Hindī literature, the works of the Bhagats, mention may be made here of a remarkable composition, a poem entitled the Padmāwat, the materials of which are derived from the heroic legends of Rajpūtānā, but which is not the work of a bard nor even of a Hindu. The author, Malik Muḥammad of Jā’is, in Oudh, was a venerated Muslim devotee, to whom the Hindu rājā of Amēṭhī was greatly attached. Malik Muḥammad wrote the Padmāwat in 1540, the year in which Shēr Shāh Sūr ousted Humāyān from the throne of Delhi. The poem is composed in the purest vernacular Awadhī, with no admixture of traditional Hindu learning, and is generally to be found written in the Persian character, though the metres and language are thoroughly Indian. It professes to tell the tale of Padmāwatī or Padminī, a princess celebrated for her beauty who was the wife of the Chauhān rājā of Chītōr in Mēwār. The historical Padminī’s husband was named Bhīm Singh, but Malik Muḥammad calls him Ratan Sēn; and the story turns upon the attempts of ʽAlā‘uddīn Khiljī, the sovereign of Delhi, to gain possession of her person. The tale of the siege of Chītōr in 1303 by ʽAlā’uddīn, the heroic stand made by its defenders, who perished to the last man in fight with the Sultan’s army, and the self-immolation of Padminī and the other women, the wives and daughters of the warriors, by the fiery death called jōhar, will be found related in Tod’s Rājāsthān, i. 262 sqq. Malik Muḥammad takes great liberties with the history, and explains at the end of the poem that all is an allegory, and that the personages represent the human soul, Divine wisdom, Satan, delusion and other mystical characters.
Both on account of its interest as a true vernacular work, and as the composition of a Musalmān who has taken the incidents of his morality from the legends of his country and not from an exotic source, the poem is memorable. It has often been lithographed, and is very popular; a translation has even been made into Sanskrit. A critical edition has been prepared by Dr G. A. Grierson and Paṇḍit Sudhākar Dwivēdi.
The other class of composition which is characteristic of the period of early Hindī, the literature of the Bhagats, or Vaishnava saints, who propagated the doctrine of bhakti, or faith in Vishnu, as the popular religion of Hindōstān, has exercised a much more powerful influence both upon the national speech and upon the themes chosen for poetic treatment. It is also, as a body of literature, of high intrinsic interest for its form and content. Nearly the whole of subsequent poetical composition in Hindī is impressed with one or other type of Vaishnava doctrine, which, like Buddhism many centuries before, was essentially a reaction against Brahmanical influence and the chains of caste, a claim for the rights of humanity in face of the monopoly which the “twice-born” asserted of learning, of worship, of righteousness. A large proportion of the writers were non-Brahmans, and many of them of the lowest castes. As Śiva was the popular deity of the Brahmans, so was Vishnu of the people; and while the literature of the Śaivas and Śāktas[1] is almost entirely in Sanskrit, and exercised little or no influence on the popular mind in northern India, that of the Vaishnavas is largely in Hindī, and in itself constitutes the great bulk of what has been written in that language.
The Vaishnava doctrine is commonly carried back to Rāmānuja, a Brahman who was born about the end of the 11th century, at Perambur in the neighbourhood of the modern Madras, and spent his life in southern India. His works, which are in Sanskrit and consist of commentaries on the Vēdānta Sūtras, are devoted to establishing “the personal existence of a Supreme Deity, possessing every gracious attribute, full of love and pity for the sinful beings who adore him, and granting the released soul a home of eternal bliss near him—a home where each soul never loses its identity, and whose state is one of perfect peace.”[2] In the Deity’s infinite love and pity he has on several occasions become incarnate for the salvation of mankind, and of these incarnations two, Rāmachandra, the prince of Ayōdhyā, and Kṛishṇa, the chief of the Yādava clan and son of Vasudēva, are pre-eminently those in which it is most fitting that he should be worshipped. Both of these incarnations had for many centuries[3] attracted popular veneration, and their histories had been celebrated by poets in epics and by weavers of religious myths in Purānas or “old stories”; but it was apparently Rāmānuja’s teaching which secured for them, and especially for Rāmachandra, their exclusive place as the objects of bhakti—ardent faith and personal devotion addressed to the Supreme. The adherents of Rāmānuja were, however, all Brahmans, and observed very strict rules in respect of food, bathing and dress; the new doctrine had not yet penetrated to the people.
Whether Rāmānuja himself gave the preference to Rāma against Krishna as the form of Vishnu most worthy of worship is uncertain. He dealt mainly with philosophic conceptions of the Divine Nature, and probably busied himself little with mythological legend. His mantra, or formula of initiation, if Wilson[4] was correctly informed, implies devotion to Rāma; but Vāsudēva (Krishna) is also mentioned as a principal object of adoration, and Rāmānuja himself dwelt for several years in Mysore, at a temple erected by the rājā, at Yādavagiri in honour of Krishna in his form Raṇchhōṛ.[5] It is stated that in his worship of Krishna he joined with that god as his Śaktī, or Energy, his wife Rukminī; while the later varieties of Krishna-worship prefer to honour his mistress Rādhā. The great difference, in temper and influence upon life, between these two forms of Vaishnava faith appears to be a development subsequent to Rāmānuja; but by the time of Jaidēo (about 1250) it is clear that the theme of Krishna and Rādhā, and the use of passionate language drawn from the relations of the sexes to express the longings of the soul for God, had become fully established; and from that time onwards the two types of Vaishnava religious emotion diverged more and more from one another.
The cult of Rāma is founded on family life, and the relation of the worshipper to the Deity is that of a child to a father. The morality it inculcates springs from the sacred sources of human piety which in all religions have wrought most in favour of pureness of life, of fraternal helpfulness and of humble devotion to a loving and tender Parent, who desires the good of mankind, His children, and hates violence and wrong. That of Krishna, on the other hand, had for its basis the legendary career of a less estimable human hero, whose exploits are marked by a kind of elvish and fantastic wantonness; it has more and more spent its energy in developing that side of devotion which is perilously near to sensual thought, and has allowed the imagination and ingenuity of poets to dwell on things unmeet for verse or even for speech. It is claimed for those who first opened this way to faith that their hearts were pure and their thoughts innocent, and that the language of erotic passion which they use as the vehicle of their religious emotion is merely mystical and allegorical. This is probable; but that these beginnings were followed by corruption in the multitude, and that the fervent impulses of adoration made way in later times for those of lust and lasciviousness, seems beyond dispute.
The worship of Krishna, especially in his infant and youthful form (which appeals chiefly to women), is widely popular in the neighbourhood of Mathurā, the capital of that land of Braj where as a boy he lived. Its literature is mainly composed in the dialect of this region, called Brajbhāshā. That of Rāma,
- ↑ Worshippers of the energic power—Śaktī—of Śiva, represented by his consort Pārvatī or Bhawāní.
- ↑ Quoted from G. A. Grierson, chapter on “Literature,” in the India Gazetteer (ed. 1907).
- ↑ The worship of Krishna is as old as Megasthenes (about 300 B.C.), who calls him Herakles, and was then, as now, located at Mathurā on the Jumna river. That of Rāma is probably still more ancient; the name occurs in stories of the Buddha.
- ↑ Religious Sects of the Hindus, p. 40.
- ↑ This name of Krishna, which means “He who quits the battle,” is connected with the story of the transfer of the Yādava clan from Mathurā to the new capital on the coast of the peninsula of Kāthiawār, the city of Dwārāka. This migration was the result of an invasion of Braj by Jarāsandha, king of Magadhā, before whom Krishna resolved to retreat. As his path southwards took him through Rajpūtānā and Gujarāt, it is in these regions that his form Raṇchhōṛ is most generally venerated as a symbol of the shifting of the centre of divine life from Gangetic to southern India.
