Why Kṛṣṇa and Śakti Have Their Own Grammars: The Case of Jīva Gosvāmin and Balarāma Pañcānana

Abstract

The central role of Sanskrit as ‘the language of the gods’ and its relationship with vernacularization in early modern South Asia has been the focal point of much prior research, but rarely was grammar as a knowledge system regarded as relevant to the history of vernacular and Sanskrit-based religious traditions of bhakti and vice versa. This dissertation attempts to fill this lacuna by analyzing two grammar-textbooks which were written for two rival Hindu religious communities during what Sheldon Pollock calls the “period of innovation” in South Asia (16th-18th cent. CE). One of them, the Harināmāmṛta (henceforth the HNV), was written by Jīva Gosvāmin in the 16th cent. CE for the vaiṣṇavas, or those who worship Viṣṇu or Kṛṣṇa as the supreme deity, and this includes Jīva’s own community of Gauḍīya vaiṣṇavas, followers of Caitanya, who consider Kṛṣṇa alone to be the Supreme Deity. Another, the Prabodhaprakāśa (henceforth the PP), was written by Balarāma Pañcānana in the 18th cent. CE for the śāktas, or those who worship the feminine divine, Śakti, as the supreme. My research brings attention to some untold histories of religious rivalry, efforts in conflict resolution, and language politics, even though language textbooks may seem to be unlikely places to look for them. The discipline of grammar and language analysis (vyākaraṇa) has long been perceived as being sealed off from socio-cultural issues and of little relevance to religious history, but the HNV and the PP reveal hitherto unnoticed dynamics of religious inclusion and exclusion that were unique to Jīva’s and Balarāma’s historical period. On the one hand, this dissertation is about these two texts and two authors, but on the other hand, it is about the intellectual history of the entire discipline of vyākaraṇa, which spans more than two thousand years, and the history of vaiṣṇavism and śāktism in the Mughal period. Using the HNV and the PP as a starting point, it explores the multiple “why’s” that led to the creation of the unique phenomenon of what scholars in the discipline began to call “sectarian grammars” since the nineteenth century. This dissertation seeks to demonstrate that it is untenable to treat the HNV and the PP as uniquely “sectarian”, for they are certainly not the first grammatical texts that are rich with religious content, conceptualize grammar as a reflection of religiously inflected reality, or that mention Kṛṣṇa and the Goddess in some way or form. By applying Stanley J. Tambiah’s concept of “participation in religious or cultural mythos” to Sanskrit knowledge systems, I argue that most Sanskrit grammatical traditions, with very rare exceptions, need to be conceptualized on a spectrum of “participation,” since they were also “religious” in various ways. This framework helps identify more accurately those aspects of theologization in Jīva’s and Balarāma’s grammars that are unique to Bengali vaiṣṇava and śākta concepts of religious devotion (bhakti). My research suggests that what is unique about the HNV is not that it mentions Kṛṣṇa in its auspicious invocations (maṅgala verses) and examples, but rather that it is repeatedly dedicated to him alone and no other deity and explicitly states that he is the source of Sanskrit phonemes and thus of the phenomenon of language. This serves as an expression of undivided or exclusive devotion (aikāntikī, ananyā or kevalā bhakti). It is also the first and the only known grammar that references itself in the colophons as a “vaiṣṇava grammar” and clearly states that its eligible audience (adhikārin) is vaiṣṇava. I discovered that, despite the fact that the PP does not explicitly specify its target audience as śākta, it does so implicitly, while also re-defining what it means to be a good vaiṣṇava in terms of a more inclusive bhakti. Among all the known grammar textbooks, it is uniquely poised as one that extols the Goddess, especially in the form of Kālī, as the primary object of devotion. Why these Sanskrit grammar textbooks, with their unique expression of religious devotion, emerged in the context of vaiṣṇava and śākta bhakti traditions precisely in the sixteenth and eighteenth centuries is a pivotal question that this dissertation tries to analyze from multiple angles. A major argument that this dissertation seeks to substantiate is that if there is a single characteristic that sets the HNV and the PP apart from all other grammars, then it is the reinvention of Kṛṣṇa’s and Devī’s names (as well as those of their respective entourage) as grammatical terms to create occasion for wordplay or bitextuality (śleṣa). Jīva and Balarāma create texts of hybrid genre that double as grammar textbooks and works on theology. One of their central purposes is to “theologize” the study and the analysis of language, which may seem to be a mundane, non-devotional activity. To this effect they seek to imbue grammar with theological content with the help of literary devices. I compare Jīva’s and Balarāma’s creation of a “hybrid” between a grammar textbook and a theological work with similar elements in the Muslim and Christian works of Abd al-Karīm al-Qushayrī (d. 1074) and Jean Gerson (d. 1429). The latter two authors similarly used wordplay, metaphor, and allegory to compare the grammar of Arabic and Latin respectively to theology, thereby creating a hybrid genre of what Dominic F. Longo calls ‘Spiritual Grammars’. I analyze how śleṣa allows these Sanskrit authors to go beyond the goals set by Qushayrī and Gerson, and how the HNV’s innovative use of śleṣa can be traced to the idea that poetic language bears elements of the divine that non-poetic language does not, fuelled by Rūpa Gosvāmin’s theologization of Sanskrit aesthetic theory (rasaśāstra). I also suggest that to continue categorizing the HNV and the PP as “sectarian grammars” means to give air to the 19th century idea that these texts and the Bengali śākta and vaiṣṇava communities they belong to should be exclusively defined in terms of mutual sectarianism. Since the term “religious grammars” is too broad, I propose a number of other terms that do not stigmatize these texts and, in my opinion, are more illuminating. Finally, I argue that Jīva and Balarāma had multiple “why’s” that motivated them to compose their grammars: they were motivated as grammarians, as theologians, as poets, and as religious leaders keen on affecting socio-political change, which includes attitudes toward caste norms, language politics, and patronage. My fieldwork, which involved tracing the manuscripts of these texts as well as interviewing Balarāma’s descendants and current teachers and students of the HNV, reveals that these texts had a greater historical impact that assumed before, and that the relative success of the HNV’s textual tradition is directly related to a wave of interest in vaiṣṇava grammars in several early modern polities. In general terms, I follow Tony Stewart in saying that each of these texts is intended by the authors to function simultaneously as (1) a “description of grammar” in the traditional sense, (2) a “proposition about language and ontology,” and (3) an experiential “proof” of the validity of the theological claims, with the added bonus of functioning as a “sanctioned ritual activity.” To the benefit of linguists and those who study the history of Sanskrit grammar, these texts open a window into unique and local registers of Sanskrit. To theologians, they reveal how these authors universalized their respective theological systems to demonstrate how Sanskrit grammar as testimony (śabda) functions as theology’s mirror, presenting a grammatical system (function 1) as theology accommodated by and regulating the inner workings of language (functions 2-3). My hope is that the research presented in this dissertation will contribute also more widely to the fields of history and religious studies by showing that the fact of a religious tradition aligning itself with a particular grammatical tradition or creating one is far from historically insignificant. As the dissertation sequentially analyzes historical, theological, poetic, and ritual aspects in Jīva’s and Balarāma’s textbooks, as well as their purely grammatical aspirations, it ultimately tries to shed light on what is at the very core of the HNV’s and the PP’s projects: the intersection of grammar and religion.