Establishing the Authority of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa in the Vedic Tradition
On what grounds does the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava tradition authenticate its elaborate theology of Kṛṣṇa bhakti? It recognizes a number of pramāṇas, sources of knowledge, from which, like the Yoga Sūtras (I.7), it prioritizes sense perception, inference, and sacred texts. Since the senses and human reason are subject to defects and the limitations of human error, it also adopts the Vedānta stance that sacred testimony is the only fully reliable source of knowledge in those areas, such as the nature of God, that lie beyond the empirical domain (Vedānta Sūtras I.1.3). But is all sacred text qualitatively the same? The Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava theology rests on the authority of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, which it deems the paramount scripture. But what makes the Bhāgavata preeminent in the first place? By considering Jīva’s arguments prioritizing the epistemological superexcellence of the Bhāgavata on the textual landscape of his time, we will encounter an example of traditional Vedānta hermeneutics.
Let us start at the beginning. The backdrop to the Purāṇa literatures is the Vedic culture. The oldest preserved literatures in India are the four Vedas (typically dated from the fifteenth to the twelfth century B.C.E.), which primarily contain hymns recited in the ritualistic context of the ancient Vedic sacrificial cult of the Indo-Aryans. To these Vedas, prose instructional manuals were later appended called the Brāhmaṇas (the term applies to the texts as well as the caste specialists who transmitted and enacted their rituals). In addition to these, the Vedic corpus includes two other strata or genres of literatures: the Āraṇyakas, which, overlapping in subject matter much of the material contained in the older Brāhmaṇa texts, on the one hand, and the later fourth stratum, the Upaniṣads, on the other, do not have a distinctive characteristic of their own and thus need not detain us; and the Upaniṣads. It is in the Upaniṣads that material clearly matriarchal to what comes to be associated with “Hinduism,” both philosophical and devotional, is rooted. In other words, it is in the Upaniṣads, seminal to the later classical schools of Indian philosophy as well as to the contemporary devotional traditions in the Purāṇas, that the origins of bhakti yoga are to be found.
The four Vedas, fixed at a very early stage by various mnemonic devices,1 along with the other three strata constituting the Vedic corpus, are considered Śruti, “that which is heard,” eternally existent divine revelation. In contrast with these, the Purāṇas, along with all other pan-Indic classical texts such as the epics, are considered Smṛti, “that which is remembered,” or indirect revelation, divine in origin but composed through human agency (albeit an agency usually associated with a divine figure). While they are considered sacred and authoritative, there are much more flexible expectations associated with the Purāṇas, which transmit information for the general public, and thus adjustments according to the day and age are not viewed askance. On the one hand, they recognize the need to preserve and transmit faithfully the ancient sacred material intact. But, on the other, they claim to clarify, expand upon, and even supersede the contents of previous scriptures by revealing secret truths not contained either in the Vedas or in other Purāṇas (in fact, they expand on and supersede the contents of the Śruti enormously). They are ongoing revelation. Such fluidity is inherent in the claim made by most Purāṇas of presenting the “essence” of the Veda according to time and place, as we shall see.
Nonetheless, and very important for our purposes, in Vedānta circles, the Smṛti such as the Purāṇas is considered authoritative only when it does not contradict the Śruti.2 The old Vedic corpus thus retains a sense of authority in later times, even when the rituals that are the central feature of the latter had long fallen into disuse (or been radically reconfigured). The important point here is that, considered not of human authorship (apauruṣeya) by all Vedic schools,3 these Śrūti texts were deemed infallible revelation, even as much of their content was being viewed dismissively and superseded in the later traditions such as the Purāṇas, as noted above. But (officially, at least) the status of Śruti retains its aura of paramount infallibility in comparison with the later texts that emerged on the religious landscape of India. What this means is that any later school wishing to consider itself “Vedic,” howsoever nominally, and thus be accepted as bona fide, had to develop hermeneutical strategies to somehow locate its theology and soteriology somewhere in the four Vedic strata—unlike, for example, Buddhism and Jainism, which simply jettisoned the Vedic corpus and established new traditions (albeit with their own claimed lines of preexisting authority).
But how do they accomplish this? Although it certainly has some clear protoroots in the old Vedic corpus in many areas, how does a text like the Bhāgavata locate itself in the Śruti, when it contains in other areas a theology, ontology, cosmology, soteriology, set of sociocultural specificities, sense of historicality, and, in short, entire worldview with, at best, tenuous Vedic connections and, in other areas again, no Vedic precedents whatsoever? One need only consider the fact that there is simply no reference to the Kṛṣṇa of the Bhāgavata, the summum bonum of the entire text, in any Vedic (Śruti) text other than a solitary dubious passage in the Chāndogya Upaniṣad (indisputable references to Kṛṣṇa as a Divine Being do not occur in significant numbers of Sanskrit textual sources until the fifth and fourth centuries B.C.E. and then soon thereafter also in early Greek, as well as archaeological, sources).4 How does an exegete of a sect-specific Purāṇic tradition for whom Vedic pedigree is indispensable deal with this?
Since we have selected Jīva as our lens into traditional hermeneutics and guide to the text, let us consider how he goes about resolving this dilemma of authenticating the Bhāgavata as a bona fide scriptural source of knowledge, upon which the entire edifice of Kṛṣṇa bhakti rests. Since Jīva’s Sandarbhas are essentially commentaries on the Bhāgavata, in order for them to be taken seriously as a source of knowledge, he must first of all establish sacred scripture in general as a valid episteme,5 then make a case for the Purāṇic genre as a serious scriptural source, and finally indicate why he is devoting his exclusive attention to the Bhāgavata rather than any other Purāṇa.
Accordingly, Jīva briefly situates himself within the Vedānta epistemological tradition that accepts scripture as the highest source of knowledge. As heir to this tradition, he need not reformulate the extensive and well-known argumentation honed within the pūrva mīmāṁsā and uttara mīmāṁsā (Vedānta) lineages over the centuries.6 Indeed, scriptural authority is accepted by all Vedic-derived “Hindu” traditions,7 so discussions between schools revolved around which source of knowledge should be awarded primary status and which secondary and supportive, especially between scripture (āgama/śabda) and the two other primary alternative modes of knowing: knowledge acquired through the senses (pratyakṣa, empiricism) and through inferential reasoning (anumāna, logic).8 For Jīva and the Vedāntins, while the latter two sources are important epistemes, they are subject to four human defects: the imperfection of the senses themselves, and human subjectivity to delusion, error, and the cheating propensity. Besides, the senses cannot be expected to provide knowledge of that which lies beyond their sphere of perception. As for inferential reasoning derived from (and dependent upon) the senses, “Logic cannot establish anything conclusively” (Vedānta Sūtras II.1.11), so “one should not try to employ logic for that which lies beyond the sphere of thought” (Mahābhārata, Bhīṣma Parva V.22; quoted in the Tattva Sandarbha anu 11). For such reasons, for the Vedānta traditions that by Jīva’s time had long been prominent in intellectual circles across India in general,9 the Vedas (and here they primarily intend the Upaniṣads) are the only source of knowledge for transempirical, transrational topics, as they are deemed trans-human revelation handed down intact via lineages, the paramparās10 (Tattva Sandarbha anu 10).
So Jīva’s claiming the primacy of scripture was not a particularly controversial thing to do, even as other schools prioritized other sources of knowledge. But there are now several steps missing between the Śruti as universally recognized scripture par excellence, the Purāṇas in general, and the Bhāgavata in particular. Here, too, Jīva has long-established Vaiṣṇava and Śaivite forerunners, as these traditions had long and thoroughly (throughout two millennia) permeated the intellectual landscape of India by the sixteenth century. So Jīva is able to avail of two well-known verses from the Śruti itself: one, from the Bṛhadāraṇyaka Upaniṣad, stating: “The Ṛg-Veda, Yajur-Veda, Sāma-Veda, Atharva-Veda, Itihāsa [epics], and Purāṇa were breathed out by the great Being” (II.4.10); the other, from the Chāndogya Upaniṣad, where the Itihāsa and Purāṇas are called “the fifth Veda” (VII.1.2). These are echoed by statements from another Śruti, the Taittirīya Āraṇyaka,11 as well as the widely accepted Smṛti text, the Mahābhārata,12 all bestowing authority on the epics and Purāṇas as the fifth Veda and as augmenting the Vedas. Thus he has invoked the Śruti itself to promote the Purāṇas as authoritative scriptural sources on a par with Śruti. Even better, he then quotes a statement “pūraṇāt purāṇam: the Purāṇas [are so called] because they complete,”13 to argue that these texts are in fact indispensable for understanding the very Vedas themselves.14
Having done this, and with the authority of the Purāṇas as a genre now legitimated by the Śruti, Jīva next produces numerous quotes from the other Purāṇas themselves as to the preeminence of the Bhāgavata within the Purāṇic corpus—the verses quoted previously in “Īśvara, Pure Bhakti, and Motivated Bhakti” from the Matsya Purāṇa and Padma Purāṇa, dividing the eighteen Purāṇas according to guṇas with the Bhāgavata in the sattva category.15 With this established, Jīva feels that he can now quote the Bhāgavata itself to bolster its indispensability as a tool to understanding the Vedas, without needing to further demonstrate its credential as a source of knowledge. We will return to this shortly.
In Purāṇic narrative, as we will see in the Tale of Vyāsa, the hymns of the Vedas, along with the Purāṇic stories, were transmitted orally through the first three of the four yugas, or world ages—the satya, tretā, and dvāpara yugas. Then, with a view to preserving the material from the ravages of time heralded by the beginning of the present degenerate fourth world age of Kali yuga,16 the great sage Vyāsa (“the divider”) divided the originally single ur-Veda into the four.17 Additionally, he is held to have composed the Vedānta Sūtras, which was written to clarify the seemingly contradictory nature of the Upaniṣads.18 Vyāsa then compiled a Purāṇa Saṃhitā, or singular ur-Purāṇa text, from the tales, lore, anecdotes, and teachings that had been handed down through the ages. This original Purāṇa text was then further divided by his disciples into the eighteen known to later tradition.19 In addition to his role as divider of the Vedas and compiler of the Purāṇas, Vyāsa is the traditional author of the enormous one-hundred-thousand-verse Mahābhārata epic (composed, like the Purāṇas, for those who had no access to the Veda owing to social restrictions, SB I.4.25). As compiler of both the Vedic corpus and the Purāṇic one, Vyāsa is thus deemed by the Bhāgavata to be the foremost authority on both the Śruti and the Smṛti (and tradition even assigns him the role of author of the primary and canonical commentary on the Yoga Sūtras, the Vyāsa bhāṣa).
We will see in the Bhāgavata (I.5.iff.) that Vyāsa remained unfulfilled even after this massive and prolific output of knowledge, until his guru, sage Nārada, confirmed his suspicion that the cause of his despondency was that he had not yet described the ultimate goal of knowledge—he had thus far covered only lesser mundane topics concerned mostly with material well-being. This diagnosis resulted in the composition of the Bhāgavata, the galitam phalam, the ripened fruit of the Vedic tree (I.1.3), the essence of all the Vedas, Purāṇas, and Itihāsa epics (I.2.3; I.3.42). Here we see an excellent example of how a Purāṇa positions itself as superseding the Vedas, but the point in all this is that the Bhāgavata depicts Vyāsa, the author and composer or systematizer of just about all the most important sacred texts associated with the Vedic and late Vedic period and thus the ultimate authority on the Śruti and Smṛti, as himself acknowledging the primacy of the Bhāgavata among all other scriptures. Additionally, the Bhāgavata was mystically revealed to him, as we will see, making Vyāsa an experiential authority in addition to being a scriptural savant. Jīva has now arrived at a point where the Bhāgavata is a defensible and indeed preeminent source of knowledge in its own right.
From an academic text-critical historical point of view, there is little doubt that some of the material in the Purāṇas does go back to the earliest Vedic age. Many of the Vedic hymns assume common knowledge of bygone persons and events to which they briefly allude and which would have been remembered through tradition, and some of these are fleshed out and reworked over time in the Purāṇas.20 As early as the Atharva-Veda of circa 1000 B.C.E., there are references to “the” Purāṇa21 and numerous references to it in the later Vedic texts. Thus, while the present Purāṇas contain later material, as well as references to events in historical time, they also contain ancient narratives and anecdotes reworked from the earliest period of protohistory in southern Asia. (And it is for such reasons that it is futile to speak of absolute dates for any Purāṇa as a whole, since one would have to speak of the age of individual sections within particular Purāṇas; one can venture to estimate the final date of a Purāṇa’s composition only in its extant form.)22
And as far as the Kṛṣṇa co-relatable to the Bhāgavata Kṛṣṇa is concerned, although He does not surface on the historical landscape of ancient India as derived from (academically dated) textual and archaeological sources until a few centuries prior to the Common Era, there is at least one point of overlap between traditional knowledge sources prioritizing the authority of Śruti and Smṛti and our modern ones prioritizing empirico-deductive methods. One point common to all sources is that Kṛṣṇa appears at the end of some sort of age—be it the late Vedic age as construed by Indological historiography or the very end of the dvāpara-yuga third age as proposed by traditional bodies of knowledge such as the epics and Purāṇas. And there is agreement that Kṛṣṇa is pivotal in the inauguration of a new age—the rise of the bhakti movements prior to the turn of the Common Era that swept across the subcontinent, relegating the old Vedic rites to quasi-redundant, or radically reconfigured, forms as documented by historians and the beginning of the Kali yuga in traditional epic and Purāṇic narrative, which is held to do similar sorts of things, by tradition.
Jīva still has much hermeneutical work left to do. Not only must the Bhāgavata’s essential message be tailored to embody and also supersede those of the Vedas, but the specifics of the Kṛṣṇa theology of his sixteenth-century lineage must also be accommodated within the Bhāgavata. This latter task is accomplished fairly effortlessly, that is to say organically, for much of the material that occupied the concern of this volume, bhakti yoga, but already by the end of part 1 (in the chapter “The Practices of Bhakti”), where we encountered the more advanced stages of rāgānugā and rāgātmikā bhakti, Jīva and Rūpa entered into transcendent domains that are nowhere to be explicitly found even in the Bhāgavata. Even from a traditional exegetical point of view, these must be acknowledged to be as implicitly “concealed” in the Bhāgavata as is Kṛṣṇa Himself in the Śruti. In fact, Jīva’s tradition itself lays claim to transmitting hitherto unrevealed Truths imparted by Caitanya to the Gosvāmīs, especially Rūpa and Sanātana. And Caitanya is deemed to be an incarnation of Kṛṣṇa by this tradition (again on the basis of verses scattered throughout the Purāṇas),23 which is the basis upon which his teachings are considered authoritative in turn. So while in effect we are dealing with new revelation, traditional exegesis is uncomfortable with the idea of “new” revelation, as Truth is eternal; so it cannot be newly created, even as it may be revealed fully or partially according to time and place. So Jīva and the Gośvamīs set out to anchor Caitanya’s teachings to the larger Śruti and Smṛti corpus in similar sorts of ways as the Bhāgavata is legitimized. Following them in this endeavor would take us too far afield, but hopefully this brief overview of how the Bhāgavata itself has been authenticated has afforded some sense of the world of Vedānta exegesis.
Given its well-established roots on the Indian subcontinent, and its recent exportation to the West,24 we thus find in the tradition of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava Kṛṣṇa bhakti an excellent example of a “living” tradition, with its tensions and resolutions in matters of epistemological authoritativeness, its periodic revelatory “updates,” and its ongoing dialogue with its ever-evolving greater intellectual context, all of which lie at the very core of the phenomenon of religion in general, and certainly of the vibrant and variegated Hindu bhakti traditions.