsa, which is attributed to Hemalatā, the daughter of Śrīnivāsācārya (last half of the 16th cent.), one of the main propagators of Caitanya Vaiṣṇavism in West Bengal, contains several verses from another Sanskrit work by Mukunda called the Rāga-siddhi.7 In addition, the Nv says that he started several poetic descriptions of the līlā-s of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa that he, unable to finish them because of old age, had Viśvanātha Cakravartin (last three quarters of the 17th cent.) complete. Thus, it is possible that some of the poetic works that have survived in Viśvanātha's name may have been started by Mukunda. Mukunda was born in approximately 1580 C.E., met Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja in the first decade of the 17th century, lived with him until his death in 1614-15 and lived at Rādhākuṇḍa until, perhaps, 1660. Mukundadāsa's student Rūpa Kavirāja is portrayed in the Nv in a rather unflattering way. According to that account Rūpa Kavirāja was originally a disciple of Kṛṣṇacaraṇa Cakravartin who was a disciple of Gaṅgānārāyaṇa Cakravartin and whose son and disciple, incidently, was Rādhāramaṇa Cakravartin, the teacher of Viśvanātha Cakravartin. Since, in Caitanya Vaiṣṇavism, the practice of selecting one's teacher from the family of one's father's teacher was and is common, it is quite possible that Rūpa Kavirāja was indeed an uncle of Viśvanātha, as one traditional view has it.8 If so, he must have been born in approximately 1600, met Mukunda in the 1620's and died in the 1660's. The Nv says that he died of leprosy. There ap5 Published

in Haridāsa Dāsa's edition of the Bhakti-rasāmta-sindhu. (Navadvīpa: Haribol Kuṭīra, G. 462) I came across the first part of another manuscript in the library of the Government Sanskrit College, Calcutta. It had been inadequately identified and catalogued. It was in Bengali script and may contain Mukunda's original text before it was “edited” by King Sewai Jayasiha II in the 18th century. 6 Paritoṣa Dāsa, Sahajiyā O Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava Dharma, pp. 102-3. (Calcutta: Firma KLM, 1978). 7 Hemalatā Ṭhākurāṇī, Mānavi-vilāsa, ed. by Pradīpakumāra Siṃha. (Viṣṇupura: Māṇikalāla Siṃha, 1387 [1981]) 8 Krishnagopal Goswami Sastri in the introduction to his edition of Rūpa Kavirāja's Sārasaṅgraha, p. xliii. (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1949)

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pears to be no evidence for the contention that Rūpa Kavirāja was a disciple of Hemalatā Ṭhākurāṇī, daughter of Śrīnivāsācārya. According to the Nv, Rūpa Kavirāja accompanied his teacher, Kṛṣṇacaraṇa, to Vraja and visited all of the places of Kṛṣṇa's līlā. He met Mukunda at Rādhākuṇḍa and when Kṛṣṇacaraṇa returned to Bengal, Rūpa Kavirāja, with the permission of his teacher, remained in Vraja to study the Bhāgavata and other bhakti texts with Mukundadāsa. During his residence at Rādhākuṇḍa Rūpa Kavirāja became an important and respected member of the community, and yet, the Nv tells us, a few days after Mukunda's death he ran amok. During the last days of his life, Mukunda was cared for by the granddaughter of Gaṅgānārāyaṇa Cakravartin, Kṛṣṇapriyā Ṭhākurāṇī. The Nv says that she cured him of a serious case of dysentery and administered to him with such affection that she soon became his favorite. As a result of his affection he turned over the service of Raghunāthadāsa's śilā to her when he was approaching death.9 Though she, too, was a respected member of the community of Rādhākuṇḍa, the Nv describes an incident that occurred between her and Rūpa Kavirāja. Rūpa Kavirāja used to attend daily readings of the Bhāgavata at Rādhākuṇḍa as did most of the devotees who lived there. One day, Rūpa Kavirāja failed to show respect to Kṛṣṇapriyā Devī and sharply criticized her for continuing to utter the names of Kṛṣṇa during the reading. He asked her how one could do two things at once. How could she pay attention to the recitation of the names of Kṛṣṇa and listen to the Bhāgavata also? She replied that she had no control over her tongue which was accustomed to repeating constantly Kṛṣṇa's names and that her habit did not interfere with listening to the reading. This reply angered Rūpa Kavirāja which, according to the Nv, was the beginning of his downfall, the symptoms of which were the fabrication of his own philosophy and his eventual departure from Vraja for Orissa where he died of leprosy and became a ghost. That, the text warns us, is the result of committing an offense to a devotee.10 Two of Rūpa Kavirāja's works have survived and, in spite of his eventual isolation from the rest of the Caitanya Vaiṣṇava community, he successfully established a following that has survived until the present day. His surviving works are the Sāra-sagraha and the Rāgānugā-vivtti.11 From these details of the lives of Rūpa Kavirāja and his teacher, Mukunda, and the evidence of their surviving works we can form a general idea of the points of conflict that arose between them and other members of the Caitanya tradition. It is interesting to note that though Mukundadāsa is highly 9 Nv,

pp. 204-5. pp. 205-7 11 Rūpa Kavirāja, Sāra-saṅgraha, ed. by Krishnagopal Goswami Sastri (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1949) and Rāgānugā-vivṛtti, ed. by Kṛṣṇadāsa Bābājī (Kusumasarovara: Kṛṣṇadāsa Bābā, ? ). 10 ibid.,

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praised in the Nv, his student, Rūpa Kavirāja, is not. One must be wary, however, of the Nv's representation of the incident involving Rūpa Kavirāja and Kṛṣṇapriyā Devī. Though the text is, generally speaking, historically reliable, sometimes the sectarian biases of its author intrude into the narrative, in addition to which he wrote perhaps three quarters of a century after the incident he describes. Nevertheless, a few important points emerge. Rūpa Kavirāja, and presumably Mukunda too, very strongly favored the extra-marital interpretation of the relationship between Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa. Jīva Gosvāmin's extensive argumentation against it in his commentary on Rūpa Gosvāmin's Ujjvala-nīlamaṇi, however, makes it evident that the extramarital interpretation was already exerting influence in the last half of the 16th century. Though Jīva takes special care to refute it in several parts of his commentary, he leaves a great deal of doubt about his own views by ending an important passage, in which he argues in favor of the marital interpretation, with an enigmatic verse. The verse is as follows: svecchayā likhitaṃ kiñcitkiñcidatra parecchayā| yatpūrvāparasambandhaṃ tatpūrvamaparaṃ param||12 Some of this was written by my own desire and some by the desire of another. Since there is a succession of former and latter (between the two) that (my opinion) is the former and the other is the latter. Though the verse is extremely laconic and unclear, it is lends itself to the interpretation that Jīva supported the marital point of view at the instance of someone else and that he himself favored the extra-marital viewpoint, since, in his commentary, he states the case of the extra-marital interpretation first, as the pūrva-pakṣa, and then argues against it, as was the common procedure in polemical discussions of this sort. Some suspect this verse, of course, of being an interpolation, but all the manuscripts seem to contain it. Jīva's defense of the marital relationship and his portrayal of it in his literary works, the Mādhava-mahotsava and Gopāla-campū, gave the Vaiṣṇava community both in Vṛndāvana and Bengal a great deal of difficulty. Yadunandana, in his 17th century Bengali work called the Karṇānanda, mentions a letter written to Jīva by Rāmacandra Kavirāja, Govindadāsa and Narottamadāsa asking him which interpretation he accepted. Jīva's reply is included in the text and is oddly evasive. He says that his opinion is the same as that of his student, Śrīnivāsācārya. “Whatever Śrīnivāsa has taught, that 12 Jīva Gosvāmin, Locana-rocanī, on Rūpa's Ujjvala-nīlamaṇi, 1.21, p. Haridāsa Śarman, 1954)

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8.

(Vṛndāvana:

is my opinion too.”13 Śrīnivāsa supported the extra-marital interpretation, according to Yadunandana. Though they therefore probably inherited the debate on this question, Mukunda and Rūpa Kavirāja were among the first to write in Sanskrit and with carefully crafted arguments contradicting the authoritative views of Jīva. Another writer of a slightly later period sheds some light on this controversy from a different perspective. This is Rādhākṛṣṇadāsa, the head priest of the important Govinda temple in Vṛndāvana during the middle of the 17th century.14 In his work, the Sādhana-dīpikā, he also argues on behalf of the extra-marital interpretation of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa's relationship. After presenting a number of arguments in favor of that interpretation, he mentions some circumstantial reasons, which he heard from his teacher, for Jīva's acceptance of the marital point of view.15 He tells us that Jīva Gosvāmin had a very dear disciple named Gopāladāsa who was a Vaiśya by caste (which is mentioned, perhaps, to indicate that he was wealthy). In order to please Gopāladāsa, Jīva wrote in favor of the marital interpretation. Rādhākṛṣṇadāsa implies that Gopāladāsa was the “other” by whose desire Jīva supported the marital viewpoint. Rādhākṛṣṇadāsa reveals the closeness of their friendship by asserting that Jīva also composed his Sanskrit grammar the Harināmāmta-vyākaraṇa for the benefit of Gopāladāsa and cites a verse as evidence from the closing section of the grammar in which Jīva mentions a certain Gopāladāsa as a friend of his. As if this were not enough, Rādhākṛṣṇadāsa goes on to say that Jīva had another student, a Bengali brāhmaṇa by the name of Kṛṣṇadāsa who after Jīva's death claimed to be Jīva's mantra disciple. According to Rādhākṛṣṇadāsa, however, Jīva had no mantra (initiation) disciples, but only śikṣā (instruction) disciples. This Kṛṣṇadāsa, claiming to be the true disciple of Jīva, made amendments to Jīva's works, in some places adding and in others deleting things. Rādhākṛṣṇadāsa points to some suspicious and contradictory passages of Jīva's Vaiṣṇava-toṣaṇī and argues that suspicion should also be extended to those sections of Jīva's writings that support the marital interpretation as well. The Kṛṣṇadāsa referred to here may be the same as the one in Jīva's will who is identified as the son of Bhāratācārya and who later inherited from Vilāsadāsa the service of Jīva's deities, Rādhā-Dāmodara, after Jīva's death.16 13 Yadunandana, Karṇānanda, in Vaiṣṇava Sāhitya o Yadunandana, by Śāntilatā Rāya, pp. 482-485. (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1976) 14 Rādhākṛṣṇa Dāsa was the head priest of the Govinda temple in the year 1643, but when he assumed the position and how long he held it is not known. See Vṛndāvana Theke Jayapura by Asīmakumāra Rāya, p. 38. (Calcutta: Jijñāsā, 1985) 15 Rādhākṛṣṇadāsa Govāmin, Sādhana-dīpikā, ed. by Haridāsa śāstrī, 9.48, pp. 60-63. (Vṛndāvana: Sadgranthaprakāsaka, 1980) 16 Tarapada Mukherjee and J. C. Wright, “An Early Testamentary Document in Sanskrit,” in

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Whatever Jīva's actual belief was, the marital/extra-marital dispute was not the issue that created the trouble for Rūpa Kavirāja In fact, much of the argument found in Rūpa Kavirāja's Sāra-saṅgraha establishing the superiority of the extra-marital relationship reappeared later in Viśvanātha Cakravartin's commentary on the Ujjvala-nīlamai, which was accepted by the tradition. It was his view on the question of practice that brought Rūpa Kavirāja the most trouble. Rūpa Kavirāja developed the doctrine of the four varieties of practice which were briefly anticipated in Mukunda's Siddhāntacandrodaya. David Haberman has already discussed these four in some detail in his book, Acting as a Way of Salvation, so I will not dwell on them here.17 We have already seen the principle behind the four practices in the story from the Nv in which Rūpa Kavirāja criticized Kṛṣṇapriyā Devī for doing two things at once. This agrees substantially with his opinion that rāga-bhakti (devotional practice motivated by passion for one's deity) must be practiced with both the physical and mental bodies. To practice vaidhi-bhakti (devotional practice motivated by need to follow rules) with the physical body and rāga-bhakti with the mental body is equivalent to doing two things at once and being of two minds at once. This state of affairs does not lead, according to Rūpa Kavirāja, to pure (kevala) bhakti. Curiously, although Jīva evaded the question of the nature of the relationship between Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa, in his letter to Rāmacandra Kavirāja, he clearly said that one should practice vaidhī with the physical body and rāga with the mental body.18 We can only assume that Rāmacandra and the others asked Jīva about it in their letter to him and that, therefore, this question, too, was already a being discussed in the last quarter of the 16th century and the first quarter of the 17th century. It was this attempt to resolve the conflict between two contradictory kinds of motivation in the practice of devotion that appears to have brought about the eventual banning of Rūpa Kavirāja's books. The presence of women in the lives of both Mukunda and Rūpa Kavirāja is another curious component of this story. Of course, these relationships may have been innocent, but the presence of women in the community of anchorites at Rādhākuṇḍa is nonetheless suspicious. If the Mānavi-vilāsa is really the work of Hemalatā, an important female leader in the Vaiṣṇava center at Viṣṇupura, Mukunda seems to have had a profound effect on her as well. Besides Kṛṣṇapriyā Devī, two women named Kadambamālā Ṭhākurāṇī and Gaurāṅgapriyā Ṭhākurāṇī are listed as “esoteric” disciples of Mukunda in a manuscript in the Pāṭhabāṛī collection entitled The Branches of (the DisBulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies, vol. LXII, 1979, p. 314. 17 David L. Haberman, Acting as a Way of Salvation: A Study of Rāgānugā Bhakti Sādhana, pp. 239-257. (New York: Oxford University Press, 1988) 18 See footnote 15.

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ciples of) Kavirāja Gosvāmī.19 The relationship between Kṛṣṇapriyā Devī and Mukunda is presented in the Nv as that of a daughter for a father, and there was probably a 20 or 30 year difference in their ages. The relationship between Rūpa Kavirāja and Kṛṣṇapriyā Devī, however, was much more complex. They were approximately the same age and both lived at Rādhākuṇḍa at the same time. In addition, they both were involved with Mukunda in their own ways and Kṛṣṇapriyā was the granddaughter of Rūpa Kavirāja's previous teacher's teacher, Gaṅgānārāyaṇa Cakravartin. Their exchange during the reading of the Bhāgavata can be reasonably interpreted as an attempt by Rūpa Kavirāja to win Kṛṣṇapriyā over to his point of view. The recitation of the name of Kṛṣṇa can be taken, in this context, as vaidhi bhakti (enjoined devotion) and listening to the Bhāgavata as rāga-bhakti (passionate devotion). Rūpa Kavirāja was telling Kṛṣṇapriyā that she could not practice vaidhi with her physical body and rāga with her mental body at the same time. The implication is that she should practice rāga with both her physical body and mental body. Her reply is very interesting; she said essentially that she was not doing two things at once. Her tongue recited the names of Kṛṣṇa merely out of habit while her heart was in the reading of the Bhāgavata. This may be taken as the standard response of the tradition to the problem. The physical body continues as it always has, subject to the rules that apply to it, while the heart is turned to the separate reality of the līlā of Kṛṣṇa and Rādhā, in which, in one's perfected identity or mental body, one seeks to assume the functions of one's own eternal service to Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa. The clash between Rūpa Kavirāja and Mukunda and other elements of the tradition climaxed long after their deaths. In the second half of the 17th century, during the reign of Aurangzeb, a tremendous uneasiness developed in the Vaiṣṇava community in Vṛndāvana. King Mānasiṃha of Amber, a favorite of Emperor Akbar, had built a fabulous temple for the sect's main deity Govinda and there was fear that Akbar's great grandson, Aurangzeb, would attack it and desecrate it. In a letter dated 1671, King Rāmasiṃha of Amber, advised a Vaiṣṇava named Vimaladāsa to find a safe place, away from the royal highway, for Govindajī.20 It is thought that the deity was moved a short time later to Rādhākuṇḍa and then to a village called Kāmā were Govindajī was being worshipped in 1674. By 1717 Govinda was in the city of Jayapura under the direct care of King Sewai Jayasiṃha II. The conclusion to the controversy initiated by Rūpa Kavirāja and carried on by his and Mukunda's disciples was reached with the ascendancy of the authority of the King of Jayapura in religious matters pertaining to 19 Cited

in Caitanya-parikara, p. 476, and identified as ms. no. 166. Rāya, op. cit., p. 38-39.

20 Asīmakumāra

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the Caitanya tradition. A document, dated 1731, reports the findings of a council held in Jayasiṃha's court to debate the validity of the views of Mukunda and Rūpa Kavirāja.21 This document was apparently presented to and signed by five members of Mukunda's disciplic line, two of whom came in disciplic lines through Rūpa Kavirāja, too. The document claims that a Kṛṣṇadeva Bhaṭṭācārya defeated the interpretations of Mukunda and Rūpa Kavirāja and established the correctness of Jīva's point of view in a council held by the king. As a result of these deliberations the king passed a judgement banning the reading and teaching of Rūpa Kavirāja's works, condemning him for rejecting his previous teacher (Kṛṣṇacaraṇa Cakravartin) and recommending that Vaiṣṇavas not associate with those who agree with him. As for Mukunda, the king himself apparently rewrote or eliminated the portions of his commentary on the Bhakti-rasāmta-sindhu that did not agree with Jīva's view. Today, the only complete copy of Mukunda's commentary is found in the collection of the descendants of King Sewai Jayasiṃha II, the founder of Jayapura. This is not quite the end of the tale, however. It seems that Kṛṣṇadeva Bhaṭṭācārya, the champion of the court of Sewai Jayasiṃha II, was persuaded to take his arguments to Bengal in order to win universal approval for his position. When he got there he was soundly defeated by another great scholar of the 18th century, Rādhāmohana Ṭhākura. There are two old Bengali documents which record this event, one of which appears to be the actual concession of defeat of Kṛṣṇadeva.22 The primary focus of the disputation seems to have been the marital/extra-marital question, because no mention is made of the question of practice. There is only one reference to Rādhākuṇḍa and it is a rather puzzling one because an archaic word is used. The document says that a ḍhāṅgā of extra-marital love was started or established at Rādhākuṇḍa. D.C. Sen takes this to mean some sort of victory pillar, but I have not been able to find the word given that sense in any of the major Bengali dictionaries. It seems more reasonable to relate the word to ḍhāṅgāita, an immoral ruffian, which would mean that a travesty or miscarriage of the extra-marital interpretation was started at Rādhākuṇḍa from which the victorious disputants of Bengal wanted to exclude themselves.23 Thus, though the part of the thought of Rūpa Kavirāja that focused on the extra-marital interpretation was accepted and became part of 21 Naresh Candra Baṃsala, Caitanya-sampradāya, appendix 4, pp. 504-506. (Agra: Vinoda Pustaka Mandira, 1980) 22 D.C. Sena, Baṅga Sāhitya Paricaya, vol. 2, pp. 1638-1643. (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1914) 23 For ḍhāṅgāita, see Sukumar Sen, An Etymological Dictionary of Bengali: c. 1000-1800 A.D., vol. 1, p. 380. (Calcutta: Eastern Publishers, 1971) Both ḍhāṅgā and ḍhāṅgāita appear to be related to ḍhaṅga, defined in Sen on p. 379.

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the mainstream tradition through Viśvanātha Cakravartin, his reflections on practice were rejected by the orthodox tradition even in Bengal. Moreover, the document implies that certain practices had developed at Rādhākuṇḍa that the Bengali authors did not approve of. It was, perhaps, at this point in the history of the sect that the separation between the mainstream tradition and the sub-traditions out of which the Sahajiyā sub-sects arose was most sharply and permanently effected. In concluding, one must note that though Rūpa Kavirāja ultimately was not accepted by the tradition, he forced it to define itself through the challenges he posed for it. Rūpa Kavirāja appears to have carried Rūpa Gosvāmin's theological and practical discussions to their logical conclusions, some of which the tradition was reluctant to accept. The first idea became an accepted alternative interpretation of the relationship between Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa in Bengal; the second, depending on how one answered the question, became a justification for certain practices that were prominent among some sub-sects of the Caitanya tradition. The Sahajiyā lines, for instance, found support for their sexual practices and other disciplic communities for the practice of dressing as gopī-s (cowherd women) in the idea of practicing rāgabhakti with both the physical and mental bodies. Lastly, the terms that arose in this early discourse developed into the technical terminology peculiar to post-Caitanya Sahajiyā Vaiṣṇavism (i.e., pravartaka, sādhaka and siddha).24 It is not surprising, therefore, to find an influential 18th century Sahajiyā text, the Vivarta-vilāsa (Vv), tracing the doctrines and practices of Sahajiyā Vaiṇḍavism back through Mukunda, to his teacher, Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja, and through him to the Six Gosvāmins themselves.25 In fact, it appears possible to argue that the development of the post-Caitanya Sahajiyā sects was intimately connected with the works of Mukunda and Rūpa Kavirāja, who, in turn, were very well versed in the writings of the Six Gosvāmins of Vṛndāvana, especially those of Rūpa Gosvāmin. Though the Vv does not mention Rūpa Kavirāja, he is included in many of the other Sahajiyā lineages as the disciple of Mukundadāsa.26 Thus, on the one hand, Mukunda and Rūpa Kavirāja enriched and helped define the mainstream Caitanya tradition and on the other, whether they themselves practiced or not, they provided a theoretical basis and justification for the hetero-practical sub-sects of the tradition, which had a rich flowering in Bengal among the common followers of the sect during the 17th and 18th centuries. In addition, it is interesting 24 These

three terms, which are well attested in the early post-Caitanya Sahajiyā texts, appear to have developed out of Rūpa Kavirāja's taṭastha, sādhaka and siddha distinctions. See pp. 7779 in his Sāra-saṅgraha. (Calcutta: University of Calcutta, 1949) 25 Akiñcanadāsa, Vivarta-vilāsa (Vv), pp. 108-9. (Kalikātā: Tārācanda Dāsa and Sons, ?) 26 Haridāsa Cakravartī, Bhakta-mālikā o bhakti-candrikā, pp. i-ii. (Navadvīpa: Prabhāvatī Devī, 1391 [1975])

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to reflect on the banning of Rūpa Kavirāja's books as a possible factor in weakening the Sanskritic tradition among these sub-sects and consequently in strengthening the trend, already visible in them, towards the composition of vernacular works.

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