SOCIAL LIVES OF RELIGIOUS SYMBOLS:

AN EVOLUTIONARY APPROACH TO EXPLAINING RELIGIOUS CHANGE

Richa Pauranik Clements

Submitted to the faculty of the University Graduate School

in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree
Doctor of Philosophy
in the Department of Religious Studies
Indiana University
May 2010
 UMI Number: 3409888

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Accepted by the Graduate Faculty, Indiana University, in partial fulfillment of the
requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy.

Doctoral Committee
______________________________

David L. Haberman, Ph.D.

______________________________

Gerald J. Larson, Ph.D.

______________________________

David Brakke, Ph.D.

______________________________

Richard Nance, Ph.D.

May 20, 2010

ii
 © 2010

Richa Pauranik Clements

ALL RIGHTS RESERVED

iii
Acknowledgments

This project began unexpectedly several years ago when I first laid eyes on a

Brajbhasha poem of eight lines (Appendix A). There is no other way to say it: the

poem captured my heart. And an idea was born. Much like the subject of this

dissertation, this idea evolved over time in a new direction when I learned about

a fresh way of understanding and explaining conceptual change. Clancy, my

husband, introduced me first to Bill Croft’s theory. I do not yet know whether Croft

will recognize his theory of language change in my adaptation, but I hope he will

still appreciate a good story. Krishna’s story is captivating, but my efforts to tell it

anew would not have succeeded without the help of the following individuals and

institutions. My profound thanks are due to my teachers, David Haberman, David

Brakke, Gerald Larson, and Richard Nance, for their unfailing support,

encouragement, and patience. At various turns in this long journey I also

benefitted from the advice of Shandip Saha, Rupert Snell, Pratapaditya Pal, Jan

Nattier, Rebecca Mannring, Henry Glassie, and Robert Campany. I am deeply

grateful to Mr. and Mrs. Kapoor, Dr. and Mrs. Seitz, Dr. and Mrs. Sidhu, and the

Norton Simon Museum, Pasadena, CA, for kindly permitting me to include a few

images of Krishna in this dissertation. To put it simply, they allowed me to show

what I was talking about.

iv
 I also wish to thank Indiana University’s College of Arts and Sciences and

the University Graduate School for granting me the Greenberg Albee Fellowship

and COAS Dissertation Year Research Fellowship for fall 2005 and spring 2006.

Prior to that, Indiana University’s Office of International Programs and Research

and the University Graduate School funded me with a Pre-Dissertation Travel

Grant in the summer of 2000. This was the cherry on top of the cake that was the

years of teaching assistantships, travel grants, and the limitless help at Indiana

University’s libraries without which I would have been lost.

But what sustained me most were my husband’s love and my parents’

faith in my ability to finish this project. I have no words to express the depth of my

gratitude to them. Instead, I offer them this dissertation.

v
 Richa Pauranik Clements

Social Lives of Religious Symbols:

An Evolutionary Approach to Explaining Religious Change

In post-colonial historiography, earlier representations of Hinduism by British colonial

and scholarly authorities, by Christian missionaries, and by the Hindu intelligentsia of the

day are given unique significance. In order to test the validity of the notion that the

colonial-era representations of Hindu gods and Hindu practices constituted a singularly

ideologically-driven reformation, this dissertation examines the changing representations

of one god, Krishna, in religious, poetic, and visual texts of ancient and medieval India.

Borrowing a new theoretical framework from the philosophy of science and linguistics, it

analyzes the conceptual evolution of Krishna captured in these texts. It presents strong

evidence suggesting that religious change in Hinduism has consistently been driven by

the activities of bilingual practitioners, that the contours of change conform to dominant

conceptual categories prevailing at any given time across different communities, that the

processes of innovation and propagation involve foregrounding of certain aspects over

others due to cognitive and social factors, and, finally, that these processes of change

and ‘reform’ unfold along similar paths regardless of the time period.

_______________________________

_______________________________

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vi
CONTENTS

Acknowledgements iv

Abstract vi

Explanatory notes x

1. Introduction 1

1.1 The context of this study 2

1.1.1 Krishna and western scholarship on Hinduism 9

1.1.2 Inadequate explanations of religious change 14

1.1.3 Evolutionary biology, linguistics, and the study of religion 25

1.2 Hull’s generalized theory of selection 34

1.3 The generalized theory of selection applied to the evolution of 37

science, language, and religion

1.3.1 Replicator 37

1.3.2 Interactor / vehicle 43

1.3.3 Selection 48

1.3.3.1 Communication, community, and change 48

1.3.3.2 Mechanisms for altered replication / innovation 57

1.3.3.3 Mechanisms for differential replication / propagation 62

1.3.4 Summary and implications 69

vii
2. The evolution of Krishna of the Mahābhārata and the Bhagavad Gītā 72

2.1 Social environment, conceptual/social identification, Sanskritization 75

2.2 Bilingual Brahmins 80

2.3 Pre-Vedic multilingual environment and the birth of Purusha 86

2.4 Vedic multilingualism – setting the stage for Krishna’s appearance 93

2.4.1 Society and religion in the early Vedic period 95

2.4.2 Society and religion in the Kuru state 102

2.4.3 Society and religion in eastern India in the late Vedic period 105

2.5 Vishnu, Narayana, and Krishna before the Mahābhārata 113

2.6 Krishna of the Mahābhārata and the Bhagavad Gītā 125

2.7 Summary 137

3. The evolution of Krishna of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa and Vraj 143

3.1 On the threshold of social-religious change 147

3.1.1 The birth of Gopala-Krishna 147

3.2 Society and religion in the first millennium CE North and South India 152

3.2.1 Bilingual Brahmins 153

3.2.2 Language & literature, court & temple, politics & devotion 159

3.3 Krishna / Vishnu and Māyōṉ / Tirumāl before theBhāgavata Purāṇa 188

3.4 Krishna of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa and Vraj 209

3.5 Summary 225

viii
4. Enduring images of Krishna in love and war 230

4.1 Krishna in Brajbhasha poems and Rajput paintings 231

4.2 Krishna in nationalist discourse under the colonial rule 255

4.3 Concluding thoughts on cognition, choice, communication 264

Appendix A 270

Appendix B 271

Appendix C 272

Abbreviations 273

References 274

ix
Explanatory notes

1. Parenthetical citations are in the Chicago Manual’s author-date system as

modified in the Linguistic Society of America style (thus, no space after the colon

within the citation).

2. Unless stated otherwise, italicized words within direct quotations have original

emphasis. This is the default.

3. Titles of classical texts are italicized by some authors and not by others. The

variation of the practice within direct quotation reflects the original author’s

choice. Ditto with the original author’s choice regarding diacritics.

In direct quotations, I make no changes in terms of upper-case or lower-case

letters at the beginning of the incorporated quotation in my writing. The quotation

reflects the original material entirely.

4. When citing an author’s single work over many paragraphs, I give the work’s

date at the beginning of each paragraph followed by only page numbers within

that paragraph.

6. I use the standard diacritics for Sanskrit words, and follow the practice of

Hardy (1983) for Tamil words.

7. All translations from Sanskrit, Brajbhasha, and Hindi are mine, unless

otherwise stated.

x
The religious concepts we observe are relatively successful ones selected
among many other variants. Anthropologists explain the origins of many
cultural phenomena, including religion, not by going from the One to the
Many but by going from the Very Many to the Many Fewer, the many
variants that our minds constantly produce and the many fewer variants
that can be actually transmitted to other people and become stable in a
human group. To explain religion we must explain how human minds,
constantly faced with lots of potential “religious stuff,” constantly reduce it
to much less stuff.

Concepts in the mind are constructed as a result of being exposed to

other people’s behavior and utterances. But this acquisition process is not
a simple process of “downloading” notions from one brain to another.
People’s minds are constantly busy reconstructing, distorting, changing
and developing the information communicated by others. This process
naturally creates all sorts of variants of religious concepts, as it creates
variants of all other concepts. But then not all of these variants have the
same fate. Most of them are not entertained by the mind for more than an
instant. A small number have more staying power but are not easily
formulated or communicated to others. An even smaller number of
variants remain in memory, are communicated to other people, but then
these people do not recall them very well. An extremely small number
remain in memory, are communicated to other people, are recalled by
these people and communicated to others in a way that more or less
preserves the original concepts. These are the ones we can observe in
human cultures.

Pascal Boyer in Religion Explained:

The Evolutionary Origins of Religious
Thought (2001:32-33)

1
1. Introduction

In the historiography of Hinduism, there is a debate between some scholars who

view Hinduism — as a cohesive world religion whose practitioners share a pan-

Indian Hindu identity — to be a British construction and others who argue that it

“grow’d” over centuries of rivalry with Islam prior to the coming of the British

(Lorenzen 1999), and further evolved during the colonial period with the active

and creative engagement of Hindus with Orientalists and Christian missionaries

(Pennington 2005). Both groups of scholars focus their attention on

developments in the representations of Hinduism and Hindus in the context of

their interactions with the non-Hindu Others, Muslim or Christian. These

developments — such as the articulation of a shared religious identity, an

emphasis on atheism or selective monotheism — could be termed contact-

induced changes in the Hindu world.

1.1 The context of this study

I build upon but depart from the above studies, and situate the contact-induced

changes in Hinduism within a broader framework which encompasses not only

such externally-motivated changes but also internally-motivated changes that

occur due to changing interpretations of a religious form, or violation of a

religious norm, or introduction of a new element from a sub-group, because

2
practitioners of a religion belong to multiple communities within society. My

hypothesis is that the mechanisms of contact-induced religious change are

similar to mechanisms of religion-internal change. Apart from similarities in the

internal and external mechanisms for change, there is also continuity and

connectivity of certain ideas and practices in a tradition even as it changes.

In this light I argue against viewing colonialism as a cataclysmic event that

caused a decisive rupture in the Hindu traditions, 1 by extending the horizons of

inquiry to internal debates and shifts in emphasis in certain historical

circumstances between atheistic or theistic, ascetic or erotic strands within

Hinduism that get reflected and accentuated in Hindu self-representations (i.e.

the representation of Hinduism by the Hindus) to the Other. I also argue for

viewing a certain tendency toward homogenization or generalization in such

Hindu self-representations as a natural development which occurs in direct

proportion to growing interactions between Hindus and non-Hindus.

This homogenizing tendency is an example of socio-cultural evolution that

unfolds through a process of ‘rational selection’: people make certain choices in

their acts of representation in their discursive environment. 2 These choices have

1 Cf. Pennington (2005:170), who finds merit in the constructionist proposition that “colonial
modernity decisively altered the character and evolutionary course of Hindu religion,” even
though elsewhere he points out that “the historical question of continuity vs. rupture in the
evolution of Hindu thought is quite complex” (11).
2 Rescher (1977:133) contrasts ‘natural’ selection process in biological evolution and ‘rational’

selection in conceptual evolution in this way:

3
either a communication or a prestige value, or both. By communication value, I

mean the choice of a conceptual category — that enables cognitive processing to

be efficient (the principle of cognitive economy) — available to both interlocutors

in interaction, thus establishing a common communicative ground. 3 Some

choices allow their (re)presenters to make claims about the worth of their own

beliefs and practices; these choices have certain prestige value. When a

concept is more and more frequently repeated in discourse, it becomes

entrenched in people’s minds and becomes part of the tradition. 4

Rational selection is a process of fundamentally the same sort as natural selection —

both are simply devices for elimination from transmission. But their actual workings
differ, since elimination by rational selection is not telically blind and bio-physical, but
rather preferential/teleological and overtly rational.
However, a case can be made that intentional behavior need not be teleological (Croft 2000:64-
65). In any case, the idea of ‘rational selection’ forms part of a generalized theory of selection
that subsumes conceptual evolution in science, social science, or, as I am using it, in a religious
tradition. It is a process of selection from among conceptual variants. It should not be confused
with Rodney Stark’s rational choice theory of religion which views religious activity in terms of an
economic exchange between humans and gods involving a cost-benefit analysis by humans.
3 Cf. Leopold and Jensen’s (2005:383) comment that “the syncretistic function of selectivity

operates as a function of the cognitive optimum effect so that straightforward associations may
take the place of more unintelligible or unidentifiable religious forms.” Thus, selectivity functions
at both ends of a communication process. As Boyer (2001:42) points out, people’s minds are
disposed to arrange conceptual material a certain ways rather than others.
4 The cognitive structure in a practitioner’s mind, which contains his belief system, shapes his

production and understanding of religious forms. Exposure to the concepts more frequently
repeated over others in discourse would impact the formation of individual’s belief system or
cognitive structure. The more frequent a concept appears in discourse, the more recognizable it
is and the easier it is to process cognitively. Clements (2009:3-4) notes the crucial role of
frequency in the formation of structure with an acknowledgment that
frequency would not be as important as it is if the human mind did not function as it does.
Among myriad other complex things, the human mind functions as a highly sophisticated
pattern recognizer. Assuming that, in dealing with linguistic and other input, our minds
work to create processing short cuts, these can be regarded in language learning as
pattern generalizations over linguistic elements, extracted out of the input received by
speakers in discourse. If the nature of input changes, so too may the frequency of use of
a given item and, in turn, the corresponding patterns.
4
 For instance, when representing Hinduism to the Other, the choice

whether to emphasize its atheistic or theistic, monotheistic or polytheistic aspect

in a discursive situation depends upon the available conceptual categories that

would make communication possible. The choice may also depend upon the

relative position of power of the Other, whether the (re)presenter wishes to be

perceived a certain way: an equal or better. If the conceptual category of

monotheism is present in the Other’s belief system (while the category of

polytheism is not), the rational choice, for either communicative or prestige

reasons, or both, would be for the (re)presenter to emphasize the monotheistic

aspect of Hinduism. The more frequent such discursive situations occur and the

more frequent this choice is made, the more likely it would be for Hinduism to be

represented as monotheistic religion, resulting in the entrenchment of the notion

‘Hinduism is monotheistic’. This may in time lead to other aspects of Hinduism

receding into the background or going dormant only to be revived in newer

discursive contexts.

The above example of an evolving mode of representation of the abstract

category of ‘Hinduism’ can function as a frame of reference and a point of

departure for the following propositions:

5
1. Religion is fundamentally a social interactional phenomenon: a religion’s

constitutive elements develop through its practice by its adherents in social

discourse situations. 5

2. Keeping in mind that (i) representation of knowledge and communication of

represented knowledge are two mega functions of language (Givón 1998:41);

(ii) language, like religion, is also fundamentally a social interactional

phenomenon (Croft 2000:87); and (iii) language change is an evolutionary

process involving the mechanism of selection (Croft 30, 229); an evolutionary

5 The belief that religion is a socio-cultural phenomenon is reflected in its anthropological

definition by Spiro (1966:96) that it is “an institution consisting of culturally patterned interaction
with culturally postulated superhuman beings.” And if culture denotes “a historically transmitted
pattern of meanings embodied in symbols . . . by means of which men communicate, perpetuate,
and develop their knowledge about and attitudes toward life” (Geertz 1966:3), religion is also a
historical and interactional phenomenon.
Cf. Taylor’s (1998:6) report that “Recent investigators working in a variety of fields have
argued that religion is a historical phenomenon that emerges only in particular intellectual and
cultural circumstances. Far from existing prior to and independent of any inquiry, the very
phenomenon of religion is constituted by local discursive practices.” Discourse or communication
is specific to time and place, and therefore, makes any religious practice contextual,
spatiotemporally defined, empirical, historical.
Religious practice is a two-directional discursive practice: one involves spiritual goals
and communicating with God (thus, spiritual practice); the other involves social goals and
communicating with other members of one’s society (social-interactional religious practice). I am
researching the latter. It is in the social world that ‘religion’, as a body of knowledge and practice,
evolves.
By practice of religion I mean any activity that references religion, including but not
restricted to ritual performance, ideological construction of religious identity, representation of
religious concepts in either religious or secular contexts, etc. Within the various religious
practices, as I gloss the term, I am studying the practice of ‘re-presentation’ of religious symbols
or concepts.
Representation is a communicative act. Therefore, the theoretical framework of
evolutionary linguistics that explains language change through language use proves to be highly
productive for the study of religious change through religious practice of representation.
6
 theory of language change provides a useful framework for explaining

religious change.

3. Religious concepts are elements of the substantive content of a religion, like

ideas of god, devotion, goals of life, the human condition, ethical principles of

right and wrong, and so on. These concepts are articulated in communicative

interaction in the form of professed beliefs, rituals, representations, stories (in

prose or verse), painted images, dramatic characters, etc. Unless concepts

are produced in these discourse forms, they cannot be re-produced. It is

through interaction that religious forms change (mutate/recombine), replicate,

and disseminate. The physical vehicles of transmission of these forms are

books, paintings, films, and, of course, human brains.

4. Religion is a dynamic system, and its practitioners change its constitution

through twin processes of innovation and propagation/transmission.

5. Mechanisms of change are unintentional or intentional (though not necessarily

teleological), and are both functional and social.

6. Change is not random; change is directional.

7. Changes in representations can be explained within the framework of a theory

of selection.

I test these propositions in this dissertation by examining changing

representations of the concept of a savior god, namely, Krishna. The concept of

7
Krishna is expressed in the form of stories, painted images, and dramatic

characters in different time periods. 6 I trace Krishna’s career in certain scriptural,

poetic, and pictorial texts of north-west India, and explain the changes in his story

through a framework built upon William Croft’s (2000) evolutionary theory of

language change and David Hull’s (1988) general theory of selection which

subsumes both biological and conceptual evolution. 7 The issues I explore are of

changing conceptualizations and representations of Krishna in a changing

discourse environment.

Krishna’s conceptual history functions as a synecdoche for developments

within Hinduism propelled by tensions between the practitioners of world-

affirming Vedantic theistic traditions, such as Vaishnavism, and the professors of

world-negating Vedantic atheistic traditions, such as Advaita Vedanta. These

two modalities of religious practice and relating to the world have coexisted in

Hinduism since Vedic times, though discursive emphasis on one over the other

has occurred in different periods, as evident, for instance, in the changing

conceptualization of Krishna. I investigate the vicissitudes of Krishna’s image —

from a heroic warrior god to a brahmanical god (c. 300 BCE–300 CE) to a

paradigmatic lover (c. 800-1000 CE), to a loving god (c. 1500-1700 CE), to a

6 Cf. Dawkins (1989 [1976]:192-193): “Consider the idea of God. . . . How does it replicate itself?

By the spoken and written word, aided by great music and great art.”
7 Croft is a professor of linguistics, and Hull a historian and philosopher of science, especially

evolutionary biology. Both are eminent scholars in their respective fields.

8
depraved god (c. CE 1700s-1800s), and to a loving but secondary god (c. 1900-

1995) — in order to account for certain continuities and changes in the history of

Hinduism. 8 The fluctuations in Krishna’s fortunes according to changing social

mores were reflected not only in his own religious traditions but also in the

western scholarly traditions devoted to them.

1.1.1 Krishna and western scholarship on Hinduism

Scholars of Hinduism have long framed their queries into its history in

structuralist binaries, such as emotion vs. reason, devotion vs. knowledge,

theism vs. atheism, eroticism vs. asceticism, which are all abstract categories.

Such scholarship often results in construction of religion as an abstract system,

removed from its historical contexts, and not as a dynamic phenomenon evolving

through actions of its practitioners. 9

8 ‘Krishna is ‘secondary’ only in relation to the primacy of the other Vaishnava god, Rama, in

certain contexts. Cf. the Brockingtons’ (2006:xi, 363-364) view of the changing conception of
Rama in different times and different milieux with different values such that Rama went from
being a martial hero to a moral hero, then a regal but still human figure, then an avatāra
(‘descent’, earthly manifestation) of the god Vishnu, and finally a God in his own right.
9 See, for instance, Doniger O’Flaherty’s (1973), Asceticism and Eroticism in the Mythology of

Śiva. Though she continues to organize some of her scholarship in terms of dualities, like
sexuality and renunciation, violence and tolerance, etc., (2009:9, 11), she now situates these
tensions in their historical circumstances and not simply mythology.
Structuralist binaries came into religious studies from structuralist linguistics via
anthropology. Croft (2000:26) views the structuralist notion of language as a system of
contrasting signs as “the embodiment of essentialist thinking.” Instead of seeing language or
religion as constituted of abstract entities, they should be seen as made up of real, empirical
entities — linguistic utterances, or religious forms, such as scriptures, stories of gods, painted
images — actually produced by speakers or practitioners in discourse.
9
 Modern, post-colonial scholars of Hindu traditions perceive, describe, and

often project the prominence of one trait over another, as did earlier colonial and

other Orientalists. Western scholars engaging in studies of religious traditions in

ex-colonial societies harshly critique earlier projections by colonial and other

Orientalist scholars — say, their valuing of reason over emotion and knowledge

over devotion as reflected in the Orientalist criticism of Krishna bhakti sects and

their practices — but fail to articulate their own historical impulse behind their

research projects and preferences. 10 A mood of Enlightenment idealism led

many British Orientalist scholars to value the former of the two sets of categories,

while counter-cultural drives of much of American scholarship on theistic

Hinduism direct them to champion the latter. 11 Ironically, in attempting to counter

Haberman maintains that the distinguishing feature of Hindu religious life is that it always
seems to operate between two irreconcilable opposites only to arrive at a third possibility, which
seems an inconceivable paradox. This negotiation between any pair of opposites imparts a
dynamic quality to Hinduism. For example, Haberman (1994b:26-29) describes how the “dualistic
distinctions” between worldly happiness and unhappiness are resolved in “pointless ‘enjoyment’”
(ānanda) which transcends them both; and how the tension between asceticism and sexual
desire is mediated in the desirous yearning for god who forever remains elusive.
10 See, for instance, Halbfass (1988) for an exposition of the relationship between Indology and

the historical currents in Europe in the Age of Enlightenment and, following that, of Romanticism.
Haberman (1999, 1994a, 1993) provides three such hard-hitting critiques of Orientalists and their
impact on Hindus, especially those engaging in bhakti (loving devotion) toward Krishna.
11 King (1999:95) considers a certain inevitability of Orientalism and reminds us of Gadamer’s

argument that “understanding something implicitly involves the prejudices of one’s own ‘historical
situatedness’; one simply cannot avoid having an agenda or a perspective upon things by virtue
of one’s cultural and historical particularity.”
Cf. the views of Edwards (2000), a historian of Islamic art and the curator of the exhibition
‘Noble Dreams Wicked Pleasures: Orientalism in America, 1870-1930’. (All references in this
paragraph are from Edwards 2000.) The history of American Orientalism pertaining to the
Mediterranean region and this period as detailed by Edwards has resonances for American
representations of India and its cultures, peoples, and religions. According to her (12), American
10
the earlier Orientalist scholarship, the current scholarship often replicates it — in

reverse — and, therefore, the picture of Hinduism remains largely

monochromatic. 12 It is worth taking note of the point made by Bose and Jalal

(2000:9) that, following the appearance of Edward Said’s Orientalism in 1978,

a good segment of cultural anthropology reinvented itself in the 1980s as

a new historical anthropology with the professed intention of exposing the
nexus between culture and power. Yet misinterpreting Said’s attack on
spurious comparative method which enabled the occident to brand the

Orientalism at the beginning of this period was “resonant with but quite different from” that of its
imperialist counterparts in Europe, such as French, because of America’s own status as a former
colony, its “sober” Protestant legacy, and its recently fought civil war over institutionalized slavery.
However, she (viii) writes, “What was true in 1870 had evolved somewhat by 1890 and changed
radically by 1925. Furthermore, I became convinced that Orientalism is best considered a
symptom, a representation, or a therapeutic response to changing circumstances rather than a
static intellectual stance or a monolithic phenomenon.” Within these six decades, American
Orientalism evolved through three stages, “subject to domestic needs and social pressures” (16).
In 1870s and 80s Americans viewed paintings of picturesque Orient, which served a retrospective
purpose, as a wistful look back at simpler life before the rapid industrialization and urbanization of
the late Victorian period. American Orientalism at this time served as “a foil for ‘progress’” (27-
28). Then came the Chicago World’s Fair of 1893 and the Orient was brought home at the
Midway Plaisance in the form of belly dancers, Bedouins, camels, and donkeys. “This was the
point where the erotic and the exotic merged” (37). The belly dance or the ‘hoochy-coochy’, for
instance, “opened up certain areas of the public arena for American women and literalized the
fantasies of American men…. Thus the Orient was irrevocably and explicitly sexualized in the
public eye” (39-40). Thereafter, in the early decades of the twentieth century, American society
went from being “agrarian, republican, and religious” to “secular and market-driven,” in which
Victorian standards of propriety gave way to focus on the body, and “the quest for pleasure,
security, and material well-being” (40). The Orient was “reimagined around sex” and offered to
the public through mass-produced goods, lithograph prints, and movies (17). The counter-
cultural movement in the 1960s, though ostensibly anti-materialistic and attracted to eastern
religions, took another step in the same direction. American scholars of Hinduism influenced by
their historical moment, just as their British predecessors were during the colonial times, were
either attracted to or repelled by certain aspects of Hinduism which spoke to their psychological-
cognitive drives.
12 Cf. Fox in ‘East of Said’ (1992:144-45), who criticizes Inden for attacking all South Asian

scholarship as Orientalist and for exhibiting in his anti-Orientalism the very same Orientalist
stereotyping. Fox’s positing of ‘affirmative Orientalism’ by certain western apologists is in turn
critiqued by King (1999:231, n.51), who points out that “this may reflect a lack of appreciation on
Fox’s part of the extent to which even ‘affirmative Orientalism’ contributes to European hegemony
over the East.”
11
 orient as the realm of the irrational, the unscientific and the inferior, these
historical anthropologists and anthropological historians ended up
committing two grave fallacies. First, they failed to notice the dissonance
and polyvalence within colonial discourse as it developed over time, and
they imbued it with an ahistorical, monolithic quality. Second, they drew a
sharp dichotomy based on a championing of otherness that posed the
innocence of local culture against the cunning of universal reason. This
also led to a privileging of particular kinds of textualized and oral sources
of indigenous knowledge and the abandonment towards them of a critical
stance which seemed reserved only for the colonial archives, even as the
latter continued to be used as the main repository of the former.

These tendencies are specially pronounced in scholarship on Krishnaite

traditions.

Explaining the extraordinary focus on Krishnaite traditions and remarking

on the classicist bias of many British Orientalists which privileged Sanskrit

language texts over vernacular works, Lutgendorf (1991:30), a scholar of Rama

bhakti, writes:

By the middle of the twentieth century, however, anthropologists and

historians of religion began to take a closer and less biased look at the
vernacular devotional literature figuring so prominently in contemporary
religious practice. The majority of studies that have emerged from this
new perspective have focused on the cult of Krishna and its relevant texts,
a preference that may in part reflect a reaction to the prejudices of earlier
scholars who had condemned the erotic scenarios of the Krishna legend.

Such condemnation stemmed from the prevailing Victorian sensibilities of the

nineteenth-century Britain, while the celebration of all that was censored earlier

comes out of the Anglo-American counter-cultural revolution of the 1960s and

12
70s, whose effects live on in contemporary scholarship on Hinduism. 13 By virtue

of certain academic lineages in American universities, there is ever more

research on Krishnaite traditions by the next generation of scholars. 14

I am a part of one such lineage, and to that extent the subject matter of

this dissertation retains a focus on Krishna. However, I depart in other ways by

offering a fresh perspective on Krishna’s legend through an evolutionary account

of conceptual change, and by extending the range of inquiry from scriptural texts

to art forms like poems and paintings. In so doing, I show the emergence of

Krishna’s conceptual lineage within Hinduism. Situated in the post-postcolonial

moment in history, and thus in search for ways to explain religious change

outside of the colonial-Orientalist / postcolonialist scholarship paradigm, I (i) draw

on theories from the disciplines of philosophy of science and linguistics,

especially evolutionary linguistics and sociolinguistics, and (ii) identify

mechanisms for religious change that have been neglected in contemporary

scholarship on Hinduism. Ascertaining that mechanisms that cause religion-

internal changes in the absence of a non-Hindu Other are similar to those that

13See, for example, Kripal’s analysis in Roads of excess, palaces of wisdom: Eroticism and
reflexivity in the study of mysticism (2001) of the antinomian roots of Agehanand Bharti’s writings
on Indo-Tibetan Tantric traditions. Kripal sees a similar countercultural impulse and a focus on
sexuality in scholarship on mainstream Hinduism as well (personal communication March 2006).
14 Haberman (personal communication March 2006) uses the word ‘paramparā’ to describe the

transmission of knowledge and interest in specific areas of Hindu Studies (for example, Gaudiya
Vaishnavism, Pushti Marga, Shrivaishnavism, etc.) from one generation of scholars to the next.
Cf. Hull’s (1988:410) view that genes or concepts form lineages as do organisms. Both biological
and conceptual lineages are historical entities.
13
cause changes during interactions with Others is a step toward a new theoretical

model not dominated by theories of Foucault, Derrida, or Said. What emerges in

this study is that change in certain conceptualizations sometimes merely

represents a shift in emphasis, a recombination of elements in changing socio-

historical environment, and that colonialism may be seen as simply one new

circumstance in a continuous series of circumstances going back to Vedic times.

Having articulated this dissertation’s place within the broader scholarship

on Hinduism, it is important to determine its relation to earlier scholarship on

religious change and earlier instances of use of evolutionary theory or linguists in

explaining religious phenomena.

1.1.2 Inadequate explanations of religious change

The following is a brief look at two representative volumes which explicitly deal

with the topic of religious change in order to illustrate how change is theorized (or

not) in the field of religious studies, and how its understanding can be improved

by the model proposed in this dissertation.

The most recent work on the subject of religious change in south Asia is

the edited volume Patronage and popularisation, pilgrimage and process:

Channels of transcultural translation and transmission in early modern South

Asia. It has thirteen contributions which variously investigate the point at which

14
innovations occur in different traditions, the agents involved in transmission and

change, and the audiences and patrons of these processes (Pauwels 2009a:1).

The overall conclusion, as articulated by the volume editor (Pauwels 2009a:6), is

that

Through an impressive creative process, religion is constantly reinvented,

identities are redefined, traditions are invoked and suppressed in the
same breath. This is not just the case under the influence of colonialism
and within the purview of modernity — although it may be easier to
document change for that period — but careful study of more ancient texts
(chapters 3 and 5) shows similar processes at work in earlier periods.
Finally, this is still ongoing today (chapters 8 and 9).

The volume is impressive in its scope in terms of the range of texts, practices,

time periods, and traditions covered. What is missing, however, is a theoretical

framework that might explain the broader significance of the various cases of

change or their relationship to each other when they may be viewed as different

instantiations of a general evolutionary process. The first two contributions to the

volume exemplify this point: the first is by Monika Horstmann, in whose honor it is

published, and the second is by the volume editor, Heidi Pauwels.

Horstmann (2009) examines the eighteenth-century adaptation by an

Indian of Al-Ghazālī’s Persian Sufi text Kimiyā-i Sa‘ādat (The Elixir of Happiness)

to Indic religious concepts and language, especially of advaita (non-dualistic)

Vedanta. According to Horstmann, this adaptation was “a cultural translation”

(15) in which, for instance, the original Sufi text’s contention that “the process of

15
realization of the essential properties of the heart represents a holy war (jihād)”

was rendered as “the firm and systematic pursuit of the puruṣārthas [goals of

life]” (18). Also, in Horstmann’s (17) words, “God’s beauty, which figures so

prominently in Islamic mysticism, is not a concept especially emphasised by [the

translator].”

Horstmann’s study presents a perfect example of achieving cognitive

economy through rational selection of particular concepts and terms by a

translator whose goal is to re-present a work of Islamic Sufi tradition to an

audience with an Indic cultural background in such a way as “to avoid confusing

and estranging the listener by alien concepts” (Horstmann 2009:16). The

translator’s representation is also mediated by his own advaitic belief system.

This process of selection — which results in innovation and propagation of

certain concepts — if articulated as such, would contribute toward building a

theoretical framework for explaining religious change.

The lack of a broader theoretical understanding of common processes of

innovation and propagation in religious traditions is even more apparent in

Pauwels’ (2009b) contribution. Pauwels compares two poetic compositions: one

written in Brajbhasha by Raskhān (a Muslim convert to Krishna bhakti), and the

other written by Nāgarīdās (a Krishna devotee Hindu king) in classical Urdu

associated with Islamic heritage. After a detailed comparison, Pauwels

16
concludes that “it is obvious that Nāgarīdās, the Hindu Braj poet, outdoes the

alleged Muslim convert [Raskhān] in using Arabo-Persian register and imagery”

(32) and brings his concept of love closer to Perso-Arab view than does Raskhān

(35). In contrast with their respective existential situations, Nāgarīdās, who was

happy in love, presented a more pessimistic view, and Raskhān, unhappy in

love, a more celebratory view of love. Pauwels speculates that Raskhān’s

representation of love is guided by his sectarian affiliation, “typical for the

neophyte, who needs to assert the orthodoxy of his faith,” which for Raskhān was

the “faith of love” toward Krishna (35). She suggests (36) that Raskhān’s

conceptualization of love was a deliberate selection from the other competing

views of love that he must have been familiar with before his conversion. She

also notes that Nāgarīdās remained a Hindu though belonging to two worlds by

virtue of being a vassal of the Mughals, but she goes no further with the possible

implications of his familiarity with two different religious and political communities.

Pauwels (2009b) fails to explain the possible reasons behind Nāgarīdās’s

decision to use classical Urdu or to conceptualize love a certain way. Yes, he

may have been inspired by the poetry popular in the court circles at the time (23-

24, 36), but who constituted his own target audience? Was his poetry ever

performed at the Mughal court, “which he frequently attended” (36)? Was the

purpose of his other Urdu poetry in praise of Krishna in order to bring Krishna to

17
his Muslim audiences, or in order to bring Urdu’s Perso-Arabic register to his

fellow Hindu devotees of Krishna? Pauwels does not raise this question. She

wants to discover the channels of transmission that familiarized Nāgarīdās with

classical Urdu poetry. More interesting question would be, given his dual

citizenship in a Hindu kingdom and the Mughal court, whether he saw any

communicative and/or prestige value in employing classical Urdu register and

Perso-Arab concept of love? Did the transmission of the Urdu register and

Perso-Arab concept of love into Braj traditions by Nāgarīdās have any immediate

or lasting impact? 15 It might be more useful to inquire into the channels of

transmission opened by his Urdu poetry.

Pauwels (2009a:2) believes that her close comparison of the two texts

allows one to determine “precisely the nature of innovations brought in by

Nāgarīdās, including the changes in the concept of love.” An innovation’s

significance must be assessed relative to its propagation, and Pauwels does not

account for the motivations behind Nāgarīdās’s selection of Urdu register or the

consequences of his choice for the Braj religious traditions and Urdu poetry. Her

findings do not advance our understanding of the mechanisms of change, and

15Pauwels (2009b:34) admits that “it has not yet been studied how the new Rekhtā [i.e. classical
Urdu] poetry made its influence felt in the Krishna devotional Braj poetry of the time.” Her present
contribution does not shed any light on the matter either.
18
thus do not contribute toward building a general analytical framework that would

allow probabilistic explanations of change.

The book Innovation in religious traditions: Essays in the interpretation of

religious change (Williams, Cox, and Jaffee 1992), also an edited volume,

contains a better overview of the phenomenon under investigation, especially in

the introduction and the afterword. 16 These authors define innovation as

“significant change” from a certain perspective in a particular context (3).

Addressing the issue of innovation’s motivations, they critique the overuse of its

most common explanation: individual or social crisis. While accepting its

legitimacy as one possible precipitator of innovation, they cite Byron Earhart’s

argument that it is only one among three major factors, which are “social

environment, the influence of the prior history of development within the history of

the religious tradition, and the personal contribution of individual innovators or

founders” (in Williams et al 1992:9).

Williams et al (1992) regard the role of individuals with creative

religious genius as one of the more important factors in “creating and

communicating new religious symbols, ideas or forms” (9). Yet, on

16 Williams et al (1992) say that for them ‘change’ is too broad a term that includes “an infinite
host of minute alterations or fluctuations in religious perceptions that are inevitable not only from
generation to generation, but from individual to individual, or even from instant to instant within
the same individual” (1). They do not make a distinction between a process of inherent change
and an evolutionary process involving replication of an entity with its attendant consequences of
altered replication and differential replication, that is, of innovation and propagation. My
theoretical model, following Croft (2000), offers this perspective.
19
balance, the explanation they most favor for religious innovation is that it is

“something ‘natural’ to religious tradition, as a modality of religious

tradition itself” (10-11). This perspective allows them (353) to see

religious innovations arise from some inherent tensions present within a

religious tradition:

That is, rather than a crisis-engendered invasion into a homeostatic

‘tradition’, innovation in the sphere of religion appears to us to
proceed quite inevitably from the dynamics of tradition itself. This
is so because the medium of textual tradition, language, is never
self-identical or univocal in its meanings. Since tradition is multi-
dimensional in its linguistic forms and mediated in diverse settings,
it is itself the condition of its own transformation, as it is
repossessed by its bearers and embodied in a world constantly
under construction.

To the extent Williams, Cox, and Jaffee (1992) recognize the

elements of the dynamic between tradition and innovation, the polyvalent

nature of religious forms, the agency of innovators, and the role of social

environment in bringing about religious change, their views validate my

theoretical model. However, having defined innovation as “significant

change” and asking “significant to whom?” rather than ‘what makes a

change significant?’, they ignore the diachronic aspect of change, its

propagation. My answer is that any innovation, large or small, which

henceforth occurs more frequently in a tradition, propagates over time,

and becomes entrenched in the tradition is ‘significant’. Following Croft’s

20
(2000:5) evolutionary theory of language change, my theoretical model

recognizes innovation and propagation to be distinct but “jointly necessary

components of change,” and thereby brings more clarity to the subject.

Another question raised by Williams, Cox, and Jaffee (1992:353), which they

suggest cannot be answered, is: “Who is to say what constitutes a particular

‘tradition’ such that some event or other constitutes an ‘innovation’ within it?” I

propose that these questions can be empirically answered with the help of a

theoretical framework borrowed from linguistics. In religion, tradition consists of

customs of thought and action handed down orally or in texts (i.e. entextualized

discourses) and established through practice. In language, linguistic convention

is established through language use. Thus, a religious ‘custom/norm’ is akin to

linguistic ‘convention’. 17 Both religion and language are dynamic systems, whose

boundaries are determined by a community of speakers / religious practitioners.

Speakers / practitioners constitute a community within which a more or less

accurate meaning interpretation of their speech act or a practice is probable, and

this is due to established linguistic convention or religious custom/norm.

17Cf. OED ‘Tradition’ (definition 5b): “A long established and generally accepted custom or
method of procedure, having almost the force of a law.” Just as, collectively, linguistic
conventions constitute the common ground of knowledge of a speech community, religious
customs/norms form the common ground of knowledge — a religious tradition — of a religious
community.
21
 Regardless of how a convention originated, in language a convention is “a

property of the mutual knowledge or common ground of the speech community.

Of course, common ground is found in the minds of speakers, albeit shared with

other members of the speech community” (Croft 2000:7). Knowledge of the

linguistic conventions held in individual speaker’s mind is his competence or

grammar. The distinction between convention and competence is: “Competence

is an individual psychological phenomenon, while convention is a social

interactional phenomenon. Competence can vary; it depends on how well an

individual knows the conventions of the community. Conventions are also

variable, but in a different way: conventions vary in the degree to which they are

established in a speech community” (Croft 72). It is actual communicative

interaction through which common ground/convention is restructured: it is in

communicative interaction that speakers either adhere to convention or somehow

violate it and give rise to a variant to the norm. This is innovation.

The variants have differing social values associated with them which make

their use, depending on one’s communicative goals, either more or less desirable

to the speaker. The more frequently a variant is selected for its social value in

language use, the more entrenched it becomes in speakers’ minds, the higher

the possibility of its selection or “activation value” and so an innovation becomes

established as convention (Croft 2000:32). Similarly, when a religious norm is

22
violated, a variant religious form is born, which may or may not be selected with

increasing frequency by other members of a religious community, or by other

communities in a larger tradition.

A religious community is a social group that shares a tradition, a common

ground, a mutual knowledge of their religion. The tradition, made of established

customs/norms, ensures an efficient coordination of meaning during interaction

among community members. That is, a tradition aids better and quicker

understanding of what a person means by their speech act or religious practice.

In order to ensure that there is a common ground of knowledge among the

community members, conventions are established. Since signs (words,

practices, etc.) have no inherent meaning in themselves that everybody would

instantly recognize and understand, a community comes to assign them a certain

meaning, and a convention thus emerges. For example, the Hindu religious

practice of circumambulating a religious object clock-wise is a custom whose

religious meaning is arbitrary. The world would not end if people went counter

clock-wise; and yet every practitioner follows the custom, because it is the

expected behavior.

There are other practices, though, whose meaning and form were

changed by religious practitioners for social-religious reasons. For instance, in

the Hindu tradition of Pushti Marga, the ritual worship of Krishna is referred to as

23
‘sevā’(service), while the non-Pushti Marga devotees of Krishna continue to

perform ‘pūjā’ (worship). The members of the Pushti Marga have assigned a

different meaning to their worship and have made it a community-specific

convention, which then forms part of the tradition or common ground or common

knowledge of the community members. It sets them apart from other Krishna

devotees. According to Richard Barz (1976:51), sevā for the Pushtimargis is

unselfish love for and service of the divine being, while pūjā is worship
done for the doer’s benefit. There are some physical differences between
organized pūjā and organized sevā — for example, worshippers doing
pūjā usually offer their offering and perform their worship as isolated
individuals while, on the other hand, sevakas perform sevā as a group, as
a satsaṅg, and do not offer their gifts directly before the divine svarūpa —
but the real difference is in the attitude within the heart of the
worshipper. 18

By reinterpreting the meaning of conventional worship performed by the larger

Hindu society, the Pushtimargis created a variant. This is innovation, and it can

be identified as such within the borrowed framework of the evolutionary theory of

language change.

Thus, inquiries into processes of religious change, as described and

theorized in the two volumes directly related to the subject, leave certain

important questions unanswered. The preceding discussion demonstrates that a

18 For descriptions of what constitutes pūjā for Hindus in general, see Michaels (2004:241-245)
and Eck (1996:47-50). Both authors’ accounts of formal pūjā offer some textual evidence
supporting the Pushtimargi interpretation; however, in terms of actual practice, having witnessed
for years pūjā performed by family members and others in India and abroad, I can say that many
Hindus perform sevā in the Pushtimargi sense even while referring to it as pūjā.
24
more comprehensive framework for addressing them is evolutionary theory of

conceptual and language change. Before examining such a framework, I present

below a brief overview of the earlier uses of evolutionary biology and linguistic

theories in the field of religious studies.

1.1.3 Evolutionary biology, linguistics, and the study of religion

Linguists have long studied language change and have developed theoretical

models that are applicable to the investigation of religious change. The use of

linguistic models in the study of religion is not new. The influence of structural

linguistics has already been mentioned above. In summing up the cognitive

theories of religion recently, Goldberg (2008:65-66) especially noted the use of

Chomskian cognitive linguistic theory in the study of Vedic ritual. Theories of

linguistic and cultural creolization and language acquisition have also been used

to study syncretic religious formations arising especially in colonial settings. 19

However, as Leopold and Jensen (2005:4) point out, “innovations are not

necessarily the result of inter-cultural contact, but they may arise independently

as part of discursive differences in competing factions of shared religious and

cultural backgrounds.”

19 For instance, in The white Buddhist, Prothero (1996) uses the theory of creolization in
linguistics to examine Henry Steel Olcott’s hybrid Buddhism and also Olcott’s religious/cultural
interactions with Sri Lankan Buddhists in 1800s.
25
 Leaving aside the problematic category of syncretism, theories of

creolization and language acquisition are inadequate when studying religious

changes in non-contact situations. We need a broader theoretical framework to

study religious change in both situations, and evolutionary theory of language

change as laid out by Croft (2000) offers such a model. The evolutionary model

has also been used to study religious phenomena, especially in terms of

explaining the origins or function of religion in human history. The most notable

use of evolutionary theory in relation to religion recently has been by Wilson

(2002), who put forward a case for viewing religion as a force that enables

people to form a moral community and function as an adaptive unit. The moral

issue central to his study is altruism in society. Wilson is concerned with

explaining the adaptation and survival of a religious community as a whole. In

short, Wilson’s theory is of group selection in which religion functions as a

mechanism of selection, i.e. religion enables a group to be selected for survival.

In contrast with the above, this dissertation discusses conceptual

changes within a particular religion from a historical perspective. While it uses

the framework of a generalized theory of selection, applicable to both biological

and conceptual evolution, it is not concerned with evolution of a genetic capacity

for religion (a search for the so-called ‘God gene’; Cf. Wright 2009:460), or

evolutionary origins of religious thought (Boyer 2001), or the evolution of the idea

26
of God (Wright 2009), or the adaptation and survival of religious communities

(Wilson 2002). 20 In other words, this dissertation does not deal with the origin of

religion, its existence, or its persistence. Instead, its focus is the evolution of a

specific religious concept in the history of a one religion and the mechanisms

involved in the process.

The notion that socio-cultural entities like ideas, practices, languages,

tunes, fashions, etc. can be studied in evolutionary terms was, of course,

popularized by Richard Dawkins when he introduced the term ‘meme’ to describe

a self-replicating unit of culture, in The selfish gene (1989 [1976]). He believes

cultural transmission to be analogous to genetic transmission resulting in a form

of evolution (189). 21 He says, “Just as genes propagate themselves in the gene

pool by leaping from body to body via sperms or eggs, so memes propagate

themselves in the meme pool by leaping from brain to brain via a process which,

20 Wright’s (2009:4, 448) book is, in his own words, a “materialist” account of the evolution of the

idea of God in the history of religion in general, which began with the biological evolution of
human brain, to technological evolution, to expanding social organization, to the expansion of
moral imagination. He cites the Canadian newspaper National Post’s (April 14, 2003) headline
“Search continues for ‘God gene’” to dispute the very notion of religion as a singular genetic
adaptation. In this context, Wright (540 n.2) also critiques the group-selectionist explanation of
religious evolution in Wilson’s (2002) Darwin’s cathedral.
21 Cf. Hull (1988:282), who argues that instead of seeing cultural evolution (or meme-based

conceptual change) as analogous to biological evolution (or gene-based biological change), it is

more accurate to view biological, social, and conceptual changes as instances of the same sort of
process — the process of selection [either natural or rational]. For Hull, no one process takes
precedence over another. See also Croft (2000:11-12), who makes a similar argument for
language change. Thus, biological, conceptual, linguistic, or religious changes are all examples of
the same, or a similar process; therefore they can be explained using a generalized theoretical
model, namely, the generalized theory of selection.
27
in the broad sense, can be called imitation” (192). Elsewhere he says, “Imitation,

in the broad sense, is how memes can replicate. But just as not all genes that

can replicate do so successfully, so some memes are more successful in the

meme-pool than others. This is the analogue of natural selection” (194).

Dawkins seems to be conflating the two processes that make up an

evolutionary process — of ‘replication’ and ‘propagation’ through selection — in

his descriptions above. 22 It is only much later (1982) he concedes that evolution

through natural selection is a two-step process, where the unit of selection (a

‘vehicle’, like an organism) is not the same as the one that replicates (a gene).

He now prefers the formulation that evolutionary process is an interplay between

replicator survival and vehicle selection (Hull 1988:217). Dawkins’ confusion

regarding memes as units of replication and units of selection appears to be

carried over from his earlier ambiguity regarding genes. On Dawkins’ denial that

he had ever mistaken a replicator for a vehicle, his critics disagree. “As they see

things, Dawkins was confused on all issues from start to finish. His switching

from ‘replicator selection’ to ‘vehicle selection’ amounts to total capitulation,” Hull

sums up (414).

22 See Croft (2000:3-5). The replication process results in change at two levels: In the first, the
structure of the replicate is different from the structure of the original. This is altered replication,
and it produces variants of a structure. In the second, there is shift in the frequency of variants
relative to others. This is differential replication. In the context of language, Croft refers to the two
processes of change also as (1) innovation or actuation – the creation of new forms in the
language, and (2) propagation or diffusion (or, loss) of those forms. He argues that both are
distinct but jointly necessary components of the processes of language change.
28
 There are other problematic points in Dawkins’ theory of cultural evolution.

Keep in mind that differential selection between variants is at the heart of the

process of evolution, and it should be true for biological as well as cultural or

conceptual evolution. But Dawkins (1989:196-197) suggests that memes have

no alleles or variants like genes do which compete with their opposite for a place

in the same chromosomal slot:

There is a problem here concerning the nature of competition. Where

there is sexual reproduction, each gene is competing particularly with its
own alleles — rivals for the same chromosomal slot. Memes seem to
have nothing equivalent to alleles. I suppose there is a trivial sense in
which many ideas can be said to have `opposites'. But in general memes
resemble the early replicating molecules, floating chaotically free in the
primeval soup, rather than modern genes in their neatly paired,
chromosomal regiments. In what sense then are memes competing with
each other? Should we expect them to be `selfish' or `ruthless', if they
have no alleles? The answer is that we might, because there is a sense
in which they must indulge in a kind of competition with each other.
Any user of a digital computer knows how precious computer time
and memory storage space are. At many large computer centres they are
literally costed in money; or each user may be allotted a ration of time,
measured in seconds, and a ration of space, measured in `words'. The
computers in which memes live are human brains. Time is possibly a
more important limiting factor than storage space, and it is the subject of
heavy competition. The human brain, and the body that it controls, cannot
do more than one or a few things at once. If a meme is to dominate the
attention of a human brain, it must do so at the expense of `rival' memes.

Dawkins makes no connection between the above point — that any meme that

grabs the attention of human brain and gains traction in it wins in competition

with other competing memes — and the principle of cognitive economy or

cognitive optimum effect (see § 1.1 fn.3 above). Any meme that can be
29
cognitively processed quickest (with least effort) will win the competition, that is,

be selected. Moreover, Dawkins seems to be denying altogether a competition

between two variants of a single meme. For him, either two memes are different,

or, if linked in any way, they are one (1989:196); for example,

If Darwin's theory can be subdivided into components, such that some

people believe component A but not component B, while others believe B
but not A, then A and B should be regarded as separate memes. If almost
everybody who believes in A also believes in B — if the memes are
closely `linked' to use the genetic term — then it is convenient to lump
them together as one meme.

But what is convenient need not necessarily be correct. I disagree with Dawkins’

contention that memes have no alleles or competing variants. Hull (1988:444)

makes the argument that in socio-cultural evolution, ideas sometimes have one,

sometimes two, sometimes more sources; secondly, “ideas do not always exist in

just two forms, just two conceptual ‘alleles’. Numerous alternatives exist.” Hull

(444) explicates:

In its narrowest sense, selection occurs only among alternative alleles

residing at a single locus. Alleles are different versions of the same gene,
‘sameness’ being defined here in terms of occupying the same locus on a
chromosome. Although the term ‘allele’ was coined in the context of
transmission genetics, it was generalized for the purposes of population
genetics. In selection models in population genetics, alleles are the things
that compete with each other. In populations of organisms, many alleles
can exist at a single locus [such as in the gene pool of a population]. This
does not mean that any one organism can have all these alleles. [Only
one or two or three alleles can exist at a particular locus in any given type
of organism.] . . . But in the context of a particular population, all the
alleles that reside at the same locus can be said to compete with each
other. . . . It is in the population genetics sense that different conceptual

30
 ‘alleles’ can be said to coexist in the same conceptual pool. Quite
obviously, more than two conceptual variants can be said to coexist in the
same conceptual pool, but nothing about biological evolution implies
otherwise. 23

Just as genes are organized into genomes, ideas or concepts are organized into

‘theories’; different versions of the same theory are ‘different’ because at one or

more conceptual loci, different conceptual variants or theories exist in

competition (Hull 445). Thus, Hull both builds on Dawkins’ ideas and corrects

them in his own generalized theory of selection. My analytical framework for

religious change is therefore based not on Dawkins’, but on Hull’s model of

conceptual evolution, which recognizes the possibility of two or more variants of

a conceptual variable.

In this dissertation my hypotheses are that there are competing variants in

representations of Krishna; that in particular contexts one variant is selected over

the other(s); 24 and that the mechanisms that lead to the selection of these

variants are similar regardless of whether the context is religion-internal debates

23 Croft (2000:28-29) calls the linguistic equivalents to the genes and memes ‘linguemes’ and
their alleles ‘variants’, that is, “alternative structures used for a particular structural element, such
as alternative phonetic realizations of a phoneme,” etc. The locus for a set of variants is the
‘variable’, and only one variant can occur in its (the variable’s) structural position in an utterance.
“The total set of linguemes in a population of utterances (the language), and hence in the
grammars of the speakers taken as a whole, is the ‘lingueme pool’.”
I propose the equivalents for religion to be: religious concepts (= gene, meme, lingueme),
conceptual variants (= alleles), conceptual variable (= the locus for the conceptual variants), and
conceptual pool (= gene pool, lingueme pool), which contains the total set of religious concepts in
a population of religious forms.
24 Context is important in deciding whether variants are in competition with each other for the

same conceptual locus or whether they are occupying different spots at different conceptual loci.
31
or religion-external contact-induced pressure. Consider the conceptual variants

at various loci in the following chart:

Chart 1: Conceptual variants of ‘Ultimate Reality’ in the conceptual pool of Vaishnava traditions 25

Theory of Reality

Becoming Being

atheism theism

monotheism polytheism

Creator god Sustainer god Destroyer god

Rama Krishna

Baby Warrior Moral Ideal avatāra God God avatāra Ideal Amoral Warrior Baby
Rama hero hero king of Vishnu of Vishnu lover hero hero Krishna

In a philosophical theory of what constitutes Reality, if Reality is defined either as

the material world of becoming or as an unchanging eternal being, then the two

concepts ‘Becoming’ and ‘Being’ are in competition for the one definitional spot

in the theory of ‘Reality’. However, if a dualist philosophical system considers

‘Becoming’ and ‘Being’ as two components that together make up the Reality, the

two concepts do not compete. 26 Similarly, in a theory of what constitutes an

25This is a simplified outline for purposes of exposition; there are other variants not included.
26The dualistic nature of reality is comprehensively explored by the Sāṃkhya school, and its
practical implications by the Yoga school of classical Indian philosophy. For a thorough account
32
unchanging eternal being, if ‘Being’ is defined either in theistic terms or in

atheistic material terms, then the concepts ‘God’ and ‘Matter’ are in competition

for the one definitional spot in the theory of ‘Being’.

From the point of view of the practitioners of Abrahamic religions, Ultimate

Reality can only be monotheistic. The view in Hinduism is more complex: Hindus

most often represent their religion in terms of both ‘monotheism’ and ‘polytheism’

in that they express the idea that all their gods are but manifestations of one

God. This renders Hinduism to be a religion of ‘polymorphous’ monotheism

rather than a simple polytheism. 27 Generally, then, ‘monotheism’ and

‘polytheism’ are not competing conceptual variants for most Hindus.

Also, when Hindus represent Rama as ‘an ideal king’ and Krishna as ‘an

ideal lover’, these conceptualizations of Rama and Krishna are not in competition

because they emphasize two different characteristics of the two gods. But if

Hindus are representing an ideal Hindu warrior god, they have two competing

variants: ‘Rama as a warrior hero’ and ‘Krishna as a warrior hero’. While

representing Krishna to non-Hindus, for social or communicative reasons, Hindus

may choose to emphasize his warrior aspect over his lover aspect. In such

of the principal texts of both schools and their history, see Larson (1998 [1969]), and Larson and
Bhattacharya (1987, 2008). Though the two schools are fundamentally non-theistic in the
absence of a god who orders and participates in his creation, their dualist thought impacted the
development of theistic Hinduism, as seen, for instance, in the traditions of goddess worship.
27 See Larson (1995:112, 158) for more on Indic traditions’ “polymorphic” spirituality and theology.

33
discourse situations the conceptual variants ‘warrior Krishna’ and ‘lover Krishna’

compete as the defining term for ‘Krishna the Hindu god’.

The above examples are hypothetical, but choices made by practitioners

of a religion in historical contexts may gain a critical mass in the process of

selection and become entrenched in the tradition. This dissertation is an

exploration of such representational choices made by Hindus and their

subsequent impact on the history of Hinduism. Conceptual variation is therefore

at the heart of this evolutionary account of religious change.

Thus, Hull’s (1988) generalized theory of selection, which recognizes the

possibility of conceptual alleles, becomes a new model for analyzing language

change (Croft 2000); together they provide the basic framework for my analysis

of religious change. I first describe Hull’s generalized theory below and then

explain its application in the fields of linguistics and religious studies.

1.2 Hull’s generalized theory of selection

Hull explains the evolution of concepts and organisms by first offering a general

analysis of selection process in evolutionary biology, and defining its constituent

parts (1988:408-409):

1. “Replicator – an entity that passes on its structure largely intact in successive

replications.”

34
2. “Interactor – an entity that interacts as a cohesive whole with its environment in

such a way that this interaction causes replication to be differential.”

3. “Selection – a process in which the differential extinction and proliferation of

interactors cause the differential perpetuation of the relevant replicators.”

4. “Lineage – an entity that persists indefinitely through time either in the same or

an altered state as a result of replication.”

Hull then describes the implications of his proposed definitions (1988:409-

412; also Croft 2000:22-24): First, a replicator (for example, a gene) must have

structure that is passed on in successive replications. Replication can be (1)

identical i.e. normal, (2) altered, or (3) differential. The mechanism of identical

replication in biology, for example, is copying of genes in reproduction, whereas

the mechanisms for altered replication are mutations or recombinations. Altered

replications result in new replicators with a different structure from the original.

These are variants.

The other causal mechanism results in differential replication and

differential perpetuation of replicators: the interactors (for example, organisms)

interact with their environment in a way that causes replication of some variants

(and their structures) to become more frequent relative to others. That is,

interactions leads to the survival of some interactors (and their ‘relevant’

35
replicators), and the extinction of others. Successive replications create entities

that persist indefinitely in the form of lineages.

According to Hull (1988:409), in biological evolution, replication and

interaction occur at all levels of the organizational hierarchy, “from genes and

cells, through organs and organisms, up to and possibly including populations

and species.” However, genes are paradigm replicators and organisms are

paradigm interactors.

As Hull (1988:410) says, selection is “an interplay between two processes

— replication and interaction,” and it is causal in nature. 28 He emphasizes that

“all the entities that function in selection processes as well as those that result

from them are spatiotemporal individuals — historical entities” (1988:412). 29

They are actual individuals, not potential alternatives.

Having formulated a generalized theory of selection, Hull next applies it to

conceptual change in the history of science. The relevant theses for our

purposes are: In conceptual evolution, a concept is the equivalent of a gene; it is

28 A situation of differential replication in absence of interaction leading to random change may

occur. However, Croft (2000:42) believes that there is enough regularity in language change, in
both innovation and propagation, to suggest otherwise. I would argue the same for religious
change.
29 By ‘individual’, Hull (1988:411) means spatiotemporal particulars with finite duration as a

characteristic. He considers lineages to be a special sort of individuals: genealogically cohesive

but capable of change indefinitely through time. They do have one spatiotemporal aspect,
though: “In any system that is evolving through selection, sooner or later, a point occurs at which
the genealogical fabric is rent and networks become trees. At whatever level in the traditional
hierarchy that this occurs, the resulting entities are lineages.”
36
a replicator. A concept has structure and information contained in the structure. 30

The scientists’ brains are vehicles of transmission, and the scientists are

interactors or vehicles of interaction. The environment the scientists interact with

consists of the part of the natural world they study, their fellow scientists, and the

rest of the society. “Their interaction with their environment causes the replication

of concepts (new or modified ideas), and their differential propagation (the

amount of attention those ideas enjoy among scientists) causes differential

perpetuation of the relevant replicators (the ideas embodied in scientists’

theories)” (Croft 2000:25).

1.3 The generalized theory of selection applied to the evolution of

science, language, and religion

I now examine the above-discussed generalized theory’s application in the

specific disciplines of science, linguistics, and, important for us, religious studies.

1.3.1 Replicator

30Hull (1988:437): “The similarity between genetic and memetic replication is enhanced by the
apparent appropriateness of talking about the transmission of ‘information’ in both.” And “Just as
a series of analogies presupposes literal usage, information must be information about
something. . . . The messages incorporated in the genetic material are about something — the
phenotypes of the various structures that they help produce” (439).

37
In conceptual evolution, it is the concept that replicates. In the field of science,

replicators are “elements of the substantive content of science — beliefs about

the goals of science, proper ways to go about realizing these goals, problems

and their possible solutions, modes of representation, accumulated data, and so

on” (Hull 1988:434). For Hull (443), the “size” of the conceptual replicator is

highly variable and “is determined by the selection processes in which it is

functioning. From the point of view of replication alone, units are not needed.”

According to him (443), from the perspective of socio-cultural selection, all units

are of the same size even though, from other perspectives, they appear to be of

varying sizes. 31 The size of conceptual replicators may be variable in terms of

generality: more narrow and descriptive or more general statements. But, in

Hull’s (445) words, “In addition to conceptual variants being of greater or lesser

generality, they are also bound together to varying degrees into conceptual

systems. Given a particular conceptual system, alternative conceptions can

perform the same function.” As discussed earlier, just as genes are organized

into more inclusive functional systems i.e. genomes, ideas are organized into

more inclusive inferential systems i.e. ‘theories’.

31 Hull (1988:442) points out: “Just as selection models can be applied in biological contexts only
if the complexities of developmental genetics are bypassed, they can be applied in the context of
sociocultural evolution only if comparable complexities are ignored.”
38
 Similarly, linguistic replicators (‘linguemes’) possess structure and exist in

“nested systems of more inclusive units,” from a phoneme to a morpheme to a

word to a syntactic structure, and also their corresponding semantic values (Croft

2000:28). Just as genes are found in DNA, and DNA is replicated in sexual

reproduction in sexual organisms, similarly linguemes are embodied in

utterances, which are produced during communicative interaction.

In religion, as well, replicators (concepts; conceptual structures) are

embodied in more inclusive inferential-functional units (a word < utterance <

episode < story, etc.), and produced in a range of forms. For instance, I examine

Krishna’s conceptualizations in narratives. These narratives can be broken down

in smaller units to facilitate analysis so that the locus of change can be identified.

The following chart (modified from Givón 1984:243) shows one such conceptual

nesting system:

Chart 2: Hierarchic structure of narrative discourse – a concept’s nesting system in the story form.

Narrative [the story]

Books
Chapters
Sections
Episodes
Paragraphs
Complex sentences
Propositions
Events, processes, participants

39
Innovation of the concept could take place at any level in the structure. The

selection process determines the size of the replictor and, thereby, the locus of

innovation. Consider the legend of Krishna in the c. tenth-century text Bhāgavata

Purāṇa (BhP): The extensive treatment of Krishna’s amorous exploits vis-à-vis

the cowherd girls (gopīs) in Vraj is contained in its 10th Book. To the extent that

BhP’s narrative departs from the received tradition of Krishna’s legend found in

the Mahābhārata, the Harivaṃśa, and the Viṣṇu Purāṇa, BhP’s Book 10 is the

locus of innovation. Indeed, the new conceptualization of Krishna of Vraj found

in BhP’s Book 10 — specifically, chapters 3-9 detailing his childhood sports; and

20-23 and 28-35 detailing his adolescent erotic deeds, out of its total of ninety

chapters — proved to be the most replicated variant of the variable ‘Krishna’ in

medieval Krishna-related poems and painted images. As Bryant (2003:x) says,

The stories of Kṛṣṇa in Vraj have been, and, arguably remain one of the
two most influential textual sources of religious narrative in the Hindu
religious landscape, along with the stories of Rāma from the Epic
Rāmāyaṇa, if we are to judge on the basis of the themes that have
surfaced in Hindu drama, poetry, dance, painting, song, literature,
sculpture, iconography and temple worship over the last millennium and
more. The popularity of the Kṛṣṇa of Vraj has certainly eclipsed the
popularity of the Kṛṣṇa of the massive 100,000-verse Mahābhārata Epic,
despite its Bhagavad Gītā. Hawley (1979:202-3), for example, found that
of 800 panels depicting Kṛṣṇa to have survived from the period prior to
1500 CE, only three refer with any clarity to the Bhagvad Gītā:
We are given to understand that for two millennia the Gītā has been
India’s most influential scripture, yet . . . it is remarkable how
indifferent sculptors were to this part of Krishna’s adult life . . .
instead sculptors focus on the events of his youth. The Krishna we
see is the cowherdboy who was so fond of butter as a child, [and
40
 who] became such an attractive lover as a youth . . . sculpture may
at least in some respects be a more accurate index of what
people’s religious commitments were all along. 32

Hawley here is discounting the possibility that, as part of the Mahābhārata’s Book

6 (23-40), the Gītā’s text may be the most replicated artifact from the

Mahābhārata, and that the Gītā’s relation to the Mahābhārata is like the BhP’s

Book 10 is to the BhP as a whole. These are issues of differential replication and

selection, but more than that, these are issues of selection through interaction

between religious practitioners and their socio-historical environments.

Philosophy, theology, and art are neither produced nor transmitted in a vacuum,

and they each have, as it were, a distinct language code. Religious communities

are ‘multilingual’ and religious practitioners are conversant in various ‘codes’,

though they may prefer to use one code rather than another in a given context.

Philosophical code is not conducive to reproduction in sculptures, narratives are.

In any case, in medieval India the BhP’s conceptualization of ‘Krishna the ideal

lover / lover of gopīs’ or ‘Gopi-Krishna’ became entrenched in the tradition over a

period of just a few centuries. In sum, then, the BhP’s Book 10 embodies the

32 Cf. Eder’s (2003:183) comment on the tendency of scholars like Ursula King to argue for the
Gītā’s limited cultural historical significance in pre-modern times on the basis of a lack of
iconographic evidence. Eder cautions: “By equating an absence of visual artifacts with a lack of
importance, however, King ignores the numerous Gītā translations in vernacular languages and
the commentarial traditions. Without a more thorough consideration of the vernacular language
and regional religious traditions, dismissal of the Gītā’s importance during the pre-British period is
premature. To the contrary, the absence of the Gītā as a subject of iconographic representations
from the pre-British period may reflect the text’s elevated, śruti-like status.”
41
genome (the narrative of ‘Gopi-Krishna’) in which the gene (i.e. the concept of

Krishna) replicates most successfully.

Croft (2000:30) writes that, just as genome replication is first a cell-level

process and then a population-level process when it is reproduced during sexual

reproduction, mediated by mating of two organisms, similarly,

replication of linguemes in utterances is fundamentally a cognitive

process, mediated by activation of some mental structure and articulatory
motor routine. (This mental structure / motor routine is of course acquired
from exposure to prior occurrences of the linguemes in language use.)
And replication of linguemes is equally fundamentally a social process,
mediated by the speaker in conversational interaction. If a speaker doesn’t
speak, she will not replicate any linguemes.

As mentioned before (§ 1.1 proposition 3), in religion, religious concepts

are the replicators: concepts regarding god, devotion, goals of life, the human

condition, ethical principles of right and wrong, modes of representations of

existential reality, etc. Just as replication of a linguistic structure is a two-step

process, one at the cognitive level and the other at the social level, religious

concepts, too, replicate at the two-levels: internally in the mind of the practitioner

(in this case, the author/s of the BhP) and externally in discourse (the text of

BhP). And just as the cognitive-level replication of linguemes is mediated by a

speaker’s mental structure (his ‘grammar’), the cognitive-level replication of a

religious concept in a religious form is mediated by “the cognitive structure in a

practitioner’s mind that contains their knowledge about their religion, and is the

42
structure that is used in producing and comprehending religious forms” (modified

from Croft’s definition of ‘grammar’, 2000:26). This religious cognitive structure

— acquired through exposure to religious forms available in the religious

community the practitioner belongs to — is the individual’s religious belief

system. It consists of their mental knowledge and the processing capability which

enables them to practice their religion. The cognitive structure is also a

spatiotemporally bound entity in that it resides in individuals.

Replication of religious concepts at the social level involves their

articulation by practitioners in discourse in the form of professed beliefs or

philosophy (in the Gītā, for instance), rituals, narrative representations (stories in

prose or verse; BhP’s Book 10, for example), visual representations (painted

images, dramatic characters), etc. It is through being produced, re-produced,

and transmitted in these forms in communication that concepts in religious forms

change, replicate, and disseminate. The physical vehicles of transmission of

these forms are human brains, spoken word, books, paintings, films, and so on.

1.3.2 Interactor / vehicle

Hull (1988:434) states that “In biological evolution, variable chunks of the genetic

material are the primary replicators. As such, they pass on the information they

contain in their structure. They also function as interactors in the production of

43
more inclusive interactors.” However, in science, conceptual replicators can

interact indirectly, that is, only through interactors like scientists. Hull (436)

points out that, “Conceptual replication is a matter of information being

transmitted largely intact from physical vehicle to physical vehicle.” Scientists are

physical vehicles, in two ways: Scientists’ brains function as vehicles of

transmission of information, as vehicles for replication sequences, while

scientists, as active agents, function as vehicles of interaction (with their

environment).

As Hull (1988:436) sums up, “conceptual replication is a matter of ideas

giving rise to ideas via physical vehicles, some of which also function as

interactors. Replicators are generated, recombined, and tested” by scientists

interacting with the environment, which consists of the phenomena they study or

conceptualize (the natural world), their fellow interactors (scientists), and the rest

of the society.

In linguistics, according to Croft (2000:29), the speaker, including the

speaker’s grammar/cognitive structure, constitutes the interactor. Thus, the

speaker, a social/cognitive being, is “a cohesive whole as a member of a speech

community, communicatively interacting with other members of the speech

community. The environment is thus the other members of the speech

44
community, the social context of the speech event, and the goals of the speech

event itself.” In language use, speakers produce an utterance.

In religion, practitioners may produce a religious concept in an utterance,

but they may also produce it in other forms, such as a ritual, a taped speech, a

written story, a painted image, a dramatic enactment — all of which are vehicles

of transmission of information in a discourse situation. Therefore, in religion, the

physical vehicle of transmission of a conceptual structure and information are

texts, sculptures, paintings, films, etc. and the vehicle of interaction is the

practitioner and their individual belief system, which is cognitive structure

consisting of knowledge of their religion plus the processing ability for practicing

that religion. All interact together as vehicle-interactor with an environment

consisting of a community of believers, the social context of the religious

practice, broadly defined, and the goals of the practice event itself — the goals of

representations of Krishna, in this case study.

Having identified the replicators and the vehicle/interactors involved in the

process of selection in science, language, and religion, I now turn to explicating

the process itself. But first I sum up all the other related concepts in the

generalized theory of selection and its instantiations in biology, language, and

religion in the following table (modified from Croft 2000:38 and Clements 2009:9):

45
Table 1: The generalized theory of selection and its instantiations in biology, language, religion

Generalized theory Selection in biology Selection in language Selection in religion

of selection
Replicator Gene Lingueme Religious concept

Replicators in a Gene pool Lingueme pool Conceptual pool

population

Structured set of String of DNA Utterance Discourse form

replicators
Normal replication Reproduction by Utterance reproduction Form reproduction in
interbreeding in communication, i.e. religious practice (e.g.
communicative representation)
intercourse
Altered replication Recombination, Mechanisms for Mechanisms for
mutation of genes innovation innovation

Alternative Alleles Variants Conceptual variants

replicators
Locus for alternative Gene locus Linguistic variable Conceptual variable
replication

Interactor Organism Speaker (including Religious practitioner

grammar) (including individual
belief system), and
vehicle for transmission
(poems, paintings, films)

Hybrid interactor Hybrid organism Bilingual speaker ‘Bilingual’ practitioner

(conversant with two
belief systems)
Environment Ecological Social-communicative Social-communicative,
environment context social-historical context

Selection Survival and Entrenchment of Entrenchment of

reproduction of convention by speakers religious norm by
organisms and its propagation in practitioners and its
communication propagation in practice

46
Having thus identified the replicators and the vehicle/interactors and all the other

related concepts involved in the process of selection in science, language, and

religion, I now turn to explicating the process itself. By now it should be clear that

Croft’s (2000) model of selection in language change directly offers an analytical

framework well-suited for analysis of religious-conceptual change. Before

presenting Croft’s model in the next section, which I use to analyze my materials

in the following chapters, I extract from the table above the equivalencies I see in

language and religious change. The following are particularly pertinent:

Language Religion
Speech community Religious community
Speaker Practitioner
Communication Religious practice (broadly defined; see fn. 5)
To talk To practice (communicate, represent)
Utterance Discourse form (broadly defined; see §1.1 prop.3)
Convention Custom/norm
Common Ground Tradition
Competence/Grammar Individual belief system

In the following section of Croft’s theory of language change through utterance

selection the connections I have elucidated above should become apparent.

After all, as a social-religious practice, representation is fundamentally a

communicative act. These equivalencies make the application of Croft’s theory of

selection available so that we may analyze Krishna’s conceptual history in the

following chapters.

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1.3.3 Selection

As stated above (§ 1.2), the process of evolution or change is the result of two

other processes: altered replication (innovation) and differential replication

(propagation). Selection — an interplay between the two processes of replication

and interaction — functions as mechanism for change. Language / religious

change is also a two-step process of innovation and propagation, both of which

have causal mechanisms. The two processes of change are assessed relative to

linguistic / religious conventions or norms of a community. Normal replication is

conformity to convention, while altered replication is the result of non-conformity

to convention because of functional reasons, like internal psychological

processes, or social-interactional causes involving achieving certain goals in

language use or religious practice.

1.3.3.1 Communication, community, and change

Discussing language use, Croft (2000:71) modifies Jacobson’s (1971 [1960])

three functions of language use within the theoretical framework of utterance

selection thus:

1. Referential function: communication of information; related to conformity to

convention (i.e. normal or non-innovative replication)
2. Poetic function: creativity/expressivity; related to intentional mechanism for
violation of convention (i.e. altered replication or innovation)

48
 3. Phatic function: solidarity/conformity with social norms; related to the
establishment or acceptance of a convention (i.e. selection or propagation).

All three functions point to intentionality in language use. However, while

language use is intentional in that “Speakers set out to achieve certain social

goals with their interlocutors” through the communication of information (Croft

59), language change may be its unintentional consequence. Understood as

such, social-interactional function of language and religion (in the present

context) would look like this:

Means (action) Goal [Unintended effect]

Language use = communication ➜ to achieve social goals ➜ [language change]
Religious Practice = representation ➜ to achieve social goals ➜ [religious change]

This, according to Keller (1994:57), is “phenomenon of the third kind” where

language change is “an unintended causal effect of an intended human social

action.”33 The following views of Keller regarding communication are directly

applicable to social-interactional religious practice and support my findings

33 The other two phenomena are: (1) unintended consequences of unintentional communicative
performance-related mechanisms like speech errors, or articulatory and auditory failures in sound
production and comprehension (Croft 76); equivalent cases in religion would be errors in copying
in the production of religious texts, or errors in the performance of a religious ritual, etc. And (2)
intended consequences of intentional by design, therefore teleological, action to bring about
systemic changes in a language or a religious tradition. In this context, Croft (2000:64) makes two
important points for language change which are also directly applicable to religious change:
“First, a theory of language change need not appeal to teleological mechanisms in order to
account for directionality in language change. Second, language change, even directional
language change, is a probabilistic process, not a deterministic one.” Religious practitioners can
give directionality to conceptual change through rational selection — for “conceptual evolution is
purposive” (Hull 1988:457) — yet they cannot determine its success beforehand.

49
presented in subsequent chapters; therefore in this context I substitute the more

general term ‘communicate’ for his ‘talk’.

For Keller (1994:105), the intended goals of language use are ultimately

social, not just communicative. He says that in communication, we try to achieve

most, if not all, of the referential, poetic, and phatic functions together, that is, “we

try to conform, attract attention, be understood, save energy. It is extremely rare

that someone wants nothing but to be understood.” Obviously, some of these

maxims (or mechanisms) contradict each other, and in trying to achieve two of

these, we compromise.

Keller (1994:106-107) reminds us that, as with all human action,

communicative action means “to try to transform a relatively less desirable state

into a relatively more desirable one.” Therefore, our communicative efforts are

governed by the hypermaxim:

1. Communicate in such a way that you are socially successful; meaning:

2. Communicate in such a way that you are most likely to reach the goals that

you set yourself in your communicative enterprise; which is then modified to

accommodate the economy principle thus:

3. Communicate in such a way that you are socially successful, at the lowest

possible cost.

50
The hypermaxim governs the following maxim offered by Keller (98) that may be

understood within our framework of normal, altered, or differential replication:

4. Communicate in such a way that the other understands you.

The effect of following this maxim [4] is conformity to religious customs/norms of

another’s social-religious community. In Croft’s (2000:72) words, this is normal

replication, and is “based on social interaction — mutual knowledge of the

conventions.”

For Keller (1994:86), then, “The human being has a goal to be socially

successful, and influencing others by means of language is an essential element

in the explanation of social success.” Croft (2000:88) maintains that the social

goal of language can be had only through a joint communicative activity involving

a speaker and a hearer. A religious practice like representation is a joint activity.

It is only through joint action that the function of language is carried out.

The understanding of language use as a joint activity presupposes the

involvement of people, especially as member of a speech community. The

question ‘How is a speech community defined?’ is important because linguistic

conventions are in turn defined with respect to speech communities. The answer

to this question is important in my analysis of religious practice of representation,

because this practice is a communicative act involving members of one, two, or

more communities. If ‘speech community’ is read as ‘religious community’ in

51
which speakers / practitioners are ‘multilingual’ in different languages, religions,

and cultures, the following discussion proves fruitful for my analyses.

In answering the question ‘How is a speech community defined?’, Croft

(2000:90) disputes the validity of “the naïve view of a speech community” derived

from Chomsky, “that it is a collection of individuals who speak a single language

among themselves, and are all native speakers of that language.” Instead, Croft

(91) offers a correction: the naïve view does not account for multilingual

societies where same people may speak two or more distinct varieties, called

‘codes’ by sociolinguists who define codes as belonging to one or more social

domains. Examples of social domains are family, friends, work, school, religion,

etc.; there are sub-domains, such as different groups of friends with whom one

engages in different activities, different types of work one may do, each with a

different code. Therefore, a speech community should be defined in terms of

domains in addition to individuals who operate in those domains and use

domain-specific codes. I already indicated the usefulness of these distinctions

while discussing Hawley’s (1979) interpretation of absent sculptural evidence of a

certain motif in Krishna’s representations.

In light of the above, Croft (2000:91) outlines the implications of this

change in definition of a speech community. The first is that “individual members

of society speak a variety of codes (languages and/or speech styles). That is,

52
they are multilingual, choosing to speak in one or another code according to the

different social domains they operate in.” 34 The second implication is that “a code

has a social meaning, determined by the context in which it is used, as well as a

referential meaning, i.e. meaning in the usual sense of the word.” And the third

implication is that “no code has the complete range of communicative power;

there are things one cannot talk about in one or the other languages.”

Croft (2000:92) draws the conclusion that “The profound fact is: every

language is a multiplicity of codes.” And he sums up: “a linguistic code belongs

to a (speech) community, and a community is defined by a domain. Every

person is a member of multiple (speech) communities he or she belongs to.”

Linguists call this a person’s repertoire; everyone has a slightly different

repertoire. In my view, Hinduism scholars often assume, wrongly, a very limited

repertoire on part of the religious practitioner(s): Hindus either ‘do bhakti’ or they

‘do philosophy’ and never the two codes shall co-exist in a single practitioner! It

is time to recognize that on a continuum with the two extremes being

practitioners monolingual in code X at one end and practitioners monolingual in

code Y at the other, there is a vast middle ground consisting of practitioners who

34Being monolingual members of multilingual speech communities would indicate their non
participation in the social domain(s) which require use of the language(s), or rather codes, they
do not speak. Hawley’s (1979) understanding of the presence or absence of certain religious
motifs in Indian sculpture is limited because it assumes a ‘monolingual’ religious community or, at
least, a community that prefers one code in all domains.

53
are conversant in multiple codes in varying degrees who choose some code over

others in different social contexts.

Croft (2000:92) refers to a socially interacting group of speakers (the old

‘speech community’) as ‘society’, and says “every society consists of multiple

communities. An effect of the massive degree of overlap in codes used in the

communities of a single society is to break down the internal-external boundary

in the theory of language change.” And, I would argue, this is also the case in the

theory of religious change.

Communities to which individuals belong are nested in greater or lesser

degrees of community exclusivity and communication isolation (Croft 2000:168),

determined by geography or residence and by extension, ethnicity or nationality.

However, even in an exclusive community with strong ties, individual members

may not be communicatively isolated and are therefore exposed to external

variants. They use and thus introduce these variants into their own primary

social network and vice versa. Such individuals are ‘introducers’ (Croft 179);

they transfer a linguistic feature or a religious concept from one social network to

the other. In the next chapter, for example, a group of ‘bilingual’ or ‘multilingual’

Brahmins in Vedic times emerges as ‘introducers’. They are the most likely

authors of the Mahābhārata (MBh) and the Bhagavad Gītā (BhG), and in these

texts they introduced new elements from various codes and produced a new

54
variant of god called Krishna. The new religious or linguistic variants over time

become conventions (or not) depending on social factors.

Conventions play a major role in religious practice and language use,

“because innovation is essentially language use beyond conventions, and

propagation is essentially the establishment of a new convention in a language”

(Croft 2000:95). In social-interactional religious practice and language use the

purpose is to communicate meaning for some social goal. But, even though

language is a conventional signaling system, 35 meaning in use is not fully

captured by the conventions of a language (Croft 99). In order to capture

meaning more fully, virtually all language use / communication involves a

combination of conventional and nonconventional i.e. innovative elements (Croft

2000:101, 104). For Croft, there is no sharp distinction between conservative

and innovative language use. For instance, in the MBh innovative ideas are

presented in the Vedic code of sacrifice, and even the new representation of

Krishna is built of various older Vedic Aryan and non-Aryan elements. There is

no sharp break between Vedic Brahmanism and Hinduism as articulated in the

MBh. However, in Hinduism’s history, this communicative act of epic composition

is but one act in the constantly evolving process of meaning interpretation. Since

meaning is subject to change, its interpretation becomes an evolving process,

35Defined as “a system of conventions for evoking a meaning in the hearer’s mind that is in some
sense equivalent to the meaning in the speaker’s mind”, (Croft 2000:243).
55
leading to the evolution of the mapping between form and function/meaning in

language and religion. This is one among various causes for change in language

and religion summed up in the following table (modified from Croft 2000:79):

Table 2: Causal mechanisms of language change (extendable to religious change) 36

Teleological Intentional Nonintentional

Normal — Convention (being Entrenchment

replication understood)
Altered [Preserving order] Expressiveness [Form-function reanalysis]
replication [Creating [Economy] [Identification & inter/intraference]
distinctions] [Errors]

Selection — Accommodation Change in entrenchment

Act of identity
Prestige (including
covert prestige)

36 I have modified Croft’s table by including only those mechanisms that I find useful in analyzing
the materials to be examined. In this table, I have economy in square brackets because its status
as an intentional or unintentional mechanism is ambiguous; also form-function reanalysis is
unintentional in language use but a new meaning interpretation may be an intentional act in
religion. Interference and intraference, discussed in the next section, are in square brackets
because (i) they also can be intentional mechanisms, and (ii) they are absent in Croft’s table. He
discussed the two processes in a different context but I believe it is right to include them here.
Also, in teleological mechanisms for altered replication, Croft has language-specific processes
that I do not find useful; therefore, I introduce just two possible (and non-linguistic) candidates in
that category to account for either religious authorities’ deliberate efforts to preserve their system,
or for any religious figure’s deliberate attempts at introducing religious change in the form of a
new interpretation of a tradition or the founding of a new sect. The initiation of these changes
may be considered either teleological or merely intentional, but since their acceptance and
establishment in society cannot be determined beforehand, I, like Croft, prefer to explain them in
terms of intentional, not teleological, action.
An additional note: Keeping in mind that knowledge of conventions in an individual
speaker’s mind is his competence or grammar and that competence is a psychological
phenomenon, Croft (2000:72) calls ‘entrenchment’ the psychological habit of competence or
routinization of behavior — the more entrenched a behavior, the less control an individual has in
using it. And to that extent, it functions as nonintentional mechanism of normal replication. The
level of entrenchment (i.e. grammatical knowledge) itself varies relative to exposure to language
use; and this makes its variation a mechanism for selection.
56
1.3.3.2 Mechanisms for altered replication / innovation

Innovations / altered replications lead to the formation of variants of a linguistic or

religious variable. These variants are propagated / replicated differentially,

leading to some being ‘selected’ and perpetuated, that is, they become

established as a convention in a community. Following sociohistorical linguistics,

one can say that the selection process — of differential replication and differential

perpetuation — is a social one, in that the variants of a religious variable have

social values attached to them. The practitioners select variants to replicate

based on their social values, such as overt or covert prestige, the relative social

position of the interlocutors, etc.

There is a direct consequence of differential use of variants: The differing

social value of variants for individual practitioners causes shifts in degrees of

their entrenchment in the practitioners’ cognitive structures. This in turn causes a

shift in proportions of the variants’ usage, leading to the global effect of an

adjustment of their activation value and further shift in their entrenchment in a

practitioner’s cognitive structure (modified from Croft 2000:32). The term

‘activation value’ refers to the increasing ease of access one develops the more

one recalls or activates a particular memory or concept in discourse. In other

words, the more a competing variant of a variable is activated in one’s memory,

the more entrenched it becomes in that person’s cognitive structure. Thus, the

57
social aspect both presupposes and enforces the cognitive aspect in the

processes of selection. One notices all these processes of change in the early

history of Vaishnavism where the ‘activation value’ of the concept of ‘Krishna’

changed after his representation in the MBh as the highest Brahmanic god. I

explore this further in the next chapter.

In this context, by appealing to explanations in sociolinguistic theory for

language change that are also pertinent for religious change, one can say that (i)

change does not mean an abrupt shift from variant A to variant B; there is an

intermediate period where A and B coexist as variants of a single variable, (ii)

individual practitioners use more than one variant of a variable, and (iii) the

distribution pattern of variants in communication depends on social factors, such

as socioeconomic class, gender, sex, age, social network relations among

interlocutors, etc. (modified from Croft 2000:54). Thus, in this theory, the causal

mechanisms of selection are the social motivations of speakers.

A study of ‘innovative’ Hindu religious texts like the BhG or the BhP

reveals a strong tendency of their authors to communicate their ideas in a way

that not only connects them to older traditions but also in a way that makes them

stand apart from other traditions. This is captured in Keller’s (1994:101;

modified) maxims below:

5. Communicate in such a way that you are noticed.

58
 6. Communicate in such a way that you are not recognizable as a member of

the group.

In addition to these ‘poetic’ or ‘expressive’ maxims, Keller restates the ‘prosaic’

maxim cited earlier as [3] now with an interactional dimension:

7. Communicate in such a way that you do not expend superfluous energy.

The ‘economy’ principle in communication, therefore, can be seen either in terms

of cognitive processing tendencies or as an intentional mechanism for using as

little time as possible in achieving some extralinguistic goal.

Apart from the ‘intentional’ mechanisms of creative expressiveness and

economy for altered replication, there are some nonintentional mechanisms that

include the following.

Form-function reanalysis: According to Croft (2000:117-118), the

‘meaning’ of a word or construction or a practice is essentially the history of its

uses by the members of the community. Based on their understanding of this

history, individual members do abstraction and analysis of previous uses and

then based on these produce new forms in new contexts. In so doing, they bring

about change. An example of form-function reanalysis in the context of

Hinduism, discussed in the next chapter, is the changing meaning of Vedic

sacrifice to ascetic practice and then to devotional practice. In religion, the form-

function reanalysis can be an intentional mechanism when new interpretations of

59
an existing form are offered in a philosophical commentary, or when a concept is

given new meaning, like sacrifice defined in terms of selfless action in the BhG,

as we see in the next chapter.

Interference and intraference: Interference is a mechanism for innovation

in contact-induced changes (Croft 2000:145ff.). Accommodating Croft’s

description to religion, one can see these changes originate with practitioners

who are ‘bilingual’ in different languages, belief systems, and cultures 37 and who

may have minimal bilingualism, but have some knowledge of both languages and

are able to create connections between the structures and meanings of the two

languages. Interference results from ‘interlingual’ identification. Applied to

religion, the ‘bilingual’ practitioner makes a cognitive link between elements or

forms of two distinct religious systems because of a perceived identity of some

properties within elements or forms in the two systems. This identification

motivates the transfer of properties of an element from one system to an element

of the other system. The effect of such a transfer is interference.

Once identification of concepts in the two systems is made in the

practitioner’s mind, the counterpart forms in the two languages or religions are

rendered variants of a single variable with overlapping meaning. For example, as

37 Within the context of religion, throughout I use the terms ‘bilingual’ or ‘multilingual’ broadly to
signify the knowledge and capacity of religious practitioners in two or more languages, religions,
and cultures.
60
I explore in the next chapter, if a religious practitioner is ‘bilingual’ in early

Hinduism and Buddhism, Krishna and the Buddha could be two variants of the

single variable ‘aristocratic-ascetic-teacher’. In the MBh/BhG Krishna’s

representation as a new variant of the variable ‘aristocratic-ascetic-teacher’ is the

result of certain identifications.

It is this identification that ‘creates’ the variants, that is, gives the potential

for replication of one variant in the other system as a novel variant; therefore,

identification can be seen as a mechanism of innovation. To the extent that

identification is a natural cognitive process, spontaneous interference may occur.

Identification can also be an intentional mechanism as we will see in the next

chapter. The conceptualization of Krishna in the MBh/BhG involves a series of

identifications with other religious figures.

An example of a system-internal identification (leading to intraference)

involves religious rituals: Vedic sacrifice (yajña) and devotional worship (pūjā)

were re-presented as two variants with overlapping meaning by the authors of

the MBh/BhG. Also, as I indicated earlier, for non-sectarian Krishna devotees

today, even pūjā and sevā (service) have overlapping meanings.

In the context of Hinduism, Michaels’ (2004:5-12) idea of ‘Identificatory

Habitus’ — “the establishment of an identity by equating it with something else”

— serves the same purpose as the mechanism of cognitive-linguistic

61
identification. Intentionally or unintentionally, it is the favored innovation process

to achieve convergence for social-religious goals, from the Vedic times to the

modern times. Michaels calls the idea of ‘Identificatory Habitus’ his working

understanding of India. He sees an Identificatory Habitus inherent in both the

philosophical nondualism of the Vedanta and in the method of substitution in

sacrificial rituals or asceticism. It explains the multiplicity of the gods as much as

it does the monotheism of India (7). Vedic texts posit identifications or

correspondences (bandhu) between the sacrificial rite and the cosmos, between

the performance of the sacrificial ritual and the maintenance of the cosmos,

ultimately leading to speculations about the relation between the subjective

reality or self (ātman) and the ultimate reality (brahman).

1.3.3.3 Mechanisms for differential replication / propagation

Selection involves choosing among existing variants of a variable, and its

mechanisms are those that favor the adoption of a particular form among

members of a community (Croft 2000:73). The three principal intentional

mechanisms for selection are accommodation, act of identity, and prestige.

These social mechanisms presuppose the cognitive. While we find the operation

of all three mechanisms in the history of Hindu practices, in their study a

consideration of the cognitive aspect is neglected. Therefore, I borrow from

62
linguistic explanations of these mechanisms which pay equal attention to the

social and the cognitive. I begin with the mechanism of accommodation.

Accommodation takes place when practitioners alter their practice in order

to accommodate to their audience. This leads to convergence which is “a

linguistic situation arising when two or more groups speaking different languages

cohabit, becoming multilingual but retaining their languages” (Gumperz and

Wilson 1971 in Croft 2000:234). The locus of convergence is the structure of the

languages or religious traditions. Convergence involves some reduction and

simplification, while substantial (i.e. lexical-semantic) differences are maintained.

Linguistic convergence — from which I derive the idea of conceptual and

representational convergence in religion, important to my analysis — is

demonstrated in two studies, one by Morales (1995) and the other by Gumperz

and Wilson (1971).

The first study is on ‘The loss of the Spanish impersonal particle se among

bilinguals’ among Puerto Ricans, who have various impersonal constructions

available to them for expressing an action without mention of an agent. The

situation can be summed up thus:

63
 Impersonal Pronoun Use Among Bilingual Puerto Ricans
(Morales 1995)
English they we ----- one you (2singular)
X

Spanish 3plural 1plural se uno tú

In the Spanish of the Spanish-English bilingual Puerto Ricans studied by Morales

(1995), the use of the impersonal se was disfavored significantly, whereas this

was not the case in the Spanish of monolingual Puerto Ricans. The reason for

this, Morales suggests, is that the impersonal se construction has no counterpart

in English. The bilinguals favored the impersonal constructions shared by both

English and Spanish. The conclusion is that it is cognitively simpler, and more

economical, to use forms shared by both languages in order to express a given

idea. Morales (1995:158-159) concludes that convergence results in a less

complex system of forms, a rejection of the most abstract and complex

construction, and the replacement of it with other forms from within the system

itself.

Reduction and simplification thus have as much cognitive reason as

social. The results of this and the second study to be discussed now support

Boyer’s (2001) observation regarding the constriction of cultural phenomena from

very many to many fewer. The study on ‘Convergence and creolization: A case

from the Indo-Aryan/Dravidian border’ (Gumperz and Wilson 1971) identified

64
processes of reduction and convergence in the Kupwar village in Maharashtra.

The inhabitants are multilingual in the Dravidian languages Kannada and Telugu,

and the Indo-Aryan languages Marathi and Urdu. The inhabitants maintain a

strict separation between public and private spheres of activity, and a

corresponding exclusivity of the language used at home. The “ethnic

separateness” of home life and the language associated with it results in the

persistence of multi-lingualism and code-switching resulting in a “reduction and

adaptation in linguistic structure” (1971:165). This case is also relevant if we

assume the co-existence of different codes relating to, for example, devotional

religion and philosophy in a religious practitioner’s mind, and their use in different

domains of the practitioner’s life, much like the separate use of different codes or

languages. 38

The above two studies are examples of one type of accommodation

phenomenon, which involves adjusting by way of simplification. The second type

of accommodation involves adjusting one’s practice / speaking in order to identify

with the community of the interlocutor. This can take the form of shifting to the

variants associated with the higher social group. It is related to the notion of

prestige in a class-based model where the variants used by the more powerful

38 In the context of Hinduism, Doniger (2009:44) sees this phenomenon in terms of “eclectic

pluralism, or internal or individual pluralism, a kind of cognitive dissonance,” in which a person

holds different beliefs simultaneously, drawing upon any one as the occasion demands. She
relates this behavior to the multivalent nature of Sanskrit and its compound structure.
65
community form the standard and are propagated into the less powerful

community. However, there is also the phenomenon of covert prestige which

involves propagation of lower socioeconomic class vernacular variants through

the inversion of the preceding dynamic (Croft 2000:74, 181-182). The existence

of covert prestige indicates that the factor of social identification rather than

power/prestige determines the direction of change (Croft 181). Thus, acts of

identity can be complex and multi-directional, depending on the communication

situation.

Within an Indian context, the mechanism of ‘prestige’ is akin to

‘Sanskritization’, which Srinivas (1971:6-7) defines as “the process by which a

‘low’ Hindu caste, or tribal or other group, changes its customs, ritual, ideology,

and way of life in the direction of a high, and frequently, ‘twice-born’ caste.” To

this I would add that, along with the upward mobility of a group of people, their

god(s) too undergo ‘Sanskritization’. As my next chapter shows, the process of

Sanskritization has been in operation since the Vedic times.

Beside the brahmanical model of Sanskritization, which has the Brahmins

at the top of the caste/class hierarchy, Pocock (in Srinivas 1971:7-8) mentions a

Kshatriya or Kingly model which “is represented by the dominant political power

in any area, and is mediated by the local dominant non-Brahmin caste or castes

of that area.” The adherents of the two models vied for supremacy in early Indian

66
history and can also be seen in the rivalry between Vedic Brahmanism and

Buddhism / Jainism, which “were both started by ‘Kshatriyas of exceptional ability

preaching a new philosophy which was utilized by their followers for asserting the

social superiority of the Kshatriyas over the Brahmins” (Ghurye in Srinivas

1971:31). The epic MBh took shape during this period, and I see in it an effort to

promote the brahmanical model and thereby regain the prestige and power of

Vedic Brahmanism and the Brahmins which they had lost under pro-Buddhist

kings. In this endeavor, the Brahmins represent Krishna as a ‘brahminically

attuned’ Kshatriya god to rival the Buddha. I develop this argument in the next

chapter.

Thus, Sanskritization is an act of identity, and acts of identity account for

“the first law of propagation” of a variant which is that practitioners in a particular

community tend to converge on a single variant for conveying a particular

meaning. The regular use of a particular conceptual variant not only conveys a

particular meaning, it also serves as an act of identity with a community by the

practitioner. Multiple variants divide community identity and tend to be resolved

in various ways. Thus, conventionalizing one single variant helps in conveying

meaning more efficiently and establishing or confirming a communal identity

(Croft 2000:183).

67
 Representations of gods in the early history of Vaishnavism, which I

examine in the next chapter, present a virtual case study of movement toward a

unique convention. Just as there is a strong tendency in language to avoid

multiple forms with the same meaning and same social (community) value, so it

seems in religion as well. Croft (2000:177-178) describes the three ways people

increase the conventionality of a linguistic variant in order to avoid complete

synonymy: (1) by division of meaning such that alternate forms are used for

distinct functions i.e. meanings; (2) by associating distinct forms with different

communities by the speakers; and (3) by speakers selecting one form over the

other leading to increasing conventionality of the selected form. A speaker

chooses/prefers one variant over another due to reasons of social identification,

which again presuppose cognitive reasons.

Examples for all three ways of increasing conventionality and avoiding

synonymy can be found in the early history of Vaishnaism in my next chapter. As

an instance of division of meaning, in the process of fusing of two tribes/clans

(Yādavas and Vṛṣṇis) and the fusing of their two tribal/clan heroes (Krishna and

Vasudeva), ‘Vasudeva’ was given a new function as Krishna’s patronymic. An

early example of association of distinct forms with different communities is in

Vasudeva-Krishna’s with the Bhāgavatas, and Narayana’s with the Pāñcarātra

community of worshippers. I find that the selection of Krishna from among all the

68
other gods for representation as the highest brahmanical god in the BhG is an

example of the third. The Vedic Brahmins’ selection of Krishna from among

various gods, for reasons of accommodation, social identification, and prestige,

led to their differential replication and differential perpetuation in the history of

Hinduism. 39

1.3.4 Summary and implications

1. Language evolves in language use (in communication). Religion evolves in

religious practice (here, representation). Religious change is driven by

interactors (practitioners) interacting with their social-communicative and

social-historical environment in such a way that their replication (conceptual

representation) of replicators (concepts) is altered (innovative) and differential

(it shifts the frequency of use of variants). Differential replication results in

propagation and entrenchment of the most frequently selected variant(s) in

practice. The mechanisms of/for innovation and propagation include form-

function reanalysis, conceptual identification and interference, economy,

accommodation and convergence, social identification, and prestige. I use

39 Replication of one form instead of another can occur as a result of exposure to use (measured

by token frequency) rather than as an act of identity or accommodation; that is, differential
replication can occur independent of any intentional goal of the speaker. This effect would then
be an instance of language or religious change as a phenomenon of the third kind.
69
 this theoretical framework to analyze the history of the conceptualizations of

Krishna in the following chapters.

2. As language use and religious practice are social-interactional and social-

historical phenomena, both involve people and communication. Therefore, the

issues of community and successful communication are important.

3. Society is made up of multiple speech communities; individuals in a society

are members of multiple speech communities and social domains and have

multiple codes. This understanding of speech community — as made up of

multi-lingual/multi-code speakers — blurs the divide between internally- and

externally-caused changes. In the context of religion, practitioners belong to

multiple communities and domains, and are conversant with/in various codes.

This multi-layered view of social membership and identity complicates the

critique of contact-induced changes wrought through orientalism and

colonialism. Whether the context is intra-society or inter-society contacts,

since people are multi-lingual, everyone to some extent participates in the

processes of interference and convergence. There is not much difference

between the internal causes of religious change and external causes of

religious change. That is, the difference is one of degree, not one of kind.

4. All communication involves a combination of convention and innovation. So it

is with religious practice. Regardless of the context — whether a

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representation is made to a fellow-member of a religious community or to a

person from another community — the interaction will combine both normative

and innovative elements so that the interlocutors can coordinate on meaning

interpretation. This is why both continuity and change are necessary

properties of a tradition.

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2. The evolution of Krishna of the Mahābhārata and the Bhagavad Gītā

Krishna’s story is a historical record of conceptual assimilations, innovations, and

cognitive/social accommodations made by religious practitioners over a long

period of time. In changing social, economic, and political circumstances,

religious practitioners (un)intentionally initiated and/or participated in these

processes of change through innovative recombination of earlier concepts. 40

The practitioners’ interactions with their historical and immediate environment

have influenced Krishna’s representations since the Vedic times. Regarding

Krishna’s (extra-)Vedic antecedents, the tendency in most scholarship on

Krishna is to mention it in a paragraph or two at most and then begin with his

story in the MBh (Cf. Bryant 2007). The focus is mostly on a detailed analysis of

the MBh and other texts produced subsequently, with a brief consideration of the

texts’ social-historical environment by a few scholars (Cf. Malinar 2007). Yet, the

attention overwhelmingly is on a textual analysis of Krishna’s legend from the

MBh onward.

I propose to begin my study of Krishna’s representations a little further

back in order to analyze the processes that led to his representation in the MBh,

40 ‘Recombination’ is the key word here, for Hull (1988:414) reminds us that “Although genuinely
novel ideas crop up once in a while — quite rarely — most progress in science occurs by means
of recombination.” Similarly, Croft (2000:104) says, “Most innovative use of language is also
partly conventional, because it is based on the recombination of conventional [meaning]
coordination devices (words and constructions).” I suggest that this phenomenon of innovation
through recombination is also present in religious practices.
72
because, of course, representation presupposes earlier ‘presentation(s)’. My

working assumption is that the elements that make up MBh’s Krishna evolved in

a certain direction, and that this directionality was due to agency of a group of

Brahmins. The interconnected intellectual, if not genetic, lineage of these

Brahmins may also be the most likely candidate for the MBh’s authorship. Since

the social-interactional process of representation is the focus of this study, I

examine the environment in which Krishna’s constitutive elements developed.

This involves studying social-political environment in the Vedic times and its

impact on the evolution of these elements. I find the processes and mechanisms

of change in the Vedic times to be no different from such processes in the later

history of Hinduism, including under colonialism. Therefore, I suggest that

Hinduism’s later history should be contextualized in a broader framework that

includes its earliest history. Taking a step in that direction, I consider the more

recent findings in Vedic Studies that shed new light on a social-political

environment that included multilingualism, acculturation, Sanskritization, etc.

during Vedic times: all factors that shaped early representations of Krishna and

his constitutive elements in Vedic texts and his later representation in the MBh.

As the representations of Krishna and their social-historical background in

medieval, early-modern, and colonial India have been treated in some detail in

earlier scholarship, I spend relatively more time on the history of the Vedic times,

73
which has been largely ignored in Krishna studies. Thus, I divide the history of

Krishna’s conceptualization into three phases:

1. Vedic texts to the MBh (BhG)

2. The MBh (BhG) to the BhP (Vraj)

3. Krishna of the BhP (Vraj) versus Krishna of the MBh (BhG)

The first phase culminated in the epic Mahābhārata (MBh) and its most iconic

representation of Krishna as the Lord-charioteer guiding his favored warriors to

victory and to a just kingship. The most replicated portion of the MBh has been

the Bhagavad Gītā (BhG), 41 and, by extension, the most replicated image of

Krishna from the entire epic is that of Krishna as Arjuna’s charioteer. According

to Rao (1986; in Bryant 2003:x), out of nine major iconographical forms under

which Krishna has been worshipped in India, seven relate to his childhood in

Vraj; one is of Krishna with his consort Rukmiṇī, and the other is of Krishna as

Pārthasārathi, the charioteer of Arjuna: “This latter image is the only

representation of Kṛṣṇa in the role of teacher and speaker of the Bhagavad Gītā.

(Kṛṣṇa had agreed to drive Arjuna’s chariot and delivered the Bhagavad Gītā to

41 As Bryant (2007:4) points out, the BhG is “the best known and most often translated Hindu
text.” While it may be fashionable to argue that the British colonialists and European Orientalists
brought it to prominence, Bryant reminds us that “anyone over the last twelve centuries or so
interested in founding a new line of Vedanta — the school of philosophical thought that has
emerged as the most influential and definitive of ‘Hinduism’ — was expected to write a
commentary on the Gita as one of the three main textual sources of scriptural authority.” The
other two canonical sources for Vedanta were the Upaniṣads and the Vedānta/Brahma-sūtra.
The tradition of commentary on these select texts had been active for at least five centuries
before Europeans discovered India in 1498 CE. (Cf. also chapter 1 fn.32 above.)
74
him on the Mahābhārata battlefield immediately prior to the war).” Thus, apart

from the Vraj Krishna of later texts, the most entrenched representation of MBh

Krishna is of a teacher — a brāhmaṇya (brahmanic) Krishna of the BhG. By

‘brāhmaṇya Krishna’ I mean Krishna having the status and character of a

Brahmin in terms of being a teacher of dharma in the BhG. Additionally, the

adjective signifies the brahmanization of Krishna, that is, Vedic Brahmanism’s

Sanskritization of the extra-Vedic antecedents of his constituent elements42 by

identifying them with Vedic Vishnu and making them ‘Vaishnava’. In the MBh,

‘brāhmaṇya’ also comes to signify ‘brahmanically-attuned’ i.e. Krishna who is

sensitive to the brahmanical order of society, unlike his the then competitors, the

Buddha and Mahavira. Thus, ‘brahmanic’ denotes all three meanings together.

Krishna’s early history began perhaps in pre-Vedic times and led up to the MBh,

giving us brāhmaṇya Krishna as a new religious concept (a replicator; a new

variant) embodied in the BhG (a discourse form that is reproduced in further

representations). In the MBh, the BhG is the more precise locus of innovation.

2.1 Social environment, conceptual / social identification, Sanskritization

Krishna’s early history culminated in the MBh, a text in which Vedic religion

transitions into Hinduism. In Hull’s (1988) terms, the MBh can be viewed as a

42 By ‘extra-Vedic’ I mean elements initially outside of but later incorporated into the Vedic culture.
75
new ‘vehicle’ of ideas of its Brahmin authors or ‘interactors’, who interacted with

their environment in a way that led them to re-work and re-present older

concepts innovatively in the MBh. Thus, within the MBh, especially its BhG, the

authors reproduced a new variant (brahmanic warrior Krishna) of an older

concept (tribal warrior hero). As later history shows, the new variant became

entrenched in the tradition as the new norm.

It was the practitioners’ interactions with their environment, their

innovations and selective propagations of certain concepts that led to the

changes we find articulated in the MBh. Among the intentional mechanisms for

propagation in these interactions from pre-Vedic to post-Vedic times, social

identification i.e. Sanskritization, stands out as the social-religious response of

some people in two historical periods of state formations — the formation of the

Kuru state c. 1200-900 BCE, and the formation of the Maurayan empire c. 324-

185 BCE. During both periods, due to active royal-administrative interventions,

certain religions prevailed: Vedic Brahmanism under the Kurus and Buddhism-

Jainism under the Mauryans. Cognizant of these social-political factors, a group

of ‘bilingual’ Vedic priests Kāṇva-Āṅgirasa-Bhārgava in the lineage of Vedic poet-

seers (ṛṣis) Kaṇva, Aṅgirasa, and Bhṛgu, gradually brought into the Vedic

pantheon non-Aryan / extra-Vedic gods like Puruṣa-Nārāyaṇa, and Vāsudeva-

Kṛṣṇa, or they reinterpreted the meaning of these gods in the process of

76
identifying them closely with Vedic gods such as Mitra, Varuṇa, Indra, the

Nāsatya/Aśvin, Viṣṇu. 43 Successive reinterpretations and conceptual

identifications of these divinities in the Ṛg Veda, Śatapatha Brāhmaṇa,

Chāndogya Upaniṣad, and the MBh eventually gave us the brāhmaṇya Krishna.

Acceptance and entrenchment of such divine identifications among

religious practitioners had cognitive and social reasons. Cognitively, the new

definitions of the divinities became entrenched because the forms of these Vedic

or extra-Vedic gods came to be in variable distribution. That is, they came to be

seen as variants of each-other, and one god could be conceptually substituted

for another because of their increasingly identical form and function. 44 Social

reasons for acceptance of conceptual assimilations included prestige and acts of

identity with a dominant ruling group: when extra-Vedic gods Purusha-Narayana

were identified with the Vedic Vishnu, the factor in play was Vishnu’s prestige as

a Vedic god; and, on the flipside, brahmanical authorities assimilated extra-Vedic

gods to the Vedic gods because of covert prestige of the former.

43 Henceforth, unless they are in a direct quotation employing diacritics, I use the Anglicized
spelling of the names of these deities. Also, with reference to class/caste designations, I use
their Anglicized spellings unless the designations with diacritics occur within direct quotations. In
this context, Brahman and Brahmin are interchangeable forms, of which I use the latter while
some authors use the former.
44 Cf. Hardy’s (1990:79) view that the concept of Bhagvān (God, Lord) as a “single, all-powerful,

eternal, personal and loving God . . . is an empty slot, to be filled by concrete characteristics
which then make up a specific Bhagavān-figure who serves as (the one and only) God to a given
group of people.” Depending on the devotees’ perspective, ‘Bhagvān’, then, can be seen as a
variable for which Vishnu, Narayana, Krishna, Rama, or the Buddha at one point or another
become the competing variants.
77
 The brahmanical authorities attempted to bring under their influence the

communities of worshippers devoted to popular extra-Vedic gods. 45 For these

communities, the acts of identity brought benefits. At the social level, the extra-

Vedic communities and their gods became mainstream and were accepted as

part of the larger Vedic society. At the religious level, the new composite deity

reconciled the idea of a ‘human’ god on earth (like Krishna) with his status as a

supreme divinity. 46 The identification made Krishna the earthly manifestation of

the Vedic god Vishnu. Moreover, as represented in the MBh, Vishnu’s earthly

manifestation as Krishna took on some characteristics of the Buddha and took up

social-philosophical issues of the day brought to the fore by the rise of Buddhism

and Jainism. Thus, from the Vedic texts to the MBh, the representational trend

bent toward the conceptual categories of the politically more powerful group that

actively intervened in social-religious affairs (the Vedic Kurus, the Jain-Buddhist

Maurayans) and toward the more prestigious variant of God (Vishnu, the

Buddha).

I see the above trend mirrored in Krishna’s representational history under

colonialism in terms of variant selection (brahmanic warrior Krishna versus

playful Vraj Krishna), and the cognitive and social motivations behind the

selections of ‘bilingual’ Hindu intelligentsia. In order to better contextualize the

45 For a detailed discussion on this subject, see Jaiswal 1981.

46 Dandekar 1979:249-250 and Matchett 2001:7-8.
78
trend’s colonial instance (§ 4.2 below), I include in detail the findings in Vedic

Studies that can illuminate the trend’s background during Vedic times leading up

to the MBh. 47 Only against this background can one appreciate the composite

nature of Krishna’s conceptualization in the MBh and understand the

foregrounding of some aspects relative to other aspects in his representation by

bilingual religious practitioners in Vedic times and subsequently.

The MBh is an epic that contains the story of a war that took place in the

Kurukṣetra region (upper Ganges valley) of north-west India and social-religious

47 In the following discussion, I use Witzel’s (1999b:2-3) definitions of languages, texts, and
periods involved. Languages involved are Vedic, Dravidian and Munda, belonging to three
different language families (respectively, Indo-European, Dravidian and Austro-Asiatic). “The
Vedas provide our most ancient sources for the Old Indo-Aryan variety (IA; OIA = Vedic Sanskrit)
of the Indo-Iranian branch (IIr. = Old Iranian, Nuristani and Old Indo-Aryan) of the Indo-European
language family (IE = Celtic, Germanic, Italic, Slavic, Greek, Hittite, Tocharian, etc.) that are
spoken in the subcontinent. However, these texts also contain the oldest available attestation for
non-Indo-European words in the subcontinent (Dravidian, Munda, etc.).” Indo-Iranians or Indo-
Aryans/Vedic Aryans were speakers of IIr. and IA/OIA — these are linguistic, not racial, terms.
The Vedas were orally composed (c. 1700–500 BCE) in parts of present-day Afghanistan,
northern Pakistan and northern India. The Ṛg Veda (RV) is a Bronze Age OIA text of Greater
Panjab (= “with the inclusion of many areas of Afghanistan from Sistan/Arachosia to
Kabul/Gandhara”), composed after the demise of the Indus Valley Civilization (IVC) c. 1900 BCE.
Witzel recognizes three periods within the RV: the early (RV I, c. 1700-1500 BCE), the middle (RV
II, c. 1500-1350 BCE), and the late (RV III, c. 1350-1200 BCE) “on the basis and by the internal
criteria of textual arrangement, of the ‘royal’ lineages, and independently from these, those of the
poets (ṛṣis) who composed the hymns. About both groups of persons we know enough to be able
to establish pedigrees which sustain each other.”
In terms of substrate languages in the RV, in the later three Vedas (Atharva Veda [AV],
Yajur Veda [YV], Sāma Veda [SV]) and the epics, Witzel (1999b:5) sees the following trends: (1)
a Central Asian substrate in the oldest Ṛgvedic; (2) no Dravidian substrate in RV I period, but that
of an Austroasiatic (= Para-Munda) substrate plus a few hints of Language “X” and some others;
(2) the first influx of Dravidian words in the RV books of RV II and RV III periods; (3) in the post-
RV texts (i.e. AV, YV, etc.) and in “the educated Vedic speech of the Brahmins,” a continuing
influx of vocabulary from earlier substrates, plus the occurrence of Proto-Munda names in eastern
North India; and (4) a presence of other substrates, including Proto-Burushaski in the northwest,
Tibeto-Burmese in the Himalayas and in Kosala, Dravidian in Sindh, Gujarat and Central India.
79
philosophies that developed mostly in the region (lower Ganges valley) south-

east of that. 48 The MBh covers more than the distance between the two regions,

it also expands the horizon of religious developments from the Kuru state to the

Mauryan Empire, and the compilation of the Vedas in the former and the

composition of the MBh in the latter: “Like the Vedas, the Mahābhārata has

gathered textual representations of all the gods into a single compendious whole.

Unlike the primary Veda, the Mahābhārata made all of this available openly and

widely” (Fitzgerald 2004:73). I suggest that the authorial group that bridges this

distance originated in regions even further west than Kurukṣetra. They brought

the various threads of extra-Vedic mythologies and rituals together with the Vedic

in their conceptualization of brahmanic Krishna in the MBh and its BhG.

2.2 Bilingual Brahmins 49

On the basis of certain legends in the MBh, especially of Parasurāma

Jāmadagnya, a Bhārgava Brahmin, Sukthankar (1936) and Goldman (1972,

48 See Thapar (2003:98-102) and Doniger (2009:261-262) on issues of the war’s dates — most
probably c. 950 BCE; Indian tradition’s 3012 BCE — and possible archaeological evidence. Witzel
(1995b:335-336, 1995c:1) argues that there was a Ṛgvedic archetype of the epic MBh in the
hymn of the ‘Ten Kings Battle’ (RV 7.18, 7.33), which took place further west on the river Paruṣṇī
(modern Ravī in Pakistan), near Mānuṣa, a locality west of Kurukṣetra, suggestive of the origins
of the Bharata in eastern Iran. In this battle the Bharata and the Yadu (Yakṣu, ‘sacrificer’) were
victorious allies, just as in the MBh.
49 To be clear, by ‘bilingual’ I mean ‘being conversant with/in two languages, cultures, and

religious belief systems’ as well as ‘being conversant with/in philosophical and devotional codes
of a religious language’. I gloss ‘multilingual’ similarly. See also Table 1 and fn.37 above.
80
1977, 1978) have argued that the MBh was redacted by a historical clan of

Bhārgava Brahmins. 50 Later reanalysis of the legend of Parasurāma

50 In terms of seeing the MBh as a thematically-integrated text that has religious and conceptual
unity, I find useful Biardeau’s opinion that the MBh as we have it today was composed by a family
group over a relatively short period of time, and Hiltebeitel’s view that it was produced by a team
of experts under the guidance of a principal author (in Sutton 2006:83). Referring to the
Bhārgava Brahmin Śaunaka in the MBh, Hiltebeitel (2001:173 n.148) argues that it is more fruitful
to think of the contributions to the MBh by his “school” of Vedic exegesies rather than his “clan”.
Hiltebeitel (2001:105ff.) has vigorously questioned Sukthankar-Goldman’s theses
regarding the MBh’s Bhārgava authorship, calling it “a pervasive myth about Mahābhārata
mythmaking” (2001:107). Hiltebeitel (2001:109-110) considers Śaunaka and other Bhārgavas as
simply epic characters, and says “there is nothing to suggest that the composing Brahmans were
Bhārgavas. Indeed, it is far more likely that they were not, or not just [them alone];” for instance,
there are more references in the epic to Āṅgiras Brahmins, like Bṛhaspati and his incarnation
Droṇa (Shende 1943 in Hiltebeitel 2001:107). But in citing this criticism, Hiltebeitel disregards the
close alliance between Āṅgiras Brahmins and the Bhārgava in Vedic literature.
Hiltebeitel’s (2001:110-112) rejection of Bhārgava authorship is mainly based on the evidence of
negative portrayal of Bhārgavas in the MBh, summed up by Sukthankar (1936) and Goldman
(1977), in which these Brahmins appear as irascible sages, domineering, arrogant, unbending
and revengeful; as degraded, military, violent, caste-mixing Brahmins, whose central concerns
included “death, violence, sorcery, confusion and violation of class roles (varṇāśramadharma),
intermarriage with other varṇas (varṇasaṃkara), and open hostility to the gods themselves”
(Goldman 1977:5). Hiltebeitel (2001:111) comments: “Convinced, however, that this mythology
of the Bhārgavas is mythology by the Bhārgavas, neither Sukthankar nor Goldman ever asks why
Bhārgavas would have portrayed themselves so unfavorably.” While arguing that the Bhārgavas
“are portrayed as vehicles for defining, and if necessary correcting, the status relations of
Brahmans,” Hiltebeitel (2001:111) does not entertain the possibility that the bad Bhārgavas may
be the Brahmin counterpart to the epic’s villainous Kshatriyas, the Kauravas. Indeed, Hiltebeitel
(2001:108 and n.54, 116) had noted that Minkowski’s (1991) and Sullivan’s (1990) analyses of
“the countless parallels” and “analogs” between the Bhārgava myth cycle and the Bharata story of
“caste mixture, degraded Brahmans, Brahmans as kings, black magic, curses, feuds, extreme
and uncontrolled violence.” Then why deny the possibility that the authorial group of Brahmins
may have been Bhārgavas who were defining what was wrong in their contemporary
Brahmanicial world through the portrayal of a group of “‘flawed’ Bhārgavas and Āṅgirasa
Brahmans” like Paraśurāma and Droṇa? (Hiltebeitel 2001:113). After all, the MBh’s authorial
group is partial toward other Bhārgavas and one in particular — Krishna — who is descended
from Bhārgava Śukra and his grandson Yadu through maternal descent. (Hiltebeitel 2001:112,
116 n.74). Cf. BhG 10.25 in which Krishna identifies himself with Bhṛgu among all the Vedic poet-
seers, and among the Vedas, with Sāma Veda, BhG 10.22. Krishna’s first unambiguous mention
is in the Sāma Veda’s Chāndogya Upaniṣad (3.17), as a disciple of a Ghora Āṅgirasa (an
Āṅgirasa-Bhārgava?). Sāmavedic strophic structure is the distinguishing feature of the Ṛg Veda’s
Kāṇva (identified with Āṅgirasa-Bhārgava) books. Indeed, Krishna’s conceptualization in the epic
incorporates some principal elements of Bhārgava mythology, such as Purusha, Narayana, and
the Nasatyas/Ashvins.
81
Jāmadagnya by other scholars, including Hiltebeitel, has led Fitzgerald (2004:58)

to call for a reassessment of the Sukthankar-Goldman theses per the authorship

of Bhārgava Brahmins. At the same time, Fitzgerald (2004:54, 72; 2006:277)

retains the idea of MBh as a product of Brahmin response (“Brāhmaṇ counter-

revolution”) to prevailing socio-political environment c. 300 BCE - 300 CE. Sutton

(2002:15) writes that the MBh “presents the ideology of brāhmaṇas of various

persuasions, all of whom are attempting the redefinition of traditional beliefs

under the influence of non-Āryan and mystical ideas.” Hiltebeitel, too, writes of

Brahmin authorship of the MBh (2001:101-102, 110).

Whether the authors of the MBh were Bhārgavas or other Brahmins, they

brought together Vedic and extra-Vedic, Aryan and non-Aryan ideas in the epic.

I suggest that these authors were bilingual and that bilingualism was perhaps a

tradition in their lineage going back to pre-Vedic times. 51 In such a case they

51 Ideas of pre-Vedic bilingualism, acculturation, and acceptance of non-Aryans or mixed Aryans

as Brahmins are supported by the following arguments. Noting the remnants of Dravidian (Brahui)
in Baluchistan, Witzel (1995a:107-108) writes of a very likely early contact in the north-west
between Indo-Aryan, Dravidian, and Munda-speakers such that “Vedic Sanskrit is already an
Indian language.” Kuiper (1991 in Witzel 1995a:108) concludes that, contrary to what is normally
thought, much longer period elapsed between the arrival of the Aryans in the region and the
composition of the oldest hymns of the Ṛg Veda (RV). Of the long period of acculturation, Witzel
(1995a:113) writes, “By the time they reached the Subcontinent, [the Indo-Aryans] were already
racially mixed: emerging from the lower Volga region and passing through Central Asia” where
they may have completely “Aryanized” a local population, for example, of the BMAC (Bactria-
Margiana Archeological Complex) area, in terms of language and culture. Witzel imagines a
complete acculturation of both groups before a part of this new people moved into the Panjab
assimilating (i.e. Aryanizing) the local population. This group of “’Aryans’ combined racial,
linguistic and cultural characteristics” (Kuiper 1991 in Witzel 1995a:114), and was “politically
dominant because of its new military technology and tactics,” especially the horse-drawn chariot.
82
would be people with weak ties to their communities, and would therefore be

more likely to be ‘introducers’ of new concepts across the communities they

shared, mixing them in the process. Some of their mixed traditions (mythologies

and rituals) may have had pre-Ṛgvedic roots, which they developed further in the

epics in combination with newer traditions. The idea of preservation and

transmission of pre-Vedic ideas in the MBh by any (intellectual) lineage of Vedic

Brahmins is not far-fetched if we recall the case of Kupwar village in India where

a multilingual community maintains a strict separation between public and private

spheres, between language used at home and in public and thereby ensuring

maintenance of their respective languages’ lexical-semantic substantive content

even while converging structurally in their publicly-used codes (§ 1.3.3.3 above).

We may have a similar case here in that the Atharvans may have maintained

their extra-Vedic mythologies and practices within their community even while

‘Aryans’, therefore, also included those who imitated the Indo-Aryans and adopted their
Vedic culture to become completely ‘Aryanized’, such as the “Aryan” chieftains with “non-Indo-
Aryan” names like Bṛbu and Balbutha, “who is explicitly called a Dāsa” (Witzel 1995a:113). Cf.
Witzel’s (1999b:23-24) example of a Dravidian, Ailūṣa, a Ṛgvedic poet-priest, whose great-
grandson Tura Kāvaṣeya later developed the Agnicayana ritual in the Kuru realm: “This case
shows the inclusion of a Dravidian into the fold, and underlines the important role a new ‘convert’
to Ārya religion could play in its very development. . . . Further, he was not classified as Śūdra but
obviously as a Brahmin who had learned to compose RV hymns in the traditional poetic IA
language! All of this is indicative of a high degree of amalgamation and language acquisition at
this time, during the middle and late Ṛgveda period [c. 1500-1200 BCE].” Perhaps Atharva Veda
priests like Bhārgavas were also such ‘mixed’ Brahmins. Note Hiltebeitel’s (2001:107 n.53)
criticism of follow ups to the MBh’s Bhārgava authorship hypothesis that the Vedic poet-seer
Bhṛgu was a Dravidian, or that the Bhārgavas may have been responsible for the bhakti elements
in the epic, etc. I suggest that in light of Witzel’s scholarship on Vedic materials, the idea of
Bhārgava authorship of the MBh is at least plausible.
83
participating in broader Vedic religious life and contributing some extra-Vedic

elements to it. Once the Vedic canon was formalized, they were responsible for

preserving it. We must also consider the following description of the Vedic

tradition which may be applicable to earlier extra-Vedic traditions:

We owe the transmission and preservation of the [Vedic] texts to the care
and discipline of particular religious, or better, priestly schools (or śākhās).
It should also be emphasized that both the composition and the
transmission of the texts were completely oral for the entire Vedic period
and some considerable time afterwards — hence the critical importance of
the schools in their preservation. From the beginning, the various schools
were favored by particular tribes, and later on by particular dynasties. 52

Apart from the Vedic Atharvan priests Kāṇva-Āṅgirasa-Bhārgava in the lineage of

Vedic poet-seers Kaṇva, Aṅgirasa, and Bhṛgu, 53 other clans/tribes of note in

Krishna’s early conceptual history were the Yadu-Turvaśa, Bharata, Kuru-

Pañcāla, and Kosala-Videha (out of about 35 Vedic tribes/clans). Apart from the

52 Jamison and Witzel 2003:66. Witzel (2003a, 1997, 1995a, 1995b) has suggested the historicity
of the Kurus, especially of the Kuru king Parīkṣit and his son Janmejaya, and of their role in the
formation of the Vedic canon and in the establishment of the first larger polity or state, c. 1200-
900 BCE.
53 Note that the RV’s books 2-7 are the work of seven Vedic poets and their clans or schools, out

of which these three become particularly prominent. I am using ‘Atharvan’ as a handle for all
three together since they are interconnected, possibly through real or ‘spiritual adoption’ among
the lineages (Cf. Witzel 1995b:316). As discussed later, Witzel, Parpola, Insler have noted their
complete identifications or close relations, enough to allow me to group them together. Not all
are exclusively connected to the AV, but their mythologies related to Krishna and his constituents
Purusha-Narayana, even when in non-AV texts, are somehow placed in relation to Atharvan
elements. For example, the first unambiguous mention of Krishna is in Chāndogya Upaniṣad of
the SV, but there he is a disciple of an Atharvan, Ghora Āṅgirasa. SV itself is almost entirely
made up of RV books 8 and 9, dominated by Kāṇva school (Witzel 1995b:338). Articulating all the
myriad connections among the three lineages is beyond the scope of this study but I mention a
few in the following discussion.
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Vedic sacrificial religion, 54 other important practices or religions were the non-IE

BMAC religion (see below), asceticism, Buddhism, popular devotional religion

like Bhāgavatism. And of the various divinities, the following had a more

prominent role in Vaishnava history: Aryan gods (Mitra, Varuna, Indra, the

Nasatya/Ashvin, Vishnu), 55 non-Aryan gods? 56 (Purusha, Narayana), religious

leaders (Gautama Buddha, Mahavira), and personal gods (Vasudeva-Krishna,

Rama).

Krishna of the MBh 57 is the culmination of a long process of ‘interlingual’ or

inter-cultural identifications, the beginnings of which may lie in the region known

as the Bactria Margiana Archaeological Comples (BMAC). The significance of

BMAC in the making of Krishna is underscored by the apparent connections

54 The Vedic religious practice consisted of singing the Vedic poems, chants, or other sacred
utterances, ritual fire sacrifices (with offerings of milk, honey, clarified butter, and animals, like
horse or cattle), and sharing the sacrificial meal with the community (viś) as well as the gods, like
Indra, Vishnu, etc. Jamison (in Flood 1996:40) and Thapar (in Doniger 2009:107) call it a
“portable religion” in that it had no fixed places of worship, images, or texts, and it could be
carried in the saddlebags and the heads of the nomadic practitioners. For an overview of Indo-
Aryans and their Vedic religion, see Larson (1995:57-65), Flood (1996:30-50), Michaels (2004:33-
36), Thapar (2003:104-136), Witzel (2003a), and Doniger (2009:85-198). It was a priestly religion
with a strong social dimension. Thapar (2003:126-132) discusses this in detail in the section
‘Sacrifice as Ritual and as a Form of Social Exchange’.
55 The first four Vedic gods are mentioned in the Hittite-Mitanni agreement of the middle of the

14th century BCE; “The Mitanni had been exposed to early Indo-Aryan (not: Indo-Iranian)
influences a few hundred years earlier, exerted by a branch of those tribes who entered the
Bactro-Margiana area around 2100 B.C. and who then proceeded to India” (Witzel 1995c:4 n.17).
Vishnu was a minor deity in the Vedic pantheon at that time.
56 The question-mark is deliberate as the meaning and etymology of these names is not clear.

This is explored further below.

57 For the present I am bracketing another additive to Krishna’s legend: the pastoral Gopala-

Krishna of the Ābhīra tribe as described in the Harivaṃśa, the late supplement to the MBh. That
is another story that belongs with the next phase of Krishna’s history.
85
between the area, the above-mentioned group of bilingual Atharvan Brahmins,

the mythologies and practices associated with the divinities identified with

Krishna, and the Vedic texts in which they appear. 58

2.3 Pre-Vedic multilingual environment and the birth of Purusha

Before there were Vedic Aryans, there were early Proto-Indo-Iranian speakers

who moved southward from the Siberian steppes in southern Urals into the

BMAC sometime in the latter half of the third century BCE (Parpola 2005, 2002). 59

Parpola suggests an Aryan contribution to the rise of the BMAC from that point

on, and identifies this wave of early Proto-IIr. speakers as the Dāsas or Dasyus

58 In the following discussion, I provide evidence in support of my arguments primarily from the
scholarship of Parpola and Witzel, who have synthesized a great deal of archaeological and
linguistic data from various other scholars (including archaeologists, philologists, historians), and
are themselves variously cited by Flood (1996), Hiltebeitel (2001), Thapar (2003), Doniger (2009),
etc. For in-depth linguistic and archaeological data and data-analysis refer to Parpola, Witzel,
and the scholars whose work they analyze. I am employing their conclusions in building a
historical narrative of conceptualizations of Vaishanava divinities.
59 The area considered an early habitat of Proto-IIr. is the Andronovo cultural horizon’s Bronze

Age Sintashta-Arkhaim-Petrovka (SAP) archaeological complex in southern Urals, dated c.

2200/2100 - 2000/1800 BCE. Witzel (2003b:48) points out that it is as yet uncertain that (Proto-)
IIr. was actually spoken at the SAP in this period though linguistic evidence coupled with its
geographical position makes it highly likely. Also, the SAP complex had “the newly developed
spoked (proto-) chariot and many other items (horse sacrifice, grave structure, [Ṛgvedic]
Dadhyañc style replaced horse head in a grave at Potapovka, pur-style forts, etc.) overlapping
with the early IA and Old Iranian cultures and texts.”
The BMAC (c. 2500/2200-1700 BCE), a Bronze Age civilization spanning a wide area
from southeastern Iran to Baluchistan, Afghanistan, and parts of Turkmenistan, Uzbekistan, and
Tajikistan, developed out of local cultures, according to Witzel (2000). It had irrigation farming,
livestock, jewelry, weapons, and walled fortresses suggesting a period of conflict and
development of military elite due to a threat from mobile pastoralists from the north like the Indo-
Iranians. It was contemporaneous with the early Andronovo culture of the steppe to the north.
86
that later Ṛgvedic Aryans encountered. 60 He (2005:23) argues that these Dāsas

first took over the rule of the BMAC and spread to South Asia during the final

phase of the IVC (Indus Valley Civilization). “Their religion fused with the

Harappan religion to become the foundations of Śaiva-Śākta Tantrism.” 61 Here it

is worth noting that passionate devotion to Krishna developed in southern and

eastern regions of India with significant Śaiva-Śākta traditions. 62

60 Cf. Witzel’s (2003b:53-54, 2000:4-5) doubts regarding the theory of early Aryan presence at the
BMAC in terms of presence of horses and chariots. However, Parpola (2005:4-6) points to more
recent, archaeological finds in a grave in Tajikistan, like horse-bits and cheek pieces for chariot
horses along with a horse-topped bronze scepter, and pottery typical of the BMAC, especially c.
2034-1684 BCE. He also mentions some other evidence like depictions of horses on seals, etc.,
both at BMAC-related places and Syria and Anatolia with which the BMAC had trade relations at
the beginning of second millenium BCE).
61 Based on arguments of Lamberg-Karlovsky (2002:72ff.) and other scholars, Witzel (2003b:54-

55) suggests that non-IIr. speaking mountain people from the BMAC area, “as yet only marginally
influenced by IIr. languages and customs,” probably carried the BMAC materials into the northern
Indus (= Harappan) and southern Indus (= Mohenjo-daro) areas, c. 2250-1750 BCE. Furthermore,
“A similar move may have brought speakers of P[roto-]Dravid[ian] to Bolan and Sindh.” Witzel
(2003:54 n.200) speaks of “a remarkable overlap between BMAC and Indus shamanistic
concepts” as evident in certain IVC seals.
62 Parpola (2006) connects Dāsas to Vedic Vrātyas (‘People who have taken vows’), variously

described as wandering band of warrior ascetics by Doniger (2009:120) and “promiscuous, extra-
societal group of Veda students ‘on leave’”(Witzel 2003a:72, 88). Jaiswal (1981:168) cites
Manusmṛti’s (10.23) description of Sāttvata-Vṛṣṇi tribe of Krishna’s birth as the descendents of
Vaishya Vrātyas, because they engaged in food-production by cattle-raising, agriculture and
trade, and argues that it was only later when Krishna’s legends had been absorbed into the
Vedic Brahmanical religion that Krishna’s tribe was assigned a Kshatriya status.
In the context of Vrātya-Dāsa-Śākta associations, Parpola (2006:173) finds in their rites,
vrātyastomas, which included horse/human sacrifice, the construction of the fire altar
(agnicayana), and ritual copulation, “fossilized remnants of the archaic preclassical [Vedic] ritual.”
Later, due to social and economic changes, codification and formalization of Vedic ritual, the
violent and sexual elements were reduced to symbols. Parpola (2006:176) connects the Vrātyas
with goddesses Vāc, Durgā, and the Sumerian Nana(ya), “A lion-escorted martial goddess
imported from the Near East” depicted on the seals of the BMAC and IVC and still worshipped in
Afghanistan as ‘Bibi Nanni’. He also sees a close resemblance between the violent and sexual
practices of the Vrātyas and aspects of the later Hindu navarātri festivals of goddess Durgā, the
guardian of Dāsas’ fortresses (durga, pur). Parpola and Jaiswal, in developing their arguments
87
 Witzel (2000:5-6) writes that “there was a mixture in the BMAC of many

cultural elements from Mesopotamia to E[astern] Iran and the Indus.” 63

Furthermore, he (2003b:53) suggests that an amalgamation of BMAC/Central

Asian and the IIr. languages is evident not only in the borrowed vocabulary

relating to agriculture and village life, but also in certain prominent words and

their underlying concepts, like terms for priests (“atharwan”), rituals, and

deities. 64

For Witzel (2003b:56), the process of Aryanization in Iran and India was

preceded by “a large degree of intervening bilingualism” during which a language

shift took place, i.e. the peoples of BMAC and others, though in majority, adopted

the IIr., but not without leaving clear traces of their own languages as well as of

“customs, beliefs, rituals, religion, and material culture.” Perhaps this is where

regarding the history of early Vedic religion and origins of Vaishnavism, respectively associate
religious rituals involving sexuality with settled pre-Vedic agricultural society of BMAC or IVC.
63 Witzel (2000:8) sums up the situation thus: “during the 2nd mill[enium BCE], we find, in all the

agricultural regions from the Kopet Dagh to the Eastern Iranian plateau, in Mesopotamia and in
the Indus valley, a shift to a less stratified and complex organization, with an almost synchronic
development of the very expansionist BMAC adaptation throughout the desert oases of Central
Asia, and the development of complex mobile herders on the Eurasian steppe’ (Shishlina and
Hiebert 1998:230).” When this immigrant Aryan civilization joined the local BMAC one, the former
lost its own material culture, transformed the latter local one, took on many of its aspects [like the
body of language and social organization] and spread this innovative culture by moving further
south into Greater Iran and toward the Panjab leading to what Witzel calls the Aryanization of
South Asia (2003:56, 2000:9).
64 Witzel (2003b:52) believes that the non-IE BMAC religion “directly influenced the Avestan and

Vedic form on certain IIr. beliefs,” such as the transformation of the IE and Eurasian myth of the
hero killing the dragon into one of fighting the dragon of drought (Vṛtra), i.e. “one of releasing the
waters by the late spring snow melt in Afghanistan (Avesta) and in the northwestern Indian
subcontinent (RV).”
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the Atharvan’s initial acculturation with the Indo-Iranians took place (see fn.53

above).

The BMAC and its successor settlements were abandoned c. 1700 BCE,

and the (now) Indo-Aryans moved south-eastward into another intermediate area

of bilingualism: the Hindukush, where Vedic Sanskrit acquired the phonetic

feature of retroflex consonants, missing in Old Iranian and the other branch of

(pre-Vedic) Indo-Aryan, the Mitanni-IA.

The Hindukush may be the place of origin of the later Ṛgvedic ‘Purusha’

(Cosmic/Primeval Man), who is first identified with Narayana, and then, as

Purusha-Narayana, identified with Krishna. 65 The Purusha myth is significant for

various reasons not least of which is that it is the first articulation of the Vedic

Aryan social structure with Brahmins at the top of the hierarchy. Doniger

(2009:119, 131) calls it the foundational myth of the Brahmin class, and Witzel

(1995c:10) refers to it as the first constitution of India. The myth’s cosmogony is

through divine-human sacrifice, much like the MBh, which is also about

regeneration through the all-consuming sacrifice of the Great War (raṇayajña,

MBh 5.57.12-18). 66 Given that it is later explicitly identified with Krishna 67 in a text

65 See Flood’s (1996:120) view that Narayana is identified with “‘the cosmic man’ (puruṣa), who
possibly originates outside the vedic pantheon as a non-vedic deity from the Hindu Kush
mountains.” RV’s ‘Poem of the Primeval Man’ or the Puruṣa-Sūkta (PS = RV 10.90) is about
cosmogony and the origins of four social classes of the Aryan society.
66 See Malinar (2007:49, 181, 186) for a discussion of the ‘sacrifice of war’, and (115, 196; van

Buitenen 1964:108-109) for a discussion on cosmogony’s interpretation in terms of embodiment,

89
authored by Brahmins for their social-religious goals, it is important to take into

account its possibly extra-Vedic antecedents. While analyzing “the position of

the Hindukush religion in between the IIr., BMAC and Vedic religions,” Witzel

(2004:3-4, 12) finds echoes of the Purusha myth in the mythology of the Kalash

god Munjem, who is the Lord of Middle Earth and who, like Indra, killed his

demon father in a way “reminiscent of the Puruṣa/Ymir and Chin[ese] (< Austric)

Pangu myths.” 68

But the Purusha myth may go further back to the BMAC. On the basis of

archaeological evidence, Fairservis (1995:206) suggests that, unlike the typical

IE tripartite social stratification, the four-fold social stratification evident in later

Indo-Aryan culture and articulated in the Purusha myth may have come from the

BMAC. 69 Parpola (2006) finds even more connections between the BMAC, the

where the creator is regarded as embodied in creation, and cosmogony as a template for the
creation of individual bodies. Also see Malinar (7, 140, 157-158, 192-199, 202-206) for an
analysis of the divinity of Purusha as Krishna in the BhG.
67 BhG 8.9; 13.20-24; 15.16-19. BhG’s representation of Krishna as Purusha transforms the

dyadic structure of the previous myth into a triadic one in which Krishna is re-presented as the
‘highest Purusha’ (puruṣottama, 15.19). But at the same time it is closer to the Ṛgvedic Purusha
myth in that the female creative principle is not independent of Purusha (Cf. RV 10.90.5): “In
contrast to non-theistic Sāṃkhya philosophy, [in the BhG] prakṛti “is not considered independent
of the (divine) puruṣa principle” (Malinar 2007:205).
68 See also Witzel 2003a:71.

69 For Fairservis (1995:207), the archaeological evidence for connection between the BMAC and

the Puruṣa-Sūkta (RV 10.90), comes from the excavations at Altyn Depe in the foothills of Kopet
Dagh mountain range on Turkmenistan-Iran border. The digs represent a continuous occupation
by sedentary farmers from about 4000 BCE to its urban phase around 2300 BCE. He sums up the
findings (208) like this:
In all, archaeologists have been able to isolate at least four groups integral to the
settlement who, in general, played different roles in society and had, for the most part,
different funerary practices, dietary habits and traditional roles of descent. These were:
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Dāsas, the Purusha myth of human sacrifice (puruṣamedha), the mythology of

Narayana, and Atharvan traditions.

The Atharva Veda’s (AV) ritual background was different from that of the

RV (which was mainly concerned with “worship of gods with recited and chanted

hymns and offerings of an invigorating drink called soma”); the AV, in contrast,

emphasized “royal rites (with bloody sacrifices), rites of ‘white’ and ‘black magic’

as well as domestic ceremonies” (2006:157 n.1). Parpola (2006:161) suggests

that “Vedic texts do indeed attest to real human sacrifices performed within the

memory preserved by the authors,” and that the actual practice began to diminish

by the time of the Brāhamaṇa texts. He believes that the concept of ‘cosmic man’

(puruṣa) and his sacrifice becomes suddenly important in the youngest hymns of

those who were associated with the platform tower [i.e. vegetarian priests who did their
own cooking, who possessed a gold bull’s head and other objects apparently amuletic in
nature]; those who lived in the large houses with rather rich trappings [like lots of metal
seals and female terracotta figurines; they did no cooking but ate lamb meat]; those who
had individual homes more humble in their attributes [who cooked at hearths and
courtyard ovens, and ate mature sheep and goats]; and those who lived in small rural-
type structures close to the industrial areas in which they worked [like kilns, and they ate
sheep, goats as well as wild animals, suggesting hunting]. There were also outlying
settlements, satellite villages, presumed to be encharged with the agricultural production
and conveyance necessary for the subsistence of this large community postulated to
have more than 10,000 inhabitants.
The four distinct groupings seem parallel to the later IA classes of priests (Brahmins),
warrior/aristocrats (Kshatriyas), food-producers (Vaishyas), and artisan-workers (Shudras)
mentioned in the RV (10.90.12). Another parallel may exist between the female figurines and the
new active female creative principle in the RV (10.90.5) virāj, which is later replaced by the
female principle prakṛti in Sāṃkhya philosophy.
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the RV due to contact between the Ṛgvedic Aryans and the Dāsas, “whose

traditions seem to be continued in the Atharvaveda” (2006:173-174). 70

Between the arrival of the Dāsas into the BMAC c. 2500-2000 BCE and the

abandonment of the BMAC c. 1700 BCE, another wave of (late) Proto-IIr.

speakers came to the BMAC with horse-drawn chariots, in whose religion the

[horse-related] Nasatya/Ashvin twins were the favored divinities. From this

group, who had close contact with Assyrians, the first wave of Ṛgvedic Indo-

Aryans (i.e. the early tribes including the Yadu) moved into the Panjab area c.

1600 BCE. Then another wave of Aryans arrived at the BMAC “who had the

Soma-drinking Indra as their leading deity.” From this latter group the second

wave of Ṛgvedic Indo-Aryans originated and moved into the Panjab area c. 1300

BCE (Parpola 2005:23).

70 Parpola acknowledges the connections between the IE myths of human sacrifice found in the

RV, and Slavonic, Roman, German, and Iranian sources, but believes that the tradition of actual
human sacrifice was inherited by the Vedic Aryans from the BMAC-IVC (2006:170-171, 175-177).
He sees the connection between the Śākta and Vedic human sacrifice to have formed via the IVC
(2006:174-175), and he argues that the IVC was introduced to the “head hunting and skull cult” of
BMAC/Afghanistan/Nuristan by the Dāsas (2006:177). The Atharvan Brahmins continued the
Dāsas’s BMAC traditions within the Vedic religion — as evident in the conceptualizations of
Purusha, Narayana, and later Vishnu — in the PS (RV 10.90), the AV, the Śatapatha Brāhamaṇa
(ŚB of the YV), and perhaps in the tantric Pañcarātra ritual of human sacrifice. Parpola’s (2006)
arguments regarding Vedic human sacrifice are supported with archaeological evidence
presented by Bakker (2006); and, in relation to the concept of Purusha-Narayana, Parpola’s
arguments are anticipated by Jaiswal (1981 [1967]). Cf. Doniger’s (2009:151-152) and Flood’s
(1996:41, 184, 218) views discounting the possibility of actual human sacrifice during Vedic ritual.
Parpola (2006:159) expressly argues against Flood’s (1996) views.

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2.4 Vedic multilingualism – setting the stage for Krishna’s appearance

Before moving the narrative further into the Panjab, I propose a possible scenario

in which the Atharvan Brahmins were native to or familiar with non-IE language,

religion, and society in the BMAC and the Hindukush region from which they

derived notions like four-fold social stratification, human sacrifice, a male creator

god and a female creative principle, and either combined them, or not, with

comparable IE notions in the conceptualization of cosmogony in the ‘Poem of the

Primeval Man’ Puruṣa-Sūkta (RV 10.90). The BMAC region had some presence

of Dravidians and possibly also of Para-Munda speakers, both of whom may

have had some connections with Sumerians. The most prominent (non-

Aryan/non-Vedic Dravidian-Sumerian?) god first identified with Purusha is

Narayana, and he first appears in Śatpatha Brāhamaṇa (SB), also possibly

authored by Atharvan Brahmins. 71

71 ŚB belongs to the White YV, and it has two recensions one of which is ŚB Kāṇva, “which
differs little in content and phraseology” from ŚB Mādhyandina (Jamison and Witzel 2003:70).
Witzel notes a close relationship between YV and AV priests not only mythically but also in terms
of close relation between certain texts (1997:282 fn.105; 292 fn.150).
On the question of Narayana’s possible non-Aryan, Sumerian antecedents, see Jaiswal
(1981:47). Witzel (email, February 23, 2010) draws on the traditional ‘etymology’ and links the
name ‘Nārāyaṇa’ with “nara- 'water', an adaptation of Dravidian nīr 'water',” which appears first
in ŚB in the river name Sadānīrā ‘always having water', “if not from nīla- 'blue' as some suppose.”
Cf. Witzel’s (1999b:39-40, 1999c:47) comment that Dravidian nīr is not found in the neighboring
North Dravidian languages (Malto, Kurukh) in the Gangetic plains, but is only found in Baluchistan
(Brahui dīr): “This may be accidental, but it may also indicate that Brahmanical educated speech
of the Kuru with their IA-Drav[idian]-Munda symbiosis and acculturation had incorporated some
Drav[idian] words which appear only now in the texts.”
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 Atharvans had a lower status among the Vedic priests, possibly due to

their BMAC origins or their association with sorcery, black magic, human

sacrifice, etc. They were motivated to improve their status and carve a niche

within Vedic priesthood. They did it in various ways, including by developing

formal rituals for royal consecration and other household rituals that would make

them most eligible candidates for royal priests (purohita). The other way they

raised their status, I believe, is by incorporating their extra-Vedic gods, like

Purusha, Narayana, and possibly also Krishna, into the Vedas perhaps by

composing hymns addressed to them. Gradually, through a series of

identifications, perhaps beginning with their own identification with the gods they

sang about, to their conceptualization of Purusha-Narayana in terms similar to

the Vedic Vishnu, they eventually became the highest gods in Vedic

Brahmanism. Narayana’s prominence is evident in the fact that in the most

influential new text, the MBh, produced by the Atharvans, the RV god Vishnu

takes a back seat to Narayana, and even Krishna is identified with Narayana.

Narayana-Krishna of the MBh is presented as the charioteer-advisor to a warrior

(like the Nasatya/Ashvin twins representing dual kingship), which is an idea

associated with the first group of Indo-Aryans to migrate to India from the BMAC

and later disperse to the east. It is in eastern India that Atharvans give shape to

their most influential texts. It is also in the east that non-Vedic traditions like

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Buddhism and Jainism developed which then influenced the conceptualization of

Krishna in the MBh.

In support of the above hypotheses, I present below Parpola’s (2006,

2005), Witzel’s (2004, 2003b, 2001, 1999b, 1999c, 1997, 1995a, 1995b), and

Thapar’s (2003) analyses of the available archaeological, linguistic, and other

data relevant to my topic.

2.4.1 Society and religion in the early Vedic period

‘Ārya’ was a cultural term that referred to both a people and their language.

Indo-Aryans or Ārya were all those people who joined the tribes speaking Vedic

Sanskrit and adhering to Vedic cultural norms, such as Vedic ritual and poetry

(Witzel 2001:3, 18; Cf. Thapar 2003:135-136).

There may have been a long period of initial acculturation between local

populations and the first wave of Indo-Aryan immigrant tribes, like the Yadu-

Turvaśa and Anu-Druhyu. 72 Atharvans are associated with these tribes, of which

Yadu is said to have been Krishna’s tribe. It is during this period that some of the

linguistic and cultural features of early pre-Ṛgvedic period must have evolved.

72 The earlier tribes were likely in the Panjab area before the Pūru and their sub-tribe (and later
rivals), the Bharata, came in and became prominent in the middle Ṛgvedic period (c. 1500-1350
BCE). Witzel (2001:18 n.54) points out, “The RV is, by and large, a composition of poets of the
Pūru and Bharata, and not of some earlier IA tribes already living in the Panjab (Witzel 1995).”
Cf. Parpola’s (2005) dates above; his first wave of Ṛgvedic Indo-Aryans is c. 1600 BCE, and the
second wave of Ṛgvedic Indo-Aryans is c. 1300 BCE.
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“The speakers of Indo-Aryan and the local population must therefore have

interacted on a bilingual basis for a long period, before the composition of the

present RV hymns with their highly hieratic, poetical speech” (Kuiper 1991, 2000,

in Witzel 2001:18). Perhaps by c. 1200-1000 BCE, the Indo-Aryans of the Kuru

confederacy consisted of an amalgamation of earlier Indo-Aryan tribes, partly

acculturated Indus (Para-Munda-speaking) people, and Dravidian speakers.

Because of the amalgamation of the three groups (IA, Para-Munda, Dravidian),

we have to suppose a large degree of bilingualism and even trilingualism,

and the forming of pidgins. (Kuiper has a forthcoming paper on a
‘bilingual’ Vedic poet). A Vedic pidgin must have been used at home, and
proper Vedic Sanskrit was learnt ‘in school’, at the time of initiation of
boys. While the lingua franca was a form of late/post-Ṛgvedic IA, pockets
of the Para-Munda Indus language, of the newly arrived Dravidian as well
as some remnants of the Gangetic Language ‘X’ must have survived as
well. 73

During the Ṛgvedic-period, Para-Munda speakers’ influence extended

further west than the Panjab where it had a strong presence, into the Himalayas

and even in eastern Afghanistan (Witzel 1999b:12). In this context, Witzel notes

the possibility, much debated, that Para-Munda had links to Sumerian (1999b:12-

13). Likewise, there may be a link between Dravidian and Sumerian (1999b:24),

and a Dravidian presence in the mountainous eastern Iran and Baluchistan from

73Witzel (1999b:34). On relation between Para-Munda, Indus, and Dravidian, Witzel (1999b:13-
14) suggests that (1) the language of the Indus people was not Dravidian, (2) the language of the
pre-Ṛgvedic IVC was of (Para-) Austro-Asiatic nature, and (3) Para-Munda perhaps had a
northern dialect (Harappa, in the Panjab) and a southern dialect (of Mohenjo-daro, in Sindh).

96
where they migrated into the Indus valley c. 4000/3500 BCE. 74 Originally pastoral

hill tribes, they acquired agriculture only in South Asia and after a period of

acculturation with the Indus people, they practiced intensive rice and millet

cultivation in Sindh (Witzel 1999b:20-24, 32-33). 75

The significance of all this for Krishna’s history is in the presence of non-IA

substrate in the RV, particularly of Dravidian words in the middle and late period

RV books like 8 and 10 (c. 1500-1200 BCE), including personal and tribal names,

as well as cultural terms. Witzel (1999b:21) points out that Dravidian words

occur first in RV 8, “more specifically in its Kāṇva section,” therefore, “If one

takes all of this seriously and locates at least the Kāṇva sections of book 8 in

74 Regarding Dravidian immigration, Witzel (1999b:33) writes “An early wave of Dravidian
speakers might very well have preceded the Indo-Aryans into Iran and S. Asia and some may
have stayed on in SE Iran." In that case they knew the horse already in Central Asia, but would
not have taken it over directly from the Indo-Iranians (as may be indicated by Brahui (h)ullī,
O.Tam. ivuḷi ‘horse’, etc., different from IIr. a£va [IA aśva]).” However, “the technical terminology
for chariots is IA and IE. Linguistic evidence is “that the earliest IIr. *ratha ‘chariot (with two
spoked wheels)’ . . . is old enough to have resulted in the archaic compounds Ved. rathe-ṣṭhā,
Avest. raϑaē-šta- ‘chariot fighter’, cf. Old Avestan raϑī, RV rathī ‘chariot driver.’ Dravidian has
nothing of this, but possesses words for ‘wagon’ or ‘bullock cart’” (Witzel 1999b:33).
75 Witzel (1999b:22). There is an intriguing possibility of interconnections between an IA, Austro-

Asiatic and Dravidian myth and such historical circumstances: It is in Sindh that rice was first
introduced into the IVC. We first encounter ‘rice gruel’ (odana) in the (partly E. Iranian) Kāṇva
book (RV 8.69.14, 8.77.6-11) in “the Emuṣa myth” discussed by Kuiper (1991:16ff.), who says
“the Kaṇvas, non-IA local sorcerers, introduced this myth into the RV” (in Witzel 1999b:22). The
myth is of a bow shooter splitting a mountain, finding the rice gruel, and killing a boar named
Emuṣa. Witzel comments: “Now, the suffix -uṣa (Kuiper 1991) of Emuṣa clearly indicates a name
taken from the (Para-Munda) Indus language.” On this point, I asked Dr. Witzel whether the
‘Puruṣa’ myth of the RV (10.90) might also have non-IA, Para-Munda or Proto-Dravidian
elements, given its unsettled etymology (“probably” from the Sanskrit root √pṛī ‘to fill’, M-
Williams’s SED). Quoting Mayrhofer’s Etymological Dictionary (EWAia) II.149ff., Dr. Witzel
suggests that its etymology is “not explained convincingly” and that Mayrhofer speculates
whether it relates in its final sound to manuṣa (email, February 23, 2010). Perhaps, the word
‘puruṣa’ is of IE origin but applied by non-IA priests (i.e. Atharvans) to an entity who is ritually
sacrificed in a non-IE/IA fashion.
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East Iranian lands, that is in (S.W.) Afghanistan and Baluchistan, one can also

adduce the very name of this clan of poets. K. Hoffmann (and I) have connected

the name with kṛ ‘to act magically, to do sorcery’.” 76 All this points to a real

possibility of the Atharvans’ connections with the BMAC, the early human

sacrifice-related mythologies of Purusha-Narayana, and, due to their

acculturation with the first wave of Ṛgvedic Aryans including the Yadu, also a

direct connection with Krishna’s legend.

Within the RV, there is a correlation between tribes, the RV books and

family of poet-priests, and geographical areas. 77 My focus is on the Kāṇva-

Āṅgirasa-Bhārgava group of Atharvan poet-priests. Witzel (1997:278 n.85)

identifies two clans, “largely the same,” that together make up the AV priesthood:

Āṅgiras (related to Aṅgiras) and Bhārgava (related to Bhṛgu): “The AV was

originally called ‘the (text) of the Atharvans and Aṅgiras’ or ‘the (text) of the

Bhṛgu-Aṅgiras’.” 78 Also associating Kāṇvas with this group, Parpola (2005:24

n.135) writes that the Kāṇvas and Āṅgirasas represent the tribes in the first wave

of immigration into the Panjab, and “their poetry [in books 1 and 8 of the RV],

76In response to Kuiper’s (1991:80) objection to this etymology by pointing to a word (Pra-
skaṇva) with the Indus prefix pra-, Witzel (1999b:21) says: “This may mean that the Indus
language extended to Eastern Iran, especially to the area west of Sindh, to Baluchistan, and to
Makran with its many Indus settlements. Book 8 would then represent an amalgam of Dravidian
and Para-Munda influences (including some pre-Iranian?).”
77 For a detailed look at this subject, see Witzel (1997 and 1995b).

78 Cf. Hiltebeitel’s (2001:112) comment that “Linked with the Āṅgirasas as Brahmans of the

Atharva Veda, [the Bhārgavas] are the Mahābhārata’s experts in black magic, curses,
dhanurveda (the Veda of the bow), and mantra-sped divine missiles.”
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with its (Sāmavedic) strophic structure, vocabulary, etc. differs from the family

books [i.e. books 2-7]” of the RV. 79 He further quotes Insler (1998) that these

poet-priests were the principal authors of the AV, and the importance of the

Vedic god Varuṇa and of the royal rites of the purohita (the royal chief priest) in

the AV “agrees well with the assumption that this collection continues traditions

of the first wave of the Ṛgvedic Aryans, in whose religion the cult of the Aśvins . .

. and their doubles Mitra-and-Varuṇa was still important. The sorcery elements

of the Atharvaveda, the Śaiva-Śākta Tantrism, seem to go back to the earlier

Dāsa tradition (cf. Parpola 2002).” Witzel (1997:276 n.77), too, says that many of

the AV sorcery rites may be older than the RV, though they are preserved in a

language that is younger than that of RV 10. 80 Jamison and Witzel (2003:69)

also point out that, of the four Vedas, the AV “stands a little apart from the other

three Vedas, as it does not treat the [Vedic] Śrauta rituals, but contains magical

(black and white) and healing spells, as well as two more large sections

containing speculative hymns and materials dealing with some important

79 Witzel (1997:263) also points to “the stylistically divergent Kāṇva collections” in the RV.
Moreover, the first wave of Ṛgvedic Indo-Aryans, like the Yadu-Turvaśa and Anu-Druhyu, are
only mentioned more frequently in the RV’s Kāṇva section of Book 8 and very little in other books
(Witzel 1995b:320).
80 Elsewhere, Witzel (1999c:3, 39) points out that the AV “contains several hundred sorcery spells

abounding in non-IA words;” including “’popular’ words of plants, animals, demons, local deities,
and the like. Their character still is, by and large, Para-Munda, with some words from the ‘local’
language (“X”), and with some Drav[idian] words included; all of which is clearly visible in the
increase of words with retroflexes.”
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domestic rituals such as marriage and death, and with royal power.” 81 All these

are the concerns of the early Vedic divinities Nasatyas or Ashvins. 82

Parpola (2005:2) says that in the RV, “the Nāsatyas are worshipped

especially by the Kāṇva and Atri poets resident in Gandhāra [i.e. Afghanistan or

the BMAC].” The Kāṇva (Atharvans) were associated with the BMAC’s first wave

of Ṛgvedic Aryans including Krishna’s ancestral tribe Yadu, who probably

worshipped the Nasatyas instead of Indra (Parpola 2005:21). The Nasatyas are

relevant to Krishna’s history in two ways: (1) ‘Krishna’ first appears as a poet of

a hymn addressed to the Nasatyas in the RV, he may or may not be the Krishna

of the MBh, but (2) the relationship between Krishna and Arjuna in the MBh

appears to be modeled on that of the Nasatyas, and it is a model of dual

kingship. I discuss this again later.

Parpola (2005) describes the centrality of Nasatyas in the Aryan culture by

making the following points: (i) The horse-drawn chariot was central to the

emergence and diffusion of Proto-Aryan speakers; (ii) the two-man team of

warrior and charioteer was deified and their mythology spread together with the

81 Witzel (1997:277, 282) also posits a ‘floating mass of Ur-AV hymns of sorcery and speculation,
on marriage, death, etc., some of which are also found in RV 10 where they were codified as
Ṛgvedic hymns at the time of the collection of the RV 10.
82 Parpola (2005:8, 12) notes that Vedic aśvin (possessed of horses) corresponds to Homeric

hippeύs and hippόta; that Nāsatya “is a derivative of *nasatί- ‘safe return home’ and belongs to
the same Proto-Indo-European root *nes- as the Greek agent noun Néstōr — known from Homer
as a hippόta and a masterly charioteer — and refers to the charioteer’s task of bringing the hero
safely back from the battle.” The two names are interchangeable, I use ‘Nasatyas’ except when
the other occurs in a direct quotation.
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chariot from Proto-Aryans to Proto-Greeks and Proto-Balts; 83 (iii) the charioteer

and the chariot fighter in the Vedic religion were expressly equated with the

Nasatyas; (iv) the two team members were often of equal social status; (v) the

Nasatyas, like the later Dioskouroi in Sparta, were models of dual kingship; 84 (vi)

the dual kingship in the Buddhist tradition parallels the universal emperor

wielding supreme political power with the Buddha wielding supreme spiritual

power; (vii) in the Vedic-Hindu tradition the idea of a dual kingship is found in the

integral connections of kṣatra ‘political power’ and brahman ‘sacred power’, the

two concepts being represented by the king and the royal chief priest, the

purohita; (viii) the Nasatyas were associated with two other Vedic divinities, Mitra

and Varuna, who are personified social concepts of ‘friendship’ and ‘oath, true

speech’, respectively; (ix) both sets of dual divinities represented dualistic cosmic

forces, day and night, light and darkness, white and black, and, particularly for

Nasatyas, birth and death; (x) the two other examples are of the Vedic warrior

god Indra and his charioteer and purohita, Bṛhaspati or Brahamaṇaspati, ‘Lord of

the Song’, an epithet of Indra himself, but later became a separate purohita

83 Parpola (2005:10-11) points to archaeological evidence of the existence of two-man team

associated with the chariot that is suggested by a burial at Sintashta (c. 2200-1800 BCE) in which
a warrior was buried with the car and his weapons at the bottom of the grave and another man
was buried along with a pair of horses and a fireplace in an upper chamber.
84 Parpola (2005:17) cites RV 3.38.5 where the divine twins are addressed as kings (rājānā) to

support his argument. Elsewhere they are not kings themselves but have the ability to bestow
royal power, especially by making the king’s chariot victorious.
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figure; 85 and (xi) the example of the MBh pair of Arjuna (‘white’) and Narayana-

Krishna (‘black’), as Arjuna’s charioteer during the MBh war and the deliverer of

‘The Song of the Lord’, the Bhagavad-Gītā (BhG).

The Nasatyas lost ground to Indra with the rise of the second wave of

Ṛgvedic Aryans, though they may have retained the affections of the first wave of

Ṛgvedic Aryans. From among the second group, the Bharata were most

influential in social-religious history of early India: they were responsible for the

first collection of the RV, and their descendent, the Kuru king Parīkṣit — probably

a historical figure — organized the more comprehensive collection of the RV c.

1200-1000 BCE (Witzel 1995c, 1997). Parīkṣit figures in both major Krishna-

centered texts, the MBh and the BhP.

2.4.2 Society and religion in the Kuru state

By c. 1200-1000 BCE, in comparison to an earlier, perhaps simpler, Ṛgvedic

ritual, a streamlined authoritative (“an orthodoxy of sorts”) śrauta ritual structure

had been established by the Kuru dynasty (Witzel 1997:260), which became a

means to express upward social mobility in a process Witzel (1997:267) calls

85 Bṛhaspati also takes the form of Mātalī — abbreviation of Mātarίśvan, who is mentioned 27
times in the RV, mostly in books 1 and 10, and 21 times in the AV, all texts associated with the
Atharvans — identified as Indra’s charioteer in the MBh (Parpola 2005:26). In the RV Mātarίśvan,
also identified with the Fire god, Agni, brought the fire to Bhṛgu. The Bhṛgus are closely
associated with fire as well as chariot-building. (Parpola 2005:27).
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early Sanskritization. 86 The complex ritual structure necessitated ritual texts

which were assembled by traditional priests divided into four units: “the Ṛgvedic

Hotar, the Sāmavedic Udgātar, the Yajurvedic Adhvaryu and the Atharvavedic

Brahman priests” (Witzel (1997:267-268, 285).

Of the four types of Vedic priests, Witzel (1997:268 n.46) compares the

status of the AV priests to that of the ‘Śūdras’, 87 as a lower category of Brahmins.

86 For early Sanskritization in Vedic times, see Witzel (1995b). Early Sanskritization was a
feature of the new, post-Ṛgvedic Kuru-Pañcāla state, “the first larger polity or ‘early state’ on
Indian soil,” which extended the geographical center of Vedic civilization from the north-west’s
Balhika (Bactria) and the Gandhāra/Panjab area to the eastern border of the Panjab (Kurukṣetra,
Haryana) and beyond, well into Uttar Pradesh to Kausambi/Allahabad (Witzel 1995c:9, 5).
Unlike the Ṛgvedic period of liberal intermingling and gradual acculturation whereby non-
Aryans became chiefs, “under the Kuru kings, acculturation was followed by well-planned
Sanskritization representing major changes in social format” (Witzel 1995c:10). Through
Sanskritization, the Kurus succeeded in controlling non-Aryans and the Aryans (the priests, the
other aristocrats, the third estate of food-producers and traders), and the political realm as well as
the religious (the rituals and the texts). The Kuru kings set up the complicated Śrauta ritual, and
succeeded in controlling the older, amorphous groups of poet-priests by a clear subdivision of
their ritual labor into four fields of specialization, i.e. the four Vedas and their ritual use. The
complicated Śrauta ritual was something for the aristocratic class to “worry about” and this helped
the Kuru kings to control them as well. “The new Śrauta ritual thus put everyone in his proper
station and at his proper place” (Witzel 1995c:13). In order to carry out many of the religious and
social reforms, the Kuru kings initiated a collection of the major poetic and ritual texts, and their
re-arrangement. Once the collection was fixed, there was no need to create new hymns. But
composition of new speculative hymns was carried out in the late RV under the Bharatas, and in
the AV under the Kurus. The poet of the RV “now reappeared as author of (part of the) AV, which
was at first called Ātharva-Āṅgirasa, ‘the (collection of hymns) of the Atharvans and Aṅgiras’”
(Witzel 1995c:14-15).
In all the above efforts of the Kurus, according to Witzel (1995b:15), a continuity within
great changes was achieved by means of “the artificial archaization of certain parts of the new
Śrauta ritual, the use of artificial, archaic forms in the poetic and learned language of the poets,
priests and “theologians” of this period, and of text formation and their collection. The new ritual
and its language appeared to be more elaborate and impressive but at the same time, had to give
the appearance of having come down from a hallowed past.” This is ‘Sanskritization’, and the
BhP has the same kind of achaization of language due to its efforts to be ‘Vedic’. Sanskritization
by way of forging a link to the Vedic times is also evident in Hinduism’s history under colonialism.
87 Cf. Witzel’s (1999b:34) comment that the name of the ‘Śūdra’ hints at how Dravidian influence

on Vedic was exerted. “From the late RV (10.90) onwards, this designates the fourth, non-Ārya
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He (1997:282 n.105) also notes a close link between the Atharvan Brahmin

priests and the Adhvaryus of the YV, and says: “Both did not belong to the

highest echelons of Ṛgvedic priests.”88

Because of their low status in the early Śrauta rituals, the AV priests made

an effort to be accepted by the nobility and the other three types of Vedic priests,

and they did this by “giving their hymns a new shape, inserting many stanzas

addressed to the gods of Ṛgvedic and classical Vedic ritual,” and by providing

the king with a more solemn consecration rite (the rājasūya) than found in the

RV. This coupled with other important rites of passage or major rituals of life

cycles, like marriage, is “a clear indication of one of the major interests of the

Atharvavedins: to be purohitas, house ‘chaplains’ of royal and noble families”

(Witzel 1997:278-279). The interest of Atharvan priests in royal rituals continued

down to the late Vedic/early medieval period (Witzel 1997:280 n.95). The

Atharvans were clearly trying to achieve social goals through religious practice.

class; it was added to the three ‘Ārya’ classes of Brahmins, Kṣatriyas (nobility), and Vaiśya (‘the
people’) only at this time. However, Greek sources of Alexander’s time still place the Sudroi
people at the confluence of the Panjab rivers with the Indus; this may still indicate their origin in
Sindh / Baluchistan.” Elsewhere, Witzel (2001:8) points out that the Indo-Iranian speaking society
had “a patriarchal, exogamic system of three classes, with tribal chieftains, and a priest/poet
class.” Cf. earlier discussion of Fairservis’s views on the BMAC or IA class system (fn.68 above).
88 In the story of “Dadhyañc Ātharvaṇa (Cf. fn. 58 above),” the YV Adharyus priests are

associated with the Aśvins, “the somewhat impure doctors of men and of the sacrifice (note the
Adhvaryus-Ātharvaṇa connections); . . . Note that it is an Ātharvaṇa, Dadhyañc, who helps the
Aśvins (and thus the Adhvaryus!) in their endeavor to learn the secret of the ritual” and who pays
with his life (Witzel 1997:292 n.148).
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2.4.3 Society and religion in eastern India in the late Vedic period 89

In the later Vedic period of Brāhamaṇa commentarial texts on the Vedas, the

Śatapatha Brāhamaṇa (SB) is important to Krishna’s history, as discussed in the

next section. Witzel (1997:309 n.256) calls it “the one clearly eastern text.”

‘Eastern’ signifies the land of the Kosala and Videha tribes in the later Oudh or

present-day U.P. and Bihar. Significantly, “the dialect features of the eastern

people can be regarded as being due to the remnants of a first wave of Indo-

Aryan immigrants into India (such as the Yadu-Turvaśa) which has been pushed

further east by the late Ṛgvedic Bharata/Kuru hegemony” (Witzel 1997:310).

Furthermore, the Kosala-Videha area was one of great mixtures of peoples,

including earlier para-Vedic Indo-Aryan settlers (like Kosala, Kāśi, and Videha),

the local Munda people, and some Tibeto-Burmese elements. Various new

immigrants entered c. fifth century BCE of which some were brahmanically-

oriented tribes but also other non-orthoprax Indo-Aryan tribes such as the Vrijji of

Mahavira (Witzel 1997:312). Many of these tribes, including the Śākya of

Gautam Buddha, are called asurya (‘demonic’, non-orthoprax) in the SB.

Thapar (2003:146ff.) writes of the relationship between non-Vedic

ideologies and belief systems and the type of polity called gana-sangha

(chiefdom or oligarchy), consisting of either a single clan like the Buddha’s

89 In ‘late Vedic’ (c. 800-400 BCE) I am including the Vedantic or Upanishadic period as well.
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Śākya, or a confederacy of clans like Mahavira’s Vrijji. Both were located in the

eastern region at Kapilavastu and Vaishali, respectively. The social-religious

legends and practices of these oligarchies separated them from the Vedic

orthodoxy. They had two (not four) social strata — “the kshatriya rajakula, ruling

families, and the dasa-karmakara, the slaves and labourers” (Thapar 2003:148).

Their non-Vedic practices included veneration of sacred enclosures and groves.

Among the legends regarding their clan origins, “one was that the ruling families

were frequently founded by persons of high status who, for a variety of reasons,

had left or been exiled from their homeland” (Thapar 2003:148). This is

reminiscent of some features in the legends of Vaishanva gods, Rama and

Krishna. Thapar (2003:147) suggests another connection with Krishna: “There

were also systems similar to gana-sangha in western India, of which the Vṛṣṇis

as described in the Mahabharata would be one.” Krishna is identified with the

Vṛṣṇis (after they fused with the Yadu or Yādava tribe; see fn.115 below).

Before the appearance of the Buddha and Mahavira, ascetic practices

were already part of the religious landscape; and toward the end of the late-Vedic

period (c. 600-500 BCE) and subsequently (c. 500 BCE – 300 CE), they came to the

fore. 90 Some reformists, like the Buddha and his followers, denied the authority

90The following summary of religious-historical developments in the period between c. 600 BCE to
300 CE is based on Larson (1995:60-75), Michaels (2004:36-39), Thapar 2003 (Chapters 5-8) and
Doniger 2009 (Chapters 7 and 10).
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of the Vedas and the Brahmins. Others, like Upanishadic thinkers, stayed within

the Vedic fold even while shifting from the outward-directed practice of sacrificial-

fire ritual to internalization of the same in the form of ‘inner ascetic burning’

(tapas) through disciplined meditation (yoga). Though different in orientation

toward religious authority, these groups had some overlapping concerns

regarding the nature of self and its relation to the cosmos; the meaning of life and

death; the problems of action and fruits of action (karma) and their relation to

following the ‘right’ dharma (innate nature of things, cosmic law, divine order,

religious doctrine, social norm, justice, morality, truth); the issues of reincarnation

and salvation; etc. Speculations and philosophizing on these subjects began

during this period.

During the same period, outside of the brahmanical or ascetic traditions,

other approaches to these issues took hold at the folk level. Two dominant

tendencies were: one, the deification and veneration of a clan or tribal leader who

may or may not have been also a religious leader (Vasudeva, Krishna, Gautam

Buddha, Mahavira), and, two, a growing belief in savior figures (celestial beings,

bodhisattvas) who ‘descend’ or ‘incarnate’ in this world out of compassion to

alleviate human suffering. 91 There was a growth of sectarian worship of

91 Regardless of whether in the emergent Mahayana Buddhism (c. 150 BCE – 150 CE), the

Buddhists on the bodhisattva path to becoming a Buddha were really practicing hard-core
asceticism and were disconnected from lay worship, the formulation of their motivation —
attainment of Buddhahood to bring an end to the suffering of all beings — embodied the idea of a
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particular gods like Vishnu or Narayana by members of the Bhāgavata and

Pāñcarātra communities. There is textual, numismatic, and epigraphic evidence

of the existence of such sects at least from late Vedic times, if not earlier. 92 Main

forms of religious practice — which are recognized in the MBh — consisted of (i)

pilgrimage to holy sites including temples, and (ii) ritual worship (pūjā) involving

making flower, fruit, rice, and other offerings to an image of the chosen deity.

There were continuities between the Vedic sacrifice and the pūjā ritual in that

both involved making offerings to god(s) and the distribution of the remains of the

food offerings among the worshippers as the god’s favor or grace. 93 The

difference was that the offerings were made to a representation of god in iconic

or aniconic form. 94 These later religious practices did not need priestly

mediation.

Parallel to the above developments, local efforts to include the aboriginal

population were made among the middle- and late-Vedic polities in the east

savior figure. For more on debates on the nature of bodhisattva practices and their connection or
not to lay Buddhist practices in early Mahayana, see Nattier (2003), and Harrison (1995, 1987).
See also Goswami (2004) for a Vaishnava view of connections between Pure Land Buddhism
and Vaishnavism.
92 See Flood (1996:119-122), Colas (2003:230-235), Thapar (2003:216-217), and Doniger

(2009:260-261). The earliest mention of a devotee of Vasudeva (= bhagavat, later identified with
Krishna and Vishnu) is in the fifth century BCE Sanskrit grammarian Pāṇini’s Aṣṭādhyāyī (4.3.98),
and the first explicit mention of ‘Bhāgavata’ as a devotee of Vasudeva is in an inscription (c. 115
BCE) on a pillar in central India erected by a Greek envoy. Pāñcarātra tradition is found in the
MBh, and is often linked to the Śatpatha Brāhmaṇa (c. 800-600 BCE).
93 Witzel (2003a:90) sees pūjā as “a clear continuation of the Ṛgvedic guest worship offered to

the gods,” in which the gods were entertained with recitation of hymns and fed with sacrificial
offerings.
94 See Thapar (2003:276) and Doniger (2009:258-259) for the form of early religious practices.

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(Witzel 1997:313-314). These were done by “adopting” these peoples as sons of

famous Ṛgvedic poets. Witzel sees the process of Sanskritization at work in such

efforts, which included the importation of western Kuru-Pañcāla Brahmins by

local kings or chieftains. Thus the Kosala became a Kāṇva territory by importing

the Kāṇvas and the Taittirīya scholar Bodhāyana, who became a Taittirīya

scholar but was originally a Kāṇva (Witzel 1997:306, 315). It is possible that the

congregation of Atharvans in the eastern territories had implications for the

representations of Krishna and other gods in the MBh. More evidence of

Atharvan authorial activities during this time include Sanskritization in the

extensive materials in the late Vedic eastern texts on royal coronation (abhiṣeka)

and the horse sacrifice (aśvamedha), which Witzel (1997:315) calls “the ultimate

royal ritual;” and “These rituals received their final form and were discussed in an

encyclopedic form in [SB].” Though belonging to the YV, in this and other

material included in the SB like the mythology of Narayana and puruṣamedha, its

concerns appear to Atharvan (Cf. fn.71 above).

Thus by the time of the composition of the MBh (c. 300 BCE – 300 CE), a

threshold period of transition from Vedic Brahmanism to Hinduism, religious

practice had at least three variants: Vedic ritual sacrifices, yogic ascetic tapas,

the latter being more privileged over the former, and devotional worship of

specific god(s).

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 At the social level, the Vedic brahmanical religious practitioners were not

only interacting and competing with older communities who had pre-Vedic

religious practices, but also with newer non-Vedic religious communities like the

Jains and the Buddhists as well as sectarian communities devoted to popular

‘Hindu’ gods. As Michaels (2004:37-38) points out, there was more:

Yet, Brahmanism lived on, as did popular Hinduism [despite ascetic

reform movements and royal patronage of Buddhism by Emperor Ashoka,
c. 273-236 BCE]. . . . There were also later influences of Greeks,
Scythians, and Kushans (both Central Asian nomads), Parthians
(Grecophile, Iranian nomads), and finally Huns. Between 327 and 325
[BCE], Alexander the Great advanced as far as the Indus Valley. On
Kushana coins — the Central Asian Kushanas dominated northern India
from about 78 [CE] until 230 [CE] — representations of Hellenistic, Iranian,
and Indian deities or rulers are found, in some cases alongside one
another. The many north Indian kingdoms had acknowledged Greek or
Scythian overlords. Syncretic cultures developed, mainly in the northwest,
where people lived according to Iranian mores, Buddhist religion, and with
Greek art. Thus, the epoch of upheaval is also a time of religious
eclecticism and the counterreaction to foreign rule. The Hindu religious
capacity to conform and accept influences of foreign religions was
certainly formed at this time and in contact with these various external
cultures. The Identificatory Habitus developed beyond its roots in
sacrificial ritual to become a prevailing social etiquette. 95

Such Identificatory Habitus — ‘the establishment of an identity by equating it with

something else’, the ideas of ‘unity of multiplicity, multiplicity of unity’ and ‘identity

of god and man’ (Michaels 7, 206, 208) — is evident in the fusing of four divine

95See Larson (1995:62-64) and again Michaels (2004:332-344) for more on the logic of
identification in Vedic-Hindu tradition. For an in-depth cross-cultural comparative study of such
Indian and Chinese traditions, see Farmer, Henderson, and Witzel (2000).
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personae to give us the Vaishnava god Krishna: Vishnu, Narayana, Vasudeva,

and Krishna. 96

The point of this long discursive journey was to recreate the environments

in which the conceptualization of Krishna and his constitutive elements evolved.

The social-religious environments for Brahmin authors of Vedic and epic texts

were profoundly multilingual. As Witzel (1999b:6 fn.2) reminds us, “‘Pristine’

languages and cultures do not exist, nor did they at c. 1500 BCE.” The

conceptualizations of gods in the RV, the SB, and the MBh were the result of the

Brahmins’ interactions with such ‘mixed’ environments, as evident in some extra-

Vedic features of ‘Vedic’ gods (more on this in the next two sections below).

Religious practitioners then did, as they have done since, practice religion in

conjunction with striving for social goals. In their efforts the likely Brahmin

authors of these texts employed the full arsenal of mechanisms for either

articulating the change underway in society or initiating the change in the status

of their gods and themselves as outlined in Chapter 1 above: including

‘interlingual’ or conceptual identification, interference, expressiveness,

accommodation and social identification with the powerful class and its

96Matchett (2001:4-5) writes that Vishnu is only one of the names of the Supreme God of
Vaishnavism, and that just because the tradition is known as Vaishnavism, it does not follow that
the process of identification of these four divine figures was one in which Vishnu was always
dominant or the process began with his followers. She believes it more likely that it was the
growth of Krishna’s ‘cult’ which drove the process of fusion, “a process which appears to have
taken place somewhere between the fifth and second centuries BCE” (5).

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prestigious conceptual categories. In either case, with these mechanisms, the

authors emphasized those divine aspects that had the most cognitive salience

and social value in particular historical circumstances. They gave directionality to

the representations, and integrated the most significant elements for Krishna’s

representational history, like Vishnu, Purusha-Narayana, and the Nasatyas — I

shall call these Atharvan Vaishanvite elements. These elements were nascent in

the RV but came together noticeably first in the SB and then in the MBh, and the

latter two texts emerged as successive loci of innovation in Vaishnavite

mythology. The SB and the MBh are possibly of east-Indian provenance as they

show a convergence of Dāsa-Vedic-Buddhist-Jain elements. 97

In both the SB and the MBh, the Atharvans re-presented the Vaishnavite

elements in an altered form. The alterations came about through form-function

reanalysis (meaning re-interpretation) of the concept of protector/sustainer god in

the SB, especially Vishnu, and through identification of Purusha, Narayana, and

Vishnu, leading to interference and convergence. Notice that by the end of the

MBh, in terms of number of independent and unique gods, we go from many to

97 Though Malinar (2007:15) dates and locates the final redaction of the BhG in the first century
CE Mathura, where a plurality of ‘highest’ beings, new practices of image worship and the concept
of the king as representing and serving a highest god for the sake of the ‘welfare of all beings’
thrived, because these were characteristic of the teachings of the BhG. However, based on ideas
regarding dharma, bhakti, and the doctrine of disinterested action within the text, in relation to
Buddhist ideas and Ashoka’s politics, Malinar (261) suggests that the BhG’s theological
framework may have been composed c. 180 BCE – 50 CE. Perhaps the final redaction of the MBh
as a whole, which may have been ‘brewing’ for some time over a larger expanse of the Kuru state
and which incorporated wider array of ideas, took place further east?
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fewer: only Krishna and Vishnu emerge enhanced. On the social side, in the

MBh, the Atharvans selected the most popular and (covertly) prestigious concept

of protector/sustainer god – Krishna – with whom to identify the by-then most

(overtly) prestigious protector/sustainer god in the Vedic pantheon – Vishnu.

2.5 Vishnu, Narayana, and Krishna before the Mahābhārata

Vishnu’s divinity was first recorded in the RV. But, compared to other Vedic gods

such as the warrior god Indra or the Fire god Agni, Vishnu was not yet a

prominent deity and was represented almost only in his role of taking three steps

toward heaven (Witzel 2003:72-73). 98 Vishnu’s three steps99 are traditionally

associated with the etymology of his name from the Sanskrit verb √viś (to enter,

to enter in or settle down on, to pervade). 100 He is the god of the three strides or

steps (vikrama, pada) who enters or pervades the universe for the benefit of all

living beings, especially mankind, 101 and is his most prominent aspect. Vishnu’s

highest step (paramam padam) is his station, where men and gods dwell and

98 Cf. Matchett (2001:5, 204 n.23), who calls Vishnu “not an insignificant” figure in the RV, despite
the fact that Vishnu has only four hymns addressed to him alone (1.154; 1.156; 7.99; 7.100) and
two addressed to him in conjunction with Indra, compared to 246 alone and 45 jointly with some
other god for Indra, or 195 and 17 for Agni. See also Preciado-Solis (1984:1-6), who measures
Vishnu’s significance in terms of the totality or universality of his various fertility, vegetative, solar
characteristics that make him a creator and protector god.
99 RV 1.22.17; 1.154.1-4; 3.54.14; 4.3.7; 5.87.4; 6.12.2; 8.12.27; etc.

100 See Gonda (1969:4 n.11, 54-55) for a detailed account of theories regarding the etymology of

Vishnu’s name. See also Preciado-Solis (1984:5).

101 RV 1.154.2; 1.155.4; 6.49.13; 7.100.4, etc.

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rejoice. 102 He is the cowherd or protector (gopa) of this supreme abode (RV

3.55.10), who ensures that divine injunctions are kept (dharmāṇi dhārayan, RV

1.22.18). Gonda (1969:iii) concludes that

there is much truth in the time-honoured Indian interpretation of Viṣṇu’s

character as representing pervasiveness and spatial extensiveness, and
especially that pervasiveness and omnipresence which is essential to the
establishment and maintenance of our cosmos and beneficial to the
interests of gods and men.

These are the most relevant characteristics of Vishnu that play a role in the

process of his assimilation with Krishna. In this context, certain MBh passages

(3.187.26-30; 7.28.22-26; 13.143.11; 14.53.13; and BhG 4.7-8) assume added

significance because they repeatedly assert Krishna’s role in restoring,

establishing, or protecting dharma by entering the world. In light of the above-

described characteristics of Vishnu in the RV, I cannot agree with Matchett’s

(2001:28) statement that “the idea of the Supreme God entering his own world to

perform salvific deeds was originally connected with Kṛṣṇa rather than with any

other component of the Vaiṣṇava deity” i.e. Vishnu or Narayana.

The deity Narayana makes his first appearance in the Śatapatha

Brāhamaṇa (SB, c. 800-600 BCE) as Purusha-Narayana. Purusha, without the

epithet Narayana, was the subject of the ‘Poem of the Primeval Man’ (RV 10.90).

Gonda (1977:8) points to the ancient tradition that Narayana is the seer-poet (ṛṣi)

102 RV 1.22.20-21; 1.154.5; 8.29.7.

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of this RV ‘Poem of the Primeval Man’, and says that it is “in all probability one of

those cases in which an historical or legendary founder of a religious movement

was identified with the god he preached.” 103 The man-god in the RV ‘Poem of the

Primeval Man’, Purusha, is both the being sacrificed and the being to whom the

sacrifice is dedicated (Doniger 2009:117). And now, in an innovative move in the

SB, by explicitly identifying Narayana with Purusha and representing both as an

integrated Purusha-Narayana, the Atharvans elevate maybe one of their own, a

seer-poet of mixed heritage — (Dravidian, Sumerian, IVC, BMAC, Hindukush?)

— to the status of a god who gains the power of transcendence and immanence

for himself and other gods.

In the SB (12.3.4.1; 13.6.1.1), the Man, Purusha, is referred to as

Purusha-Narayana, who desired to surpass all beings and be all (puruṣo ha

nārāyaṇo’kāmayata’atitiṣṭeyaṃ savāṇi bhūtānyahamevedaṃ sarvaṃ syām’iti),

and who beheld the ritual human sacrifice performed over five days (sa etam

puruṣamedham pañcarātraṃ yajñakratum apaśyat, SB 13.6.1.1), and, himself

being the sacrifice, through the sacrifice he surpassed all beings and became all

103Also see Gonda (1976:26) and (1975:137). Matchett (2001:5) says that apart from being
considered the seer-poet who composed the Poem of the Primeval Man, the figure of a divine ṛṣi
named Narayana also appears in many epic and puranic texts, including the MBh.
Michaels (2004:208) comments on the implications of such identification between Vedic
seer-poets and gods: “This open boundary between god and man has meant that a man who
makes himself into a ‘god’ is identified with him in asceticism, that kings are considered
manifestations of gods, that an actor who plays Rāma in the film is almost worshipped as the god
Rāma himself.”
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that there is (teneṣṭva’tyatiṣṭhat sarvāṇi bhūtānīdaṃ sarvamabhavat, SB

13.6.1.1). 104 Purusha-Narayana is identified with the totality of cosmos through

the sacrifice also in SB 12.3.4.1ff. 105 He, therefore, becomes more like Vishnu.

In the SB Vishnu is also identified with the Vedic sacrifice. 106 In fact, the SB

(1.9.3.9ff.) represents Vishnu’s three steps or strides in conjunction with sacrifice,

where Vishnu is the sacrifice who obtains the all-pervading power (vikrānti) for

the gods and also for the sacrificer, also identified with Vishnu, (etāmvevaiṣa

etasmai viṣṇur yajño vikrāntiṃ vikramate). Gonda (1969:77) notes the constant

identification of Vishnu with the sacrifice in the Brāhmaṇas (like the SB), and

sees it as a sign of Vishnu’s importance “to be declared to be identical with so

great and powerful an institution” as Vedic sacrifice. Moreover, one implication of

104 Jaiswal (1981:32) renders it: “by performing the pañcarātrasattra, or the five-day sacrifice,
Nārāyaṇa gained superiority over all beings, and became identical with all beings.”
105 The notion of Purusha-Narayana as the totality that contains all existence is then interpreted

through the etymology of ‘Narayana’. According to Bhandarkar (1913:30) and Jaiswal (1981:34),
based on Mahābhārata (MBh, 5.68.10) the name means the resting place or goal (ayana) of men
(nāra or narāḥ). Biardeau (in Matchett 2001:204-205) offers another interpretation leading to a
similar conclusion of the relation between totality and its fractions. Biardeau sees Narayana as
“He who is formed from (the sixteen parts or creatures) who have their course directed towards
the Puruṣa.” Biardeau derived this from the use of puruṣāyaṇa in Praśna Upaniṣad (PU 6.5),
where ‘the sixteen parts of the perciever’ are ‘puruṣāyaṇāḥ’ in the same way as rivers are on their
way to the oceans (samudrāyaṇāḥ) to be submerged. ‘Nara’ was substituted for ‘Puruṣa’.
The other meaning of ‘Narayana’, based on MBh 3.187.3 and 12.328.35, is derived from
Narayana’s resting place, the waters or nārā. This interpretation allows an iconographic linkage
between Narayana and Vishnu, often represented asleep on the cosmic waters. Cf. Witzel’s
explanation in fn.71 above.
106 ŚB1.2.5.1-7; 3.6.3.3, 16; 4.2.2.10; 4.3.5.8; 4.5.1.16; 5.2.5.4; 5.4.5.18; 11.1.4.4; 12.4.1.4, 5;

13.2.2.9; 14.1.1.13; see Matchett (2001:204 n.33). See also Gonda (1969:77-80) for further
references on the topic of Vishnu and Vedic sacrifice.
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the identity of Vishnu and the sacrifice was that what could not be brought about

in sacrificing could be brought about through the god (Gonda 1969:79-80):

The parallelism between the objects and presumed effects of the all-
important ritual, the mighty means of securing the fulfillment of any desire
on the one hand, and the activity of a god who was believed to obtain, for
men and other beings, control of those powers which were considered to
be of vital importance, and to prepare the way for the representatives of
fertility and productivity on the other, might have led to an early
identification of that divine power and activity which was denoted by the
name of Viṣṇu and the mighty instrument in the hands of the priests.

Gonda (1969:5) grants some room for the supposition that “the ethnic substratum

has much contributed to the divinity” known as Vishnu and that his ascendancy

could be seen as coming to the fore of such non-Vedic or popular elements.

I believe that in the later Vedic texts like the SB, Vishnu’s identification

with sacrifice and representation as sacrifice and the sacrificer was driven by

entrenched popularity and influence of the extra-Vedic god Narayana. I see the

identification of Narayana and Vishnu as an instance of intraference through a

system-internal identification: the commonalities in the external properties of (1)

their having ‘created’ the universe and all beings through either sacrifice

(Narayana) or strides (Vishnu), (2) their encompassing the whole existence, (3)

their connection to sacrifice, and (4) their being beneficial to other beings, all of

which allow a cognitive link between the two in the practitioner’s mind. The two

become variants of the variable ‘creator/sustainer god’, and the practitioners

could choose one or the other variant depending on the context. The frequency
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of their occurrence would depend on answers to questions like ‘which form has

prestige?’ (Vishnu in the Vedic realm), or ‘which is more popular?’ (Narayana), or

‘which allows one to identify with a certain group?’ (a two-way process:

Sanskritization of Narayana’s followers, and ‘popularization’ of Vishnu’s Vedic

practitioners).

In the SB Narayana is brought into the Vedic fold and Sanskritized by

being identified with Purusha, who is already extolled in the RV (10.90), as

sacrifice and the sacrificer. Vishnu, more than any other Vedic gods associated

with him, like Indra, Agni, or the Sun god, had the above-discussed

characteristics that made possible his conceptual identification with Narayana. 107

Significantly, it is in the SB that all three Atharvan Vaishnavite elements

are together represented as sacrifice, and have the same characteristics:

Purusha, Narayana, and Vishnu. In this text these deities become variants for

the category of protector/sustainer god. The SB is a testament to the importance

of sacrificial rituals in the assumption of royal powers ever since the formation of

the Kuru state. The Śrauta rituals instated by the Kurus were the means to

107See Gonda 1969 (Chapters 2-5, and 15). Vishnu and Agni both ‘abide in ghee’ and are
associated with ritual sacrifice and wealth; Vishnu and the Sun god are conjointly associated with
power of penetration, spatial expansiveness, and fertility; both Vishnu and Indra are associated
with welfare and wealth, fertility, combat action, protection, beneficial power, etc. Though
considered a warrior god and associated with royal power, Indra does not have the powers of
transcendence and immanence; and though Agni’s aspect of ‘purity’ is brahmanic, he lacks the
aspects of transcendence and immanence or creative power; and the Sun god could not be
equated with ritual sacrifice.

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achieve Sanskritization. Being on the fringes of the Kuru state, the eastern

polities of older Aryan tribes were especially concerned with elevating their status

in the Vedic realm and therefore the Vedic Śrauta rituals assumed great

importance. These social-political considerations were reflected in the

representations of gods, especially in the elevation and representation of gods

explicitly identified with sacrificial ritual, beneficence, and powers of

transcendence and immanence i.e. powers suggestive of royalty, like spatial

extensiveness and pervasiveness. Thus, even in Vedic times, the

representations of gods were in accordance with the dominant conceptual

categories associated with the ruling class who actively regulated the religious

sphere.

Besides centralized monarchies and increasingly highly ritualized

sacrificial religiosity, for the larger society the period in between the organization

of the RV and the composition of the SB was marked by movement of people

first to the upper- and then the lower-Ganges valley and a gradual shift toward

settlement, agricultural economy (based particularly on cultivation of rice),

vegetarianism, non-violence (ahiṃsā), urbanization, increased interregional

trade, and accumulation of wealth. Outside of the sacrificial rituals in the context

of royal consecration, sacrifices increasingly involved vegetarian products,

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especially rice. 108 Apart from the Brahmins who were most involved with the

sacrificial rituals and Kshatriyas who exercised royal powers legitimized through

108 This change has significance in Vaishnava bhakti traditions in the following way. Classical
Vedic sacrifices involved animal or vegetarian offerings, like rice, and the sacrificial meal was
distributed among community members as a part of religious practice. A connection exists
between these practices and the later understanding of bhakti, and between both sacrifice /
bhakti and Vishnu-Narayana’s conceptualization as a sacrifice and its deity.
Narayana was conceptualized as representing the totality that subsumes fractions i.e. the
whole community made up of individuals (fn.104 above). Symbolizing the entire tribe, he was the
possessor and dispenser (bhagavat) of communal wealth (bhaga) — which in early communities
was equated with the sacrificial meal — to individuals forming part of the community. According to
Jaiswal (1981:38), in its earliest uses bhakta meant ‘meal’ and when rice became the principal
meal of the community, bhakta became synonymous with ‘boiled rice’. The meaning of bhakta as
food or meal is also found in the MBh (SED), and the ŚB 7.5.1.21 identifies Vishnu with food as
does MBh 12.47.71 (Gonda 1969:14). See also RV 10.60.5, addressed to the god Bhaga
described as bhagavān, where ‘bhagavat’ refers to possessor of the bhaga (good fortune,
happiness, welfare, prosperity, RV), and by implication is also its giver (bhaga = ‘dispenser’,
gracious lord, patron – applied to gods; RV).
Cf. Thapar 2003 (119-120), where she shows the interconnections of the terms bali
(sacrifice), bhāga (share), śulka (the value or worth of an item, later, a tax), the leadership of a
chief (rājā) in generation and distribution of wealth in the form of cattle, etc., especially during
Vedic sacrificial rituals. The rājā was imbued with elements of divinity by the priests through the
performance of sacrificial ritual. The parallels between these historical practices and the
Narayana legend are remarkable.
All these notions are related to the Sanskrit verb √bhaj ‘to divide’ ‘distribute’ ‘allot’ ‘share
with’ or ‘partake of’. In the Vedic times, it did not mean ‘to adore’ or ‘to serve’ — the connotations
which became prominent later. Bhakti originally denoted ‘a portion’ or ‘share’, and “In its
extended meaning bhakta came to imply not merely the wealth which was distributed but also the
individual who had been allotted his share of wealth. That is why in early uses bhakti and bhakta
have a passive sense referring to the thing one belongs to or is partial to” (Jaiswal 1981:38). She
concludes (117) that “The original conception of the bhakti was material and concrete, and the
favours of the gods were conceived in terms of worldly objects; hence in its early uses bhakti is
sometimes convertible into prasāda (favour),” and an idea of fondness, love between the bhakta
and the bhagavat was based on kindered spirit without implications of inferiority to its possessor.
Earlier, even gods had bhakti for men; later, the dynamic of love changed.
When the social-political circumstances changed in the late-Vedic period and kinship
bonds loosened and tribal structure gave way to a class/caste structure (by the end of the
Mauryan age, c. 300 BCE), stability in society and smooth functioning of the state was ensured
through emphasis on a religion based on devotion and faith, which was also promoted as a way
of life – selfless service or desire-less action in the performance of one’s social and religious
obligations. From the late-Vedic period onward, gradually the bhagavat became a transcendent
being and the individual bhakta became a devotee. Therefore, in the MBh, Vishnu-Narayana
came to be represented as the object of devotion. Bhakti was now primarily an act engaged in by
the devotee (bhakta), not an act of distribution of wealth or happiness by the bhagavat. Thus, the
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the sacrificial rituals, the rest of society was more concerned with food production

and wealth creation (and veneration of ascetic or divine superior beings). In this

context, it is noteworthy that attention of the Vedic practitioners gradually shifted

from the warrior god Indra toward Vishnu-Narayana. In later tradition, both

Vishnu and Narayana were often associated with the Vaishyas (from viś, the

people/community), whose business was farming and trade and wealth

generation (Gonda 1969:24). In the MBh 3.189.9ff. Narayana was worshipped

by both Kshatriyas and Vaishyas.

Without using the term Sanskritization, Gonda (1977:7-9) notes two

related phenomena in the development of early Vaishnavism: First, the process,

discussed above, that fused Vishnu and Narayana into one idea of ‘the Highest’,

already evident in the identity between Purusha and Narayana in the SB

(13.6.1.1), and second, the incorporation of their adherents into the fold of the

traditional brahmanic community, already attempted in the c. third century BCE

text Mahā-Nārāyaṇa-Upaniṣad (201-269). 109 Gonda sees the brahmanic

tendency also in the MBh, especially in its Nārāyaṇīya section (MBh 12.321-339),

with references to brahmanic saints and sages as sponsors of Narayana’s

theology, respect for asceticism and Vedic sacrificial rituals relative to the

conceptualization and representation of a god, Narayana, changed alongside a change in the

meaning of some practices. This is an instance of gradual form-function reanalysis over time.
109 Flood (1996:120-121) dates the Mahā-Nārāyaṇa-Upaniṣad to c. fourth century BCE.

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recognized superiority of bhakti, etc. In the Nārāyaṇīya (MBh 12.322.1 ff.),

Krishna is only one of the forms of Narayana, and bears the name of Vasudeva,

the Supreme Soul, whose religion is the monotheistic (ekāntika) Bhāgavata faith.

In the same Nārāyaṇīya (MBh 12.337.63 ff.), Bhagavān Nārāyaṇa, the Supreme

Soul, is represented as the promulgator and preceptor of the Pā ñcarātra system.

Gonda (1977:9) concludes that

Whereas the Nārāyaṇa [i.e. Pāñcarātra] and the Bhāgavata religions

probably were of different origin they were in the course of time
amalgamated. 110 When this ‘combined’ bhakti religion was secondarily
absorbed by the broad current of Viṣṇuism, Vāsudeva and Nārāyaṇa
were, like Kṛṣṇa of the Bhagavadgītā, identified, and sometimes replaced
by Viṣṇu.

Krishna’s career in the BhG, like that of the legendary ṛṣi Narayana, may

have begun in the RV where there is a ṛṣi named Krishna who composed a hymn

(RV 8.85) dedicated to the Nasatyas, and his son Viśvaka also dedicates his

hymns RV 1.116 and 1.117 to the Nasatyas and explicitly mentions Krishna as

110 Jaiswal (1981:37-38, 45-47) critiques this position, and argues that followers of both traditions

worshipped Narayana as the supreme deity, i.e. Bhagavān or bhagavat, and that the difference
between the two was social rather than theological orientation (46):
The main difference between the Bhāgavatas and the Pāñcarātras seems to lie in the
fact that whereas the Bhāgavata devotees of Nārāyaṇa had accepted the brāhamaṇical
social order, the Pāñcarātras were indifferent to and were perhaps against it. It is
generally accepted that the Pāñcarātras had prominent Tantric leanings, and Tantricism,
on the whole, was more popular with the lower classes. Bhāgavatism, on the other hand,
gained support of the ruling classes and championed the varṇa system.
Cf. Flood (1996:122), who makes a distinction between ‘tantric’ Vaishnavism, evident in the later
(c. seventh or eighth centuries CE) Pāñcarātra texts, and an ‘orthodox’ Vedic Vaishnavism of the
Bhāgavatas. Flood (123) also believes that, as used in early Vaishnavism, “The term bhāgavata
might have referred to a general tradition or orientation towards theistic conceptions and modes
of worship, particularly of Vāsudeva-Kṛṣṇa, rather than a specific sect in the sense that the
Pāñcarātrins or Vaikhānasas were specific sects.”
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his father (avasyate stuvate kṛṣṇiyāya ṛjūyate nāsatyā sacībhiḥ . . . RV

1.116.23). 111 Macdonell and Keith (1958, in Preciado-Solis 1984:12) believe that

this Krishna may be identical with a ‘Kṛṣṇa Āṅgirasa’ mentioned in the Kauṣītaki

Brāhmaṇa (30.9) of the RV. 112

Most probably linked to the preceding is the next noteworthy reference to

Krishna, son of Devaki, ‘Kṛṣṇa Devakīputra’, in Chāndogya Upaniṣad (ChU

3.17.6, c. 500-400 BCE), where he is presented as a pupil to a Vedic sage, Ghora

Āṅgirasa, who taught Krishna the secret meaning of Vedic sacrifice. Some

scholars see parallels in the sage’s advice in this passage and certain ideas

found later in the Bhagavad Gītā, like self-control and selfless action. Other

scholars dispute this and see no link between the ChU’s Krishna and the MBh’s

Krishna. Malinar (2007:249 n.9) comments that “While a direct connection seems

difficult to establish, it may have contributed to making Kṛṣṇa a teacher of

religious doctrines in the older parts of the BhG.”

111 Cf. Parpola’s (2005:21) belief that since the Vedic tribe/clan of Yadu (traditionally identified as
Krishna’s tribe/clan) belonged to the first immigrant wave of Ṛgvedic Aryans, they probably
worshipped the Nasatyas rather than Indra – the preferred deity of the second wave of Ṛgvedic
Aryans.
112 Note Bryant’s (2007:4, 16 n.5) skepticism regarding such an identification. Preciado-Solis

(1984:12) speculates on the possibility of another poet-seer also named Krishna in the RV who
composed hymns RV 10.42, 10.43, and 10.44 dedicated to Indra. Given the association of other
Atharvan Vaishnavite elements with Krishna, including the Nasatyas, at least the first poet-seer
may be linked to the later deity Krishna, who is represented as the Lord-charioteer in the BhG? If
a link is made, some brahmanical aspect of MBh’s Krishna had been foreshadowed by the RV.
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 The connection of Krishna, son of Devaki and pupil of Ghora Āṅgirasa, to

the later conceptualization of Vasudeva-Krishna may be debatable, but, for his

devotees, the ChU allusion places Krishna in the Vedic frame of reference. 113

Preciado-Solis (1984:36) believes that textual evidence favors a connection.

Moreover, he sees a continuous development of Krishna’s legend from the ChU

on, through the c. fifth to third century BCE texts, like Yāska’s Nirukta (2.1.2),

Pāṇini’s Aṣṭādhyāyī (4.3.98)114, the Baudhāyana Dharma Sūtra (2.5.9.10),

Megasthenes’ Indika, Kauṭilya’s Arthaśāstra (1.6.10; 14.3.44), leading up to the

MBh. In all these references, Krishna’s representation is primarily in the form of

a deified tribal and warrior hero. Malinar (2007:252) speaks of “a gradual

deification” of Krishna “from a clan hero (as he is depicted in the epic) to the god

and then the ‘highest god’, provided with a fully fledged theological interpretation

in the BhG.” According to Flood (1996:119-120), “By the second century BCE

113 See Jaiswal (1981:73) and Preciado-Solis (1984:24-27) for this debate. Also, Preciado-Solis
(11-16) examines in detail the various references to ‘kṛṣṇa’ in the RV (1.140.3; 1.164.47; 4.7.9;
8.43.6; 8.96.13-15; 10.3.2; 10.20.9; 10.61.4; etc.) and concludes that these are instances of the
adjectival form for ‘black’ or ‘dark’. Nevertheless, according to Preciado-Solis (36), Vedic texts,
including the RV, have several mentions of tribes, like the Vṛṣṇis, Yādavas and Bhojas, who are
traditionally associated with Krishna, and this may suggest that these tribes and families “had
already a tradition of a certain hero of this name” as far back as the Vedic times. Or, like
Narayana, Krishna was also an ‘Atharvan’ ṛṣi in the RV who comes to be deified by his lineage.
Certainly, his worship of the Nasatyas in the RV, the gods’ connection with the Yādavas, and
Krishna’s representation as the Lord-charioteer in the MBh, etc. should be considered.
114 Also, see c. 150 BCE Patañjali’s Mahābhāṣya commentary (on Pāṇini 4.3.98, 4.3.64, 3.1.26,

3.2.111, 2.3.36, 2.2.24) for more references to the Krishna legend.

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Vāsudeva-Kṛṣṇa 115 was worshipped as a distinct deity and finally identified with

Viṣṇu in the Mahābhārata, appearing, for example, three times in the Bhagavad

Gītā as synonymous with Viṣṇu.”

2.6 Krishna of the Mahābhārata and the Bhagavad Gītā

By the second century BCE, Vedic sacrificial religion had come under heavy

criticism of ascetic traditions, like Jainism and Buddhism, and the Mauryan

Emperor Ashoka. Yet, in the BhG, “Kṛṣṇa’s supremacy is in various ways related

to sacrifice: he was made the protector of all sacrifices and asks his followers to

115 ‘Vāsudeva’ is Krishna’s patronymic, perhaps acquired through identification with the supreme
deity of the Vṛṣṇi or Satvata/Satvant clan, who initially may have been a Vṛṣṇi hero or king.
Vṛṣṇis became fused with the Yādava clan of the north-west city of Dvārakā. Krishna, the son of
Devakī, may have been a deified warrior hero of the Yādavas, and after the fusion of the two
tribes/clans, came to be identified as Vasudeva-Krishna (Flood 1996:119). Witzel (1997:305 n.
222) says that ‘Satvants’ are “already known to the RV; according to later texts they lived south of
the Yamunā.” Of all the other tribes / clans / lineages associated with Vasudeva or Krishna, like
Surasenas (Greek “Sourasenoi”) – a branch of the Yadu dynasty, Andhakas, Bhojas, and Vṛṣṇis,
the Yadu tribe is of the oldest repute, since it features in the RV as one of the five major Ṛgvedic
Aryans to have first migrated into the Panjab area (Witzel 1995b:327-328). Vṛṣṇis are mentioned
in later texts like the c. 900 BCE Taittirīya Saṃhitā (TS 3.2.9.3) and the c. 700 BCE. Śatapatha
Brāhmaṇa (3.1.1.4). It may be that the Vṛṣṇis were a Yādava clan from the RV times, or that they
later identified themselves as Yādava in a process of Sanskritization. In the latter case, the
Vṛṣṇis fused themselves with the Yādava because of the Yādava’s Ṛgvedic credentials, which
made them a desirable target group with which to identify for prestige reasons. In this scenario,
the warrior hero of the Vṛṣṇis would then be identified with the warrior hero of the Yādavas due to
similar characteristics, both becoming competing variants for the variable of ‘warrior hero’. In
order to conventionalize one variant and avoid synonymy, the fused tribe would reinterpret
Vasudeva as Krishna’s patronymic. Identification of ‘Vasudeva’ as Krishna’s father was a
retrospective narrative act. The earliest, unambiguous mention of Krishna (ChU 3.17.1-6) is by
his metronymic, Devakīputra. For a detailed discussion of varied epigraphic and numismatic
evidence relating to the worship of Vasudeva and/or Krishna in early history of Vaishnavism, see
Malinar 2007 (252-256).
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dedicate their lives to him as a continuous sacrifice” (Malinar 2007:4), 116 alhough

now, after the Upanishadic and non-Vedic Buddhist-Jain ascetic reformation, the

emphasis was on the sacrificial fire of knowledge. Within the same context, the

MBh/BhG’s other cross-over subject of concern in relation to divine

representation was royal power.

The MBh was shaped by social, cultural, political events beginning c. 400

BCE, and it contained a brahmanical response to the rise and success of Veda-

and Brahmana-rejecting religions of Buddhism and Jainism, the rise of ‘Shudra’

Nanda empire at Patliputra (c. 340 BCE), followed by the Mauryan dynasty (c. 317

or 314 BCE) and its overthrow by their Brahmin general Puṣyamitra Śuṅga (in

187 or 185 BCE), followed by the Kāṇva dynasty, which was also Brahmin and

ended 30 BCE. 117 Fitzgerald (2006, 2004) sees the MBh as initially an anti-

Mauryan ideological enterprise of some Brahmins who did not like the Mauryan

emperor Ashoka’s royal patronage of Buddhists, Jains, etc. over Brahmins, his

criticisms of Vedic rituals (especially animal sacrifices) and festivals, and,

particularly, his teaching of dharma through his various edicts. In short, Ashoka

not only restricted brahmanical influence, he preempted their sacred authority as

teachers of dharma. Citing Ashoka’s eighth rock edict in which he talks of his

spiritual interests and the seventh rock edict containing praises of the efficacy of

116 Krishna proclaims himself to be the Lord and enjoyer of all sacrifices in BhG 9.24, 5.29.
117 See Fitzgerald 2004:54 and 2006:276-277.
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his dhamma policy, Malinar (2007:263) notes that Ashoka “depicts himself as a

ruler who commands not only weapons, but also knowledge.” In this respect,

Ashoka, purportedly a lay Buddhist, seemed to be following the Buddha’s model

of a Kshatriya teacher of dharma, that is, the model of a brahmanic Kshatriya /

king. 118 The Buddha and Emperor Ashoka represented the form of mixed secular

and religious functions, rather than “the hierarchical complementarity of brahmins

and kṣatriyas” favored by earlier tradition and again argued for in the MBh

(Fitzgerald 2006:276). 119

Thus, according to Fitzgerald (2006:277), among the Vedic Brahmins’

major causes for anxiety were material and philosophical competition with

118 Cf. Parpola’s (2005:15-16) reference to Gautama/Gotama Buddha in the context of the subject
of dual kingship: “In India, the Buddhist tradition parallels the universal emperor wielding supreme
political power with the buddha- wielding supreme spiritual power.” Harvey (1990:16) notes that
“This paralleling of a Cakkavatti [Skt. Cakravarti, ‘Wheel-turning’, emperor] and a Buddha is also
made in relation to other events of Gotama’s life, and indicates the idea of a Buddha having
universal spiritual ‘sovereignty’ – i.e. influence – over humans and gods. It also indicates that
Gotama renounced the option of political power in becoming a Buddha. . . . He did, however,
teach kings and give teachings on how best to govern a realm.”
In Hinduism, Parpola (2005:16) notes, first “The idea of such a dual kingship manifests
itself above all in the integral connection of kṣatra ‘political power’ and brahman ‘sacred power’,
the two concepts being represented by the king and the royal chief priest the purohita;” and
second “This dual kingship is associated with the chariot and therewith the [horse-related divine
twins] Aśvins.”
119 Cf. Malinar’s (2007:100) comment that “While in Buddhism the royal and the soteriological

functions are separated in the figure of the cakravartin and the buddha respectively (cf. Reynolds
1972), the BhG and also later texts combine both in the figure of the highest god, who protects
the created world, but also guarantees liberation from it.” However, the Buddha did combine
aristocratic and brahmanic functions in his person, while Ashoka combined rājañya (royal) and
brahmanic (teaching and promoting dharma) functions, though they both may be promoting a
different understanding of dharma. In this context, it is noteworthy that “Ashoka does not depict
himself as a cakravartin in the Buddhist sense” of a “dharma-promoting king” (Malinar 264, 266)
even when he was clearly and explicitly promoting dharma. She believes that “self-perception of
kings as cakravartins” may have been a later development.
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Buddhists and Jains, and the erosion (saṃkara) of the varṇādharma system of

clearly demarcated social functions. At issue was more than biological mixing

(miscegenation) of people of different classes/castes, but people doing wrong

kinds of work for their varṇā type and the social, political, and economic

ramifications of this as evident in the non-Kshatriya king like Nanda, non-

Brahmin-supporting king like Ashoka, and Brahmin kings like Śuṅga and Kāṇva.

Therefore, in the BhG Krishna is himself represented as the creator of the

four classes/castes (4.13), and there is a great emphasis on doing one’s own

proper duty (svadharma, svakarma): “Better [is] one’s own duty done imperfectly,

than duty of another [class/caste] well performed” (BhG 3.35) and “Devoted to

one’s own duty, a man attains perfection” (BhG 18.45, also 18.46).

Thus, some concerned Brahmins responded critically and conservatively

but also creatively to social-religious challenges in the text of the MBh.

Fitzgerald (2004:53-54) reads the ideological enterprise of Brahmins in the MBh

in terms of a hypothesis that

two of the most important arguments governing the text’s basic formation
were: the covertly anti-Mauryan (especially anti-Aśokan) argument that
proper rule should be brāhmaṇya, that is, based on reverence for unique
Brāhamaṇ priority in the determination of social, political, and cultural
matters; and the argument (against the Śuṅga and Kaṇva examples) that
governance and its intrinsic violence are inappropriate for men of the most
refined natures and sensibilities, that is, Brāhmaṇs.

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 Citing the “polyphonic” voices in the text, Fitzgerald (2006:270) does issue

a note of caution that “I do not think that the main MBh was regulated exclusively

and entirely by the ideological program I see operating in it.” He then writes of

the history of the epic: “it is my belief that many elements of a heroic narrative

centering upon a great Kuru-Pāñcāla war existed before the ‘main’, anti-

Mauryan, brāhmaṇyarājya-chartering MBh was composed; that the anti-Mauryan

MBh represents an artistic and ideological transformation of such a preexisting

heroic narrative.” Fitzgerald (2006:272) describes the story thus:

It is the story of a divinely planned purging from the earth of a demonic

kṣatra (the armed forces in the world) and the subsequent establishing of
proper, brāhmaṇya kingship: that is, kingship amenable to the desires
and principles — dharmas, principally the idea of varṇadharma — defined
by the carriers of the Brahman, the holy Veda (i.e. brāhmaṇa men,
‘brahmins’). This purge was led by a specially engendered half-human,
half-divine war party of kṣatriyas — the five Pāṇḍavas — who together
represented Indra come to earth. 120

Depending on one’s point of view, the purge was instigated or aided by Krishna,

who functioned as the charioteer-guide to Arjuna (Indra’s son in the MBh). 121 In

this conceptualization Krishna embodies the Vedic Brahmin’s response to the

Buddhist-Ashokan model of kingship, which at the time was prestigious by virtue

120 Fitzgerald (2004:55) relates the purge to the concept of avatāra “in the original sense of that
term, avatāraṇa — a ‘taking down’, a relieving of a burden that oppressed the earth (Hacker
[1978]). (Only later did this term come to signify the ‘descent’ of a deity for such a rescue
mission.)”
121 Cf. Hiltebeitel 1982 and 1984, where he discusses the relationship between Krishna and

Arjuna as fellow-charioteers, and suggests certain affinities between Arjuna and Shiva in terms of
their destructiveness.
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of association with a successful religious teacher and a powerful emperor.

Fitzgerald defines the MBh’s brāhmaṇya kingship model primarily in terms of

royal patronage and protection of the Brahmins and their regaining the top-most

position in the social hierarchy and thus their sacred authority. The model of

kingship privileged in the MBh is dualistic, in which the Brahmin priest wields

spiritual power and the king secular power.

At the same time, in a parallel move, Brahmins represent in the figure of

brāhmaṇya Krishna the mixed royal and spiritual authority represented by the

Buddha and Ashoka. Krishna was a warrior/Kshatriya hero but in his pivotal role

in the epic, in the BhG, he is represented as brahmanic warrior Krishna. This

conceptualization of Krishna as a brahmanic-aristocratic divinity was no accident.

In the BhG — the part of the MBh which found most resonance in the

subsequent development of Hinduism and therefore deeper entrenchment in its

conceptual pool — the above aspect of Krishna’s character was favored over two

other aspects found in the rest of the epic: the pastoral cowherd (Gopala) aspect

and the epic hero (Vasudeva) of questionable morality. First, the authors of the

MBh must have been knowledgeable of the pastoral cowherd aspects of

Krishna’s character. Hiltebeitel (1991:108-109) says that in the MBh, Arjuna’s

wife and Krishna’s sister, Subhadrā, is put in a position of subordination to her

co-wife and all five Pāṇḍavas’ wife, Draupadī, and asked to change ‘into the

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dress/disguise of a cowmaid’ (gopālikāvapuḥ, MBh 1.213.17). “As argued

elsewhere, this gopa [cowherd] ‘disguise’ is reminiscent of her brother Kṛṣṇa,

who also — in full awareness of the epic poets — takes on his famous cowherd

‘disguise’ as a child and youth.” Moreover, “Subhadrā’s subordination to

Draupadī is that of the junior wife to the senior wife, and perhaps of the cowherd

theme to the kṣatriya theme” in the epic (Hiltebeitel 1991:109). In absence of a

pastoral background of the two most prominent Kshatriya religious figures of the

time, Mahavira and Gautama Buddha, whose teachings and followers were

accorded royal patronage and more, the Brahmins authors of the MBh were

compelled to emphasize those aspects of Krishna’s character that would put him

on an equal or higher footing relative to his competitors.

If this was indeed the authors’ intent, an exclusive focus on Krishna’s

aspect of a Kshatriya hero would also not have done the trick, because, outside

of the BhG’s theological-philosophical framework, in the MBh’s epic framework

Krishna’s misdeeds are innumerable. Brockington (2003:120) says that in the

epic, Krishna gives the Pāṇḍavas “frequently devious and unscrupulous advice,”

and in Matilal’s (1991) ‘defence of a devious divinity’ we find a survey of the

contradictions between Krishna’s activities and his professed ethical doctrines in

the epic, especially during the war. These were nicely summed up by

Duryodhana in MBh 9.61. Thus, in the absence of the BhG, the image of Krishna

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in the MBh would have been at best complex and at worst unflattering.

Therefore, in light of the social-historical currents surrounding the redaction if not

the composition of the MBh, the BhG’s representation of Krishna as a brahmanic

warrior takes on added significance.

The Brahmin authors of the MBh selected and emphasized the royal-

yogic-teacher aspect of his character to match the Buddha’s and Ashoka’s

own. 122 It was an act of accommodation leading to conceptual convergence (like

them, Krishna is represented as a Kshatriya teacher of dharma), but also

divergence in some respect (unlike them, he is identified as the highest god): As

a contrast to the Buddha and Ashoka, the authors represent Krishna as the

brahmanic warrior who recognizes the four-fold class system (BhG 4.13), grants

some validity to the Vedic sacrifice and the Vedas (BhG 3.10-15; 4.12; 10.22),

and who reestablishes brahmanically-attuned kingship. As Malinar (2007:4-5)

says, on the subject of kingship the BhG’s representation of Vasudeva-Krishna

as the highest god recalibrates power relations: “The king is now defined in

relation to the highest god, who unites the ascetic power of the detached and

liberated yogin with the creative and protective dimensions of his being the

overlord of all beings, including kings. This limits the chances of kings to depict

122For instance, see Malinar’s (2007:264-265) discussion of Ashoka’s model of kingship in which
the king is required to behave correctly, practice self-control and restrict royal power through
adherence to dharma.
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and present themselves as divine.” Malinar (2007:98-100) relates this to the idea

of avatāra nascent in BhG 4.6-8 (the word itself does not appear in the BhG).

She interprets the BhG’s idea of avatāra not as ‘descent’ but as ‘appearance’,

and finds a connection between “Kṛṣṇa’s birth and the creation of ‘apparitional

bodies’ ascribed to yogins and buddhas” (99). She elaborates (99-100):

In the present context, Kṛṣṇa’s appearance is connected with his task as a

teacher who is interested in re-establishing his doctrine and with that of a
divine king who must uphold dharma. The structure of the repeated
revelations of a religious doctrine and of equally multiple appearances of
its teacher is well-established in Buddhism and Jainism. Like a Buddha or
a Jina, Kṛṣṇa is confronted with the decay of his teaching, which
necessitates repeated manifestations. . . . The doctrine of repeated
revelations can be regarded as an answer to the question of why an
eternal truth is not eternally present. By claiming that it was there once,
but has vanished and needs another proclamation, the fate of truth is
assimilated to the conditions of the socio-economic order in which it is
revealed. If decay is considered a characteristic feature of the created
world, the pledge of repeated revelations can be regarded as proving its
persistence. In contrast to the Buddhist and Jaina traditions, which
separate the task of the spiritual from that of the worldly promoter and
protector of order, these two aspects are blended in Kṛṣṇa. He not only
teaches, he is also actively engaged in the royal task of establishing order.

Krishna, though, chooses to engage in doctrinal revelation and social-cosmic

reordering through his favorite, royal devotee, Arjuna: the ideal model of

kingship remains dualistic. 123

123Though, to be sure, the ideal was not always followed in practice: many Brahmins, like the
Satavahanas for instance, continued to assume kingship in the centuries following the
composition and transmission of the MBh. The Satavahanas (c. 50 BCE – 225 CE), who ruled in
the middle peninsula of southern India (Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh today) claimed to be
Brahmins who destroyed Kshatriyas (khatiyas), but, interestingly, they “refrained from taking
imperial titles” (Thapar 2003:226-227).
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Krishna’s cosmic and royal aspects also converge in his cosmic or universal form

(viśvarūpa) in BhG 11.5-8; 11.15-19. It is in the context of his vision of Krishna’s

cosmic form as a royal god with a specific ‘four-armed iconography’ 124 that Arjuna

addresses him as Vishnu (BhG 11.24; 11.30). Malinar interprets this as

Krishna’s equation with, not subordination to, Vishnu (2007:173). Matchett

(2001:25) interprets the third instance of Krishna’s identification with Vishnu in

the BhG — where Krishna proclaims that ‘Among the Adityas I am Vishnu’

(ādityānām ahaṃ viṣṇur, 10.21), to be Krishna’s claim that ‘Vishnu is my

manifestation as Aditya’. In either case, the identity between the two was

significant in terms of prestige. Thus, the Brahmin authors of the MBh/BhG

created a new prestigious variant for the social-religious variable of ‘royal-yogic-

teacher extraordinaire’ to parallel the Buddhist-Jain variant, and, as far as the

Hindus are concerned, Krishna went on to win the popularity contest, so to

speak.

Hiltebeitel (2007:24) says that the MBh was “written to move people, that it

succeeded in doing so, and that what it has to say about Krishna is vital to both

the authorial motivation and the text’s success. Krishna’s divinity is not a literary

after-effect.” I see authorial motivation and inspiration in the representation of

124 Following Srinivasan (1997), Malinar attaches some significance to this ‘iconography’ and
remarks on its repetition at other junctures in the epic (MBh 16.9.19-20; 5.129). She also relates
it to “the structure of Vedic kingship expressed in the consecration and other royal rituals”
(2007:170).
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Krishna as Arjuna’s charioteer-guide during the pivotal part of the epic and in the

presentation of a dualist model of Brahmin-Kshatriya relationship.

In the BhG, the Atharvan Brahmins promoted a model of brāhmaṇya

kingship, which, I argue, draws on a model of dual kingship from pre-Ṛgvedic

times — that of the Nasatyas, the divine charioteer / purohita / brahmana guide

(Krishna) and his teammate the warrior / king (Arjuna). 125 The relationship

between the two, now represented as a relationship between a god and a king,

can also be read in terms of bhakti. 126 For instance, while discussing the epic

contexts of kingship and bhakti, Malinar (2007:12-13) says,

the many levels on which the divinity of Kṛṣṇa is connected to themes of

sovereignty and kingship may explain why this specific knowledge
revealed by the god Kṛṣṇa is called rājavidyā, ‘the knowledge of kings’ or
royal knowledge [BhG 9.2]. This indicates that kings should not only be
the model for this new relationship with a highest god, but should also use
it themselves. In this regard, the relationship between Kṛṣṇa and Arjuna
as staged and transformed in the text establishes a paradigm. Arjuna is
depicted, at least temporarily, as the ideal king because he is made the
ideal bhakta, the loyal follower who can expect to receive his share of

125 Cf. Malinar’s (2007:180-181) view that sees the relationship between Krishna and Arjuna in
these roles as the opposite: for her, in the imminent ‘sacrifice of war’, Krishna is the sacrificial
fire, the presiding god and the royal patron of the sacrifice. Krishna is the king; whereas Arjuna is
a rājarṣi, ‘a royal seer in the position of a priest’, who articulates his vision of Krishna’s cosmic
form in a hymn. Malinar makes no reference to the model of dual kingship in the mythology of the
Nasatyas as a possible paradigm for the relationship of Krishna and Arjuna. One final note on the
identification of Krishna-Arjuna team with the Nasatyas: the equine gods have twin ‘sons’ who
are also part of the MBh story as Arjuna’s youngest brothers, but they have a low status in the
fraternal hierarchy and ‘bit parts’ on the epic stage. There is more to identification of divinities
than ‘blood relations’ as we have seen in the other cases covered in this discussion.
126 Though appearing to define bhakti as an exercise as easy as ‘offering a leaf, a flower, a fruit,

or water in devotion’ (BhG 9.26) and a path to god accessible to ‘women, Vaishyas, even
Shudras’ (BhG 9.32), the emphasis throughout the BhG is on ascetic, self-less, disciplined action
dedicated to god.
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 Kṛṣṇa’s power and, ultimately, his transcendent state of being (cf.
Biardeau 1997).

Malinar (13) continues with the argument that in this paradigm bhakti is a ‘secret’

knowledge and a demanding practice of transforming attachment to oneself into

detachment through an attachment to god and dedicating all activity to him.

Bhakti here is no different from ascetic discipline and sacrificial activity, and

seems colored by austere religious philosophies. 127 Sutton (2002), Brockington

(2003), and Malinar (2007) discuss at length the integration of Sāṃkhya-Yoga

philosophy in the MBh and the BhG, beside some aspects of Upanishadic,

Buddhist and Jain philosophies, like asceticism and the ethic of nonviolence.

Fitzgerald (2004:72) says that “Because many in the Brāhmaṇ tradition had

participated in the creation and promotion of much of the religious perspective of

yoga and the ethics of harmlessness between 700 and 200 BCE, the reaction of

the Mahābhārata carried many of these ideas along with it.” The second most

important and powerful new development in the MBh, according to Fitzgerald

(2004:72) was in “the abundant and open way that the Mahābhārata presented a

wonderful new theism coupled with a moving new devotionalism.”

That the authors of the MBh/BhG were bi- or multilingual in non-Aryan and

Aryan, extra-Vedic and Vedic languages and cultures should by now be clear.

The epic’s inclusion of both philosophical arguments and devotional bent in its

127 See Kuznetsova’s (2006) discussion of the conceptual continuities for more detail.
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structure and stories, and most importantly in its representation of Krishna’s

divinity, perhaps indicates that the authors were also bilingual in both these

codes. As I argued in chapter 1 above, this bilingualism in philosophical and

devotional codes is a feature of Hindu practitioners and their religiosity to date.

The degree of familiarity with both codes is relative to one’s interests, family

background, and social-economic context. On a continuum, there are perhaps

two groups at two ends who are exclusively monolingual in one of the two codes.

There is a large middle class that maintains both codes, and uses them

differently in different social contexts. In situations of contact with other religions

who project a superior religious-philosophical kit and are backed by

administrative power which is legislating on religious matters, the philosophical

code and the religious ideals are foregrounded, even when the other code and its

accompanying practices are maintained at home and in the company of fellow-

practitioners. It is a cognitive and social-political response and it is natural. It is

time to recognize the complementary nature of philosophical and devotional

codes and their context-dependent use.

2.7 Summary

Perhaps reflecting similar concerns of earlier Vedic times, the authors of the MBh

who were negotiating the transition from Vedic to Hindu society had three

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overriding concerns: kingship (relationship between Brahmins and Kshatriyas),

society (social relations, kin relations, and family relations), and devotion

(relationship between god and man).

In the epic text, the Brahmin authors captured the change that had

occurred over centuries in the conceptualization of Vedic sacrifices to

internalized sacrifices to ascetic practices and a single-minded focus to a

focused devotion to a single god. The frequency of use of these practices in

society gradually shifted and changed the nature of religious conceptual input,

and this in turn changed the cognitive patterns in practitioners’ minds and

changed their perception of which practices were more desirable or beneficial

(see Chapter 1, fn.4 above).

Form-function reanalysis took place that altered the understanding of

sacrifice to selfless action to bhakti. There was a shift in emphasis on the kind of

efficacious action due to changing social-economic circumstances.

To meet the challenges of that time, the Brahmin authors tried to establish

new norms of religiosity different from those of the Vedic times, which had less

social value at the time. These new norms subsequently became entrenched and

Vedic religiosity faded though the idea of Vedic prestige remained. The authors

emphasized those conceptual categories/conventions which were common

across the dominant traditions at the time and thus had cognitive salience. This

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maximized the possibility of attracting people of various persuasions to their fold.

Also, to attract attention and followers, they made some innovative re-

combinations in the epic. In terms of representations of gods, Boyer’s

observation is again supported: through a process involving various

mechanisms of altered and differential replication, including Sanskritization,

identification and interference, accommodation and convergence, we emerge

from the MBh with fewer independent, unassimilated, unique gods than the many

more we went in with, who had been introduced into the Vedic pantheon over

centuries.

The authors were ‘introducers’. They introduced a lot of Atharvan and

dualistic Sāṃkhya-Yoga ideas into the Vedic religion and into the MBh. The

causal mechanisms in play were their social motivations. As bilingual

practitioners, their mechanism for innovation was interference/intraference

through conceptual identifications. The identifications over centuries influenced

the conceptualizations of Purusha-Narayana and Vishnu, and made them into

variants of one variable ‘beneficent protector god’ before culminating in the

MBh/BhG’s Krishna. The new conceptualization of Krishna (from old tribal

warrior hero) was re-presented as a prestigious variant to the other ‘aristocratic-

ascetic-teachers’ who were attracting royal patronage for their followers and their

teachings at the expense of the Brahmins. The new Krishna — ‘aristocratic-

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yogic-teacher’ or brahmanic warrior — his teachings, and the traditions

associated with him then became the new norm. Thus, through the MBh and

especially the BhG, the Brahmins caused differential replication of the concept of

Krishna. They changed the ‘activation value’ of the variant of Krishna as the

preferred religious figure among many by incorporating him in the Vedic fold and

by emphasizing his brahmanic warrior aspect (§ 1.3.3.2 above). This can be

summed up in theoretical terms (Table 1, Chapter 1 above):

Replicator Religious concept Krishna

Replicators in a population
Structured set of replicators
Altered replication
Alternate replicators
Locus for alternative replication Conceptual variable
Interactor-vehicle
Hybrid interactor
Environment
Selection
Conceptual pool
Discourse form
Mechanisms for innovation
Conceptual variants
Religious practitioner
‘Bilingual’ practitioner
Social-communicative context
Entrenchment
Vishnu, Purusha-Narayana,
warrior Vasudeva-Krishna,
pastoral Gopala-Krishna
Vedic (& extra-Vedic) legends
Identification and interference,
expressiveness, economy
MBh’s brahmanic warrior
Krishna
‘aristocratic-yogic-teacher’
Brahmins and RV, SB, ChU
and Vedic texts
Atharvan Brahmins
The BMAC, Hindukush, Kuru
state and the Mauryan Empire
MBh’s brahmanic warrior
Krishna

The authors of the MBh were successful because they presented their

religious philosophy through selecting particular concepts and terms that were

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more familiar to the people due to frequency of use — this meant that the

concepts and terms were more easily processed cognitively, as well as more

easily entrenched. The authors of the MBh seem to have followed Keller’s

hypermaxim (§ 1.3.3.1 above): ‘Communicate in such a way that you are socially

successful, at the lowest possible cost’.

In providing Krishna with a Vedic heritage and a distinct theology, these

authors set him apart from other competitors of people’s devotional attention. In

the MBh and particularly the BhG, the authors also followed the maxim:

‘Communicate in such a way that you are noticed’. At the same time for reasons

of accommodation and social identity, the authors innovated through recombining

the new with the old because it is important to ‘Communicate like the people

around you’.

Accommodation took place when the Brahmins re-presented the Vedic

religion and altered it in order to accommodate to the new audience who were

more familiar with ascetic ideals and devotional practices focused on a singular

religious figure like the Buddha or Mahavira or Vasudeva-Krishna. This led to the

convergence in the Vedic Brahmins’ philosophy of religion. While being

multilingual and cohabiting with extra-Vedic religious communities, the Vedic

Brahmins also maintained their Vedic heritage albeit in a newer form which was

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translatable across various communities leading to assimilation of more people to

the old-new Vedic-Hinduism.

They adjusted their religious paradigm to the variants associated with the

social-religious group made powerful by virtue of royal patronage. But they did it

by also employing the mechanism of covert prestige: they assimilated the

‘vernacular’ variant of Krishna to Vedic Vishnu. In the next chapter I continue

with my investigation into this assimilation process, by exploring the social-

historical background of the differential replication and differential perpetuation of

Krishna’s amorous pastoral aspect.

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3. The evolution of Krishna of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa and Vraj

As discussed in the previous chapter (§ 2.6), the pastoral cowherd (gopāla)

aspect of Krishna’s legend was not emphasized in the main text of the MBh,

because the social-communicative environment in which the text was composed

compelled the foregrounding of other aspects of Krishna’s character. His new

character as ‘aristocratic-yogic-teacher’ or brahmanic warrior and his relationship

with Vishnu made Krishna of the BhG a prestigious god worthy of increasing

royal patronage and association. Calling the BhG the central text of the

Bhāgavatas, Flood (1996:124) writes that its theology “was established on a

broad basis with royal and brahmanical support.” 128 The connection between

developments in the political and religious worlds since the Vedic times

continued in the first millennium CE. This period culminated in the c. tenth-

128 For a brief overview of royal patronage of Vaishnava Bhagavata tradition in the centuries
between the composition of the MBh and the BhP see Colas (2003). There is epigraphic evidence
of aristocratic devotion to a Bhagavat Vasudeva from the second to first centuries BCE: two
inscriptions from Besnagar (near Sanchi, Madhya Pradesh), two from Chitorgarh district of
Rajasthan, and one from Nanaghat cave in Maharashtra. Two of these inscriptions also mention
the patronage of Vedic rituals by the same devotee or their family. One Besnagar inscription
sums up the requirements for a place in heaven — self-control, generosity, and vigilance (dama,
tyāga, apramāda), three virtues also extolled in the MBh 11.7.19; 5.34.14 (Malinar 2007:254,
Brockington 1998:266, Colas 231). If we take into account Malinar’s (267-269) separation of
three layers within the BhG — the earliest from the Ashokan period; the second, when Krishna is
made “the model of ideal royal and yogic activity in that he is declared to be the highest god,”
dated between the second and first centuries BCE; and the last layer, including the final redaction
of the entire text in Mathura, dated to the early Kushana period c. first century CE — then these
inscriptions would be evidence for increasing royal support of Vasudeva-Krishna during the
period when he comes to be seen or represented as ‘aristocratic-yogic-teacher’ god related to
Vishnu.
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century text Bhāgavata Purāṇa (BhP), which marked the next big turn in

Krishna’s story when his Gopala aspect came to the fore in full force.

During this period, the MBh’s narrative tradition of itihāsa (‘so it was’ or

history) evolved in the new genre of Purāṇas (stories of the ancient past), which

included the Viṣṇu Purāṇa (ViP) and the BhP. 129 These two Sanskrit texts

develop Gopala-Krishna’s story first articulated in literature in the MBh’s

supplement, the Harivaṃśa (HV). Though a transitional text, the HV can be

considered a Purāṇa because of its content and also because “It acts as a hinge

which holds together the epic-purāṇic diptych of Kṛṣṇa” (Matchett 2001:23). 130

What began in the HV found its fullest expression in the BhP’s Book 10: in both

129 Rocher (1986) and Matchett (2003), Bailey (2003), Rao (2004) detail the various aspects of
the genre. There is an interesting connection with materials covered in chapter 2 above: “The
earliest known appearance of the word purāṇa, as a name for a literary genre, is in Atharvaveda
11.7.24, and it occurs several times, both in singular and the plural, in the Mahābhārata”
(Matchett 2003:132). The Purāṇas document the brahmanical expression of assimilated popular
traditions and as such “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 Brahmanas to propagate a particular vision” (Flood 1996:111).
130 Matchett (2001:12) believes that like all the Sanskrit Purāṇas, the HV, the VP, and the BhP

were “produced by Brahmins, so that they all three express some kind of brāhmaṇical ideology.”
According to her, each version of this ideology varies a little due to the particular circumstance of
each text’s composition. In terms of place and date of composition of each, she suggests (1) for
the HV, on the basis of coinciding textual and sculptural representations (around Mathura) the
Kushana period sometime between the first and the third century CE; (2) for the VP, on the basis
of historical political events and numismatic evidence the Narmada region in western India
around 400 CE; and (3) for the BhP, the generally agreed upon place and date suggested by
Hardy (1983:488), that is, the Tamil Pandya kingdom in South India the ninth or early tenth
century CE. Cf. Doniger’s (2009:370, 475) dates for the HV (c. 450 CE) and the VP (c.400-500 CE).
It is possible that the HV was composed in the Kushana period but became the MBh’s
supplement only in the Gupta period. The social-political environment during the latter was
favorable toward the brahmanical order and the need for exclusively highlighting Krishna’s
artistocratic-yogic-teacher aspect was a little less urgent thus making room for a supplementary
text full of stories of a very different nature.
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texts, cowherd Krishna’s pastimes as a child and youth spent in Vraj were

described in detail with some small but significant differences, discussed below.

Just as the Brahmin authors of the MBh transformed the variant of epic hero

‘warrior Vasudeva-Krishna’ into the prestigious new ‘aristocratic-yogic teacher’

variant, similarly the Brahmin authors of the BhP altered the variant of ‘pastoral

cowherd Krishna’ into the prestigious new variant ‘ludic-aristocratic-yogic-

teacher’ Krishna. I use the term ‘ludic’ to refer to the playful aspect of Krishna, 131

preferring it to ‘erotic’, because ‘erotic’ does not encompass his childhood sports.

Besides, as I discuss further below, the erotic element is primarily associated

with the gopīs, not Krishna. The adjective ‘ludic’ connects well with the Sanskrit

term ‘līlā’ (pastime, play), which defines Krishna’s activities in Vraj during his

childhood and youth. 132

131 ‘Ludic’ (playful) is derived from the Latin verb ‘lūdo’ (I play), which by transference can mean
‘to amuse oneself with doing’, and can also mean ‘to deceive, delude’. The de-verbal noun form is
‘lūdus’ (play, game, sport, pastime), and the corresponding derived form for the person who plays
is ‘lūdĭus’ (m. an actor). All these connotations have significance for Krishna’s character and
story in the BhP, particularly its Book 10. Cf. Ali’s (2004:156) observation about what lay at the
heart of courtly aesthetics in early medieval India, which I believe shaped the BhP’s Book 10:
This is the idea of ‘playfulness’ or ‘sportiveness’ – an important and polyvalent concept
denoted by a large lexical set, including various derivatives from the verbal roots √krīḍ, to
play; √ lal, to play; √ram, to rejoice or play; (vi +) √las, to shine, glitter or frolic; (vi +)
√nud, to pierce, play (a musical instrument [Krishna’s flute!], or entertain; and perhaps,
most importantly, the noun līlā, sport or play, from which the denominative verb līlāyati
was derived. In the courtly context, these terms could refer to specific games, contests
and entertainments enjoyed by men and women at court (the chief of which, as we shall
see, was the game of romance), but also, partly by extension from this, a sort of physical
inclination and even behavioural disposition.
132 See Matchett (2001:171-173) for a discussion of Krishna’s representation as līlāvatāra

(manifestation for fun) and Brayant (2003:xxii-xxvi) for an analysis of the various meanings of ‘līlā’
in the BhP. Bryant makes a distinction between the stories of Krishna’s childhood and youthful
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 To the extent that the authors of the BhP represented Krishna as a

detached teacher — they framed the tales of Krishna’s childhood pastimes and

youthful love games within a larger narrative of dispassion (vairāgya, BhP

12.13.11) — they did not alter his by then well-entrenched brahmanic character.

Rather, innovation was wrought in the representation of the pastoral narratives —

altered from the HV — such that now Krishna himself was desireless but multiple

cowherd women attained him explicitly through sexual desire (kāmāt, BhP

7.1.30) as detailed in its Book 10.29-33. Innovation was in the reinterpretation of

the relationship between god and his devotees. As I argue below, both changes

and continuities in Krishna’s legend in the BhP were due to social, political, and

religious continuities and changes in the first millennium in North and South

India.

The previous chapter covered the geographical expanse between west

and east in tracing the conceptual evolution of Krishna of the MBh; I now do the

same between north and south in order to understand the conceptual evolution of

Krishna of the BhP, as the text is most likely from India’s Tamil-speaking region.

I begin with the transition from the first millennium BCE to CE.

pastimes (Vraj līlā), and those of his adult activities as a warrior, statesman, and king. However, I
propose that Krishna’s Vraj līlā also has a regal dimension — which becomes apparent when
viewed in relation to courtly literature and political life — that should be taken into account. I
discuss this in detail further below.
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3.1 On the threshold of social-religious change

The period between the empires of the Mauryan dynasty (c. 324-185 BCE) and

the next biggest, the Gupta dynasty (c. 320-550 CE), saw a few significant

developments in society and religion. It is considered a chaotic period that saw

the influx into India of Greeks (Yavanas), Scythians (Shakas), Bactrian Kushanas

(Kuei-shangs), and Parthians (Pahlavas). Their kingdoms established new trade

routes resulting in increased trade with Greece, Central Asia, West Asia,

Northeast Africa, and Southeast Asia (Thapar 2003:234-244). This influx, and

subsequent opening up of trade and increased prosperity and influence of the

merchant classes, had several consequences for social-religious life in India, one

of which was the rise of Vraj’s Gopala-Krishna. Below I look at the origins of the

cowherd god and his assimilation with Vasudeva-Krishna in the MBh’s HV during

this period.

3.1.1 The birth of Gopala-Krishna

Matchett (2001:7) writes that although the stories of Krishna Gopala became part

of the main Vaishnava tradition later than those of Krishna Vasudeva, they

probably circulated for some centuries earlier among the cattle-rearing tribes of

north-west and western India, most often identified as the Ābhīras. She notes the

debate as to whether the Ābhīras were immigrant or native of India, and

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concludes that “it is generally accepted that they were settled there by the third

century BCE.” Jaiswal (1981:83-88) explores the debate in detail and indicates

that the theory of the tribe’s foreign origins has some merit. Indian scholars like

Sircar and Mitra believe that the Ābhīras came to India from Central Asia almost

at the same time as the Scythians in the second century BCE. Sircar (1971a:32)

connects the Ābhīras with ‘Abiravan’ area between Herat and Kandahar in

northern Afghanistan, while Mitra (1951:98-99) identifies them with a pastoral

tribe ‘Abeirai’ from near Azerbaijan.

The argument for a Central Asian identity of the Ābhīras gains support if

we consider marriage customs in the “identical cultural complex” of Krishna and

the cowherd god of the Ābhīras. Without making any connections with the

Central Asian and Caucasian customs of marriage by abduction, 133 Jaiswal (86-

87) discusses similar marriage customs of the Ābhīras and the Vṛṣṇis which were

Krishna’s tribal kin after they fused with Krishna’s ancestral tribe, the Yādavas

(see fn.115 above). In the MBh (1.213.5) Krishna declared the abduction and

133Cf. for instance, Kyrgyzstan’s version of the ancient practice with nomadic roots called “grab
and run” (ala kachuu), which has been featured in recent film/television (Lom 2004) and print
journalism (Matthews 2010) because of its revival since the country’s independence due to
economic reasons. Though outlawed, the custom is still practiced to varying degrees also in
Uzbekistan and Turkmenistan, and in the Caucasus. Unlike the mostly non-consensual
abduction-marriages in these countries, Kazakhstan distinguishes between abduction with
consent and without consent. Compare also Ingalls’s (in Hardy 1983:70) opinion that Krishna’s
story in the HV is closer to folklore, less pious, less puritanical, pointing to a world of nomadic
cattle herders of the ‘tribal areas of the west’, whose life-style and moral codes were less
constrained and whose sexual mores were freer.
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marriage of his sister, Subhadrā, by Arjuna to be in accordance with dharma.

Krishna himself acquired his first wife, Rukmiṇī, through abduction-upon-request,

detailed in the HV (87.33ff.) and the BhP (10.53.1ff.). On the basis of textual

evidence from the Purāṇas, Jaiswal concludes that the Abhiras acquired wives in

a similar fashion [though they conducted non-consensual abductions], and that

“These tribes must have lived together in close contact to have identified their

deities completely.”

The other point of overlap that allowed the identification of the two tribes

and their deities, according to Sircar (1971b:29), was the possession of large

herds of cattle by the Yādava-Satvata-Vṛṣṇi people, as mentioned in the Taittirīya

Saṃhitā (3.2.9.3) and the Jaiminīya Upaniṣad Brāhmaṇa (1.6.1). Like the earlier

fusion of Yādavas and Vṛṣṇis, possibly caused by processes of conceptual and

social identification including prestige, the Ābhīras, too, may have gradually

assimilated with the Yādava-Vṛṣṇi tribe for similar reasons, facilitated by similarity

in social customs and vocations. The earlier identification of Vasudeva and

Krishna was completed with the division of meaning of the two deities such that

one was made the other’s patronymic. Now the identification of a cowherd god

with the warrior hero was completed in the MBh’s HV by accommodating the

cowherd god into the hitherto-before underdeveloped stories of childhood and

youth of the warrior hero. Thus, the processes of identification of Vasudeva,

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Krishna, and cowherd Gopala are examples of the ‘first law of propagation’ of a

variant (§ 1.3.3.3 above), that is, these processes are instances of the human

tendency to converge on a single variant for conveying meaning in

communication. They merged all these gods into one and, at the same time, they

avoided complete synonymy by assigning them different functions within one

composite legend. Such processes increase community unity, as well as the

chances of propagation and entrenchment of its conceptual variant within a

tradition. I believe this is why the Bhāgavata practitioners and their god Krishna

were successful within the larger Hindu society from the time of the composition

and transmission of the MBh.

As discussed earlier (§ 2.6), there is evidence that the authors of the main

text of the MBh knew of the cowherd aspect of Krishna’s character. Matchett

(2001:14) analyzes a passage in its Sabhāparvan (2.38.5-15) in which Śiśupāla

objects to Krishna being made the guest of honor at an assembly of kings and

describes Krishna’s youthful exploits negatively. Matchett notes the slighting

allusions to many of the events included in the HV though the order in which they

appear in the MBh passage is not as in the HV, which indicates that the HV was

composed later. She believes that Śiśupāla’s condemnation of Krishna’s

activities during his cowherd days was indicative of the general brahmanical

attitude toward these stories at the time of the main epic’s composition. In

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arguing thus she discounts two things: first, she notes in passing and then

dismisses the larger context in which Śiśupāla’s denigrating references to

cowherd Krishna’s deeds come at the end of a long litany of objections begun

five chapters earlier (MBh 2.33). These deeds are not singled out for contempt;

they are part of a larger speech full of other insults. Second, Śiśupāla’s

recounting of young Krishna’s misdeeds is not so different from Duryodhana’s

summary of Krishna’s misdeeds during the war (MBh 9.61). I have suggested (§

2.6) possible cognitive and social reasons for the non-appreciation of certain

aspects of Krishna’s character in the MBh’s main text, given the environment in

which it was composed. The Brahmin authors of the MBh may well have

appreciated the stories of Krishna’s cowherd youth but may not have found them

useful in their social-religious rhetorical endeavor in the epic.

Dating the HV to the Kushana period between the first and the third

century CE, Matchett (2001:13) questions why at this particular time the story of

Krishna’s life came into prominence in Vaishnavism such that it came to be

attached to the MBh as a supplement (khila). She finds an answer in the

increased prosperity and influence of the merchant class due to the opening of

trade with the Mediterranean world and Central Asia under foreign kings. She

believes that the rise of one branch of the Vaishya class (i.e. merchants) “created

a climate in which stories of a divine hero who grew up in another branch

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became welcome” (14). She points out that in the HV 59.20-21 “the values of all

three branches of the vaiśya class (agriculture, trade and animal-rearing) are set

out forcefully.” These values are voiced by Krishna. Matchett (15-16) relates the

idea of a god who embraces Vaishya values to the democratized religion of

bhakti that developed between the time of the Mauryas and that of the Guptas,

and concludes:

Now in the Harivaṃśa Kṛṣṇa himself lives as a young vaiśya, even though
he is a kṣatriya by birth. This marks the culmination of the process which
Dandekar calls ‘the Kṛṣṇaisation of Viṣṇu’. From now on the image of the
young cowherd dominates the Vaiṣṇava imagination more and more. The
Bhagavadgītā as the teaching of the kṣatriya sage remains influential. But
at the level of the imagination and the emotions it is Rāma who comes to
be seen as God’s representative in kṣatriya terms. The figure of Kṛṣṇa
gains a more universal appeal than this, by incorporating vaiśya as well as
kṣatriya elements into his story.

In the following section I explore relevant developments in society and religion

leading up to the BhP’s composition in which the HV’s story undergoes

brahmanization.

3.2 Society and religion in the first millennium CE North and South India

As outlined in the previous chapter, significant developments in stages of

Krishna’s conceptualization were accompanied by processes of (i) forming a new

polity (Kuru state, Mauryan empire), (ii) royal-administrative intervention in or

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influence on religious matters, and (iii) the reorganization of knowledge in social-

religious texts (the Vedic texts, the MBh) by Brahmins. Other shifts were in

language use (Vedic Sanskrit ➜ Classical Sanskrit ➜ Epic (MIO) Sanskrit),

literature (the Vedic texts ➜ the epics), religious practices (yajña ➜ tapas ➜

bhakti) and economic structures (pastoral ➜ agricultural ➜ mercantile). All such

processes worked in conjunction and were articulated in texts that set the stage

for the next series of transformations. This was the state of affairs in the period

leading to the composition of the BhP.

3.2.1 Bilingual Brahmins

As mentioned above (fn.130), the BhP was composed by Brahmins as were the

other two texts under consideration, i.e. the HV and the ViP. Matchett (2001:12)

says that all three “show a high degree of ‘creative compilation’ in their selection

and arrangement of earlier material” in building up a distinctive theology and

cosmology. I submit that the Brahmin authors of the earliest of the three texts,

the HV, were bilingual in Vedic and folk traditions, in Sanskrit and Prakrit

languages, and in philosophical and devotional codes (Cf. § 2.2 fn.49 above).

The Gupta-period authors of the ViP were preoccupied with Hindu revival

and the retreat of Buddhist and Jain doctrines. Discussing a key passage

(3.17.9-3.18.4) and others (1.6.29-31; 1.20.28) in the text, which tells the story of

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the defeat of the ‘demonic’ ideas of the Buddhists and Jains at the hands of the

gods with the help of Vishnu, Matchett (17) writes that the ViP as a whole was

intended by its composers as “a powerful instrument of this Hindu revival.” In it

“The figure of Viṣṇu combines Vedic resonances with the newer appeal of bhakti,

according well with the tendencies of the Gupta kings, who ‘used the mystique of

the Vedic rituals and symbolism to legitimate their authority’ while showing a

personal preference for Vaiṣṇvaism.” As its text demonstrates, then, the ViP’s

Brahmin composers were bilingual in Vedic-Vaishnava tradition and in the

heterodox Buddhist-Jain doctrines which they sought to defeat, as well as in

Sanskrit and Prakrit languages, and philosophical and devotional codes.

Current scholarly opinion for the provenance of the BhP points to its

composition in South India, particularly in the Pandya state or Pāṇṭiya-Nāṭu

(Hardy 1983:525-526, Matchett 2001:19-20). Hopkins (1966:21-22) believes that

the literary quality of the text and its referencing of wide range of earlier literature

points to a learned Bhāgavata community of urban-based scholarly ascetics, who

may or may not have been Brahmins. Matchett (20), who believes the BhP’s

composers to be Brahmins, 134 draws attention to their agency and intention of

134Cf. Hardy’s (1983:493-494) statement that “besides accepting the traditional varṇa-system
with bhakti as the additional modifying factor, the author of the BhP also betrays a personal,
unreflected inclination towards brahmanism.” He analyzes the BhP’s elaborate description of the
utthāpanam ceremony of taking the new-born baby Krishna out of the house (10.7.4-17), which
was “a very elaborate Sanskritic-brahmin affair” compared to its earlier (very brief) mention in an
earlier Tamil source. From this example Hardy concludes that “the author of BhP is personally a
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achieving pan-Indian status for the BhP, saying that even when they were critical

of Vedic orthodoxy they identified themselves closely with the Vedas and other

prestigious Sanskrit texts, and reinterpreted them in their own way. She also puts

forward an admittedly speculative yet intriguing proposition: there is a possibility

that the BhP may have been composed in the north as the work of a group of

Pandya Brahmins who migrated from the south to some area further north

favorable to Vaishnavas after the Shaivite Cola ascendancy in the early tenth

century CE; that they then set out to incorporate within the culture of their

northern environs the values and world-view of their southern home. She

believes this idea would account for the BhP’s particular blend of Sanskrit and

Tamil qualities and “the various changes, noted by Hardy [1983:424], which it

makes to its Tamil material in order to make it more acceptable to a non-Tamil

audience.” It would also explain Ramanuja’s neglect of the BhP in his writings in

the south around the eleventh century, as well as its presence in Alberuni’s

northern list of mahāpurāṇas, c. 1030 CE (21).

Whether they were located in South or North India, the composers of the

BhP were Brahmins who were bilingual in Tamil and Sanskrit languages and

cultures. Just like the Atharvan Brahmins of the Vedic times, they too had social-

rhetorical goals to fulfill through the BhP. I am persuaded by van Buitenen’s

devoted follower of brahmin religion and accepts the claim that its representatives are superior
beings.”
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(1966) insights into the social goals of the BhP’s southern Brahmin

composers/redactors, the Bhāgavatas. He contextualizes the linguistic archaism

of the BhP within a framework of Sanskritization whereby the Bhāgavatas, who

followed extra-Vedic (pāñcarātra) traditions, attempted to raise the status of their

group and their practices vis-à-vis orthodox (smārta) Brahmins, who followed the

‘remembered’ (smṛti) traditions having an affinity to the Vedas. 135 Van Buitenen

presents a lengthy passage from the Āgamaprāmāṇya by the philosopher

Yāmuna, “a South Indian — equally inspired by the bhakti movement, and

neither in time nor in ambience nor, probably, in space too far apart from the

authors of the [BhP] — who presents some other aspects of Bhāgavatism, of

how the Bhāgavatas thought of themselves and how they were thought of by

others whom they had to accommodate” (26). After quoting from the text, “a

treatise meant to demonstrate the Vedic validity of Pāñcarātra,” van Buitenen

(29) concludes that

135 Within the Tamil region, brahmanism’s presence was complex, according to Hart (1975:51-
58). There were various kinds of Brahmins, Tamil and northern migrants who were acculturated
to varying degrees: “Some of the Brahmins accepted the Tamil language and its culture
wholeheartedly, for many of the finest Tamil poets were Brahmins, and their poems do not
mention Aryan or Sanskritic ideas or customs any more than those of non-Brahmin authorship.
Thus it is clear that some of the Brahmins of ancient Tamilnad had so accommodated themselves
to the customs and beliefs indigenous to Tamilnad that they bore little resemblance to the
northern ideal of a Brahmin.” He continues, “At the same time, some Brahmins retained much of
their Northern outlook and way of life;” they introduced Vedic sacrifices, etc. Hart believes that the
earliest Brahmins associated themselves with the kings and attempted to gain their patronage
(54, 55). Some of them became poets, envoys for kings and their advisers (56). Thus, some
were more “Tamilized” than others.
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 the Bhāgavatas laid claim to being Brahmanas; it is also clear that those
who made the claim were the priests among the Bhāgavatas. The
Smārtas vehemently disputed their claim, because Bhāgavatas/Sātvatas
were traditionally (i.e., by smṛti) known to be very low class: the issue in
fact (according to the usual Dharmaśātra system, by which caste
hierarchies are made intelligible by degrees of evolution from mixed
varṇas) of a Vaiśya Vrātya. And not only does the Bhāgavata stand
condemned by his heredity but his lowliness is compounded by his
sacerdotal occupation; priest to his idol he lives off his priesthood, and,
whatever his social pretensions, he is a common pūjārī. 136

Van Buitenen (31) is convinced, and Hardy agrees with him (490), that in

Yāmuna’s text and the BhP there is a conspicuous concern with persuading

others of one’s orthodoxy through Vedicism, which is part of a wider Southern

Vaishnava preoccupation. The Vedicism of the BhP is in its use of archaic Vedic

Sanskrit, and in the Bhāgavatas’ claim that it is the essence of the whole

Vedānta (BhP 12.13.15; Cf. fn.86 above). Beside the linguistic, there are social

and conceptual accommodations made in the text toward arguably the more

prestigious variants. Hardy (490) writes of the Vedas, as “the most powerful

symbol” of Hindu, northern culture which made the southern “justify its own

religious expressions in terms of the Vedas.” He notes that the BhP conformed to

the Vedas, but preserved a southern religious identity by claiming that Vishnuism

and Vishnu are what the Vedas are essentially about; it conformed to the varṇa-

system but redefined it as a scale of bhaktas, the ideal bhakta being the highest

category which even the orthodox Brahmins had to accept in order to be a true

136 Cf. footnotes 62 and 110 above.

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bhakta themselves (492-493). In this way the bilingual / bicultural Bhāgavata

composers of the BhP Sanskritized themselves, their practices, and their text. 137

If the BhP was indeed composed in the Pandya kingdom c. tenth century

CE, it was done in a predominantly Hindu milieu. This milieu of ‘religious

humanism’ was formed by fusing Tamil anthropocentric attitude with the northern

conceptions of transcendental god. 138 It produced a brahmanized temple religion

which valued desire and passion directed toward a god who was both immanent

in the temple idol and transcendent beyond this ‘symbolic representation’ (Hardy

1983:231-234). While the scholarship on southern Krishnaism recognizes the

association of the royal court with the temple and of Pandya kings with Krishna in

137 Van Buitenen’s (1966:37) description of the ‘literatus’ (śiṣṭa) in the Sanskrit tradition applies to
the Bhāgavata composers of the BhP. According to him, the śiṣṭa was always bilingual in a
regional vernacular and in Sanskrit — “And his bilingualism implied a biculturalism. Just as the
bilingual man is the mediator of loans between two languages, the śiṣṭa was the mediator of
‘loans’ between his vernacular culture, as small as a village or as wide as a nation, and the
Sanskrit culture. On his capacity of absorption depended the free interflow. . . . [A text’s context]
is the way of life that local śiṣṭas, rooted in their subculture, hold to be Sanskritic.” Thus the
Bhāgavatas were the bilingual and bicultural exemplars who made the context of their Tamil
Vaishnava bhakti culture Sanskritic in their text, the BhP.
138 In the period leading up to the BhP’s composition, according to Champakalakshmi, there were

rivalries between Vedic Brahmins and those Tamil bhakti poet-saints who were also Brahmins. At
the same time the bhakti poets indirectly affirmed the status of the Vedas when they tried to
acquire a Vedic status for their Tamil hymns (2004:57, 62). The more serious opposition though
was between the Tamil bhakti poets and Buddhists and Jains: there was a “vehement
denunciation of the Jains and Buddhists as non-believers, heretics, and hence as ‘heterodox’
(55). In both Vaishnava and Shaiva Tamil bhakti poems, the privileging of embodiment, the
metaphor of human body as a temple and the emphasis on the use of the senses in the
apprehension and worship of the divine, was expressly set against the Jain idea of self-
mortification for salvation (62). In her words, the hymnists were propagating bhakti in a situation
of rivalry with the Jains and Buddhists — whose influence and dominance in royal and urban
centers like Kāñcīpuram and Madurai had been established in the pre-seventh-century period —
for social dominance and royal patronage (69). Their conflict and change resulted in decline of
Buddhism in the south and the survival of Jainism due to its adoption of the institutional and ritual
forms of Puranic religion, namely temple worship (70).
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the classical Tamil literature (Cf. Hardy 155-156, 225-226), similar associations

are not explored in the later conceptualization of Krishna in the BhP. In most

studies on the BhP, scholarly attention focuses on the conception of the religious

individual or the bhakta and their bhakti, especially with reference to the episodes

of the cowherd women’s passion for Krishna, but not on his dispassion. I believe

that Krishna’s representation in the BhP — as a detached lover — has roots in

the realities of courtly life in early medieval India. On the basis of Ali’s (2004)

observations regarding courtly culture and political life in early medieval India

(discussed below), I venture that the BhP’s representations of Krishna and his

erotic adventures — modified from those in earlier northern and southern

sources — were shaped by the mores of a royal court. Thus, the Brahmin

composers of the BhP must have been conversant with/in the language of courtly

culture and classical literature besides temple culture and religious literature that

evolved during the first millennium in Sanskritic north and Tamil south India. In

the following section I provide the broad outline of these developments that

shaped the eventual representation of Krishna in the BhP.

3.2.2 Language & literature, court & temple, politics & devotion

Ramanujan and Cutler (1999:232) write that “In the culture of this time, the two

‘classicisms’ of India, that of the Guptas and that of Tamil classical poetry, seem

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to have met.” Their meeting led to the transformation of classical Tamil genres

into the genres of bhakti. 139 Changes in language use and literature during this

period reflected changes in society and religion at large. For instance, in the

north the newer invasions, migrations, and mixing of peoples in the early

centuries of this period increased Brahmin anxiety over social order. It led them

to compose numerous prescriptive texts (dharmaśāstras) on injunctions and

prohibitions regarding all aspects of life including dharma, politics and material

gain (artha), and pleasure (kāma). They extended their concerns to subjects of

sciences and arts, and set about ‘disciplining’ all knowledge into grammar,

mathematics, medicine, astronomy, music, aesthetics in fine arts, and soforth.

The language of these disciplines of science and art as well as religion and

literature was Sanskrit: It therefore became “a cosmopolitan language,

patronized by a sophisticated community of literati and royalty. It was no longer

used only, or primarily, for sacred texts but also as a vehicle for literary and

political expression throughout South Asia and beyond” (Doniger 2009:309).

139Flood (1996:113) argues that the Purāṇas’ compilation and bhakti’s development must be
seen firstly in the context of the stability of the Gupta period and secondly, after the collapse of
the Guptas, in the context of the rise of regional kingdoms, particularly in the south. Cf. Doniger’s
comment that “Bhakti was created in a world “in which there was a synthesis between North
Indian and South Indian cultural forms, active interaction between several religious movements
and powerful patronage of religion” (2009:339).
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 In this context, Ali’s (2004) theses regarding the c. 350-750 CE Sanskritic

courtly culture and courtly literature are noteworthy. 140 His analysis demonstrates

that the ideas enshrined in art and literature were identical to the key concepts

found in the texts on political actions of the king and his men (14). Keeping in

mind that most of our knowledge of devotional religion’s evolution comes from

the worlds of art and literature, I argue the following. While some historiographies

of bhakti readily link its development to medieval feudalism 141 and while

scholarship on the BhP recognizes the influence of secular poetry, the impact of

political ideas on the conceptualization of Gopala-Krishna in the BhP has been

140 According to Ali (2004:20), during this period a common political culture developed,
crystallized and proliferated throughout all major regions of the subcontinent. Lineages and courts
in the north (the Guptas, c. 350-550 CE) and the south (the Calukyas and Pallavas, c. 550-750
CE) adopted “a series of cultural and political conventions which included not only Sanskrit as a
lingua franca but a host of gestural, ethical, aesthetic and sumptuary practices which were
distinctly courtly in nature.” These courtly practices were next reconfigured only in the twelfth
century with the establishment of the Islamic courtly culture. Ali’s larger argument is that courtly
culture was “a complex set of practices which were formative and constitutive of political life in
early medieval India” (24).
141 See, for instance, Jaiswal (1981) and Kosambi (1970, 1961). Other scholars like Sharma

(2002) and Goyal (1989) have, respectively, dubbed the views of the former set of scholars as
‘unjustifiable’ and ‘unfounded’ ‘Marxist’ and ‘subjective’ interpretations. However, Ali (2004:104)
— who has “bracketed out the question of religion” in his study on courtly culture and political life
in early medieval India — illustrates the undeniable conceptual overlap in the religious and
political spheres. Commenting on their common key terms and concepts when analyzing the
protocol of the court he writes:
The evidence for the origin of early medieval religious ideas points instead to significant
interaction with contemporary practices and conceptions of human lordship, and the rise
and proliferation of many important ideas in both contexts seems to have been broadly
contemporaneous. In fact, religious and political notions of lordship differed more in
degree than kind. They formed part of a continuous and homologously structured ‘chain
of being’ which linked the entire cosmos. This, on the one hand, meant that the king’s
authority and mystique resembled and participated in that of the temple god, giving a
theological dimension to relationships at court. On the other hand, however, it meant that
the life of gods, housed in their sumptuous palaces, shared striking resemblances to
those of princes.
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largely ignored. 142 I see close parallels in representations of Krishna, his

devotees, and their relationship in the BhP and the courtly literature’s

representation of the king, his courtiers, and the dynamics of courtly

142 On the general subject of southern bhakti and its milieu, Champakalakshmi (2004:67) links the
pre-BhP Tamil Vaishnava and Shaiva poetry to notions of temple service and royal service
(attāṇicēvakam), and to the chieftain-bard or patron-client or lord-servant relationship of the ‘court
model’. Hardy (1983:460-465) makes the same linkages, but he places them within the category
of ‘intellectual bhakti’, which he frames in opposition to the category of ‘emotional bhakti’,
categorized as viraha-bhakti ‘devotion in which the sentiment of ‘separation’ is cultivated’ (9). He
identifies ‘intellectual bhakti’ with northern brahmanical and ‘emotional viraha-bhakti’ with
southern folk traditions. And he considers the former as an integral part of what he calls
‘normative ideology’ or Vedantic/Upanishadic spirituality, whose spiritual premise was (14-15):
a particular form of mystical experience style brahman, the evaluation of man’s empirical
situation as saṃsāra governed by the laws of karma, and the systematized ‘spiritual
exercises’ of yoga, designed to lead to the state of liberation, mokṣa. (In Buddhist
terminology this appears as nirvāṇa, duḥkha, pratītyasamutpāda, and dhyāna.) Whether,
as ‘Hinduism’, related back to the Vedas or, as Buddhism, on new grounds, both the early
Upaniṣads and the Buddha’s teaching share, in my opinion, the same ideology, in
contrast to the earlier Vedic approach to the world.
Hardy assails against the normative ideology’s “negative attitude against the whole empirical
personality,” which of course includes the mind, ego, sense-impressions, and emotions (16). He
believes that, for instance, objections against sexual desire (kāma), enumerated in the Kāmasūtra
40-45 before its author proclaims its validity in sūtra 51, are “objections behind which we can
sense the prejudice of the normative ideology against physical pleasures” (390). Elsewhere, he
writes of the normative ideology’s “tendency to suppress the senses, sensuous enjoyment and
sensual beauty” (465); and its intolerance for “emotionalism” (480). In Hardy’s nearly 700-pages-
long celebration of emotional bhakti, only once does he recognize the role of intellectual, mental
faculties in the expression of emotions in southern bhakti poetry and its culmination in the BhP,
but qualifies it with this: “The difference lies in the fact that the emotions, fed by the senses, are
here the primary locale and means of religious experience” (542 fn.205). Granted, but the
categorical distinctions he draws throughout his book are problematic, because of his complete
disregard for the possibilities that (1) the earlier, ‘normative’ Vedantic yogic intellectualism itself
could only have emerged in and become a norm through religious practice, that is, it was not
foisted by some abstract authority; (2) the so-called ‘brahmanical normative intellectual’
enterprise may in fact have been grounded in the concerns of very worldly courtly culture and
political life; and (3) the emotional bhakti represented in the BhP was enmeshed in a distinctive
gender-biased view of female sexuality, which was not flattering to women. I infer the first point
from tracing the social-religious history of the late Vedic period (§ 2.4.3 above); the latter two
critiques are based on the studies by Ali (2004) and Coleman (2002, 2001) discussed below. The
focus of analyses by Hardy, Champakalakshmi, and Coleman is on the bhakti side of the
equation, not on the conceptualization of Krishna per se. Ali’s insights, derived from non-religious
Sanskrit sources (i.e. excluding classical Tamil literature), are pertinent to analyzing the
representation of Krishna in his relationship with the cowherd women in the BhP.
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relationships. Indeed, I view the BhP’s representation of earlier pastoral

materials — especially its introduction of explicitly erotic elements in the story

and its depiction of cowherd women in relation to Krishna — as an instance of

production of a (dramatic) text for a courtly audience. The authors of the BhP

reworked the HV’s story using the conceptual categories familiar to its courtly

audience. I discuss this further in section 3.4 below. Therefore, Ali’s conclusions

regarding political life and literature of the period preceding the BhP’s

composition are particularly relevant to understanding its representation of

Gopala-Krishna.

According to Ali (2004), the dominant concerns of the people of the court

were procedural, aesthetic, and ethical in nature. Codes of style and protocol

were “important ‘socialising’ or ‘integrating’ mechanisms for ruling classes of

medieval society” (8). 143 These ideas shaped the conception of individual and

social being. Courtly manners (i.e. appearance, outward bearing, and etiquette –

extended to self-discipline and social detachment) constituted ethical frameworks

for human relations, produced a certain type of ethical ‘subject’ and defined his

143The courtly concept of beauty was a domain of bodily, gestural, verbal and ethical refinement:
“the practice of alaṁkāra, or adornment, functioned both as a ‘technology’ of self-transformation
and an idiom of communication” (Ali 2004:23). Court poetry and other practices were thus
acculturative mechanisms through which aspiring men and local élites entered into the ‘good
society’. In the context of bhakti literature, compare for instance Hardy’s (1983:534-538)
discussion which points to the BhP’s emphasis on Krishna’s “ravishing beauty” which has “the
direct consequence and the necessary effect” of making the cowherd women of Vraj love him to
the point of forgetting their dharma and family responsibilities.
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career. The various hierarchies of relations at court converged in the single

dyadic classification of servant (sevaka) and master (svāmin). The public

functions of all the king’s men were grounded in personal obligation to him. And

“Both in terms of ideology and realpolitik, the measure of this obligation was

loyalty,” which was usually denoted by the terms bhakti (devotion) or anurāga

(attachment). 144 Ali (105) continues: “Loyalty or attachment to the lord was the

inner disposition which was to inform the actions and labour which constituted

service (sevā).”

People at court were expected to publicly indicate their inner dispositions

through conventional or collectively recognized gestures and words, because

such dispositions were the fundamental basis of relationships at court (Ali

2004:183). There was a coincidence of terminology of emotions and political

dispositions in courtly texts, and a single affective language was used to denote

both personal and political relationships. 145 Therefore, even formal interactions,

like the court protocols, were conceived in affective terms (184). The delineation,

interpretation, and reproduction of the affective structures of courtly life were

through aesthetic traditions, as executed in poetry or kāvya (185). 146 Together,

144 AS 1.8.10-12, 26.

145 The affective states experienced by people of the court included not only emotions but also a
variety of other social and physiological responses and mental dispositions (Ali 2004:187).
146 Hardy views the classical caṅkam literature as “an associative structure which would condition

the emotive response to phenomena experienced [so how is this different from Ali’s northern
materials and the shaping of disposition, etc.?]. Elements emerging from ‘folk religion’ were
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the poetics and poetry shaped the formation of an ‘interpretive community’ of

authors and audiences at the court (189). Ali reads the structure of emotions and

dispositions laid out in aesthetic manuals like the Nāṭyaśāstra (NS) and

enshrined in literary works as a form of ‘education of disposition’ at court, which

was about teaching people how to feel (191). Thus the aesthetic was also

didactic. The BhP also combines these two functions in its text: it can be seen as

an instruction manual on how to engage in proper bhakti.

Poetry and drama played an integral part in educating the people at court

in the art and craft of interpretation, because understanding inner dispositions

coloured by it, just as in the encounter with Northern influences it was to play the dominant role”
(149). He writes that during the classical caṅkam period (up to the third century CE)
Krishnism/Vaishnavism had grained access to two royal courts: “that of Kāñcī at the very fringe of
Tamil culture but more open to Northern influences, and that of Maturai.” Krishna/Vishnu was also
known at the popular level, and Hardy (157-158) speculates on a possible distinction between
royal Kshatriya Vishnu and popular Shudra Krishna at that time. Krishna/Vishnu is identified as
Māyōṉ (‘person of dark complexion’, “a Tamil translation of the Skt. kṛṣṇa / Kṛṣṇa” 153), who was
peripheral during this period and not yet knows as ‘the lover of the gopīs’ (157). His greater
integration into the literary tradition, more specifically into the poetic ‘landscape of jasmine’ (the
mullai tiṇai), was advanced by the poetic theory formulated in the Tolkāppiyam, c. third to fifth
century (158). The landscape has the following poetic-emotive-symbolic associations (160-161):
wife waiting for the return of her husband (from abroad, from work), separation from lover; the
rainy season and the late evening (both related to the return home of travelers, warriors, and
monks); jasmine flower which blossoms in early winter, in the region of the forest, inhabited by
cowherds (in turn related to cows and bulls, milk products, and Krishna the Cowherd ‘Gopala’).
Hardy also acknowledges the association of the rainy season (the monsoon) with waiting in
Prakrit and Sanskrit lyrics.
According to Hardy (1983:218), the various Tamil names of Krishna/Vishnu, Māyōṉ,
Māyaṉ, Māyavaṉ, and Māl, have at their base the nominal root *mā ‘black’. On the basis of the
evidence he analyzes, all these names “are different Tamil renderings of the Skt. name Kṛṣṇa ‘the
Black One’.” The root *mā has further semantic fields of ‘great’ and ‘confusion’, thus Māl is also a
‘great man’, and one who ‘infatuates the mind’ thus is the ‘mysterious, inscrutable one’ (219).

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through outward signs was “a strategic preoccupation” for both subordinates and

men of rank and power (Ali 2004:194-196). The literature on political policy

emphasized the importance of paying attention to gestures and facial

expressions as the external signs of a person’s affective states or inner

dispositions. In both aesthetics and politics emotions were never viewed as

exclusively ‘internal states’ — “all affective states had gestural and behavioural

symptoms” (197-198). All this must have contributed to something like a ‘science

of observing people’ at court; and such observation was

a capacity, springing from the necessities of court life, which enabled men
and women to understand the dispositions, designs and mental make-up
of other people. It was complemented by a pronounced self-regard or
circumspection, for just as a man was to know the dispositions and
capacities of others, he was to know his own if he was to deploy them to
his advantage. This may be one way in which we can understand the
tireless recommendations towards affective self-restraint mentioned in the
manuals on artha and kāma. This was less an expression of any
‘ascetical’ or renunciative tendency in Indian culture than very worldly
advice to worldly men. Utmost care and regard were to be applied to the
proper management and display of inner mental states. 147

Ali suggests that expression and concealment of inner dispositions were in a

dynamic tension in court life. Besides observing others, guarding and managing

the external signs of one’s own disposition was important (200). The mastery of

dispositions was not only a mark of affective sophistication, but also a

147 Ali 2004 (198-199) and Elias 1983 (104-106). Cf. Hardy’s (1983:13-17) definition of ascetical

or renunciative tendency in Indian culture as a ‘normative ideology’, and then his repeated
assertion of its opposition to the earthy, sensual, sexual, erotic, emotional, beauteous aspects of
secular or religious life (46, 76, 103, 112, 127, 197, 390-391, 401, 465, 480, 484-485, 537-538).
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precondition for worldly success (204). Aesthetics thus provided its courtly

audience an ‘objective’ education in the subtlety of its own affective structures

but also a ‘subjective’ orientation to this system so that it enabled men and

women to negotiate the relations of alliance, loyalty, and antagonism more

effectively (206).

The preferred theme of courtly poetry was erotic love, and Ali places the

discourse on erotic love beside the discourses of ‘self-mastery’ usually

associated with ‘brahmanical’ or religious ideology, but which have rather more to

do with worldly concerns (2004:237). 148 The texts on polity were emphatic that

the prince’s training should begin with a turning inward to master his own self,

particularly the senses (239). Self-discipline and mastery over the senses were

recommended to men at court in all of their pursuits, including sexual

relationships (240). This injunction is found even in the Nāṭyaśāstra (34.18-19)

148 For instance, Ali (2004:239-240) writes that conceptions of the self had long used political
imagery in conceiving of the inner relations of the self. He presents the famous Upanishadic
formulation (Cf. Kaṭhopaniṣad 3.3-4) in which the self (ātman) is like a king in his chariot, with his
driver (the intellect) using his reigns (the mind), to control the five horses (the senses). He says
that by the early medieval period of our discussion, the image had changed considerably. In an
eighth-century inscription, “the soul is compared to the king, the mind to his minister, the group of
senses to his circle of feudatories and speech and the other organs to various royal servants.
Such metaphors not only reveal the evolution of political structures as ways of imagining the
insides of people but, just as importantly, reveal something about the relationships that men at
court were enjoined to have with themselves. So the normal and properly ‘functioning’ self not
only implied relations of internal hierarchy, but also involved active mastery and even coercion.”
In texts on polity, victory of the senses (indriyavijaya) was equated with vinaya (self-discipline,
restraint, humility), and ‘vinaya’ is conceptually and etymologically related to concepts of nīti
(policy) and naya (directed conduct) in relation to others “which formed the goal of the prince’s
and the courtier’s training.” Kauṭilya calls ‘conquering the senses’ the whole of his teaching
(Arthaśātra 1.6.3).
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and the Kāmasūtra (7.2.58), which at the same time enjoin the king not to

deprive himself of pleasure and play. 149 Ali (241) explains:

The point here is that the discipline in regard to the senses, which texts
like the Arthaśātra and Kāmasūtra recommend, need not be seen as part
of some other-worldly yearning for ascetical transcendence. The control of
the mind and victory over the senses recommended in courtly manuals,
then, had less to do with any critique of worldly life as such, but instead
were forms of ethical self-regard that men of the world were to develop
within themselves driven largely, I shall show, by exigencies at court. In
these manuals the discipline of the senses was not opposed to sensual
and worldly enjoyment, it was its precondition.

Sensual pleasure was problematic not in and of itself but because the

pursuit of pleasure could potentially lead one to neglect other important spheres

of life at court and therefore leave one vulnerable to enemy attacks (Ali

2004:241). Sexual desire (kāma) and its resultant attachment (anurāga, āsakti),

either in separation or union, had “the potential to compromise and even

destabilise the internal hierarchy and proper order of the self” and affect an

individual’s capacity to act in the world (245).

Second, the discourse of self-mastery as detailed in texts on polity drew

parallels to the wider arena of the court, because they were concerned with

training the political élite for a successful career at court. The king’s mastery over

self ideally meant the proper mastery over his kingdom. The idea was

149This last point is also articulated by Kauṭilya in his Arthaśāstra (1.7.3). As Ali (2004:240) points
out, the Nāṭyaśāstra includes dhīra (self-control) as an integral characteristic in all of its
categorization of nāyakas (heroes), even the sporting and playful hero (dhīralalita). And the
Kāmasūtra ties the knowledge, pursuit, and achievement of worldly goals with one who has
conquered his senses (jitendriya).
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intrinsically linked with gaining and maintaining one’s sphere of influence. Yet the

king’s mastery was complex for it relied upon and subsumed within it the

agencies of other elements of the body politic, each of whom exercised relative

mastery over its own sphere(s) of competence. There was a hierarchical order of

individual capacities at court, and in the hierarchical order everybody including

the emperor was dependent on his servants and ministers (Ali 2004:245-247).

Even though independence was celebrated in the gnomic literature of this period,

autonomy and independence was relative, which often appears as “the capacity

not to act as a ‘free agent’ but to dispense favour and support others as one’s

own dependants” (247). The goal then was to become a ‘refuge’ (āśraya) for a

large number of people; “one of the explicitly stated ends of self-cultivation was

to make oneself attractive, by developing qualities which drew others towards

oneself” (249). 150 Ali writes: “So it is that kings and courtiers sought to acquire

relative autonomy — in terms of power and wealth — within the context of

service at court and within its chain of dependencies. . . . It is these men who

150 Both Arthaśāstra and Kāmasūtra discuss in their final sections secret (aupaniṣadika)
practices, as last resorts, for winning over the minds of others. The recommendations are
extracted from the Atharvaveda (for instance, 7.12; 6.94). Ali writes that these hymns speak of
‘drawing the minds’ of others to take delight in the aspirant [here, courtier/king], ‘grasping’ or
‘seizing’ (gṛhnāmi), ‘bending’ the mind of others with one’s own mind. Such hymns anticipate the
logic of attachment, and “Attachment was thus envisioned as a ‘leaning towards’, or ‘inclination’ of
the mind in the direction of another” (250). The discourse of attachment, influence, and control
(vaśa) between individuals – the issue of struggle for the minds of men – was deadly important.
Ali (251) comments that the goal of the prince’s policy was not commitment to a ‘social ideology’
or the ‘improvement of society’, but “simply acquiring and retaining his kingdom — attracting
virtuous and powerful servants, retaining their support and winning over ‘seducible parties’.”
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formed the audience for the prescriptive and aesthetic literature of the court”

(248); and it is these men, I should add, who formed the audience for the

aesthetic-didactic text of the BhP. The relationship between superiors (relatively

autonomous) and inferiors (relatively dependent agencies) was represented in

terms of attachment: “anurāga along with bhakti denoted the ideal disposition

that any dependent or servant was to have towards his superior and, as such,

they formed common virtues of courtiers celebrated in inscriptions” (248).

The tension between autonomy and attachment underlay all relationships

at court: “Servitude, devotion and attachment were, on the one hand, elevated to

the most perfect of virtues and, on the other, denigrated as the basest of

conditions” (Ali 2004:252). I argue that the BhP’s conception of bhakti and of

erotic love be analyzed in this very context, because the language of court

affiliations, of courtship and erotic love was the same. Ali states that “This

congruence of language deserves serious consideration, for the antagonism of

attachment is even more apparent in the discourses on courtly love” (252). 151 The

essential dynamic of the courtship interaction was that of a ‘game’ or a contest in

151After analyzing 680 Sinhala graffiti inscriptions of c. eighth to tenth centuries from the Sigiriya
Palace complex in Sri Lanka built around the fifth century, Ali (2004) notes the remarkable degree
to which the language of sexual attraction was open to martial imagery and agonistic
conceptions. Erotic attachment was effectively indistinct from ‘capture’ and ‘enslavement’ (259).
He notes the similarities between the discourses on sexual love and those between men at court.
They had the same complex tensions, and hierarchical relationships associated with authority
and property: “The contexts of courtships, in other words, were the contexts of the court, and as
such were governed by the same principles and strategies. It is thus natural that these tensions
formed the internal dynamics of courtship” (259).
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which partners were not equal nor were their strategies (254-257). Moreover,

erotic love poetry was invested with wider concerns; it was not a straightforward

depiction of sexual relations between men and women at court (260):

This is manifestly evident from the court’s view of women as temptresses

whose charms ensnared the minds of men, and yet [women were] passive
agents in the telos of actual courtship. Women, deemed more susceptible
to desire than men, were, on the one hand, viewed as sort of naturally
‘sexualised’ – beautiful, tender-hearted and charming. On the other hand,
they were derided as inherently weak in capacities of self-restraint, overly
sensual and naturally unsteady. Given such contradictions, we might
accuse these discourses of a massive displacement, and indeed a
displacement which reveals more about courtly masculinity than the
nature of women.

In her study of the depictions of Krishna’s love games with the cowherd

women in the HV, the ViP, and the BhP, Coleman (2001, 2002) comes to

precisely the same conclusion as Ali (2004) does in the quote above, though Ali’s

is based on erotic court poetry. While Coleman frames the religious texts’

representational strategies in terms of gender politics, she does not explore their

relation to the world of court politics. I discuss her views further in the next two

sections. Ali’s (260) evaluation of the significance of the high profile of erotic love

in court poetry and drama is relevant to the subject of conceptualization of god

and a devotee’s relationship with him. According to Ali, in practice the game of

courtship allowed men to learn the strategies of conduct and forms of self-

discipline in order to successfully participate in the life at court. Success at

courtship was directly linked to success at court; therefore, “The king as the most
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powerful man at court had to constantly represent himself as the most perfectly

skilled player in the contest of love.” Yet as discourse, the language of love

acted as a palette for the projection of court society’s ambivalences and

anxieties, particularly about the problem of attachment and dependence versus

self-mastery and autonomy. In Ali’s words, “I believe that this, more than

anything, explains both the nature and prominence of the depiction of love in

courtly literature” (261). This may also explain the nature and prominence of

erotic love in Krishna’s story in the BhP and the subsequent success of its

representations in the court poetry and painting in the era of Islamic rule.

Apart from the Shastric and courtly literature, the growth of Puranic

literature was one of the hallmarks of the early medieval period under discussion

here. According to Doniger (2009:304), the format of choice for the Śāstras was

lists. This penchant for lists was carried over into the Puranic literature for

Krishna’s name featured in lists of Vishnu’s multiple avatāras, evidence of his

solidifying Vaishnava credentials during this period. However, toward the end of

the millennium he (re)gained an equal footing with Vishnu, if not preeminence,

when the BhP declares kṛṣṇastu bhagavān svayam (‘Krishna is the Lord himself’,

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1.3.28). 152 Therefore, the MBh and the BhP can be seen as bookends to the

story of Krishna-Vishnu relationship.

The avatāra doctrine and other concepts in devotional religion began to be

more fully developed in the Purāṇas during the reign of the Guptas. The Gupta

kings called themselves ‘Bhāgavatas’ and “made mythology a state concern,

enlisting particularly Viṣṇu and his heroic incarnations for their politics.” 153 But

the Guptas extended royal patronage to Buddhism and Jainism as well. 154 There

was a great deal of variation in religious life under the Guptas. Their sectarian

diversity distinguished them from other rulers, “such as those in the South India,

who were more partisan” (Doniger 2009:378).

The interactions between Hindu sects, between Hinduism and Buddhism

and Jainism, and between court and village were manifest in the early Purāṇas,

152 See Clooney and Stewart (2004) for a summary and Matchett (2001) for book-length study of
the Vaishnava avatāra theory and the relationship between Krishna and Vishnu. The ambiguity in
relationship status between the two gods results from the avatāras often being described
“centrifugally, as various functions of the god emanating out of him and expressed as many
manifestations,” whereas historically “they came into being centripetally, as various gods already
in existence” (Doniger 2009:474-475).
153 For instance, the Allahabad inscription of 379 CE identifies Samudra Gupta with Vishnu

(Thapar 2003:244). The Guptas put the figures of Vishnu’s consort, Lakshmi, and his Boar
incarnation on their coins (Ramanujan and Cutler 1999:232).
154 Chandra Gupta II was a devout Hindu, but he also patronized Buddhism and Jainism. In the

Gupta capital, Patliputra, the Chinese pilgrim Faxian (Fah-hsien) witnessed an annual Buddhist
festival in which Brahmins took an active part. In the same period that the earliest Hindu temples
were being built, Gupta emperors dedicated many Buddhist buildings, like stupas, monastaries,
and prayer halls (Doniger 2009:379). Several inscriptions on copper plates register Gupta
endowments to Buddhists and Jains, as well as their land grants to Brahmins for performance of
specific rites and for maintenance and service of Hindu temples (Kulke and Rothermund
2004:94).
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like the ViP. In the words of Doniger (2009:379), “Gupta literature came first and

reworked folk and epic materials in its own way; then the Puranas came along

and reworked both folklore and Gupta literature.” Although in this process the

upper-caste authors appropriated popular belief and worship and transmitted

them in a Sanskrit medium, the Purāṇas were less fastidious than the Vedic texts

or even the MBh. 155 Doniger therefore calls them ‘the pulp fiction of ancient

India’. Sanskritization of folklore in Brahmin interpretation did not necessarily

erase local color and regional flavor. Sometimes the value system survived the

journey (383). The growth of temples during this period made it a two-way

journey. As she (381) points out:

One of the great innovations of the rise of temple worship is that it

eventually made it possible for people who could not read Sanskrit texts to
have access to Sanskrit myths and rituals. The images carved on temples
brought into the public sphere the mythology of the Puranas. . . .
Moreover, once the images are on the outside of temples, people can see
them even if they are Pariahs and not allowed inside the temples. And in
return, the temples were part of a system by which folk deities and local
religious traditions entered the Brahmin imaginary.

Temples, then, may have facilitated the acculturation of tribal people and their

gods into Hindu society during this period (Cf. Nath 2001:67).

Temples were directly tied with the growth of Vaishnavism and its

patronage by the aristocratic and mercantile classes. For instance, Clooney and

Stewart (2004:162) write that in the early centuries CE the sedentary ruling clans

155 Thapar (2003:275) and Doniger (2009:379).

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shifted from the more mobile worship in Vedic ritual toward patronizing temples in

honor of Vishnu: “Appropriate to this permanent setting, Viṣṇu was from the

earliest times associated with protection and sustenance, while his consort Śrī

complemented this strength by nurturing the general weal, from hearth and

health to the creation of wealth.” This temple-based worship of images of Vishnu

grew into the Bhāgavata tradition of Pāñcarātra, and their texts dealing with

rituals of image worship were called Āgamas. Colas (2003:233) states that “A

main trait of the early Pāñcarātra view of ritual is non-injury, perhaps in answer to

the Buddhist criticism of Vedic rites.” He suggests the possibility of existence of

organized Vaishnava ascetic communities in this period (c. third to fifth century

CE) and that the early Pāñcarātra tradition promoted this “yogico-ascetic-

devotional tendency.”

Yogic/ascetic-devotional tendencies were together present in the doctrine

and practice of bhakti from the beginning. The foundational text of Vaishnava

bhakti is the BhG, but the earliest articulation of the idea of bhakti was in the

Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad (SU, c. 400-100 BCE), a Rudra/Shiva-centered northern

text. Placing bhakti in a context of ‘knowing’ (viditvā, jñātvā 1.7-8; 2.7) the

ultimate reality brahman or the ‘one god’ (deva ekaḥ, 1.10; 6.11), the SU in 6.5-6,

6.17 advises the religious practitioner to ‘worship’ (upāsya) the ‘adorable god’

(īḍyam devam), who is the ‘lord’ (īṣa) and the ‘protector’ of men (gopa). In the last

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verse of the SU, 6.23, the word ‘bhakti’ appears — as ‘deepest love for god’ that

makes the topics of the text visible to a practitioner — its only occurrence in the

early Upaniṣads. 156 Bhakti was associated with knowledge of God from the

beginning of its formulation and it continued to be so in Sanskrit and regional

bhakti poetry, according to Prentiss (1999:23, 24).

The conceptualization of bhakti in successive Vaishnava texts from the

BhG to the ViP to the BhP has been deemed by scholars to be either ‘emotional’

or ‘intellectual’. 157 However, in Lorenzen’s (2004:195) opinion, “it seems more

reasonable to argue that all these texts contain elements of both intellectual and

156 Olivelle (1998) and Lorenzen 2004 (187-188). See also Prentiss (1999:17-24) for a detailed
discussion on the early history of bhakti, and for the dynamic of renunciation-engagement or
intellection-emotion inherent within its doctrine and practice. “The tension in bhakti is between
emotion and intellection: emotion to reaffirm the social context and temporal freedom, intellection
to ground the bhakti religious experience in a thoughtful, conscious approach” (20). The BhG
resolves this tension in the doctrine of selfless action whereby a life of action within the social
world is affirmed and a detachment toward the fruits of action is cultivated. Single-minded
devotion to god made renunciation possible in everyday life. And this understanding of bhakti as
committed engagement continues in later regional bhakti traditions. Therefore, Prentiss criticizes
the Orientalists’ misunderstanding of bhakti as ‘uncontrolled emotion’ by pointing out that “in
bhakti texts, emotion is freed from social and temporal constraint, not moral principles.” Modern
scholars of bhakti seem to make a similar mistake in drawing a contrast between saguṇa (with
attributes) and nirguṇa (without attributes, formless) imagination of god. They come to associate
the latter with an intellectual approach and the former with an emotional one. Ramanujan
(1999c:295) questions the usefulness of this distinction first in the context of Shaiva poetry and
then all devotional poetry:
The distinction iconic/aniconic is a useful one, as nirguṇa/saguṇa is not. All devotional
poetry plays on the tension between saguṇa and nirguṇa, the lord as person and the lord
as principle. If he were entirely a person, he would not be divine, and if he were entirely a
principle, a godhead, one could not make poems about him. The former attitude makes
dvaita or dualism possible, and the latter makes for advaita or monism. . . . It is not
either/or, but both/and; myth, bhakti, and poetry would be impossible without the
presence of both attitudes.
Bhakti, then, holds in tension both knowledge and emotion, engagement and abandon; and the
negotiation of these tensions functions as strategy for living an active social-religious life.
157 See, for instance, Hardy (1983:7-48), van Buitenen (1968:1-41), and Sharma (1987:109-129).

176
emotional bhakti, each text with a different emphasis on one or the other.” In

light of this discussion, a strong contrast between northern and southern forms of

bhakti seems questionable, at least in terms of its formal and informal aspects. 158

As Cutler (1987 in Prentiss 20) argues, in Tamil Shaiva and Vaishnava bhakti

poetry “the emotion of the poetry is expressed within an efficacious poetic

structure.”

The primary mode of knowing god in bhakti is sensual, that is through

hearing and seeing: hearing and telling stories and songs about god, and visual

contemplation (darśana) of god’s image. 159 Public temples provided a space for

most meaningful darśanas for devotees. “The historical growth of bhakti religion

closely coincides with its institutionalization as ritual worship in public temples

158 In this context, Ramanujan’s (1999b:279-281) discussion of the various types of religious
figures prior to the medieval ‘saints’ in India’s Vedic and Epic periods comes to mind. Already in
the Vedas there are seers who were “the Quakers and Shakers (the vipra), the keśin or long-
haired ones,” who were not “the fire-tending hearth-watching priests or purohits.” They were
ecstatic, psychedelic soma-drinking visionaries. Then there were kavis (poets), Upanishadic
philosophers and teachers, sādhus (ascetics), and ṛṣis (sages). Sometimes the sages were also
poets. According to Ramanujan, by the sixth or seventh century CE, all these types came
together in the singing, wandering poet-saints. The point is that such figures were also known to
northern traditions of Brahmanism, Buddhism, and Jainism before the medieval developments in
the south. Also worth consideration is the fact that the great Vaishnava religious leaders of the
late medieval period (eleventh-sixteenth century) — Ramanuja, Madhva, Nimbarka, and Vallabha
— who “mapped a formal intellectual justification” of bhakti were from South India (Cf. Clooney
and Stewart 2004:166). Even Shankara’s dates (c. 788-820 CE) and place of origin in Kerala next
to Pandya territory suggest that he must have been familiar with Āḻvār-inspired ‘emotional’
religiosity. Following Hacker (1965), Hardy (1983:495) believes that Shankara grew up in a
Vaishnava environment and that Vaishnava conceptions and sentiments are present in his works,
and that his disciples show a similar Vaishnava inclination.
159 According to Doniger (2009:352), darśana may have been inspired, in part, by the Buddhist

practice of viewing the relics in stupas.

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that the devotees periodically visit. When the temples are located far from the

devotees’ homes, the visits become pilgrimages” (Lorenzen 2004:195).

Almost all aspects of social-political-cultural life and their influence on

secular and religious literature in the north in the first half of the millennium

discussed above — particularly the connection of courtly life and literature with

temple religion and religious literature — continue developing in the south of the

second half of the millennium. 160 Doniger (2009:340) suggests that after the fall

of the Gupta Empire many northern artisans moved to the South and “contributed

to many of the innovations in Pallava Sanskrit literature and temple-based

architecture.” 161 It is around mid-millennium that references to Brahmin

settlements in the south begin. This gradually introduced Sanskrit into the local

language, but Sanskrit speakers also learned Tamil and used it professionally. It

was an ongoing two-way process of acculturation (Thapar 2003:234). Along with

their Sanskrit language and sacred texts, the Brahmins brought the ideology of

160 See Thapar 2003 (229-234), Kulke and Rothermund 2004 (104-108), and Doniger 2009 (339-
340) for a brief overview of early history of South India relevant to this discussion. Ashoka’s
inscriptions make reference to peoples of South India as Colas, Ceras, and Pandyas. These
chiefdoms later became kingdoms toward the end of mid-millennium. The earliest sources for the
region’s history are short dedicatory inscriptions in Tamil dating to the period about the second
century BCE to the mid-first millennium CE. The inscriptions record donations made by artisans or
merchants, or Buddhist or Jain monks. There was constant contact and trade between North and
South India at least by Mauryan times, in the fourth century BCE. Unlike in the north, the thrust for
urbanization in the south did not result from agriculture but from the increasing demands of trade,
including trade with the Roman Empire. This period saw the transition from chiefdoms to
kingdoms, with the formation of states, which may have coincided with the establishment of
Brahmin settlements in the south.
161 See also Hardy 1983 (123).

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Hindu kingship which the local rulers eagerly adopted for the purposes

legitimization as they emerged from a tribal society (Kulke and Rothermund

2004:98).

As with Sanskrit and the North Indian vernaculars, Tamil was the

language of royal decrees and poetry (Doniger 2009:341). 162 Early Tamil literary

practices flourished in courtly context and were related to the later poetic

expressions of devotion for Shiva and Vishnu (Cutler 2003:147). As noted earlier,

the growth of bhakti is intimately connected with the growth of sectarian temples

in southern India which in turn is connected with kingship. According to Doniger

(2009:348), the endowing of temples began in this period, first complementing

and later replacing Vedic sacrifice as the ritual de rigueur for kings. 163 Much like

the Kurus did with the Vedic Śrauta rituals, the Colas in the South successfully

harnessed and institutionalized bhakti by “building temples, making grants for

162 The Guptas were patrons of Sanskrit and adopted it as their court language in a move of
“conscious archaism,” according to Doniger (2009:374). Prior to this, kings used Prakrits, like the
Magadhi of the Buddha and Ashoka, for communicating with their publics. However, as Doniger
points out, “Brahmins had continued to use Sanskrit in such a way that a bilingual literary culture
underlay such great texts as the Mahabharata and the Puranas” (374).
163 In Kulke and Rothermund’s (2004:130-148) survey of the medieval period’s emergence of

regional kingdoms and regional cultures, what emerges is the intricate links between the move
from tribal chiefdoms to early kingdoms to imperial kingdoms and the emergence and centrality of
imperial temples in these kingdoms. They write (140) that “The settlement of Brahmins and the
establishment of royal temples served the purpose of creating a new network of ritual, political
and economic relations.” Doniger (2009:351) also writes that “Temples were central to the
imperial projects of the upwardly mobile dynasties; every conquering monarch felt it incumbent
upon him to build a temple as a way of publicizing his achievement. Brahmins became priests in
temples as they had been chaplains [purohits] to kings.” The broader context of temple-building
may also have been a response to the Buddhist practice of building stupas or to the Jain and
Buddhist veneration of statues of enlightened figures (Doniger 345).
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temple rituals, and having the bhakti hymns collected” (Doniger 351). Not only

did the temples ‘ground’ the gods, they also provided the gods with a territory of

influence; and both gods and kings came to be identified ever more closely. 164

Kulke and Rothermund (2004:148) comment on their relationship:

Many scholars have written about the deification of kings, but for medieval
India the converse evolution of a ‘royalisation of gods’ is as important. The
legitimacy of a ruler was enhanced in this way. The more ‘royal’ the cult of
the territorial god, the more legitimate the claim of the king — represented
as the deity’s temporal embodiment — to rule that territory on behalf of the
god. The Bhakti cults contributed to this devotion to gods and kings in
medieval India.

For instance, South Indian religion grew with help of royal patronage by

Colas and Pallavas, and their kingship provided one model for bhakti, which,

according to Doniger, “from its very inception, superimposed the divine upon the

royal.” Or, as Kulke and Rothermund have it and, I argue, is the case with

Krishna’s representation in the BhP: bhakti superimposed the royal upon the

divine. Some of the early Tamil poems praise the god just as they praise their

patron king; one can substitute the word ‘god’ wherever the word ‘hero’ or ‘king’

occurs in some of the early royal panegyrics, and s/he will end up with hymns of

divine praise, such as in the Paripāṭal hymns to Tirumāl, i.e. Vishnu or Krishna

(Doniger 2009:350, Ramanujan and Cutler 1999:234, 236). However, bhakti

164 In the context of Tamil bhakti poetry, Ramanujan and Cutler (1999:240-241) and Doniger

(2009:351) consider sacred places the counterparts to the king’s domain, his capital and his forts:
“The temple was set up like a palace, and indeed Tamil uses the same word (koil, also koyil, ‘the
home [il] of the king [ko]’) for both palace and temple” (Doniger 2009:351).
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shifted the center of public activity from the courts to temples: “Now the temples,

not the courts, were the hubs of pilgrimage, meeting places, and markets for

souvenirs” (Doniger 348). The temple was both the god’s home and a palace, “a

public site where people could not only offer puja but look at the deity and be

looked at by him” in an act of darśana or ‘seeing’ (351). 165 Thus, the concept of

darśana came to the world of the temple from the world of the royal court. It was

the means of transference of approval, affection, or favor between the parties

linked by the gaze (Ali 2004:134). In the new bhakti-oriented religion, according

to Doniger (352), darśana was also a response to the aspect of god with flesh

and blood qualities who was right before your eyes (sākṣāt) in the temple.

From the royal court also came early classical Tamil literature — in the

form of a corpus of over 2300 poems collected in the eight Caṅkam anthologies

of lyrics, ten long poems, and a work of grammar and poetics called the

Tolkāppiyam — which played a crucial role in the further development of

Krishna’s story. 166 Hardy (1983:124-125) dates the Caṅkam corpus from the first

165 Ali (2004:123, 133-134) writes of bodily ‘grammar’ of gestural protocols at court, and says that
“Seeing was arguably the most developed sense in courtly circles, and the act of looking and
viewing was imbued with heavily coded meaning.” Furthermore, “the goal of the supplicant or
man of ambition in attending court was not to receive the king’s ‘audience’ but to gain a ‘viewing’
(darśana) of him.” He points out that the concept of darśana has been explored only in religious
context, though the earlier sources are courtly in nature. Seeing is also highly significant in courtly
literature on love and desire, for desire begins with pleasure taken by the eyes (cakṣusprīti) or by
one’s gaze ‘caught’ by another (244, 256). Both its secular and religious meanings remained
centrally important for artists in medieval and modern times. I discuss this below in § 3.4 and 4.1.
166 According to Doniger, Caṅkam is the Tamil transcription of the Sanskrit/Pali word sangham

(assembly) and may be a retrospective application as a Hindu response to the challenge of

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century BCE through to the sixth century CE. The Caṅkam anthology of Paripāṭal,

which celebrates the transcendental aspect of Krishna (as Māl or Tirumāl) is

dated the fifth or the sixth century CE (203); and Tolkāppiyam’s Book 3, which for

the first time gives Krishna (as Māyōṉ) a well-defined position in classical Tamil

literature, especially in love poetry, is dated no earlier than the fifth century CE

(160 fn.140).

The Caṅkam poetry was largely secular with two broad themes

contrasting the ‘interior world’ (akam) of emotions with the ‘exterior world’

(puṟam) of politics and war. 167 The former is about experience of love, the latter

is about heroic action, kingdom, community and all else. The dramatis personae

in the akam poetry are idealized types, they do not have names or history.

However, the puṟam poems may include names of kings, poets, and places.

Tamil Vaishnava bhakti poets, the Āḻvārs, transformed these poetic conventions

Buddhists and Jains, who termed their own communities sanghams. “The Cankam anthologies
demonstrate an awareness of Sanskrit literature (particularly the Mahabharata and Ramayana),
of the Nandas and Mauryas, and of Buddhists and Jainas” (2009:341-342; Cf. Hardy 1983:120).
Hardy (123) places this literature within “the highly sophisticated culture of ‘secular’ outlook”
developed due to the southern kingdoms’ flourishing trade with the Roman Empire and Han
China until about the fourth century CE. A decline then set in due to internal invasions and the fall
of their trading partners. A ‘Hindu’ revival from about the sixth century took place, “exemplified on
the political level by the Pāṇṭiyas and Pallavas, and on the popular level by the [Vaishnavite]
Āḻvārs (and Śaivite Nāyaṉārs),” and the element of bhakti took hold in literature and society.
167 Cutler (2003:147) stresses that while some poems in the anthologies reference gods identified

with Vishnu (Māyōṉ or Māl) or Skanda (Cēyōṉ or Murukaṉ), these are not religious poems as we
understand the term. References to gods are subsidiary to the actions and emotions of human
beings in relation to one another and to their environment. Notable exceptions are a number of
poems in the late anthology, Paripāṭal which celebrates these gods. Champakalakshmi states
that the Paripāṭal shows evidence of Vedic, Upanishadic, and Puranic influence (2004:49).
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in their ‘sacred compostions’ in praise of Vishnu/Krishna collectively knows as

Divya Prabandham (DP). 168 Akam poetry distinguished seven types of love, of

which the first is unrequited love and the last is mismatched love (when the

object of desire is too far above the one who desires). These two types of love

were not considered suitable for akam poetry; the middle five phases of well-

matched love — union, patient waiting, anxious waiting, separation from parents

or lover, and infidelity — were. 169 The bhakti poets took these secular themes,

particularly of unrequited love or what Sanskrit poetry called ‘love in separation’

168 Cf. Hardy’s (1983:44) statement that the BhP “is in fact an attempt to render in Sanskrit (and
that means inter alia to make available for the whole of India) the religion of the Āḻvārs.” He
believes that the blueprint of the mythology underlying emotional Krishna bhakti of the Āḻvārs was
developed in North India. He writes (52), “In the myths about Kṛṣṇa’s childhood among the
cowherds in the forests around Mathurā, the gopīs and their amorous relationship with Kṛṣṇa
figure as the most important theme from the point of view of emotional bhakti. This theme
appears with two facets, viz. ‘union’ and ‘separation’.” The first facet concerns their love-making
as stylized in the symbol of the rāsa dance; the second concerns Krishna’s departure for Mathurā
leaving the gopīs behind. A third facet is woven into these two; it is the theme of temporary
separation, for instance, when Krishna goes away for the day to graze the cattle.
169 The following description of landscapes in classical Tamil poetry is from Ramanujan 1999a

(200-204) and Cutler 2003 (146). The five types of love are conventionally characterized by five
matching geographical landscapes with their particular animals and flowers. Each landscape —
mountains (union), forest (patient waiting), seashore (anxious waiting), pasture or river valley
(infidelity), and desert wasteland (separation) — evokes a particular mood. There are other
elements of emotive associations, like flowers characteristic of a given region which are then
identified with a presiding deity. For instance, mullai or jasmine represents forests overseen by
the dark god Māyōṉ or Vishnu, and kuṟiñci, a variety of mountain flower, stands for mountains
overseen by the red god of war Murukaṉ or Skanda. Of course, each landscape is peopled,
respectively, by hunters and food gatherers of the mountains, herdsmen, fishermen and traders,
artisans and settled agriculturists (and later, Brahmin communities), and robbers.
Cf. the view of Kulke and Rothermund (2004:99-100) that the five types of regional
ecology indicate the pattern of gradual penetration of the hinterland of the southern region, and
also different modes of economic activity and social structure. They write, “Sangam literature, just
like late Vedic and early Buddhist literature, reflects the transition from tribal society to settled
agriculture and early state formation.”
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(viraha), and reworked them to express the theological anguish of the devotee

who is separated from god. 170

It is the Tamil bhakti poets’ emphasis on self-referential indexicality —

where the poets reference their personal experience in relation to god — that

contributed to the evolution of devotional Hinduism. Doniger (2009:344) sums up:

Unlike most Sanskrit authors and Cankam poets, the bhakti poets
revealed details of their own lives and personalities in their texts, so that
the voice of the saint is heard in the poems. The older myths take on new
dimensions in the poetry: “What happens to someone else in a mythic
scenario happens to the speaker in the poem” [Ramanujan 1999c:298].
And so we encounter now the use of the first person, a new literary
register. It is not entirely unprecedented; [there are a few instances of
direct speech in the RV and the MBh]. But the first person comes into its
own in a major way in Cankam poetry and thence in South Indian Bhakti.

Henceforth, in the context of religious life the attention shifts to the experience of

the bhaktas and to their perspective of their relationship with god through

bhakti. 171

Bhakti first appears in the classical Tamil literature in the Caṅkam

anthology of Paripāṭal, 172 which, according to Champakalakshmi, “introduces us

170 The foregoing description of classical Tamil poetry is based on Ramanujan 1999a (198-200),
Ramanujan and Cutler 1999 (233-234), and Doniger 2009 (342).
171 Doniger (2009:343) writes that the Tamils had words for bhakti (such as anpu and parru),

though eventually they also came to use the Sanskrit term (which became patti in Tamil). The
Tamil poets transformed the concept of bhakti by infusing it with “a more personal confrontation,
an insistence on actual physical and visual presence, a passionate transference and
countertransference.” As Hardy (1983:141) points out as well, in the ‘early caṅkam religion’,
before its encounter with the bhakti religion, there was an “absence of a clear awareness of
‘transcendence’, which allowed for a visualization of the divine within the confines of earthly
reality,” and there was a “sensual character of worship (viz. the charm of music and dancing, the
beauty of flowers, the fragrance of incense, the light of lamps and so on).” Thus, the religious
awareness was entirely of immanence of the divine, and its expression was sensual.
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to a new era in Tamil culture, a new milieu to Tamil religion and worship, namely

the temple, which was to become one of the major symbols of South Indian

tradition” (2004:48-49). Hardy links the new turn in the literary renaissance with a

“reawakening of political identity in the Pāṇṭiyan South” centered in its capital at

Madurai, while the Pallava power arose in Kāñcīpuram where the early Āḻvārs

flourished (1983:168-169, 202). Remarking on the Krishnaite traditions’ royal

milieux, Hardy (225) says that Māyōṉ or Krishna is indirectly but almost

exclusively linked with the Pandya dynasty and with the royal power of the king,

while their royal capital Madurai is given cosmic significance through Vishnu

mythology. The ‘royal symbolism’ of Māyōṉ “allowed for a considerable impact on

the temple-culture, at the time when the transition from the ‘palace’ to the

‘temple’ took place.” 173 Moreover, “Clearly the initial association of the Pāṇṭiyas

with Māyōṉ remained highly influential for many centuries on the development of

Southern Kṛṣṇaism, affecting milieux other than the royal court” (226). I continue

this discussion of representations of Māyōṉ / Tirumāl and Krishna / Vishnu

leading up to the BhP in the next section.

172 Cf. Hardy (1983:121) makes a distinction between ‘emotional bhakti’ and anything that
preceded it, and says that the emotional variety manifested itself in the South from about the
seventh century onward, with Nammāḻvār and other Āḻvārs. “Its various antecedents, however,
can be traced much further back, through earlier Āḻvārs and the so-called caṅkam literature, to
the first few centuries AD.”
173 Hardy states that even in the case of Pallava capital Kāñcīpuram, Māyō ṉ “also figured in

connection with the royal court and was worshipped in a temple there” (1983:226).
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 Just as the social-religious environments of the Vedic Brahmins were

profoundly multilingual (see § 2.4 above), so it was for the composers of the

Sanskrit and Tamil devotional literature in the first millennium CE. Doniger

(2009:344) sums up the situation like this:

Bhakti’s roots were royal and literary, but also folk and oral, with elements
of folk religion and folk song mixed in with Vedic and Upanishadic
concepts, mythologies, Buddhism and Jainism, conventions of Tamil and
Sanskrit poetry, early Tamil conceptions of love, service, women, and
kings, and later elements of Islam.

The conceptualizations of Māyōṉ / Tirumāl and Krishna / Vishnu in the southern

and northern texts were the result of the Brahmins’ interactions with such ‘mixed’

environments. As before, they practiced religion in conjunction with striving for

social goals (see § 3.2.1 above). 174 In their efforts the likely Brahmin authors of

the most influential texts employed the various mechanisms of change, including

‘interlingual’ or conceptual identification, interference, expressiveness,

accommodation and social identification with the prestigious class and its

conceptual categories. In either case, with these mechanisms, the authors

emphasized those aspects that had the most cognitive salience and social value

in particular historical circumstances. They gave directionality to the

174 For in-depth discussions of the social goals of religious practitioners in southern India during
the period leading up to the BhP, see Champakalakshmi (2004) and Hardy (1983). As far as the
Āḻvārs’ status is concerned, Hardy (1983:255) notes that of the twelve, six were identified as
Brahmins, chieftains, or provincial landlords and the rest also displayed a high degree of learning
and education. He concludes that the Āḻvār bhakti movement could hardly be ‘low-caste’, but was
in some sense ‘elitist’.
186
representations, and successively integrated relevant elements from earlier

sources like the MBh and the BhG, the HV, and the ViP, beside the non-religious

various folk materials and courtly literature. These various elements came

together noticeably first in the DP and then in the BhP, which then emerged as

the locus of most significant innovation in Krishnaite mythology since the MBh.

In both the DP and the BhP, the Āḻvār-Bhāgavatas re-presented the Krishnaite

elements in an altered form. The alterations came about through form-function

reanalysis (meaning re-interpretation) of the concept of transcendent / immanent

god in Tamil religion as articulated in the DP. Also, conceptual identifications

were made between the majesty of king and god, and between the qualities of

humanity, beauty, and passion of northern and southern pastoral gods. This led

to perceptual interference and conceptual convergence. Continuing the earlier

trend since the Vedic times of going from many to fewer gods, by the end of the

BhP only Krishna remained as the supreme god. On the social side, in the BhP,

the Bhāgavatas selected the cosmopolitan and ‘national’ language of Sanskrit to

propagate their ‘regional’ interpretation of Krishna’s story which had up until then

been expressed in vernacular. In so doing, they identified their (covertly)

prestigious concept of passionate devotion with the most (overtly) prestigious

Vedantic orthopraxy. All these processes involved selection and foregrounding

of certain concepts over others according to social-historical circumstances and

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rhetorical needs of the practitioners. I discuss this further in the following section

as it pertains to the conceptual evolution of Krishna from the northern HV and

ViP to the southern BhP.

3.3 Krishna / Vishnu and Māyōṉ / Tirumāl before the Bhāgavata Purāṇa

The development of Krishna’s story in the South is one of selective

identifications. That is, in the South, differing strands of Krishna’s story

developed in different milieus when practitioners selectively identified certain

northern concepts with corresponding local elements, ignoring the other features.

For instance, early southern temple religion ignored the pastoral love aspects of

Krishna’s story, focusing instead on his majestic and transcendent aspects;

whereas early Tamil folk religion, which did not have a cognitive category for

transcendental divinity, ignored Krishna’s transcendental aspects in favor of the

erotic (Cf. Hardy 1983:225-237, 452-460). In the temple religion, which

developed under brahmanic influence, innovation (i.e. altered replication) was

achieved in terms of worship: the prestigious northern god, Vishnu/Krishna was

accorded sensual worship in a southern style, which itself was legitimized by a

brief mention in the BhG. The northern or northern-influenced Brahmin priests

accommodated their practices toward celebratory sensory-rich worship, and this

led to propagation of their new, composite religiosity (i.e. altered replication).

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Accommodation also was in conceptual convergence, in which the concept not

common to both northern and southern traditions and was most abstract was

dropped: because the category of transcendental divinity was originally not a

part of the cognitive structure of southern religious practitioners, conceptual

convergence took the form of elimination of the abstract brahman in favor of a

god who could be ‘seen’ (Cf. § 1.3.3.3 above). And, to the extent that the temple

and the royal court were really and conceptually identified, the association of king

with the transcendental and majestic (not pastoral) aspect of Vishnu/Krishna was

also logical. It may have facilitated in the conceptual convergence of a

trasnscendent god with an immanent ‘god’ on earth, i.e. the king. The idea of a

transcendent god was made cognitively acceptable by presenting him in the form

an immanent god, who was still transcendent but was accessible. This concept of

a transcendent-immanent god was cognitively easier to process, easier to relate

to, and thus easier to worship. On the worship side of the equation, convergence

resulted in bhakti-yoga being defined more in terms of popular pūjā, as discussed

below.

In folk religion, innovation was achieved through ‘interlingual’ or

intercultural identification of significant pastoral features in northern and southern

traditions, and this led to formal incorporation of Krishna into the traditions of

Tamil classical literature. It allowed the conceptualization of northern god

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Krishna in a southern poetic landscape of forests and pastures, and propagation

of the legends of pastoral Krishna far and wide. The identification and

interference (see § 1.3.3.2 above) created a new variant who could compete with

the original Tamil ‘god’ Murukaṉ for the attention of poets and religious

practitioners alike. Only later were they rendered non-competing variants when

they were assigned distinct roles in the literary tradition and when Krishna was

accepted as a god who was immanent and transcendent. When Tamil classical

literature incorporated Krishna-related folk elements, the mechanism of covert

prestige was operating: the classical literature was enriched by the new material,

and the folk tradition gained recognition among the literati and ‘elite’ religious

practitioners. Thus, there were selective appropriations of northern mythology of

Krishna by southern practitioners, and selection had both cognitive and social

dimensions.

Below, I discuss the evidence for these different processes and traditions,

which resulted in a different conceptualization of Krishna from the one in the MBh

and the BhG. The mythological origins of the newer, southern representations of

Krishna were mostly northern; the different strands were brought together in the

Āḻvār poetry before the Bhāgavata composers of the BhP made further

modifications.

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 Chronologically prior sources of pastoral Krishna’s mythology, of course,

were the northern texts HV and ViP. 175 Matchett (2001:42) points to the tradition

of naming the HV ‘Āścaryaparvan’ (Book of Miracles), because in it both Vishnu

and Krishna are identified as āścarya (miracle, wonder) which other beings can

see and benefit from but not fully comprehend. Their relationship is such that

Krishna is the miraculous human counterpart which Vishnu has created for

himself. As such, Krishna is fully divine but only in relation to Vishnu (Matchett

63). Before presenting Krishna’s story in HV 46-98, the text presents a section of

stories in HV 30-45 which lay the groundwork for Vishnu’s appearance as

Krishna in the next section. In it the compilers seem to have purposefully

gathered together materials that present three aspects of Vishnu that have

parallels in Krishna’s story (Matchett 40). Thus, Vishnu (and, later, Krishna) is

175Hardy discusses fragments of the pastoral story found in the early northern ‘secular’ poetic
tradition. In the Satavahana king Hāla’s anthology of Prakrit poetry, Sattasaī (c. second-third
century CE), which depicts a milieu populated by farmers, hunters, travelers, but few cows and
herdsmen, there is mention of Krishna and the gopīs. In Hardy’s opinion, the poets mention the
story “because of its eroticism, and not because they are interested in herdsmen or in Kṛṣṇa the
speaker of the Gītā” (58). Taking into consideration the various extant manuscripts of the
anthology as a whole, Hardy concludes that, in the ‘authentic stanzas’, “originally Kṛṣṇa the lover
was distinct from Viṣṇu and Kṛṣṇa the speaker of the Gītā” (60). In its ‘three authentic stanzas’
focused on Krishna, he appears as a boy, “on the verge of adolescence, with whom the girls and
women of Vraja are in love; Rādhikā is mentioned as his favourite.” His dance on the head of the
serpent Kāliya is also mentioned (59).
The other significant ‘secular’ source, dated later than the HV, is the Gupta court-poet
Kālidāsa’s work (c. fourth-fifth century CE). In the Meghadūta, he compares a rainbow-touched
cloud with Krishna’s appearance, in terms of having a black body which obtains surpassing
beauty through the peacock feathers flashing brilliant (stanza 15, in Hardy 61). In it Krishna is
explicitly identified with Vishnu. According to Hardy (62-63), his Raghuvaṃśa (stanzas 48-51)
indicate that Kālidāsa knew Krishna also as the lover of the gopīs.
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shown to be a champion of gods and other allies, is identified with sacrifice, and

is depicted as a yogin (Matchett 40-41). The composers build a frame of divine

legitimacy for pastoral stories of Krishna that they then present.

The HV’s Kṛṣṇacarita or Krishna’s story (HV 46-98) is the earliest known

such narrative, and it is arranged in a way to show Krishna as “divine and yet

playing a fully convincing human part which conceals his divinity for much of the

time” (Matchett 2001:44-45). It has the theme of concealment and revelation, or

disguise and recognition (45). She divides the Kṛṣṇacarita into two parts: the first

(HV 46-78) deals with Krishna’s life from his birth to his killing of Kaṃsa and

installing Ugrasena as king of Mathurā. It ends with Krishna’s disavowal of any

desire for sovereignty, saying ‘I have nothing to do with sovereignty, nor do I

desire sovereignty’ (na hi rājyena me kāryaṃ nāpe ahaṃ rājalālasaḥ, HV 78.33)

and his declaration that ‘I am a forest dweller [who lives] among the cows with

the cowherds’ (ahaṃ sa eva gomadhye gopaiḥ saha vanecaraḥ, HV 78.35).

Matchett comments that “this firm denial of any interest in acquiring sovereignty

is in marked contrast to the kingly role which Kṛṣṇa increasingly plays from this

point forwards” (57). Thus, the second part of Kṛṣṇacarita (HV 79-98) begins with

Krishna preparing to assume his royal role by learning warrior craft from a

teacher. In this part he is increasingly revealed as divine Vishnu’s human

manifestation.

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 Krishna’s childhood in the cowherd community is one of a series of

extraordinary acts which the people (mis)construe as ‘miracles’. As a mere baby

he overturns a cart by kicking it over with one foot (HV 50.6); kills a female

demon, Pūtanā, by literally sucking the life out of her breasts (HV 50.24); uproots

two trees by dragging a heavy mortar between them (HV 50.18-20); and, at the

age of seven, emits a packs of wolves from his body hair in order to scare the

community into relocating to Vṛndāvana (HV 52.29-30). Once there, Krishna

continues his heroic acts, such as the two famous episodes of taming the serpent

Kāliya (HV 55.56ff.) and, with one finger, holding up Mount Govardhana over the

cowherds and cows like an umbrella in order to protect them from torrential rain

unleashed by Indra (HV 61.24ff.). Realizing Krishna’s divinity, Indra consecrates

him as ‘the king of the cows’ or Govinda (HV 62.43). 176 Indra not only offers

Krishna sovereignty over the celestial Goloka, he also offers him two of the four

months under his command, that is, Indra gives up the two autumn months that

follow the end of the rainy season (HV62.45-46). Matchett describes what follows

next thus (2001:53):

The young hero now turns his mind to the pleasures of the season which
he has won from Indra (63.15). He arranges fights between bulls and
between cowherds (63.16-17), and enjoys himself with the girls of the

176 Here a direct connection is made with the main text of the MBh when Indra requests Krishna
to be a friend of his son, Arjuna, and to help the Pāṇḍavas in the Great War (HV 62.68-88).
Krishna indicates that he knows the story of the birth of Arjuna and his siblings, and that he
intends to help them (62.89-98).
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 community whom he has ‘rounded up in the night’ (rātrau saṃkālya,
63.18).

The HV description continues (all references from HV 63): Krishna is most

attractive with a charming face, dressed in silken and shinning yellow garment

and wearing garland of forest flowers (19-21); the beautiful cowherd women

eager for sexual pleasures cannot be held back by their families in their search

for Krishna, finding him they look at him with pleasure and press him against their

breasts (23-24); they play-act, sing, and run after Krishna (25-30); other girls

thirst for and drink his beauty with their eyes, and during the night make love (31-

32); they thrill with delight, and their eagerness to make love causes their hair to

loosen and spill down over their breasts (33-34); thus Krishna sports with them in

the moon-lit autumn nights (35).

The above amorous adventures come to an end one morning when a

demon-bull causes devastation in the cow-pens (HV 64.1). In these twenty-one

verses (HV 63.15-64.1), Krishna causes fights among bulls and among the

cowherds, and for his personal pleasure rounds up the girls at night, soothes

them and has fun with them — each element mentioned only once in all these

verses. Apart from the first two sporting acts and the latter three pleasure-

seeking acts, the rest of the time he delights in the autumn nights remaining

passively beautiful, joyful, and the recipient of the passionate attentions of the

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cowherd women expressely described as eager for love-making (rati-priyāḥ, rati-

lālsāḥ). Coleman (2002:40) comments:

Although their enjoyment seems fairly mutual in this brief early passage,
the emphasis clearly falls on the gopīs’ unrestrained passion for Krishna,
whose role in the love-play is relatively passive by comparison. This does
not mean that Krishna feels no desire, of course — he did, after all, initiate
the tryst — but the language suggests that the gopīs are far more desirous
of Krishna than he is of them, however much he, too, may enjoy their
voluptuous pleasures.

In its version, the HV employs the term ‘pleasure’ (rati) in this episode rather

than the term ‘sexual desire’ or ‘lust’ (kāma), in contrast to the BhP where kāma

is presented as a means for attaining liberation (but only when directed toward

god, specifically Krishna). Coleman points to another contrast between the two

versions: in the BhP, despite its claims of the gopīs attaining liberation and

overcoming the pain of separation from Krishna, “it is quite clear that intense

suffering is intrinsic to their experience” (41). In the HV, their desire for Krishna

leads to bliss.

In the HV there is repeated mention (63.19, 23, 26, 30, and 31) of women

thirsting for and drinking Krishna’s beauty with their eyes (Cf. fn.143 and fn.165

above). To Hardy, this alludes to the Buddhist notion of ‘thirst’ (tṛṣṇā) as the

cause of all ‘suffering’ (duḥkha), only here the thirst, ‘eagerness’ (v.24), ‘longing’

(v.32), and ‘anxious desire’ (v.34) to make love all lead to ‘bliss’ (sukha, v.29).

And Krishna himself is characterized as ‘the lord of bliss’ (sukhī, v.35). Therefore,

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Hardy sees an anti-normative interpretation and symbolic theology in this

episode in Krishna’s story. 177

Hardy then discusses “a definite increase of the erotic aspects, and this

exclusively in the Southern Recension of the Hv” (1983:77). In this undated

recension some of the cowherd girls are understood to be married women, and

Krishna’s meeting with the cowherd women is described like an orgy where

Krishna ‘scratched a girl with his sharpened nails, pulled another by her hair’ —

“quite in the style of the Kāmasūtra” (77 fn.93).

Neither Hardy (1983) nor Matchett (2001), who discuss the HV’s gopī

episode in detail, note the coincidence of Krishna’s pleasure seeking immediately

preceded by his consecration as ‘king’ of a divine realm and his status now

‘equal to a god’ (devatulya, HV 63.3). I find here already hints of a connection

among the elements of divinity, royalty, and erotic love which are expanded upon

in later literature. After the above episode, the scene shifts to Mathurā where, as

mentioned earlier, Krishna restores an old king to his rightful place, claiming for

himself the status of a forest-dwelling cowherd. Yet, even though he declares a

disinterest in royal powers himself, he nevertheless begins his military training

befitting his status as a Kshatriya youth (Matchett 2001:58). After some more

adventures, he founds the city of Dvārakā and assumes kingship (HV 84.25ff.).

177 See Hardy (1983:75-77) for a more detailed discussion.

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This sets the stage for his marriage to Rukmiṇī, already mentioned above (§

3.1.1).

Turning now to the ViP, Matchett (2001:65) states that as a whole it shows

no great concern for Krishna: “It is Viṣṇu whom it celebrates as the all-pervading

deity, identical to brahman, both transcendent and immanent.” 178 After detailing

the representation of Vishnu in the text’s Books 1-4, primarily as the supreme

transcendent god, she concludes that Krishna’s story was included in it to fulfill

people’s need for emotional satisfaction gained by relating to the most accessible

yet special form of god (69-88, 92). On the basis of textual analysis and inter-

textual evidence (67-68), she believes that the ViP’s Kṛṣṇacarita (Book 5) was

likely incorporated into it after it had had an independent existence and was not

initially an integral part of the text. In it Krishna is presented as an avatārarūpa

‘descent form’ of Vishnu (ViP 5.7.67; 1.4.17). Matchett notes that there is a

paradox in the way Krishna is presented in the text: on the one hand he is closely

identified with Vishnu, and thus with brahman, and the identity between the two is

frequently reinforced throughout the ViP as a whole (93); on the other hand

Krishna is introduced as Vishnu’s aṃśāṃśa , ‘a tiny share’ or ‘an insignificant

aspect’ (ViP 5.1.3-4). Matchett comments that nevertheless, “this aṃśāṃśa

178 Hacker (in Hardy 1983:40) holds that the ViP, and none of the other Purāṇas, was the sole

[literary] source for the BhP. Following Hacker, Hardy (39-41) calls the ViP the last text to
illustrate intellectual bhakti before the BhP becomes the first text in Sanskrit to exemplify
emotional bhakti after deriving it from the Āḻvārs.
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becomes all-important” from that point on (95), and that the ViP lays greater

emphasis than the HV on the revelation, rather than concealment, of Krishna’s

divinity (96). Thus there is more piety expressed toward him.

Krishna’s story in the ViP proceeds along similar lines as in the HV with a

few notable modifications: the Kāliya episode is reworked to include a greater

theological dimension, such that Krishna is more aware of his own divine identity,

and the serpent praises Krishna as ‘greater than the greatest’ (parasmāt paramo,

ViP 5.7.62), while proclaiming that the universe is but a minute portion of him

(5.7.64) and that Krishna has the form of both being and non-being (5.7.65). The

Mount Govardhana episode in the ViP is more concise than in the HV.

The ViP expands the role of the cowherd women and their relationship

with Krishna. In Matchett’s (2001:97) words: “What was presented in the

Harivaṃśa as a brief postulate to Kṛṣṇa’s triumph over Indra is now not only told

at greater length in [ViP] 5.13.14-62 than in the [HV] 63.15-35, but is also given a

spiritual component which the Harivaṃśa lacked.” For instance, one girl who

could not meet him stayed home and meditated upon Govinda, absorbed in him

with closed eyes (tanmayatvena govindaṃ dadhyau mīlitalocanā, 5.13.20);

another girl attained liberation by reflecting upon the world as the embodiment of

supreme brahman (parabrahmasvarūpiṇam, 5.13.22). Krishna is the

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immeasurable Self who enjoyed himself in the nights with them (reme tābhir

ameyātmā, 5.13.60). Hardy comments (1983:102) that

the whole passage makes it abundantly clear that Kṛṣṇa, the lover of the
gopīs, is more than a human lover. The variety of names employed
testifies to his identity with Viṣṇu, he is characterized as the Absolute and
as the goal of man’s destiny, liberation or salvation. This means that the
gopīs by meditating on this Kṛṣṇa de facto meditate on the Absolute, and
that makes their thinking of him real bhakti-yoga. This means also that the
physical presence of Kṛṣṇa among the gopīs is almost accidental: it
serves no other purpose than to stimulate through the various miraculous
and wonderful deeds their meditation about them and him.

Among the differences between the HV and the ViP versions of the gopī

episodes, Hardy finds a narrative structure with a full plot, a pronounced religious

significance, a conformity with the ‘normative’ ideology, and sublimation of the

sexual into the erotic and then into bhakti-yoga — “[the author] has removed the

earthiness of the original story and eliminated the primary importance of Kṛṣṇa’s

physical presence among the gopīs and of their sensuous perception of him”

(104). Also new were Krishna’s initiation of the tryst with an enticing song that

lures the women to the forest instead of their being ‘herded’ together by him, the

introduction of the rāsa dance, and the motif of everlasting viraha or final

separation — the ViP describes the cowherd girls’ lament upon parting from

Krishna when he departs for Mathurā (5.18.13-31) — with no return.

According to Matchett (2001:99-102), the retelling of Mathurā episodes is

much the same in the HV and the ViP, except that in the latter, Krishna’s divine

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identity is more emphasized and the ferocity of his actions is deemphasized. The

building of Dvārakā and Krishna’s assumption of kingship, and his abduction of

and marriage with Rukmiṇī are all presented elliptically. Unlike the HV, which

ends with the enumeration of Krishna’s wives and children, the ViP relates

Krishna’s death (5.37) and ends with the internecine destruction of his tribe

(5.37.22-27). Matchett remarks that in both versions of Krishna’s story, though

based upon the same or similar material, “the composers of these texts are

choosing which themes to highlight and how to arrange them.” 179

Southern composers of Krishna’s story share similar tendencies of

selective emphasis in accordance with their own differing conceptual categories,

rhetorical needs, and social environments. 180 As I mentioned above (§ 3.2.2),

Krishna’s inclusion in the Caṅkam literature’s late anthology Paripāṭal was in the

context of royal court and temple worship. Earliest references to Krishna can be

found in the ‘classical Caṅkam’ (i.e. up to the fourth century CE) in three different

milieux: connected with the king, in folk religion, and in love poetry. Krishna’s

integration into the southern classical literature and religion has to be seen

179 Elsewhere also Matchett (2001:45) states that neither the ViP nor the BhP base its version of
Krishna’s story upon a naïve account provided by the HV, “but both are rearranging and
reinterpreting material which has already been carefully worked over.”
180 Hardy (1983:43-44) defines the scope of his study on early Krishnaism in South India such

that it takes into account “how, by contrast, avoidance, and selective choice, the level of myth in
Kṛṣṇa emotionalism developed, . . . [which] constitutes the result of Northern stimuli fertilizing the
autonomous Tamil cultural and religious scene and producing what might well be called a new
religion.”
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against the Tamil definition of an ideal man, termed cāṉṟōṉ, in the classical

Caṅkam period. Zvelebil describes him as “a wise man of human proportions and

with human qualities . . . ‘a complete, a whole man, a perfect, noble man’.” This

Tamil ideal man is not a recluse or an ascetic of any kind, but “a man of flesh and

blood who would live fully his days of courtship and married life, of fighting and

love-making” (1973:17-18). Beside such ‘secular humanism’ and ‘the ideology of

the heroes’, religion — especially that belonging to the non-heroes, the

commoner, the uncivilized persons, the iḻiciṉar — was a minor element in this

society’s culture. This division, according to Hardy (130-131) was important in

evaluating Krishna’s position in Tamil religion.

In the South, before Krishna, there was the Tamil god Murukaṉ (‘he who

possesses youth, beauty’), who covered the “interrelated semantic field ‘youth —

beauty — love — vigour — heroism — greatness’,” according to Hardy

(1983:134). Murukaṉ, as embodiment of both love and heroism, represented

their human ideal, cāṉṟōṉ, on a divine plane, which was this world and he was

imagined entirely present or immanent in it (Hardy 134-138). He featured

frequently in early classical poetry, though not distinctly associated with the

landscape of mountains as he did later (Hardy 147). Krishna or Māyōṉ, on the

other hand, played a very limited role in early classical literature compared to

Murukaṉ; but when he was featured, Māyōṉ was “closely linked with political, i.e.

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dynastic factors” (Hardy 152-153). Having analyzed earliest Caṅkam sources

mentioning Māyōṉ, Hardy accepts that “it may be legitimate to speak of Māyōṉ

as a religious figure associated with Pāṇṭiya royal symbolism” (155). He was not

yet fully integrated in the Caṅkam tradition, nor was he the ‘lover of the gopīs’. In

this early period (c. second-third century CE), distinction may have been made

between the ‘royal Māyōṉ’ (i.e. Vishnu) and ‘popular Māyōṉ’ (i.e. Krishna),

because there is evidence that at the folk level Kṛṣṇacarita was known in

Madurai (Hardy 157).

In the next stage of Māyōṉ’s career, a Tamil poetic theory was formulated

in Tolkāppiyam which then standardized his position in classical literature (see

fn.146 and fn.169 above). This text explicitly identified Murukaṉ as a poetic

feature of the ‘landscape of mountain’. Hardy believes that once the poeticians

assigned him to one landscape, they proceeded to fill the corresponding empty

slot of divine figure for the other poetic landscapes. And Krishna (‘popular Māyōṉ’

of the Kṛṣṇacarita, not the majestic Vishnu) was the natural and obvious choice

for the ‘landscape of forests and pastures’ or the ‘landscape of jasmine’

(1983:160). This is a clear case of ‘interlingual’ (conceptual) identification and

interference. The classical Tamil literature, later formalized in its poetic theory,

characterized the ‘landscape of forests and pastures’ as a region inhabited by

cowherds in a village and associated with the symbols of cows and bulls, milk

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and milk products, late evening and the rainy season or autumn nights and

jasmine blossoms, separation and patient waiting. Kṛṣṇacarita in the HV and the

ViP discussed above has these features, and therefore northern god Krishna is a

natural fit in this particular sourthern poetic landscape. His position in Tamil

literary tradition now secure, Māyōṉ moved to center stage in the following period

of the ‘Tamil renaissance’, beginning c. sixth century CE.

In Hardy’s view it is during the Tamil renaissance that, from the ‘earthy’

folk strata, certain Krishnaite myths and customs — related to Krishna’s ‘amours’

with the gopīs — began to be incorporated into its late classical literature, like the

epic about the ankelet, Cilappatikāram. 181 According to Hardy, these Krishnaite

elements are “but mythical projections of real life events” (1983:167-169, 128).

As discussed above, prior to this point Māyōṉ was not an integral part of Tamil

classical literature. Tolkāpiyyam changed the situation (166). Hardy discusses

the evidence for a major shift in cultural awareness that made it possible for

popular Krishnaite religion to become documented in literature and in a visual

artifact in the form of a c. 650 CE rock-relief at Mahabalipuram near Chennai

(Madras), and writes (197):

Thus we have here the (first) document of the Tamil South envisaging the
Northern god Kṛṣṇa within the confines of its own customs. At the same
time, we can infer an emphasis on only certain aspects, a choice from

181According to Hardy (1983:198-201), the northern sources of some southern folk materials are
derived most likely from the Hāla’s Sattasai and the HV (but not the ViP).
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 among a great number of episodes. It is probably not accidental that the
mythical episodes treated in detail in the renaissance works are erotic in
character. As yet unaffected by the (brahmin) normative ideology, and
probably reacting strongly against the negative values of Southern
Jainism (and Buddhism), the South was not scandalized by the amorous
affairs of Kṛṣṇa, and in fact sensed that in these the heritage of the
classical caṅkam spirit had a congenial correspondent. In view of the
scarcity of references to Māyōṉ in the older works, the prominence of
Kṛṣṇa the lover of the gopīs in renaissance poems must mean that during
the previous centuries when Viṣṇu, Kṛṣṇa, etc., material became
increasingly known in the South, a process of selection took place through
which those aspects were chosen which somehow corresponded to the
popular Southern sentiments. The spirit of the renaissance is closely
related to those sentiments, and thus reproduces that selective picture of
Kṛṣṇa. Thus quite contrary to the generally expressed opinion, it can be
assumed that popular Kṛṣṇaism in the South was predominantly
concerned with the lover of the gopīs, and that already some time before
the sixth century AD.

In contrast with the foregoing, Hardy writes of another, roughly

contemporary and parallel process of selection to the above: in the Paripāṭal

hymns to Tirumāl [= Māyōṉ = Krishna] the erotic myths are “practically ignored”

even though the Paripāṭal’s milieu was aware of those myths, and instead his

“transcendental, unapproachable absolute” aspects are accentuated (1983:205-

206). As he sums up the textual evidence, Tirumāl or Māyōṉ here emerges as

the One, beyond comprehension, beyond description, beyond

comparison, transcending time; he is the four yugas and the first of all
beings. He is the universe, the essence of the universe, the creator,
maintainer, and destroyer of the All. All opposites depend upon Him, while
he is beyond them.

Hardy believes that the above is a totally new language and new awareness in

the Tamil tradition, which implies a distinction between “the greatness, power,

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and ‘remoteness’ implied in the symbolism of royal political power” and “the

distance of an absolute being beyond human reasoning and at the same time

pervading the universe as its life.” In discussing the milieu of the Paripāṭal he

further says “here the poets’ attention and source of patronage has shifted from

the kings and chieftains to a new cultural (and economic) focus: the temple”

(207). There is “pronounced brahmanism” in the hymns, by which he means “a

general interest in, concern for, and preoccupation with, typical brahmin

elements,” though the poets or their ‘patrons’ may not have been Brahmins

themselves. He concludes (213) that though the Tirumāl hymns express a form

of Viṣṇu/Kṛṣṇa religion rooted in the general context of Tamil society and culture,

the attention is on temple worship and along with a pronounced preoccupation

with ‘Vedism’ and ‘brahmanism’. 182 Yet, the philosophical conception of a

transcendental god was tempered by a more sensuous form of worship (233):

The strong intellectualism, with its world-negating tendencies, which since

the BhG has been associated with Kṛṣṇa-bhakti and bhakti-yoga and was
imposed on the gopī myth in the [ViP], is absent here. The worship with ‘a
leaf, flower, fruit, and water’ which Kṛṣṇa alludes to in the [BhG 9.26] in
one single line as the lowest form of devotion, provides in the Paripāṭal the
very structure of man’s approach to Māl.

182 For instance, in these hymns, Krishna the lover, who is popular among the folks in the same
environment and at the same time, is almost totally ignored, and so is the whole complex of
poetic landscapes — because both deal with eroticism which would be considered inappropriate
in a brahmanical religious setting focused on worshipping a transcendent god. Hymns addressed
to Murukaṉ in the same anthology represent him as a granter of bliss associated with passionate
love-making (Hardy 1983:214-216).
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 The institutionalization of temple worship of Vishnu-Krishna was promoted

by Āḻvār bhakti poetry, which brought the fused northern-southern Puranic

religion to Tamil masses in their vernacular. The Āḻvārs brought together, on the

one hand, the folk religion and poetic tradition which selected the

‘anthropocentric’ pastoral aspect, and, on the other, the temple religion and royal-

dynastic tradition which selected the transcendental aspect of Kishna’s legend.

This composite found full expression in the BhP.

The early Āḻvārs c. sixth century CE were from the northern-most part of

the Tamil region bordering on ‘northern’ cultural sphere and away from Madurai

where the Tamil classical poetry was anthologized and theorized. According to

Hardy (1983:283ff.), they conceptualized Māyōṉ as the absolute god, but not the

impersonal Brahman (284). 183 Māl is the absolute transcendental god who

appears on earth in space and history, and such manifestations represent

Krishna’s māyam or māyai — the term used here in its older meaning: miracle,

wonder, trick, unpredictability, or uncanny power — “perhaps the most important

single term that describes the modality of how the Āḻvārs experience Māyōṉ”

(284-285). Krishna’s māyā transcends any logical comprehension and obscures

him from the devotees’ ‘sight’, leading to a ‘longing to see’ him (285). Krishna’s

183Narayanan emphasizes a characteristic of Āḻvārs that they made no distinction between

Vishnu and Krishna or Rama; Vishnu is indistinguishable from these deities and from the form in
the temple (2007:189-190).
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deeds contain māyā as beauty, and therefore devotion involved relishing

Krishna’s beauty (285-286). In their poems on the whole, Krishna of Vraj is

prominent; however, compared to folk Krishnaism found in the Tamil renaissance

literature, eroticism is quite subdued, though not to the extent it is in the Tirumāl

hymns of the Paripāṭal. The erotic element is emphasized by the later Āḻvārs

(287).

The early Āḻvār’s religion was temple-oriented, and it was similar to the

Paripāṭal’’s conceptualization of worship (pūjā). That is, it involved submission,

humility, loyalty, devotedness, and servitude on the part of the devotees toward

lord Krishna. This attitude was expressed by adorning and beautifying Krishna’s

image and then ritually enjoying his sensous beauty (Hardy 1983:288-290). All

this is reminiscent of Ali’s description of courtly life and relationships therein (§

3.2.2 above). In conjunction with the external bhakti of temple religion, the early

Āḻvārs engaged in internal bhakti toward Māyōṉ residing in their heart (291).

This involved, like in the bhakti-yoga of the BhG, the harnessing of one’s senses

and redirecting them toward Krishna who abides in one’s soul as antaryāmī

(inner guide, inner ruler). In this conception, Krishna/Māyōṉ is characterized by

‘omnipresent immanence’ in the bhaktas' heart (291-293). The early Āḻvārs

postulated the ultimate identity of Māyōṉ in the temple image and in one’s heart.

Therefore, in Hardy’s words, pūjā here is the physical enactment of the process

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of internal yoga, or yoga is an internal realization of pūjā, but with an emotional

dimension added to it of love, desire, melting in bliss or mystical union (294,

298). The early Āḻvārs integrated the folk (Vraj-related) and temple religion but

left out the tradition of poetic landscapes of love, most likely becaue they were

less familiar with that tradition due to their location away from Madurai where it

had developed.

Nammāḻvār (c. seventh century CE) brought about the full integration of the

various traditions featuring Krishna in the South. Hardy writes (309):

The cāṉṟōṉ ideal aims at the full realization of all human faculties, while
Kṛṣṇa demands service and surrender; the bhakta worshipping in the
temple takes in through his senses beauty, and yet he is aware that
Māyōṉ transcends all representation; as the antaryāmī Kṛṣṇa abides in
the very centre of human personality, but frequently the emotions seem to
indicate that ‘he is not there’; Māyōṉ’s landscape is that of the jasmine in
which the girl longs for the return of her lover, and at the same time the
whole cosmos is pervaded by Māyōṉ. The genius of Nammāḻvār succeeds
in creating a dialectical synthesis of all these contradictions, paradoxes,
and tensions, which are as much part and parcel of the Tamil tradition
itself as they are brought about by the meeting of two totally different
cultural traditions (North and South).

Nammāḻvār and the later Āḻvārs, however, excluded certain Krishna myths that

originated in the folk traditions — the excluded materials were those that were

absent from the HV version of Krishna’s story. This leads Hardy (459-460) to

speculate whether this constituted the rejection of folk myths which the Sanskrit

‘authority’ (the HV) itself had excluded, or whether it was due to the sophisticated

Tamil literatis’ social distance from folk culture and dislike of ‘vulgar love’.
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Moreover, Hardy sees no influence of the ViP on the Āḻvārs as their treatment of

the gopī episodes are markedly different. However, though the BhP is considered

the expression in Sanskrit of the Tamil Āḻvār bhakti ideal, its sole literary source

was the ViP as we noted earlier (fn.178 above). Moreover, the BhP “even adopts

the Advaita position, probably in response to the non-dualism of Śankarācārya,

to reconcile bhakti with Brahmanical orthodoxy” (Champakalakshmi 2004:52-53).

Whether the BhP is interpreted as a text of radical ‘union in separation’ — for

“The heart feels him to be present when it most keenly feels his absence. . . .

The absence of God, then, is the presence of God”184 — and thus either dualistic

or non-dualistic, is, again, a matter of emphasis.

3.4 Krishna in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa

I have discussed above (§ 3.2.1) the possible social-rhetorical goals of the

authors of the BhP, which are indicated principally by the BhP’s self-

proclamations of its Vedicism and orthodoxy. According to Matchett (2001:108), it

seeks to establish its authority by aligning itself with prestigious texts, such as the

RV, particularly its Puruṣa Sūkta, and the BhG, and it also aims to reinterpret, re-

184 Ramanathan 1994 (5). According to her, the ‘absence/presence’ of god is the axis on which
the mystical world revolves. In the life of passionate devotion such as one advocated by the BhP,
at least for women and common folk, separation is valued over union because separation from
god’s presence intensifies the longing and, thus, his presence. I discuss this further in the next
section.
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present, and replace its predecessors. The BhG is referenced in almost every

book of the BhP, and Krishna’s teaching of Uddhava in BhP 11.7-29 seems to be

modeled upon his teaching of Arjuna in the BhG. 185 In fact, of the three main

texts that present Kṛṣṇacarita, the BhP is the only one which represents Krishna

as a teacher. In his teaching to Uddhava, Krishna presents himself as the

supreme goal to be attained through devotional practices (11.14.20-26; 11.20.31-

33) or yogic meditation (11.14.32-11.15.36), the former being more potent than

the latter. Matchett (123-124) emphasizes that despite his didactic character,

Krishna’s teaching is through his actions, and therefore the account of his life and

deeds presented in Book 10 is the heart the BhP. In her words (125),

Of all the [BhP’s] twelve books, Book 10 is undoubtedly the best-known

and best-loved. It contains the most appealing and significant images of
Kṛṣṇa: the child who contains the universe within himself, the boy who can
displace a mountain with a flick of his fingertip, the lover whose attractions
outweigh all ties of duty. . . . Although the [BhP’s] story of Kṛṣṇa is so like
the versions in the [HV] and the [ViP], it is given a new significance in its
retelling. This is done partly by the reinterpretation of the well-known story
and partly by the introduction of new episodes, particularly in the narrative
of Kṛṣṇa’s childhood.

185For its connections to the BhG, see BhP 1.10.25; 2.8.17; 3.28.8; 6.1.53; 6.2.4; 6.9.26; 7.15.31;
8.6.1; 9.24.56; 10.81.4; 12.7.14. Matchett speculates about the possibility that the teaching of
Uddhava once consisted, like the BhG, of eighteen chapters. Like the BhG, the BhP teaching
deals with the themes of yoga of action, knowledge, and devotion in 11.20, and also with
Sāṃkhya principles in 11.22. Its chief theme, like the BhG, is bhakti. See Matchett 2001 (Chapter
Six n.7 and n.8). The BhP’s didactic character is also apparent in the various discussions it
incorporates, such as the ones about Krishna’s treatment of his friends and enemies (7.1.1-32),
and about his behavior with the cowherd women (10.33.27-37), etc.
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In the BhP, the human Krishna “is not given a celestial counterpart [like Vishnu]

who might be regarded as controlling his actions from outside” (126). Broadly,

the account of his birth (as a four-armed baby like Vishnu), the death of Pūtanā,

the kicking over of a heavy cart, and the uprooting of two trees even as a baby

are similar to the ViP’s version (127-128). However, the interpretations of the

events now emphasize his liberating power and his subjection to his servants

(bhṛtyavaśyatā, 10.9.19).

Again, the episodes of the defeats of the serpent Kāliya and Indra (by

sheltering the cowherd community under Mount Govardhan and protecting them

from Indra’s wrath) are largely the same as in the HV and the ViP, except that

here Indra takes refuge in Krishna and becomes his bhakta (10.27.15-16) before

proclaiming him Govinda (10.27.23). His deeds in Mathurā follow the familiar

outline, but only in the BhP does Krishna get invested with the sacred thread and

is taught the Vedas and Upaniṣads beside the use of weapons (10.45.26-33). In

the Dvārakā section of his story, there is an emphasis on bhakti (many old and

new figures are presented as his bhaktas), and episodes from the MBh are

included but in a way that now makes Krishna, not the Pāṇḍavas, the focus

(Matchett 132).

The BhP adds new episodes/descriptions of Krishna’s aspect of ‘the

cosmic child’ who is naughty, including what later becomes the dominant image

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of this aspect: Krishna as a butter thief (10.8.29-31). New episodes are also

added of Krishna’s youth, such as his stealing the gopīs’ clothes while they bathe

(10.22), his creation of multiple forms of himself so that he could dance with

every girl in the rāsa-dance (10.33). However, his erotic acts are given a new

meaning in the BhP. Krishna enjoys himself as described in the earlier texts, but

now the emphasis is on his yogic power, and he is described as ‘the master of

[all] yoga masters’ (kṛṣṇo yogeśvareśvaraḥ, 10.22.8). Even when he issues his

famous invitation to the cowherd girls to join him for ‘sport’ in the jasmine-scented

autumn nights, his enjoyment is predicated on his yogic power:

Finding the nights adorned with autumn-flowering jasmine, the Lord

decided to play with the help of his yogic power (bagvān api tā rātrīḥ
śaradotphullamallikāḥ / vīkṣya rantuṃ manaś cakre yogamāyām
upāśritaḥ, 10.29.1).

Matchett (2001:137) comments that the BhP “is at pains to make clear that he is

not driven by lust in his relations with the gopīs, but is acting in a controlled

manner out of disinterested compassion towards them.” Thus, having lured them

toward him with a mind-stealing song (10.29.3), Krishna receives the gopīs

coldly, asking them to return to the village and to tend to their husbands, children,

and cattle (10.29.17-27). In short, having compelled them to join him, he

proceeds to lecture them on their proper ‘womanly duty’ (strīdharma). The

women, however, beseech him with arguments laced with metaphysical and

physical propositions: since Krishna is the true self (ātman) of all beings and thus
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also of their husbands, their first, and higher, duty is to him (10.29.32); besides,

since he lit the fire of passion in their hearts with his smiles, glances, and

melodious music (hāsāvalokakalagītaja hṛcchyāgnim), he should quench it, or

else it will consume them (10.29.34-35). They are impassioned to the point of

begging him to let them be his slaves (dāsyaḥ, 10.29.38-39).

Krishna responds with amusement and pity. Though he had just lectured

them on strīdharma, he indulges their adhārmika kāma (illicit desire) by making

adulterous love to them:

Increasing the passion of the beautiful women of Vraja by stretching his

arms and embracing them, by touching their hands, hair, thighs, skirts and
breasts, by playfully scratching them with his fingernails, by play as well
as by glances and smiles, Krishna brought them delight
(bāhuprasāraparirambhakarālakorunīvīstanālabhananarmankhāgrapātaiḥ
kṣvelyāvalokahasitaiḥ vrajasundarīṇām uttambhayan ratipatiṃ
ramayāṅcakāra, 10.29.46). 186

He grants them pleasure even when, as ‘the master of the masters of yoga’, his

delight was in himself (10.29.42). The emphasis throughout is on Krishna’s

detachment in the midst of sexual enjoyment. He is presented as the granter of

pleasure to others while not needing others to experience pleasure himself. The

same dynamic persists during the rāsa-dance episode (10.33), where the women

are smitten with desire (kāmārditāḥ) and greatly aroused (10.33.17-19, 11-14) by

Krishna, the Lord of Yoga (yogeśvareṇa kṛṣṇeṇa, 10.33.3).

186Note the act of ‘scratching them with fingernails’ in the manner of the Kāmasūtra, mentioned
by Hardy with reference to the HV’s Southern recension and quoted earlier (§ 3.3).
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 Krishna, in other words, is conceptualized as a self-contained character,

‘delighting in himself’ (ātmārāma, 10.29.42), ‘unfallen’ or ‘unmoved’ (acyuta,

10.29.43), and ‘one with fulfilled-desires’ or ‘satisfied’ (āptakāma, 10.33.29). In

contrast, the gopīs, some of whom are married, are portrayed as governed by

intense and transgressive desire, which drives them mad when separated from

Krishna. Coleman (2002:44) comments:

What we find in the Bhāgavata, then, is a desireless, perpetually delighted

Krishna, passionately and perpetually desired by women who suffer
intense pain in his absence. The gopīs’ passion is intensified and
eroticized by the introduction of the term kāma into the narrative and by
the use of highly sensual descriptive language, indicates a deliberate
effort on the part of the author to portray them as ardently desirous,
sometimes insanely desirous of Krishna, whom the author likewise
intentionally constructs as essentially desireless by sharp contrast. Why?

Before grappling with Coleman’s question, it is worth noting that a similar

shift — from a desiring Krishna of the HV to a desireless Krishna of the BhP —

takes place with regard to his relationship with his wife Rukmiṇī. In the HV, they

wish to marry each other due to their mutual desire (kāma). When Krishna first

sees Rukmiṇī, her beauty acts as an oblation to the flame of the fire of hiskāma;

therefore his abduction of her is motivated by lust (87.39-41). However, in the

BhP Krishna admits, once, to an inability to sleep at night for thinking of her

(10.53.2). His admission comes only after a more detailed expression of desire

from Rukmiṇī, who sends Krishna a long passionate plea for her abduction as

well as instructions in logistics to bring that about successfully (10.52.37-43).

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Coleman sees in the BhP account of this episode “the same pattern of shifting

the burden of desire and suffering onto women, while Krishna becomes more

cool, calm and yogically collected” (2002:50 n.18). Matchett finds further parallels

in Krishna’s relations with Rukmiṇī in that there is “the same didactic streak which

was found in his relations with the gopīs (2001:141).

Living as the king and queen of Dvārakā, one day Krishna sought to break

Rukmiṇī’s pride (BhP 10.60.21). Referring to himself with the royal ‘we’, he

questions her choice of husband, and says that she should instead choose a

better match for herself, because, as he says,

‘Having no desire for women, children, or wealth, we are indifferent;

having no attachment to our dwellings [of body and home], we remain
satisfied in our self, like an inactive enlightened [witness]’ (udāsīnā vayaṃ
nūnaṃ na stryapatyārthakāmukāḥ / ātmalabhdhyā ’smahe pūrṇā gehayor
jyotir akriyāḥ, 10.60.20).

Hearing Krishna describe himself like this, Rukmiṇī thinks that he wants to

abandon her and she dissolves into tears. Krishna then takes her in his arms and

assures her that he was only teasing! (10.60.22-29, 49)

Yet the point remains that the BhP’s picture of Krishna as a man of the

world is set within the frame of yogic detachment (vairāgya, 12.13.11). Going

back to Coleman’s question earlier regarding the reasons for BhP’s differing

portrayals of Krishna and the gopīs, her answer (2002:39, 44-45) suggests that

the BhP’s author is intent on constructing a paradigm of gender-specific

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soteriologies. In the paradigm, women such as the gopīs are creatures of desire

who spend nights of passionate love-making with Krishna but, nevertheless,

return home to their husbands and children to fulfill their strīdharma. Their

separation from Krishna is final and they are left endlessly yearning for an

unattainable man/god, and this is given the status of highest form of bhakti. Their

so-called ‘liberation’ by means of desire — a conservative trope that Coleman

dubs “a high-caste male fantasy” — is a mirage, because in it the gopīs are

‘freed’ through an internalized adoration of Krishna which still demands proper

devotion to their own human husbands.

Women’s kāma is claimed to be salvific even when it actually leaves them

in social bondage — a situation that suits men who need women to fulfill their

own male desires and duties of marriage, sex, and procreation. In the BhP men

are frequently portrayed progressively moving through different stages of life

toward the state of desirelessness and exclusive devotion to Krishna, the final

goal of which is liberation/union with him. 187 Therefore, their role-model is yogic

Krishna, “the ideal for men to emulate as they strive to be freed from their own

passions for women and sexual pleasure in particular,” according to Coleman

(2002:45). She believes the BhP’s author was integrating two different strands of

187Thus, in terms of kāma and dharma, men and women have distinct paradigms: “the tension
between opposing perspectives on the role of desire in human life has been resolved in the [BhP]
by shifting the burden of desire onto women and then nominally exalting them for being
dharmically desirous of men and children” (Coleman 2002:46).

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thought that exalted two different goals: liberation and worldly action. Krishna is

therefore represented as both the lord of yoga, dispassionate and austere, as

well as lord of dharma who leads a householder’s life as an ideal husband and

father, and an ideal warrior who shows Brahmins due respect. In short, Krishna is

the perfect Man. She sums up Krishna image in the text (45):

As yogeśvara Krishna thus serves as a model for men aspiring to

renounce worldly passions, but only after they have fulfilled their dharma
of marriage and procreation, duties which Krishna himself assumes with
extraordinary ease and virility.

Coleman’s thesis is built almost entirely on arguments from ‘Vedic and

dharmaśātric ideologies’, that is, brahmanical hermeneutics (Cf. 2002:44-47, 50

n.21, n.22). She does not enquire into possible real-world causes of “high-caste

male fantasy” or the male anxieties that are represented in the text’s gender

dynamics. 188 Ali’s (2004; § 3.2.2 above) analysis of courtly literature and political

life in early medieval India presents a framework that takes into account such

causes, and therefore provides an opportunity for a new reading of Krishna’s

representation in the BhP.

There are close religious-political parallels in representations of Krishna

(the lord/king), the gopīs (his courtiers), and the dynamics of their devotional

188Coleman’s 2002 article distills her larger dissertation on the topic dated 2001 which involved a
cross-textual study of Krishna’s relationship with the gopīs and his wives as presented in the HV,
the ViP, the BhP, and a Sanskrit commentary on the episodes. Except for a brief look of the
treatment of female renunciants in Buddhist, Jain, and Hindu traditions in the dissertation (225-
237) — which, in Hardy’s (1983) terms, constitute a unitary normative ideological complex — both
2001 and 2002 publications by Coleman are limited in this regard.
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(courtly) relationship. Kulke and Rothermund’s idea of ‘royalisation of gods’ is

applicable here: this is a case of the superimposition of the royal upon the divine

(see § 3.2.2 above and § 4.2 below). Indeed, I view the BhP’s representation of

earlier pastoral materials — especially its introduction of explicitly erotic elements

in the story and its depiction of cowherd women in relation to Krishna — as an

instance of production of a (dramatic) text for a courtly audience. The authors of

the BhP appear to have reworked the HV’s story using the conceptual categories

familiar to its courtly audience. Consider, for instance, the following. According to

Matchett (2001:146), the BhP Book 10 “bears little or no relation to the realities of

pastoral life as portrayed in the Harivaṃśa. Kṛṣṇa’s life among the cowherds

takes on a new aspect here.” In her estimation, Krishna’s cowherd foster-father,

Nanda, is presented like a king, who sends for expert Brahmins to conduct his

son’s birth ceremonies (10.5.1-2), then gifts the Brahmins 200,000 cows along

with jewels and gold cloth (10.5.3), and employs various bards and musicians

(10.5.5). Called ‘the lord of Vraj’ (vrajeśvara, 10.8.42), Nanda, and Krishna’s

kshatriya biological-father, Vasudeva, meet as equals (10.5.22-31); and

elsewhere Krishna’s foster-mother is addressed as vrajeśvarī by his mother

(10.82.38). In short, in the BhP the cowherd Krishna is effectively a prince-in-

waiting.

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 With regard to the notion of the BhP’s Krishnacarita as a courtly drama, I

find support from Matchett’s (2001:146-147) analysis of the text:

[The BhP places an emphasis] on showing his life as a performance,

accompanied by celestial musicians and presented before a celestial
audience (10.16.27; 25.31-2; 27.24-5; 33.19; 45.42), so that Kṛṣṇa could
almost be said to be ‘on stage’ throughout Book 10. He has already been
compared to an actor in Book 1 [Cf. 1.8.19; 1.15.35]. This comparison
points to the beauty of Kṛṣṇa’s appearance as perceived by the gopīs
(10.21.5, 8) and also to the fact that he is in control of his actions and of
the impression which they make upon others. He shows to Brahmā his
‘performance as a child belonging to a herder family’
(paśupavaṃśaśiśutvanāṭyam, 10.13.61). When he has allowed Akrūra to
see his divine form, he withdraws it, ‘as an actor [concludes] his
performance’ (naṭo nāṭyam ivātmanaḥ, 10.41.1). What Kṛṣṇa is
performing is an ‘imitation of human life’ (10.3.31; 70.40; 80.45, cf.
7.10.71). The episode in which Nārada sees Kṛṣṇa living 16,008 lives, one
with each of his wives (10.69-70), sums up better than any other this
aspect of the Bhāgavata. Kṛṣṇa is at once the author, producer, stage-
manager and entire cast of the great cosmic show.

It is no wonder that more than any other text, the BhP Book 10 lends itself to the

arts. My suggestion is that it perhaps began its career as a piece of courtly

literature: its dominant concerns are courtly, that is, procedural (the nature of

bhakti), aesthetic (the emphasis on Krishna’s beauty, which attracts and

distracts), and ethical (the issue of desire). Just as codes of courtly style and

protocol were socializing mechanisms for ruling classes of medieval society, the

code of devotion presented in the BhP proved to be an integrating mechanism for

practitioners into bhakti communities that followed its protocol. Its ideas shaped

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the conception of a proper bhakta. All of this followed from the profoundly

didactic nature of the BhP.

Just as the various relationships at court converged in the one between

servant (sevaka) and master (svāmin), so it is in the sphere of bhakti. For

instance, the gopīs’ desire for Krishna is so strong that they beg him to let them

be his slaves. Krishna tests their attachment by disappearing from the scene of

their moonlit trysts, and he tests Rukmiṇī’s loyalty by suggesting that she be with

another man. In both episodes, the women proclaim absolute devotion to him

alone and surrender completely (10.31.1-19; 10.60.34-48). In Krishna’s court,

people’s inner dispositions and emotions were conveyed through looks, smiles,

gestures and words. The BhP’s protocol of bhakti is indeed conceived in affective

terms. The delineation, interpretation, and reproduction of the affective structures

of courtly life were through aesthetic traditions, as executed in poetry or kāvya.

Note the evocative use of the poetic tropes in the BhP, such as fragrant jasmine,

autumn night, moon light, banks of the river Yamunā, in creating an expectant,

seductive mood.

By the time of the BhP’s composition, Sanskrit and Tamil poetics had

already created an interpretive community of authors and audiences at royal

courts. If the Nāṭyaśāstra was used for ‘education of disposition’ at court, in

teaching people how to feel, the BhP emerged as an instruction manual on how

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to engage in proper bhakti. But more than that, I contend, it sought to teach

people (albeit differently to men and women) how to lead a full life — it presents

Krishna as a role model for leading a life in this world while remaining detached

at one’s core. The principle first laid down in the BhG is vividly brought to life and

explicated in the BhP’s narrative. This makes the BhP an eminently suitable

instructional manual for worldly relations at court.

Its central character is now a prince-in-waiting who has explicit sexual

relations with multiple women, in the manner reminiscent of the Kāmasūtra (the

scratching with fingernails, for instance, in 10.29.46). There are two ways in

which the descriptions of Krishna’s love-games with the gopīs and Rukmiṇī can

be read as classical courtly poetry/drama. First is with reference to Nāṭyaśāstra

and Kāmasūtra, which share terminology such that “many of the specific

practices mentioned in the Kāmasūtra (scratching, biting, symptoms of

‘lovesickness’, etc.) form frequent themes in love poetry” (Ali 2004:212). Second

is with reference to ‘graceful qualities’ of men and women in courtship and

romance set out in the Nāṭyaśāstra (NS 24.14-16, 22; 24.33, 37). 189 These

included variously, for a woman, the delightful imitation of her beloved’s speech,

gestures and qualities (Cf. BhP 10.30.2-3; 30.14-44); the standing, sitting and

walking postures and the actions of hands, eyebrows and eyes when seeing or

189 See also Ali 2004 (159-160).

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meeting the lover (Cf. BhP 10.32.3-9); the position of the hands, feet and body,

along with the eyebrows, eyes and lips (Cf. BhP 10.32.15; 10.60.29-30); and the

beauty that arose from a slight disregard in the arrangement of garlands, clothes,

ornaments and unguents (Cf. BhP 10.33.8, 11-12, 16, 18; 10.34.24). For men,

relevant concepts were the straightforward movement of the eyes (Cf. BhP

10.29.38); smiling when speaking (Cf. BhP 10.60.9); romantic gestures, and

expressions which were unaffected and born of tenderness (Cf. BhP 10.33.17,

21, 26; 10.60.26-28).

In his love-games as detailed in the BhP, the princely Krishna of Vraj gives

a master-class in observation of others and self-restraint in displaying one’s own

inner mental state. I argue that the representation of Krishna as a detached, self-

disciplined character in the drama of life is less an expression of brahmanical

orthodoxy than very worldly advice to worldly men on how to lead their life. Book

10, in short, is a discourse of self-mastery.

Krishna shows his mastery of disposition, and demonstrates how to

effectively negotiate the relations of alliance, loyalty, and antagonism more

effectively. He also shows that self-restraint and detachment does not preclude

sensual and worldly pleasures: unlike in the HV, he is detached; yet, unlike in the

ViP, he does more than just dance with the gopīs, he has sex. Just as in court

literature erotic poetry was the canvas on which these issues were engaged, in

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the BhP the love play of Krishna-gopīs and Krishna-Rukmiṇī becomes the

court(ship) drama that takes issue with ‘desire’, not out of concern for some

abstract theological doctrine but because of worldly concerns. Sexual desire

(kāma) and its resultant attachment (anurāga, āsakti) had the potential to

destabilize the proper order of the self and affect an individual’s capacity to act in

the world, thus harming one’s social-political life. As Ali notes (2004:235), erotic

love was the preferred topic of courtly poetry “not because of any innate cultural

tendency towards sensuality or openness of sexual morality, but because people

at court preferred to ‘think’ about wider social relationships through the world of

erotic love.” Through depictions of courtship men learned the strategies of

conduct and forms of self-discipline they needed to successfully participate in the

life at court. Success at courtship was directly linked to success at court. Though

it was a problematic tendency in literary practices of the time, the displacement of

desire onto women was more likely the function of a projection of the anxieties of

court society, particularly with regard to the problem of attachment and

dependence versus self-mastery and autonomy.

The prescriptive and aesthetic literature of the court was aimed at kings

and courtiers who sought to acquire relative autonomy within the context of

service at court for obvious reasons. I believe that these were the same men

who formed the audience for the aesthetic-didactic text of the BhP. Its author(s)

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employed the northern and southern Indian codes of politics and devotion in

order to simultaneously validate autonomy and attachment. In so doing, they

were able to address the concerns of a wider, politically powerful audience and

thereby secure for their text an enduring place in Hindu social-religious history.

They created a new conceptual variant of god: he was at once majestic, yogic,

and erotic. 190 Krishna of the BhP is a complete Man and the supreme God. This

variant shares some aspects with the Krishna of the MBh/BhG: they are both

aristocratic-yogic teachers, who have devoted friends and followers. Despite this,

only one has an emphatically erotic aspect and a decidedly playful youth, while

the other features as a central player in a Great War. Keeping in mind that

representations are a matter of emphasis rather than complete exclusion, the

Krishna of the MBh replicates as ‘brahmanic warrior Krishna’, and the Krishna of

the BhP replicates as ‘ludic Vraj Krishna’. These are the features that render the

two variants cognitively salient, that is, these features distinguish the variants

after accounting for commonalities, such as their shared yogic character.

The BhP variant was new to the extent that southern conceptions of Krishna’s

story — which highlighted a highly personal and sensual bhakti and emphasized

the immanent aspect of god who could be visually contemplated — were

incorporated into the representation of a Krishna as a complete Man and

190This representation of Krishna had something to appeal to all social classes: vaiśya-śūdra
(erotic/pastoral), kṣatriya (majestic/royal), and brāhmaṇa (yogic/brahmanic).
224
supreme God. At the same time, the authors of the BhP incorporated these

features according to cognitive categories — of transcendent god, the dynamic of

attachment and autonomy, the role of desire — which were accessible to

northern practitioners of religious and secular traditions due to familiarity

established through frequency of use. This made it possible for northerners to

cognitively process the new concepts and terms features more readily and also

to reproduce them more easily. The concept of ‘Vraj Krishna’ became

entrenched because the authors of the BhP successfully combined the various

codes in their repertoire – Sanskrit and Tamil, philosophical and devotional,

political and literary, religious and erotic – and made the variant universally

accessible.

3.5 Summary

The BhP represents the culmination of a long series of selections and

transformations in the northern and southern Krishnaite traditions. The process

began with the addition of a pastoral aspect to the ‘warrior Krishna’ in the

supplement of the MBh, the HV; it ended with the royalization of Krishna in the

BhP. The changes in Krishnaite traditions were shaped by other processes

similar to ones in the Vedic times, such as

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1. Formation of a new polity: Gupta Empire in the North, Tamil Renaissance
kingdoms in the South.
2. Reorganization of knowledge: the Dharmaśātras, Sanskrit poetics, Caṅkam
anthologies, Tamil poetics, Āḻvār songs.
3. Shift in language use and literary genres: Prakrit ➜ Sanskrit, Tamil ➜ Sanskrit,
and Epics ➜ Purāṇas.
4. Shifts in religious practices: Vedic sacrifice ➜ external bhakti at the temple ➜
internal bhakti in the heart.
5. Shift in the conceptualization of divinity: in the North, transcendent ➜
immanent god, and in the South, immanent ➜ transcendent god, etc.

All these processes together impacted the successive conceptualizations of

Krishna and the devotion toward him in the first millennium CE, and found a

conclusion in the BhP. In the BhP Krishna is represented in the image of the

Tamil ideal man (cāṉrōṉ) with the added dimension of transcendence. He is

presented as the self-disciplined king of the early medieval court literature who

leads a full life. By combining northern and southern elements in their version of

Krishna’s story, the author(s) of the BhP articulated a discourse on how to live

the most fulfilling social-religious life. They were motivated by a desire to promote

their vision of a good life across India and to achieve for it the prestige of

orthodoxy. Therefore, they shaped their text in the image of a Veda.

In order to be successful, the authors emphasized those conceptual

categories/conventions which were common across the northern and southern

literary, political, and devotional traditions at the time and thus had cognitive

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salience. Their interpretation of Krishna’s story and their representation of him

maximized the possibility of attracting people of all social classes.

The authors were ‘introducers’. As ‘bilingual’ practitioners, their

mechanism for innovation was interference through identifications between

northern and southern concepts of divinity, heroism, passion, and devotion. The

new conceptualization of Krishna — from old tribal pastoral deity to new ‘ludic-

aristocratic-yogic-teacher’ or ludic Vraj Krishna — was represented as a

prestigious variant to the earlier variant of ‘aristocratic-yogic-teacher’ or

brahmanic warrior of the MBh. This older variant of Krishna, which was the

norm, was the main competition in absence of more serious competition from

other religious traditions. 191 The new Krishna and the practices associated with

him then became the new norm. Here I add the suggestion that the concept of

‘Vraj Krishna’ functions as the norm in more peaceful environments. In contrast,

the concept of ‘warrior Krishna’ functions as the norm, or at least as the preferred

choice, in situations of ideological conflict or competition with other traditions. I

discuss this further in the next chapter. In any case, through the BhP’s Book 10

the Bhāgavata Brahmins caused differential replication of the most

encompassing concept of Krishna. They changed the ‘activation value’ of the

Recall that by the time of the BhP’s composition/redaction, Buddhism was in decline in the
191

South and Jainism had adapted itself to the dominant Puranic tradition. Shaivism became
dominant with the Cola take-over of the Pandya kingdom after the BhP’s composition/redaction.
227
variant of pastoral Krishna by simultaneously emphasizing his yogic and erotic

aspects, thus making him the most attractive god who was also prestigious (§

1.3.3.2 above). This can be summed up in theoretical terms (Table 1, Chapter 1

above):

Replicator Religious concept Krishna

Replicators in a population
Structured set of replicators
Altered replication
Alternate replicators
Locus for alternative replication Conceptual variable
Interactor-vehicle
Hybrid interactor
Environment
Selection
Conceptual pool
Discourse form
Mechanisms for innovation
Conceptual variants
Religious practitioner
‘Bilingual’ practitioner
Social-communicative context
Entrenchment
warrior Vasudeva-Krishna
pastoral Gopala-Krishna
Krishnacarita
Identification and interference,
expressiveness, economy
BhP’s ludic Vraj Krishna
‘aristocratic-yogic-teacher’
Brahmins and HV, ViP, DP
Bhāgavata Brahmins
The Gupta Empire, Pallava,
Cola and Pandya kingdoms
BhP’s ludic Vraj Krishna

The authors of the BhP were successful because, in choosing the common

conceptual categories across various codes in order to communicate their ideas,

they seem to have followed Keller’s hypermaxim (§ 1.3.3.1 above):

‘Communicate in such a way that you are socially successful, at the lowest

possible cost’. By equipping the old pastoral Krishna with an aristocratic-yogic

character beside the erotic, and a desire-validating theology to boot, these

authors set him apart from other competitors of people’s devotional attention. In

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the BhP’s Book 10, the authors also followed the maxim: ‘Communicate in such a

way that you are noticed’ — an erotic theology guaranteed it. At the same time,

for reasons of accommodation and social identity, the authors recombined the

new elements (pastoral god, erotic theology) with the old (yogic god, courtly

discourse) in creating the new variant because it is important to ‘Communicate

like the people around you’. By virtue of doing all the above, they succeeded.

In the next chapter I assess the relative popularity of the two most dominant

variants in Krishnaite traditions: the Krishna of the MBh (BhG) and the Krishna of

the BhP (Vraj).

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4. Enduring images of Krishna in love and war

At the close of the first millennium CE, Hindus were in possession of two defining

texts of Krishna-centered traditions: the MBh (BhG) and the BhP (Book 10). By

then, Krishna’s story was ‘complete’ and Krishna’s image was also fully formed.

From this time onward, depending on their personal inclination, historical

situation, and social-communicative environment, if practitioners focused on

some aspect of Krishna’s character over other aspects, it would be with

knowledge of his story more or less complete. 192 The simple question now is

whether representational choices made subsequently were similar in social-

communicative environments similar to those that existed when these texts were

composed.

Toward the conclusion of the previous chapter (§ 3.5) I suggested that the

concept of ‘Vraj Krishna’ is favored in relatively more peaceful discourse

environments, whereas the concept of ‘warrior Krishna’ functions as the preferred

choice in situations of ideological conflict or competition and resistance against

competing traditions. There appears to be an affinity in the concepts themselves

and the environments in which they were produced and reproduced. Early on (§

1.3.1) I also suggested that the arts favor narratives over philosophy. The latter is

192 In this chapter all dates belong to CE, and from this point on I use modern spelling of

individuals and place names, some of which are in Hindi. Other terms and names of texts are
without diacritics unless they occur within quoted materials.

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more likely to be reproduced in ideological or intellectual discourse, like

commentaries on the BhG or the BhP. Joining the two propositions, one would

expect that, even in supportive environments, if there is a choice, artists would

choose narrative elements over philosophical ones. And within the narrative

elements, if there is a choice between two variants, the artists would more likely

reproduce the ludic aspect rather than the yogic. Also, going back to the

underlying theoretical idea in this dissertation, one should expect the artist to

select concepts/themes that have wide currency in their contemporary

environment (making for easier cognitive processing), that are favored by their

patrons (leading to the artists’s social success), and that have the some prestige

value (more likely to be acceptable to the wider public). Again, these are matters

of context-dependent emphasis, not exclusion. In order to test the validity of

these predictions, based on conclusions drawn from the previous two chapters, I

take a brief look at two examples, one from the world of arts during Islamic rule

and the other from that of nationalist writings under British rule.

4.1 Krishna in Brajbhasha poems and Rajput paintings

In this section I discuss a few Brajbhasha poems and Rajput paintings produced

under the patronage of royal courts, and included in the published catalog

Painted Poems (2004). The relevant Krishna-related paintings can largely be

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divided into those produced in Rajasthani kingdoms and those in the Hill states of

present-day Punjab and Himachal Pradesh. For this discussion I include seven

paintings below, three of which come from the Pushti Marga-affiliated Rajasthani

kingdoms of Mewar and Kota, and the other four come from the Hill State of

Kangra. 193 Admittedly this is a small sample, and the conclusions may have to be

modified in light of a larger database, but to the extent that it is a representative

sample, it should give us a glimpse of selection processes between two dominant

conceptual variants of Krishna.

There were three types of historical situations relevant to the discussion

here. Between c. 1500s to 1800s there were independent kingdoms where

theological influence was not marked (like Orcha c. 1560-1620); threre were

Hindu kingdoms directly affiliated with a Krishna tradition (like Mewar and Kota c.

1670-1820); and there were Hindu kingdoms not directly affiliated with a Krishna

tradition and were under Islamic rule before independence (like Kangra c. 1775-

1825). I am focusing on only these periods because the examples of poems and

paintings I include fall roughly between these time periods, so far as their

historical information is available.

The period between c. 1560 and 1710 was dominated by the Mughals,

and within that time, the period c. 1560-1660 (reigns of Emperors Akbar,

193
According to Pal (2004:9), paintings from Jammu and Kashmir, Punjab, Himachel Pradesh,
Uttaranchal, Madhya Pradesh, and Rajasthan are all grouped under the heading of ‘Rajput’.
232
Jahangir, and Shah Jahan) was especially favorable to artists. The Mughals

influenced Rajput art to varying degrees both stylistically and thematically,

through processes of political and/or artistic acculturation. That is, Mughal tastes

influenced the selection and production of Rajput art by virtue of courtly relations

and through the agency of ‘bilingual’ artists trained in the Mughal ateliers but later

employed in regional Rajput workshops. Pal (2004) writes that most artists were

professional and were attached to royal courts; their Rajput patrons had a

penchant for mythological and rhetorical themes (10). In Pal’s words, “The Rajput

tradition and patronage of paintings owes much to the Muslim Mughals both

aesthetically and stylistically, though the Rajputs and Mughals differed in tastes

and interests” (9). The Mughals favored more ‘naturalist’ and ‘secular’ themes,

and, according to Welch (1997:13) and Ateliers (1993:1), under a growing

Mughal influence Rajput artists too began selecting more secular subjects to

paint. Welch writes, “By the first quarter of the seventeenth century even religious

pictures from Mewar, the proudest of Rajput kingdoms and the last to yield to

Mughal authority, reveal Mughal influences. Timeless ecstatic religiosity here

gives way to restrained imperial etiquette.” However, that may also have been

partly due to the growing influence of the Vallabha tradition of Pushti Marga in

Rajasthan and and its affiliation with Mewar kingdom c. 1670. Elsewhere, distant

from a strong doctrinal presence of a powerful religious community and closer to

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the historical influence of Mughals and Afghans, there were more frequent

representations of Krishna as a desiring-human than a god in the Kangra

paintings c. 1775-1825. 194 One could see a trend of ‘secularization’ of a Hindu

god to match the preferences in the Mughal art by these court paintings and in

the poems on which these were often based. In Pal’s words, regardless of

whether they derived their subjects from religious myths or court life, “poetry is

usually at the heart of a Rajput painting” (11).

To the extent that these poems and paintings are produced under the

secure patronage of Hindu royal courts, they should have images of Krishna like

those in BhP’s Book 10, emphasizing his beauty and his playfulness but also his

majesty, if not his discipline. This is precisely what they do in the courts directly

affilitated with the Pushti Marga community of Vallabha. It was Vallabha (c.

1479-1531) who introduced the BhP as a canonical text into the group of

194
Snatak (1997:159) holds the prevailing courtly culture during the Mughal period responsible for
the increasing presence of “erotic love, pleasure, pomp and worldly pageantry” among kings and
chieftains, and through them, in the domains of literature and art. Neeraj believes that the growing
tradition of ‘secular’ love poetry — from Vidyapati (c. 1380-1460) onwards in which Krishna and
Radha appear as the prototypical hero and heroine — was responsible for the gradual ‘erosion of
doubt or hesitancy in representing one’s beloved god in erotic word-pictures’ different in tenor
than those in devotional poetry (1976:78ff.). The increasing frequency of Krishna’s ‘charming-
loving’ aspect in ‘secular’ poetry then led to more frequent selection of ‘Vraj Krishna’ as the
subject of later Rajput paintings.
Cf. Mukhia’s (2004) for a book-length study of the Mughal court culture, its institutional
structure of power, authority and governance, its ideas of the requisite qualities of a ‘true’ king,
etiquette codes (deriving primarily from Iranian Sasanid prototype), the imperial family’s life and
deviations from social norms (Cf. Doniger 2009:539-541). Mukhia’s study is along similar lines as
Ali’s (2004) inquiry into the courtly culture of early medieval India, except that the former does not
include an analysis of courtly literature on erotic-aesthetic theory or practice.

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authoritative Hindu scriptures, conferring upon it the status of the final decisive

text for Vaishnava, or rather Krishnaite traditions, and gave it a normative value

(Christof 2001). Thus, Vallabha’s interpretation of the BhP was normative for the

Pushti Marga and also for the patrons and artists associated with it. In his

interpretation of Krishna’s Vraj love games Vallabha displays a fundamental

understanding of Krishna’s yogic nature — as ‘free from passion’ (nishkama) and

as ‘one who delights in himself’ (atmarama) — which defines the aesthetics and

the ethics of these games (Cf. Subodhini commentary on BhP 10.29.42;

10.30.34; 10.33.17). Even on the devotees’ side of the bhakti equation, in

Vallabha’s doctrine of cultivation of passionate love for Krishna there is an

emphasis on a disciplined life: the devotees are enjoined to fulfill all their social

duties, to perform selfless service to god without expecting anything in return,

and to enter into a permanently bound relationship with Krishna (Cf. Saha

2006:226). Thus, worldly enjoyment was predicated on a disciplined life, at least

in theory, which is also evident in the nature of Krishna’s images popular within

this tradition, as I discuss below. But, according to Peabody (2003:105),

Pushtimargi devotionalism, like Tamil bhakti, positioned itself against the ‘yogic’

traditions: “in contradistinction to the austerities and forms of self-mortification

privileged within yogic traditions, a central feature of bhakti, both in its Tamil and

Pushtimargi variations, was the soteriological position given over to bhog, or

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‘enjoyment’ in all its sensual immediacy, aesthetic hypertrophy, and transient

exuberance.” Here, Peabody is not taking into account the BhP’s own

interpretation of what constitutes ‘yogic’ in the form of Krishna’s disciplined

enjoyment, that Vallabha himself considered important. 195

Perhaps constrained by the nature of their medium or due to their

personal preferences and those of their patrons, artists largely ignored the yogic

dimension of Krishna’s personality which was always present in the BhP

representation, even when they drew their subjects directly from the BhP’s

version of Krishna’s story. They did however pay attention to his majesty and

valor besides beauty and love. Of course, if one part of the story shows god to be

attainable by something shared by all humans – desire – then the larger narrative

of the importance of self-control is, well, a spoiler. While philosophers paid

attention to the larger narrative in explaining Krishna’s relationship with the

cowherd women of Vraj to their audience, poets and artists extracted the stories

of love games out of the larger frame for their audience. Even if we assume both

audiences to be bilingual in philosophical and devotional codes, the degree of

bilingualism would vary. Even when couched in devotional language stories of

human desire are cognitively salient for nearly everybody, if not for all. And even

195
Perhaps this is more a reflection of the gap between theory and practice, for Peabody’s study
is primarily based on the historical records of c. 1720-1840 of the Kota kingdom, the second most
important Pushtimargi royal house after Mewar.
236
if a didactic philosophy of self-control and its rewards were cognitively accessible

to all without interpretation, it is not as attractive. The latter may be prestigious,

but the former wins the box-office if for no other reason than that they are easy to

reproduce artistically and easy to process cognitively. Therefore, the themes of

beauty and love are more frequently selected for visual representations than the

themes of yogic self-control.

The selection of beauty and love over yogic aspect becomes more

apparent in Shiva-related paintings in light of the fact that in the Hindu pantheon

of gods Shiva is the paradigmatic ascetic just as Krishna is the prototypical lover.

In a total of 80 images in Painted Poems (2004), 10 are grouped together as

forming ‘Shaiva Themes’ and 30 as ‘The World of Krishna’. Within the Shaiva

section, Shiva has all of three paintings devoted to him [4-6]. 196 One of these

three has him as a fully-clothed, rather beautiful hunter standing among a crowd

of people [6]. We see the torso of two ascetics in the picture, but neither one of

those two is Shiva. In the other two paintings [4, 5], Shiva is paired with his wife,

Parvati. Within the larger Hindu tradition, though Shiva is primarily a yogi and the

patron god of ascetics, in both these paintings he is domesticated. 197 In one he is

represented in a way very similar to Vraj Krishna (Figures 4 [5] and 3 [47]) below.

196 The numbers in square brackets throughout this section refer to the painting number in the
Painted Poems (2004).
197To be fair I must also count Shiva’s appearance in two other paintings [55, 56] in the section
on ‘Musical Modes’ (ragamala) in the Catalog; but again, in both he is pictured with Parvati, now
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 In the early-modern (c. 1500-1850) Brajbhasha poems and Rajput

paintings, artists with royal patronage evoke themes from Vraj Krishna’s love-

games that are meaningful to their aristocratic patrons and connosieurs at court.

For instance, in the Painted Poems (2004), out of the 30 belonging to ‘The World

of Krishna’, 16 are directly based on narratives from the BhP, and others are

based on poetic themes that had roots in the BhP or the HV versions of Krishna’s

story. There are separate sections ‘Vaishanva Themes’ [14-17] and ‘Themes

from the Epics’ [18-24], within which there is only one illustration related to the

MBh/BhG: that of ‘The Cosmic Form of Krishna’ [24]. In ‘The World of Krishna’,

his childhood acts are depicted in six paintings [25-30], and include the

overturning of the cart, the killing of Putana, the killing of another demon, stealing

butter, dancing on the serpent Kaliya, and lifting of Mount Govardhana (all

discussed in § 3.3 and 3.4 above). The other 24 paintings include scenes of

Krishna’s youth with the gopis, particularly his favourite gopi, Radha, 198 and his

adult life in Dvaraka including his marriage with Rukmini [38-40]. There are only

sitting in a palace being entertained by music. Thus, in the four out of five paintings where Shiva
appears as an embodied god, he is enjoying conjugal life. According to Panthey, the most
popular type of Shiva representation in the Punjab Hill paintings is the representation of Shiva
with members of his family (1987:60). Interestingly, while Shiva is presented as a householder,
valor is attributed to the goddess and majesty to Shiva’s son, Ganesh.
198 Radha is not named in the BhP, she comes to prominence in the later centuries, but Krishnaite

traditions trace her presence back to the BhP’s gopi episodes or earlier (Cf. Hardy 1983:52, 58,
104-112).
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two paintings in which he is identifiably the king of Dvaraka [31-32]. The

dominant theme in 16 out of these 24 painted poems is love.

Below is an example of a painting about love based on two verses in

Brajbhasha by Keshavdas (c. 1555-1617). The poet was born in a Brahmin

family, and lived during the reigns of Mughal Emperors Akbar (r. 1556-1605) and

Jahangir (r. 1605-1627). He enjoyed successive royal patronage of the kings of

Jodhpur (Rajasthan), Orcha (M.P.), and Mewar (Rajasthan), and had

connections with the Mughal court through Birbal or Maheshdas Dubey, and Raja

Todarmal. Keshavdas was learned in Sanskrit language and literature, and

composed Brajbhasha poetry with heroic and devotional themes. His greatest

contributions to Hindi literature have been in the form of two works on poetics

and rhetoric: Rasikapriya, ‘Handbook of Poetry’ (1591) and Kavipriya, ‘Handbook

for Poets’ (1601). 199 Figure 1 below is based on two verses from the former,

which deals with the description and analysis of types of ‘heroes’ and ‘heroines’,

their emotions, and their expression. With these “foundational poetics treatises”

in the new genre of Hindi literary tradition (riti), Keshavdas also marked a major

cultural shift from Sanskrit to Brajbhasha (Busch 2004:48). Calling the riti

199 For more information on the life and works of Keshavdas in general and Rasikapriya in
particular, see Bahadur 1972, Desai 1984, and Mudgal 1999. Rasikapriya was written primarily
for other poets and connoisseurs, scholars, rich merchants, and for kings and queens. The large
number of manuscripts of and critical commentaries on the text in India’s research libraries attest
to its wide-spread use and study in northern India in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries
through the early twentieth century (Desai 40-41).
239
phenomenon “a set of vernacular intellectual practices,” Busch remarks upon its

mixing the older Sanskrit ideas with newer vernacular ones — “innovation

through renovation” — by riti poeticians like Keshavdas as a way of claiming

aesthetic and intellectual cachet for Brajbhasha (53). He did this through texts

like Rasikapriya which, among all his works, “in particular is steeped in a bhakti

worldview” (Busch 2004:51). It appears to be a close adaptation of the Sanskrit

Shringaratilaka (Ornament of Passion) by the rhetorician Rudrabhatta. However,

Keshavdas introduces several new elements in his own text; he substitutes a

generic hero and heroine with Krishna and Radha, as we see in his two verses

accompanying Figure 1 [49].

This painting derives its name from the Sanskrit word godhuli for the

twilight hour when cows return home stirring up dust, hence, the ‘hour of

cowdust’. This time of day is suggestive of separation, eager waiting, and then

joyous meeting of lovers. There is also an inherent romance in the soft light of

dusk. The painting originates in Kangra, Himachal Pradesh. This and the other

Kangra paintings I discuss below all belong to the most prosperous period in the

kingdom’s history when it was ruled by Sansar Chand (r. 1775-1823). 200

200C. Singh (1982:12). See also Chaitanya 1984 for more historical background of the Kangra
School of painting. See also Beach’s (1992) volume on Mughal and Rajput painting for the larger
historical context of the various schools and their mutual influences.
240
 In the poetic heart of this painting, Keshavdas reproduced old concepts in

Krishnaite traditions. Take, for instance, two observations by Hardy (1983:179,

473): First, that Nammalvar and then the BhP (10.31) developed the ‘mythical’

theme of Krishna’s return home in the evening from herding the cows ending the

separation from which the gopis have been suffering during the day. Second, that

“Passionate desire to ‘drink’ with the eyes Kṛṣṇa’s beauty, so as to obtain

transcendental happiness, and to sing about him when absent — this is in

essence the ideology found both in the HV and in most of the Āḻvārs.”

Figure 1: The Hour of Cowdust, Kangra, c. 1800-1825, Collection of Konrad and Eva Seitz

241
Here are the two accompanying Brajbhasha verses at the back of the painting: 201

Now the signs of confusion, where, due to love, words & ornaments are contrary:

Wrapped the garland around her waist, hung the tinkling waist-belt on her breast,

Toe-rings on her fingers she put, bracelets on her feet; blouse and veil forgot.

With kohl colored her lovely cheeks, with rouge made her eyes bright,

Hearing the arrival of the Ornament-of-Braj, ornament-adorned, she ran to look.

Now the attractive mannerisms of Krishna:

Clothes bright lightening, glinting peacock-crown beauty-augmenting rainbow,

He comes singing softly playing the flute, making friends dance as peacocks.

O friend, get up! Drink your fill with eyes, for he cools the fire in cuckoos’ hearts.

Cloud-dark-Krishna dressed as a dark cloud comes to Braj from the woods,

O Kesava! Thus it is according to Rasikapriya.

Figure 2 below, also called ‘The Hour of Cowdust’, is based on a different poem,

by one Kashiram (c. 1715). This painting does not form a part of the Painted

Poems collection. About the poet Kashiram, I found only one mention. In

Ritikaleen Sahitya Kosh (1997), V. Singh’s entry reads: “Kashiram – (Saxena),

lived c. 1715; patron – Nijamat Khan, a provincial governor (subedar) under the

Mughal Emperor Aurangzeb [r. 1658-1707]; literary works – Kanak manjari,

Parashuram dialog, Kavitta Kasiram (about Nijamat Khan’s valor and influence,

etc.).

201 See Appendix A for the original in Brajbhasha. This translation is mine.

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The painting:

Figure 2: The Hour of Cowdust, c. 1795-1800. Collection of Gursharan and Elvira Sidhu, IP-030

The poem: 202

When they looked at each other, all modesty vanished,

family honor was erased — why bother veiling the face?

When their gazes locked, heartbeats stopped, movement ceased,

minds were enthralled — such was the revealing of love.

O Kasirama, both stood still as though drawn in a picture,

countless people saw not the slightest flow in the river.

The playing of the flute by Krishna was forgot,

by Radha, the filling of the water-pot.

202 See Appendix B for the original in Brajbhasha. This translation is mine.

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The meeting of eyes or a locked gaze is a recurrent motif in early-modern poems

and paintings as they were in classical literature and the BhP. The theme’s

importance is underscored by its being first in the ‘ten stages of desire’,

according to the Kamasutra (5.1.4.4-5). In the erotic-aesthetic theories and in

classical poetry, desire begins with pleasure taken by the eyes, followed by a

fixation of the mind on the object of desire and the arising of a resolution for

union with the beloved. Ali (2004:244-245) comments that “Love in nearly all the

palace dramas [in classical Sanskrit lierature] begins with the king and the

heroine seeing one another (usually in the garden) and falling in love

immediately, after which they begin to suffer in love until they are united at the

plays’ conclusion.”203

The theme of captivated gaze was and continues to be so powerful that

even the yogic Shiva did not escape. The similarities in the next two paintings are

remarkable even though they are focused on two gods with very different stories

and devotional traditions. Perhaps this shows certain convergence of distinct

traditions within the broader complex of Hinduism partly due to representational

practices of artists and others within any given context, as it was here in the

Kangra workshop in Himachal Pradesh, c. 1800:

203 The poetic theme of arising of desire with a vision of beauty continued in vernacular and early
Sufi romances in the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries in which the flash-point of desire is the
beholding of the heroine’s (God’s) beauty by the hero, then there is separation, suffering, and
ultimately union. For more on Sufi romances, see Behl (2003), and Behl and Weightman (2000).
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Figure 3: The Captive Krishna, Kangra, c. 1775-1800, Collection of Ramesh and Urmil Kapoor

Figure 4: Shiva and Parvati with Companions, Kangra, c. 1800-1825

Collection of Ramesh and Urmil Kapoor
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The poem accompanying Figure 3, describes Krishna’s condition like this: 204

Putting not a foot forward, taking not a step back,

in front he remained, his heart so entranced.

Thus forgetting the flute, not attending to his yellow sash,

holding a bough in hand, at midnight he awakened.

Says Bhagwan, the Lord, the treasure of endless pleasure,

your beauty, your face, your love has spellbound.

All Braj-women everywhere may be seduced by this Charmer,

the Universal Charmer is seduced by my Charming Friend.

The word-picture of a captive Krishna is drawn by the poet in the guise of the

female companion of Radha (though she is not named as such). Similarly, we

observe Shiva’s condition through the eyes of his wife Parvati’s female

companions at the scene. According to Pal (2004:13), the couplet on which

Figure 4 is based, is a variation of the first verse of Hāla’s Gatha-Saptasati or

Sattasaī (Cf. fn.175 above). The situation in the painting is that Shiva is so

absorbed with his wife’s face that he is unaware that the snake wrapped around

his wrist is drinking up the water with which Shiva should be performing the

evening rituals, and Parvati’s female companions find this situation amusing. The

painting is not entirely faithful to its accompanying verse which should have

204 See Appendix C for the original in Brajbhasha. This translation is mine. Commenting on the
poem’s background, V. C. Ohri writes in the Painted Poems (2004:180) that the poet, Bhagwan,
is not known from any published work, and that “The language, content and style of the metrical
composition suggest that he flourished in the period of the Ritikal Hindi poetry (1700-1850).”
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Parvati pouring the water into Shiva’s cupped hands. But it has nevertheless

captured the main theme of rapt adoration by a supposedly detached god of his

beautiful consort. A captured gaze is again at the heart of divine love games.

As I discussed earlier (§ 3.2.2, 3.4), the theme of erotic love in courtly

poetry — l view the depiction of Krishna’s Vraj love games in the BhP as a

palace drama — was the medium through which people at court thought through

the complexities of social relationships. In that context, “Seeing was arguably the

most developed sense in courtly circles, and the act of looking and viewing was

imbued with heavily coded meaning” (Ali 133). Those meanings shaped the

concept of darshan which came into temple Hinduism from royal courts. There is

a continuity of narration from Vraj Krishna’s childhood to youthful to regal

activities. In them all, the elements of ‘play’ and ‘participation’ through ‘seeing’

were very important. These elements are well-represented in the following three

paintings from the Pushtimargi kingdoms of Mewar and Kota. All three essentially

depict an event like a scene from the royal court. All three capture a mood of

playfulness in Krishna’s Vraj stories and of people’s participation in his play.

In the first painting [30], Krishna is holding up Mount Govardhana to

protect his community from Indra’s onslaught of heavy rains. In effect, he is

holding court under the mountain, and his courtiers are gazing at him

worshipfully. Other gods, like Brahma and Shiva, are also watching. The

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catalog’s description of the painting points to its significance and popularity

“because the image of Sri Nathji at [Pushti Marga’s center] Nathadvara is the

narrative’s iconic form” (Painted Poems 2004:74). Nathadvara’s icon is at the

heart of the painting following this one:

Figure 5: Krishna Upholds Mount Govardhana, Kota, c. 1750-1775

Collection of Konrad and Eva Seitz

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 In the next painting, from Mewar [75] where the Pushti Marga’s principal

image of Krishna as Shri Nathji resides, he is enthroned in a palace-temple, and

after being worshipped he is enjoying the celebration of Holi, the festival of color:

Figure 6: Maharana Sangram Singh Worshipping Krishna, Mewar, c. 1725

Collection of Ramesh and Urmil Kapoor

The catalog’s description of the painting places it in the “ancient Indian tradition

of continuous narration” in which a character appears in different situations within

a single picture (Painted Poems 2004:160). The catalog focuses on the activities

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of Maharana Sangam Singh of Mewar. In my estimation, the real focus of the

painting is Krishna as the royal-god, who is being entertained in the manner fit for

a king by his frolicking Rajput devotees in a courtyard rather than by the gopis on

the banks of the Yamuna. This is their way of having a ‘visual intercourse’ with

Krishna. To quote Lutgendorf (2008:47), darshan is a ‘gaze’ that is returned.

Hindus “do not merely want to see the deity, but to be seen by him or her so that

the deity’s powerful and unwavering gaze may enter into them.” He translates

darshan as ‘visual dialog’ or ‘visual intercourse’. With activities pleasing to

Krishna, the devotees can hopes to attract his gaze upon themselves and

become receipients of his ‘grace’. 205

My interpretation of Krishna as the royal-god is supported by the following

painting (Figure 6 [68]) from Kota, Rajasthan, in which Krishna’s identification

with royalty is brought to its logical conclusion. The relevant elements of the

painting below that link it to the one above include the presence on the lower

terrace of red powder used in the Holi festival (Painted Poems 2004:146); also,

What is distinctive about the picture is the dark-blue complexion of the

prince, which identifies him as Brijnathji, a form of Krishna and the family
deity of the Kota rulers. Such identification of the ruler with the divinity is a
characteristic freature of Kota pictures.

205 Cf. Lutgendorf’s (2008:46) connection between the Hindu concept of darshan with the Indo-

Islamic nazar (look, glance), where he writes that nazar “is applied to the eye contact of lovers,
especially the first sight that arouses passion, and also to the benign gaze of Ṣūfī masters, which
watches over and protects their disciples.”
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 Figure 7: Dancing at Court, Kota, c. 1775
Norton Simon Museum, Gift of Vineet and Floretta Kapoor

Noticeably, in the last three paintings (Figures 5-7) above from the two Pushti

Marga-affiliated kingdoms of Mewar and Kota, directly and indirectly Krishna’s

majesty is highlighted as are the courtiers’ and the courtesans’ efforts to be

graced by his gaze. Unlike the previous four paintings (Figures 1-4) in which

Krishna (even as Shiva) was shown to be actively ‘courting’ like a human, in the

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three royal paintings his transcendent aspect is affirmed and the burden of desire

is on the others. Thus the three Pushtimargi-influenced court paintings present

Krishna as simultaneously transcendent and immanent, and the representation of

his relationship with his courtier-devotees is closer to the BhP version. The

selection process in this case was indeed influenced by the conceptual

categories favored in the communicative environment. There is Krishna’s

majesty, beauty, and play, for the festivities and entertainment enacted in front of

him constitute his play much as the love games were in the BhP — it is all for his

enjoyement. At the same time, in this catalog’s collection of Rajput paintings

clearly identified as being from Mewar [15, 20, 61, 75] and Kota [30, 67, 68, 69],

eight in all, not one includes a direct representation of Krishna’s love games. To

the extent that the catalog offers only one small sample of data, my conclusions

are tentative, but if it is in any way a representative sample of images from Pushti

Marga milieux, it puts into perspective Redington’s (1983:21) pushback against

“a widespread impression” among Western readers that the dominant emotional

relationship of the devotee to Krishna taught and practiced by Vallabha and his

followers in the Pushti Marga is that of ‘parental love’. Redington believes that

despite the “most famous and popular” images of Krishna as Shri Nathji and as

the Butter Thief, the structure of Vallabha’s commentary on the BhP

demonstrates that the mood of ‘passionate love’ is considered the highest. That

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may well be the case. But should I believe the structure of a commentary or my

lying eyes? The only images of Krishna in this one catalog from the royal houses

of Kota and Mewar are of his childhood or of a royal-god being worshipped. The

frequency of occurrence of a concept should not be dismissed. 206 Practitioners

(here, artists) reproduce most readily the form that has gained wide currency, is

entrenched and therefore more easily cognitively processed — the principle of

cognitive economy applies even the case of Pushti Marga’s Krishna images.

These artists were practicing their craft in an ideologically secure environment at

Kota and Mewar. They need not have restricted themselves to only the themes

that celebrate Krishna’s childhood deeds or his majesty. Perhaps the artists

were being faithful to Vallabha’s interpretation of the BhP, to his emphasis on

passionate love for Krishna but combined with a disciplined life. Unlike the

authors of the BhP whose social-rhetorical goals included achieving the status of

scripture for their text at the national stage (why else write in Sanskrit?), no such

constraint is present for the Rajput painters, whose primary goal is to please their

patrons. As mentioned earlier, the paintings were for individuals or small groups

of connoisseurs who would ‘handle’ them, and not for mass consumption. Thus,

absent larger social goals, in a supportive environment dominated by a

206 Redington’s is a curious argument especially in contrast to Hawley’s that I cited in § 1.3.1.

While Hawley questions the influence of the BhG in the two millennia since its composition in
absence of sculptural evidence from pre-1500 period, Redington questions the clear evidence of
popularity of frequently reproduced images in one tradition on the strength of a text’s structure.
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Krishnaite bhakti ideology, the artists selected the concept of Vraj Krishna sans

its erotic or its yogic dimensions. At the same time, their representation of the

adult majestic Krishna is closer to the BhP version (lilavatara) rather than the

MBh/BhG (dharmavatara) version, because his ludic aspect is included in the

picture: his presence is for the purpose of enjoyment.

In the other four paintings, the emphasis is on the erotic aspect; in them

even the majestic aspect is missing, nevermind the yogic. These paintings (all

from non-Pushtimargi Kangra) — which had been under political and cultural

influence of the Mughals and other Islamic rulers prior to the period covered —

show more secularized representations of Krishna. Absent a dominant bhakti

ideology that required one to show Krishna’s transcendence and in a discourse

environment that had been shaped by Islamic influence that favored secular

themes, the artist favored the most human aspect of Krishna for representation.

In any case, whether the selection was in a more religious or a more secular

environment, all these kingdoms in the plains and the hills were largely Hindu,

with little direct interference from the Mughals in their religious affairs. The

Mughals in fact made land grants to Hindu religious communities, supported

temple-building, and encouraged Hindu artists. 207 And in such ideologically

207See, for instance, A. Ali (2006:173-208) for a general discussion of the religious world under
the Emperors Akbar, Jahangir, Shah Jahan, and Aurangzeb, and also for particular instances of
the various ways in which they all demonstrated a sensitivity to Hindu concerns and supported
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secure social-communicative environments, the artists most frequently selected

for representation the concept of ludic Krishna of Vraj.

As to the notion that in situations of ideological conflict or cultural

resistance, there might be a tendency to favor Krishna’s ‘warrior’ aspect, I briefly

examine below the representational selections made by Indians during the British

rule.

4.2 Krishna in nationalist discourse under colonial rule

The last three paintings in the previous section could be seen as evidence of the

centrality of ‘image worship’ in one Krishnaite tradition. These images present an

embodied god ‘enjoying’ all that is in front of his eyes. Image worship at the heart

of temple Hinduism in general and Krishna worship in particular was condemned

by Chiristian Missionaries like William Ward (1769-1823), who was based in

Bengal. He was horrified by its celebratory nature in which “the crowd out of

doors sing, dance, and make a horrid discord with barbarous instruments of

music, connecting with the whole every kind of indecency . . . After eating and

drinking, they literarlly ‘rise up to play:’ youths, dressed so as to represent

Krishnu and his mistress Radha, dance together . . .” (1817:196-197). Ward’s

view of Krishna worship essentialized Hindu male as effeminate by virtue of his

Hindu religious communities or individuals. See also Mukhia’s (2004:Chapter 1) discussion of the
general reticence in religious matters on the part of the Mughals.
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approaching Krishna as his beloved; Ward then projected this view of Indian

male’s effeminacy onto Krishna and characterized him as lascivious

(Sugirtharajah 2003:81). 208

Ward’s contemporary, the ‘Father of modern India’, Raja Rammohan Roy

(1772-1833), too, had a deeply negative view of “deities like the Kṛṣṇa of the

Bhāgavata Purāṇa” (Salmond 2004:129). In A Defence of Hindu Theism (1817)

Roy voiced his criticism:

I begin with Krishna as the most adored of the incarnations, the number of
whose devotees is exceedingly great. His worship is made to consist in
the institution of his image or picture, accompanied by one or more
females, and in the contemplation of his history and behaviour, such as
the perpetration of murder upon a female of the name Putana; his
compelling of a great number of married and unmarried women to stand
before him denuded; his debauching them and several others, to the
mortal affliction of their husbands and relations; his annoying them, by
violation of the laws of cleanliness and other facts of the same nature. The
grossness of his worship does not find a limit here. His devotees very
often personify (in the same manner as European actors upon a stage do)
him and his female companions, dancing with indecent gestures, and
singing songs relative to his love and debaucheries.

He wrote A Defence of Hindu Theism “to prove to my European friends that the

superstitious practices which deform the Hindoo religion, have nothing to do with

the pure spirit of its dictates.”209 Salmond (61) writes that “Rammohun

208 Cf. William Jones’s words: “I am in love with the Gopia, charmed with Crishen, and an
enthusiastick admirer of Ram” (Cannon 1970:652).
209 See Robertson 1999:70ff. Roy was also motivated to return Hinduism to its ‘true’ aniconic

origins, that is, to its Vedic, or rather, its Vedantic past, but only as a preliminary to reforming
Hinduism and modernizing it in areas of education, child marriage, and widow burning. He was
born into a Brahmin family, was multilingual in Sanskrit, Persian, Arabic, Latin, Greek, and
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represented a new class of Indians in Bengal (the bhadralok) who were

educated, wealthy, and financially dependent on interaction with the British.”

Those interactions may have been with people like the British men and

women whose journals and memoirs have been studied by Dyson (2002).

Dyson’s data, written between 1765 and 1856, has five references to Krishna,

out of which four are about his relationship with Radha and the ‘gopias’, in a

context of songs and music. There are observations like that of “the graceful

Crishna with his attendant nymphs moving in mystic union with the Seasons”

(Maria Graham, Journal of a Residence in India, 1812, in Dyson 199). Another

says that Krishna is a name “so connected with many obscene and monstrous

follies” that he does not want to hear it, and that “of all idolatories,” the religion of

the Hindoos is “the worst” (Bishop Reginald Heber, Letters Written in India, 1828,

in Dyson 230). 210 Dyson’s own analysis leads her to conclude (2002:107) that

Precisely those elements of Hindu culture which were feminist or

androgynous rather than exclusively masculine, matriarchal or at least
anti-patriarchal, or which made explicit or implicit links between spritituality
and sexuality, were those which took the longest time in eliciting
appreciation from the British sensibility. Since these elements were quite
dominant in many of the popular religious cults of Hinduism and frankly

English. He was also reported to have read Islamic theology, Western religious and political
philosophy including Aristotelian logic and rhetoric besides Vedantic philosophy of Shankara. He
believed in the revelation in the three Vedantic sources of scriptural authority (prasthantraya): the
Upanishads, the Vedantasutras, and the Gita (Robertson xxiv).
210 Western critics of ‘idolatory’ connected it to ‘licentiousness’, and saw in the Judeo-Christian

prohibition of images a way of encouraging “the development of intellectualist and rational

controls of life” (Weber 1978:610). Freud linked the prohibition of images with “a triumph of
intellectuality over sensuality” and an advance of civilization and ethics (1985:360, 366).

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 expressed in the arts, a great deal of the expression of popular culture in
India came to be regarded with aversion.

The Indian response to such criticisms took the form of valorization of

Indian ideal. The response was based on the finding of the newest project of

organizing knowledge, this time led by the British but — as studies like Dodson’s

(2007) show — with full participation of Brahmins who were Sanskrit scholars

(pandits). In the 1760s, the British with Indian assistance began entextualizing

the Hindu Dharmashastras, the Vedas, and other works. In 1786, William Jones

pointed out the affinities between Sanskrit, Greek and Latin, Sanscrit being “more

perfect than the Greek, more copious than the Latin, and more exquisitely refined

than either,” (422-423). Jones’ affirmation of linguistic connections eventually led

to the idea of common Aryan origins of the Europeans and the Indians (Müller

1878, 1892). This allowed Indians to question the British distinctions between

masculine Europe and effeminate India. They began to resurrect Kshatriya

values of honor, chivalry, and conquest, all concepts which fit into the prevalent

theory of the day of Aryan ‘invasion’ of India (Sugirtharajah 2003:53). The

Bengali novelist Bankimchandra Chattopadhyay (1838-1894) articulated a

discourse of power, the first systematic Indian nationalist ideology, and selected

for its symbol the martial Krishna of the MBh and the BhG. Bankim’s Krishna was

embodied perfection as well as a transcendent god, and he was better than the

Buddha or Jesus, whose sole occupation was the preaching of religion and
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therefore lacked the qualities to lead people in the project of ‘national

regeneration’. In Krishnacaritra (1886) he wrote:

The true fulfillment of human life consists of the fullest and most
consistent development of all human faculties. He whose life shows this
full and consistent development is the ideal man. We cannot see it in
Christ; we can in Sri Krishna. If the Roman Emperor had appointed Jesus
to govern the Jews, would he have succeeded? No, because the requisite
faculties were not developed in him. . . . Again, suppose the Jews had
risen in revolt against Roman oppression and elected Jesus to lead them
in their war of independence, what would Jesus have done? He had
neither the strength nor the desire for battle. He would have said, ‘Render
unto Caesar what is due to Caesar’, and walked away. Krishna too had
little taste for war. But war was often justified in religion. In cases of just
war, Krishna would agree to engage in it. When he engaged in war, he
was invincible. . . . Krishna is the true ideal for man. The Hindu ideal is
superior to the Christian ideal. . . .
Krishna himself was householder, diplomat, warrior, law-giver, saint
and preacher; as such, he represents a complete human ideal for all these
kinds of people. . . . We cannot appreciate the comprehensiveness of the
Hindu ideal by reducing it to the imperfect standards of the Buddhist or
Christian ideals of mercy and renunciation. (Trans. Chatterjee 1986:70)

For Bankim, the MBh was a historical text, Krishna a historical figure who was an

ideal for modern man, once stripped of the ‘Puranic’ folk beliefs that got attached

to him (Chatterjee 59, Dalmia 1997:378).

Like Rammohan Roy, Bankimchandra was born into a Brahmin family and

was at least ‘bilingual’ in Bengali and English as well as Indian and European

literatures. Of the latter, he was widely read particularly in “19th century sociology

and political economy, and was greatly influenced, according to his own

admission, by positivism as well as utilitarianism” (Chatterjee 1993:54). But it was

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Bankim’s fusion of love of god with love of country in his poem Bande Mataram

(Hail to the Mother) that brought him national fame as it became the emblematic

song of Indian nationalism.

The next important individual in the nationalist struggle was the ‘Father of

Indian Unrest’, Bal Gangadhar Tilak (1856-1920). A Brahmin by birth, he was

multilingual in Marathi, Sanskrit, and English, and, by his account, in “the Eastern

and Western philosophies” (Tahmankar 1956:196). In a speech in 1897, he

invoked Krishna of the BhG to promote the idea of killing one’s enemies for

unselfish nationalist cause. In a speech in 1906, he compared Krishna with

Prophet Mohammad and Jesus Christ, and concluded that it was Krishna’s

“grand and eternal promise” in the BhG — that whenever there is a decay of

dharma he would come down on Earth to restore it — that set him apart from the

other religious figures. Tilak also wrote a lengthy and influential commentary on

the ‘secret’ of the BhG called Gita Rahasya (1911). He viewed the BhG as a

‘treatise on ethics’, and his emphasis was on right action as “mere singing the

praises of God would not lead them to God if they fail to remove the poverty of

millions,” and therefore “he had no love for the Bhakti cult or for the cessation of

worldly ‘activities’” (Kheer in Saroja 1985:xiii). Tilak’s interpretation of the BhG

was driven by his concern for freedom or ‘self-rule’ (swaraj), which, according to

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him, could only be won from the British by a diligent performance of duty in the

manner of karma-yoga of the BhG. 211

Tilak’s contemporary but a different kind of nationalist was Mahatma

Gandhi (1869-1948). He was born in a Gujarati Vaishya family who were

followers of Vallabha (Lütt 1995:149). He was bilingual in Gujarati and English,

and in Vaishnava, Jain, and Christian teachings. Like Tilak, he too wrote a

translation of the BhG. Unlike, Bankimchandra, Gandhi states his belief in the

non-historicity of both the MBh and the BhG in his Introduction to the text, called

‘Anasaktiyoga: The Gospel of Selfless Action’, (1926). Furthermore, he writes,

“Krishna of the Gita is perfection and right knowledge personified; but the picture

is imaginary. That does not mean that Krishna, the adored of his people, never

lived. But perfection is imagined. The idea of a perfect incarnation is an

aftergrowth” (2000:17).

Commenting on the accessibility of an embodied god and the possibility of

a loving relationship between the devotee and god (BhG 12.2-7), Gandhi affirms

211 Cf. this story from the Times of India Online (September 11, 2007), headlined ‘HC rules Gita is
dharma shastra’: Justice S N Srivastava of Allahabad High Court has come out with the order that
"it is the duty of every citizen of India under Article 51-A of the Constitution - irrespective of caste,
creed or religion - to follow the dharma propounded by the Bhagvad Gita". Giving this ruling on a
writ petition by S R Mukherjee, Justice Srivastava said the Gita was a "dharma shastra" of India.
It said it is the duty of the state to recognise the Gita as ‘rashtriya dharma shastra’. "The Gita
inspired our national struggle for freedom and all walks of life," he said. Elaborating further, the
court said that as India has a recognised National Flag and National Anthem, Bhagvad Gita, too,
may be considered as national (or rashtriya) dharma shastra .

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the idea’s usefulness, and comments: “Neither Christians nor Muslims, nor

certainly Hindus, have risen above the worship of the Personal God. Even a

person who aspires to cultivate devotion exclusively for the Unmanifest worships

some visible symbol. . . . We should not mind if, because we worship the

Personal God, we are called idolaters and criticized for being so” (2000:177-178).

Perhaps influenced by his Pushtimargi roots, Gandhi accepted a role for bhakti in

life, and he used the idea of bhakti in his nationalist agenda of forging a national

unity of different religious communities. In this context, he also favored the idea

of the perfect polity in the form of ‘Kingdom of God on Earth’ (Ramarajya). Rama,

not Krishna, became his ideal, for “Rama gave to all kings of the world an object

lesson in noble conduct. By his strict monogamy he showed that a life of perfect

self-restraint could be led by a royal householder. . . .” (in Lütt 1995:150).

One other nationalist was Bhartendu Harishchandra (1850-1885), who

promoted Hindi language and literature, and Hindu religion. Like Gandhi, he was

also born into a Pushtimargi Vaishya family. He was multilingual in Sanskrit,

Hindi, Urdu, Brajbhasha, Bengali, and “had some English education” thus coming

into contact with newer institutions and ideas (Dalmia 1997:117). Harishchandra

accepted the validity of emotional bhakti. According to Dalmia (377-378),

The figure of Kṛṣṇa which emerges from Hariśchandra’s theological and

literary writings stands in sharp contrast to the other late-nineteenth-
century construction of the figure of the martial Kṛṣṇa of the Mahābhārata
and the Bhagavadgītā, who was projected as a historical personage and a
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 heroic model of national proportion. . . . However, Hariśchandra chose to
exalt and place at the centre of his reading, which he shared with a vast
number of his countrymen, just this joyful figure of love [i.e. “the figure of
excess, abandonment and transgression, who sported with the gopīs and
knew no moral boundaries”] in that he emphasized the act of devotional
surrender to him, which remained rooted in community ritual, festivity and
tradition, but which nonetheless was transcendent enough to encompasss
other, in his reading, less vital and less pure strands of religious
tradition. 212

In this brief survey of principal voices in the Indian nationalist movement

who had something to say about Krishna, I find an interesting division: those

Indians who had no background in a specific bhakti community like the Pushti

Marga, they were highly critical of Krishna of the BhP; the others in contrast were

more accepting of an emotional connection with an embodied form of god. At the

same time, all those who were in the thick of the resistance to British rule, they

invariably preferred Krishna of the BhG over Krishna of the BhP. These men

were all multilingual and familiar with a wide variety of eastern and western

views. They selected the most easily translatable categories of monotheism,

aniconism, and ethical action from within Hinduism in order to not only match

those within the competing ideology but then to assert Hinduism’s superiority to

the other religions and Krishna’s superiority to their prophets.

212Cf. Lütt’s (1995:147) opinion that the bhakti valued by Harishchandra was in the form of an
‘inward, sublime, affectionate devotion to God’, not in the form of the gopis’ ras-lila with Krishna of
the BhP.

263
 These processes of conceptual selection have echoes of the earlier ones

during the Vedic times, in that (1) these selections were made in an environment

where Hindu interests were suffering at the hands of a state power which favored

another religion; (2) there were missionaries of this other religion who were highly

critical of Hindu gods and religious practices; (3) the Hindu response began

effectively with another process of organization of knowledge which laid the

groundwork for new constructions of identity for the individual and the

community; (4) in their constructions of a national identity, the Hindus selected

the concept least likely to be misunderstood and most likely to lead them to

achieve their social-rhetorical goals; (5) the selection was in accordance with the

conceptual categories dominant at the time by virtue of belonging to the ruling

power, which interfered in the religious affairs of the Hindus; (6) selection of one

concept in a particular historical and communicative context did not destroy the

other(s), which continue to thrive to date; and (6) the nationalist rhetoric built

around the selected concept succeeded.

4.3 Concluding thoughts on cognition, choice, and communication

The main question that has driven this study is whether what happened to the

differential conceptualization of two aspects of a Hindu god in British India was

entirely unique to that particular contact situation or whether this selective

264
conceptualization is something we might encounter in any situation of cultural

contact.

I have asked this question within an evolutionary theoretical model, one

that views change, be it conceptual or linguistic, as happening in human minds

(the cognitive aspect) and in human society (the social aspect). This model

makes various predictions regarding how concepts evolve. Concepts are

innovated (the act of altered replication) and propagated (the act of differential

replication throughout a community). The manner in which this happens has to

do with the nature of the innovating practitioner and the nature of the

propagation. Initially, concepts often spread, i.e. are propagated, through the

conscious effort of a particular individual or group of individuals. Such individuals

or groups strive for social prestige and, it turns out, that this drives innovation.

However, propagation also is sensitive to how frequently an innovated

concept is activated in the mind of practitioners. It turns out that humans are

more likely to adopt an innovative variant of a concept the more often they hear it

in discourse. In this dissertation, I argue that this dynamic view of the

development of concepts is key to understanding how different

conceptualizations of Krishna are selected or not in certain periods.

As just mentioned, I have chosen to study within this model the

conceptualization of Krishna, from the origins of his conceptualization up to the

265
time of the British. For present purposes, I have identified four periods that in the

history of the Indian subcontinent have been important: the Vedic period, the

early medieval period, the pre-modern period, and, finally, the colonial period.

In the Vedic period, I traced the innovative identifications of various

concepts of a sustainer-protector god by a group of Brahmins, who were

motivated to achieve a better social status within their class. They also

reformulated the Vedic religion and the idea of a transcendent god who was also

immanent, through a long process in which they introduced elements from

different traditions into Vedic Brahmanism. They were able to do so because they

were ‘bilingual’ and bicultural. In the MBh/BhG they presented Krishna as a

competitor of the Buddha for people’s affections. In order to succeed, they

selected from within his story aspects that had a corresponding feature in the

story of the Buddha. They presented their version of a prestigious god using

communicative strategies that made their variant cognitively more accessible to a

wider range of practitioners. And this variant successfully became entrenched as

the warrior-philsopher Krishna of the MBh/BhG.

In the early medieval period, in a new social-communicative environment

in which there were no immediate rivals, conceptualization of Krishna took

another form. The sourthern Tamil practitioners selected from the northern

sources an aspect of Krishna more familiar to them, and one which filled a niche:

266
a pastoral god who was immanent and also transcendent, and one with whom

the practitioners could form an emotional attachment. Again, the practitioners

who made the selection and the identification were ‘bilingual’. Like their Vedic

counterparts they too were motivated to achieve a higher social status for

themselves and for their ideas which they had entextualized in the BhP. The

communicative strategies they used involved cognitive and social value. That is,

they conceptualized Krishna in a way that made his ludic aspect enticing and

prestigious at the same time.

By the end of the first millennium, Krishna’s story was ‘complete’. His

various aspects had converged in two dominant aspects of one god who now

had a complete life story.

If we consider Krishna as a conceptual variable, it now has two major

variants: warrior-philosopher Krishna of the MBh and the Vraj Krishna of the BhP.

At this point, I proposed the hypothesis that one given variant is emphasized in a

particular environment due to socio-cultural exigencies. In a more stable or

supportive environment where there is relatively less ideological conflict, the

Krishna of the BhP is more likely to be selected and in a more conflictive

environment, the Krishna of the MBh would be evoked. In order to test this

hypothesis, I briefly looked at Krishna’s representations in several Brajbhasha

poems and Rajput paintings of the early-modern period. During this period,

267
under the Mughal rule, the arts flourished as did Hindu religious communities.

The supportive environment allowed the Krishna of the BhP to ‘play’. There is a

relative absence of images of Krishna of the MBh in the data I studied. For the

second part of the hypothesis, I considered a few tracts by Indian nationalist

leaders under the colonial rule. In this conflictive environment, they selected the

Krishna of the MBh/BhG as the role model for Indian resistance to British rule.

On the one hand, the concept of ‘the Krishna of the MBh/BhG’ was

formalized in an environment of ideological conflict; the selection of this variant is

also found in a time of conflict. On the other, the formalization of the concept of

‘the Krishna of the BhP’ happened in a time and place of relative ideological

calm, and the selection of this aspect of Krishna also happened during a time of

relative ideological harmony.

To return to the initial question that has driven this investigation: Was the

representation of Krishna during the British colonial period unique in the

historiography of Hinduism? The answer is: in terms of details, maybe; in the

long view of history, not really.

The findings of this study are preliminary and could be made more

conclusive by studying the innovation in and selection of concepts of Rama and

how these relate to those of Krishna, as well the concepts of the goddess and

how they fit into the general picture of innovation and selection of Hindu gods.

268
Although that is a project for future research, the model in which such a study

could be carried out is, I hope, a key contribution of this dissertation.

269
Appendix A

अथिव�महावलछनदोहा ॥
वचनवभषन�ेमतैजांहांहोिहिवपरीत ॥ किव� ॥
क�टके तटहारलपे�टिलय�कल�ककनीलैउरस�उरमाई ॥
करनूपरस�पगपौिचिवनाअंिगयासुिधअंचलक�िवसराई ॥
करअंजनरं जतचा�कपोलकरीजुतजावकन�निनकाई ॥
सुिनआवत�ी�जभूषणभूिषतह�उ�ठदेषधाई ॥

अथकृ �कोलिलतहाव ॥
किव� ॥ चपलापटु मोरकरीटु लसैमधुवाधनुसोिभवढावतह� ॥
मृदग
ु ावतआवतवैनुवजावतिम�मयूरनचावतह� ॥
उ�ठदेिषभटू भ�रलोचनचा�किच�कोतापवुझावतह� ॥
घनस्यांमघनैघनवेषस�केसवय�वनतैवृजआवतह� ॥
इतीरसकि�याजथा ॥

Atha vibhrama hāva lachana dohā.

Vacana va bhuṣaṇa prema tai jāṅhāṅ ho hi viparīta (kavitta):
Kaṭi ke taṭa hāra lapeṭi liyo kala kiṅkani lai ura sauṅ uramāī,
Kar nūpara sauṅ paga pauci vina aṅgiya sudhi aṅcala ki visarāī.
Kar aṅjana raṅjata cāra kapola karī juta jāvaka nainanikāī,
Suni āvata Śrīvrajabhūṣaṇa bhūṣaṇa bhūṣitahīṅ uṭhi dekha dhāī.

Atha Kṛsna ko lalita hāva (kavitta):

Capalā paṭu mora karīṭu lasai madhuvā dhanu sobhi vaḍhāvata haiṅ,
Mṛdu gāvata āvata vainu vajāvata mitra mayūra nacāvata haiṅ.
Uṭhi dekhi bhaṭū bhari locana cātraka citta ko tāpa bujhāva haiṅ.
Ghanasyāma ghanaighana veṣa sauṅ Kesova yo vana tai vraja āvata haiṅ.
Itī rasikapriyā jathā.

270
Appendix B

॥ किव� ॥
देखादेखीभईतैसकु चसभछू टगईिमटीकु लकांनकै सोघूंघटकोक�रवौ ॥
लगीटकटक�जविमटीधकधक�गतथक�मतछक�ऐसौनेहकौउघरवौ ॥
िच�कै सेकाढेदोऊठाढेरहेकांसीरांमनेकन�वाहलाखलोकनकोलिखवौ ॥
वंसीकोवजैवौनटनागरकोभूिलगयौनाग�रकोभूिलगयोगाग�रकोभ�रवौ ॥१॥

Kavitta:
Dekhā dekhī bhaī tai sakuca sabha chūṭa gaī,
miṭī kulaṅkāna kaiso ghūṅghaṭa ko karivau.
Lagī ṭakaṭakī java miṭī dhaka dhakī gata thakī
mata chakī aiso neha kau ugharavau.
Citra kai se kāḍhe dou ṭhāḍhe rahe Kāṅsīrāma
neka na pravāha lākha lokana ko lakhivau.
Vaṅsī ko vajaivau Naṭanāgara ko bhūli gayau,
Nāgari ko bhūli gayo ghāgari ko bharivau.

271
Appendix C

किव�
आगे�नं धरतडगपाछे�न
ं परतपगरहोसनमुखहीयेसोिचतलग्योह ॥
बंिसयोिबसारपटपीतनासम्भारकरगहे�ुमडारजुगजामनीसीजग्यो
कहतभगवान�भुकोटसुखके िनधानतेरेरंगतेरे�न�पतेरे�ेमपग्योह
इनठगठगीठोरठोरि�जनारसवभलेमेरीठगनीत�ि�लोक�ठगठग्य�ह ॥

Kavitta:
āge huṅ na dharta ḍaga pāchenuṅ na parata paga
raho sanmukha hī yeso cita lagyo heṅ
baṅsi yo bisāra paṭapīta nā sambhāra
kara gahe druma ḍāra juga jāma nīsī jagyo heṅ
kahata Bhagvāna prabhu koṭa sukha ke nidhāna
tere raṅga tere aina rupa tere prema pagyo heṅ
in ṭhaga ṭhagī ṭhora ṭhora Brijnāra sava bhale
merī Ṭhagnī teṅ Trilokī ṭhag ṭhagyo heṅ

272
Abbreviations

AS Arthaśāstra
Atharvans Kāṇva-Āṅgirasa-Bhārgava Vedic Brahmins
AV Atharva Veda
BhG Bhagavad Gītā
BhP Bhāgavata Purāṇa
BMAC Bactria Margiana Archaeological Complex
ChU Chāndogya Upaniṣad
DP Divya Prabandham
HV Harivaṃśa
IA Indo-Aryan
IE Indo-European
IIr Indo-Iranian
IVC Indus Valley Civilization (= Harappan Culture)
MBh Mahābhārata
MIA Middle Indo-Aryan
NS Nāṭyaśāstra
OED Oxford English Dictionary
OIA Old Indo-Aryan (= Vedic Sanskrit)
PS Puruṣa Sūkta
RV Ṛg Veda
SAP Sintashta-Arkhaim-Petrovka archeological complex
SB Śatpatha Brāhmaṇa
SED Sanskrit English Dictionary (Monier-Williams)
SU Śvetāśvatara Upaniṣad
SV Sāma Veda
ViP Viṣṇu Purāṇa
YV Yajur Veda

273
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 CURRICULUM VITAE

Ms. Richa Pauranik Clements

1322 S. Longwood Drive
Bloomington, IN 47401-6088
pauranik@indiana.edu
richaclements@gmail.com

EDUCATION
2010 Ph.D. Religious Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington, USA
Dissertation: Social Lives of Religious Symbols: An Evolutionary Approach to
Explaining Religious Change
Minors: India Studies and Cultural Studies
Focus: Religious Hisotriography; History of Religions in South Asia,
especially of Hinduism, Islam, Buddhism, and Jainism; Religion in
Literary and Visual Arts; Rhetorical Theories of Cultural Production.
2000 M.A. Religious Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington, USA
Thesis: Caste and Gender in the Bhagavata Purāṇa
1996 M. Phil. English Language and Literature, DAVV University, Indore, India
Thesis: Major Themes in the Shorter Fiction of Katherine Anne Porter

1994 M.A. English Literature, DAVV University, Indore, India

Thesis: Comparative Study of the Concept of Imagination in the Literary Theories
of Aristotle and Coleridge

1989 M.A. Political Science, Ravishankar University, Raipur, India

1987 B.Com. (Bachelor of Commerce), Bangalore University, Bangalore, India

LANGUAGES
Fluent in: English, Hindi-Urdu, and Malvi (Rajasthani)
Research in: Classical Sanskrit, Medieval Hindi (Brajbhasha, Avadhi)
Basic knowledge of: Spanish
RESEARCH
Publications
Peer-Reviewed Journal
2002. Embodied Morality and Spiritual Destiny in the Bhagavata Purāṇa.
International Journal of Hindu Studies 6.2 (August): 111-45.
Reviewed Edited Volume
2005. Being a Witness: Cross-examining the notion of Self in Śaṅkara’s
Upadeśasāhasrī, Īśvarakṛṣṇa’s Sāṃkhyakārikā, and Patañjali’s Yogasūtra.
In Essays on the Theory and Practice of Yoga: In Honor of Gerald James
Larson, edited by Knut Axel Jacobsen, 75-97. Leiden: Brill.

Translation Projects
Published
2004 ‘The Hour of Cowdust’, translation of a hand-written inscription of an eight-
line poem in Brajbhasha from Keshavdas’s Rasikapriya (c. 16th century).
In Painted Poems: Rajput Paintings from the Ramesh and Urmil Kapoor
Collection, edited by Pratapaditya Pal, 181. Pasadena, CA, and
Ahmedabad, India: Norton Simon Museum, and Mapin Publishing.
Unpublished
2005 Seventy-four medieval hand-written inscriptions in Sanskrit and
Brajbhasha on Rajput paintings in the Collection of the Honolulu Academy
of Arts, Honolulu, HI.
Invited Talk
2004 Devotional Colors on Poetic Canvas, at ‘Indian Painting ― A Symposium’,
held in conjunction with the exhibition Painted Poems: Rajput Paintings
from the Ramesh and Urmil Kapoor Collection, at the Norton Simon
Museum, Pasadena, CA, April 3

Conference Papers

2
2006 Religious Rhetoric in Visual Arts, Conference Theme: Material Religion:
The Intersection between Religion and Material Culture, Annual
Conference on the Study of Religions in India (CSRI), Loyola University,
Chicago, June 8
2002 Re-Casting Identities: Dalits, Hinduism, and Christianity, Panel: Issues
in Dalit Studies, 31st Annual Conference on South Asia, Madison, WI,
October 13
2002 Contesting Memories: Missionaries there and then in the Context of here
and now, Panel: Political Posturing and Ritual Adaptations: The Church’s
way of Survival in a Pluralistic Society in India, International Conference
on Christianity and Native Cultures, Notre Dame, IN, September 21
2001 Ethical Issues and Subversive Humor in Modern Malvi Folk Literature,
Panel: Literature and Politics, 30th Annual Conference on South Asia,
Madison, WI, October 21
2001 Old Morality, New Lessons: Is it the Language, Literary Genre, or
Something Else?, Panel: Arts/Literature/Religion, Annual Midwest
American Academy of Religion Conference, Chicago, IL, March 31
2000 The Politics of Collective Memory vs. Selective Memory in South Asia,
Panel: Memory, Tradition and Politics in South and East Asia, 29th Annual
Mid-Atlantic Region Association of Asian Studies Conference, October 28
2000 Religious Nationalism and Historiography in South Asia: (Part I) Pakistan,
Panel: Nationalism, Religion, and History, 29th Annual Conference on
South Asia, Madison, WI, October 15
2000 Indic Social Theorizing and Religiosity of Hindu Women Devotees, Panel:
Issues in South Asian Society: Religion and History, 49th Annual Midwest
Conference on Asian Affairs, Bloomington, IN, October 7
2000 Embodied Morality and Spiritual Destiny: Women in a Devotional Hindu
Text, Panel: Religion and Sacred Texts, Annual Midwest American
Academy of Religion Conference, Chicago, IL, March 18
Research Assistance

3
1997-1998 Research Assistant to Dr. Gerald J. Larson, Director, India Studies,
and Professor of Philosophy and Religion, Indiana University,
Bloomington
(Assisted Dr. Larson in the fist steps – digitizing, organizing, proof-reading the
contributions – toward preparing an encyclopedic volume of Yoga Philosophy.)

1997 Research Assistant to Dr. Kevin Brown, Professor of Law, Indiana

University, Bloomington
(Assisted Dr. Brown with topical research for his project dealing with legal issues
and minorities rights in India.)

Grants and Honoraria

2006 Honorarium from the Honolulu Academy of Arts, Honolulu, HI, for
reading, transcribing, and translating Inscriptions on Rajput Paintings
in the Collection, Spring 2006

2005-2006 Greenberg Albee Fellowship and College of Arts and Sciences

Dissertation Year Research Fellowship, COAS and the University
Graduate School, Indiana University, Fall 2005 and Spring 2006

2000 Summer 2000 Pre-Dissertation Travel Grant, funded by Office of

International Programs and Research and the University Graduate
School, Indiana University, Bloomington, IN, March

2000 India Studies Travel Grant, India Studies Program, Indiana

University, Bloomington, April

2000 Greenburg Albee Fellowship, COAS Graduate Student Travel Grant,

October

TEACHING

4
2008 Associate Instructor of R250 Introduction to Buddhism, Department of
Religious Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington, January-May
2004 Instructor of I202/I509 Second Year Hindi II, India Studies, Indiana
University, Bloomington, January-May
2003 Instructor of I201/I508 Second Year Hindi I, India Studies, Indiana
University, Bloomington, September-December
2003 Associate Instructor of R250 Introduction to Buddhism, Department of
Religious Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington, January-May
2002 Graduate Assistant of I300 Passage to India: Emperors, Gurus, and
Gods, India Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington, September-
December
2002 Graduate Assistant of R368/P328/I546 Philosophies of India, Departments
of Religious Studies, Philosophy, and India Studies, Indiana University,
Bloomington, January-May
2002 Associate Instructor of R202 Religion, Ethics, and the Environment,
Department of Religious Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington,
January-May (Two independent lectures on Hinduism and Ecology)
2001 Associate Instructor of R152 Religions of the West, Department of
Religious Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington, August-December
2001 Associate Instructor of E103 The Bible and its Interpreters, Department of
Religious Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington, January-May
(An independent lecture on Islamic Interpretations of the Bible)
2000 Associate Instructor of E103 Nonviolence and the Struggle for Freedom,
Department of Religious Studies, Indiana University, Bloomington, August-
December
1999- Associate Instructor of Hindi, India Studies, Indiana University,
2000 Bloomington

PRESENTATION / PARTICIPATION

5
2005 Presenter of two programs on “Religion and Culture in Contemporary
India” to Freshmen (Grade IX) students of World Geography, Lansville
High School, IN, through interactive video conferencing outreach project
‘International Studies for Indiana Schools (ISIS)’ of Indiana University’s
International Programs, May 10
2005 Presenter and respondent for Hinduism on the panel ‘Understanding
Diversity’ in S100 (Social Work) course, Indiana University, Bloomington,
February 17
2004 Presenter of the program “Learn about India” during the ‘International
Education Week 2004’, sponsored by the U.S. Departments of Education
and State, to Grade VII students, Tell City Junior High School, IN, through
ISIS outreach project of Indiana University’s International Programs,
November 18
2003 Panelist addressing “India’s multi-linguistic, multi-religious, multi-cultural
heritage” at Indiana University’s Global Education Workshop 2003 on
‘Diversity in the World’, July 11
2003 Respondent for video in the ‘Great Decisions’ series of the U. S. Foreign
Policy Association and discussion on ‘India Today: A Rising Democracy’,
at the Meadowood Retirement Community Center, Bloomington,
February 12
2002 Panelist representing India at Indiana University’s Mini University session
on ‘Changing World Boundaries — Global Update’, June 17
2002 Host nation consultant for India in the Overseas Student Teaching Project
Spring Workshop, Indiana University School of Education, April 13
2001 Guest Lecturer on “Monotheism in Hinduism” in the course ‘Koranic
Studies’, Department of Near Eastern Languages and Cultures, Indiana
University, December 1
2001 Host nation consultant for India in the Overseas Student Teaching Project
Spring Workshop, Indiana University School of Education, April 7

6
2001 Guest Speaker on Hinduism at the Eastgate Christian Church: Disciples of
Christ, Indianapolis, March 18
2001 Respondent for India at the Indianapolis Children’s Museum ‘Bridges to
the World: Youth Trade Fair’ with ISIS outreach project of Indiana
University’s International Programs, March 2
2001 Presenter of “The Life and Culture of India” with ISIS Distance Learning
Programs on ‘Global Cultures’ to Grade III students, Deer Run Elementary
School, Indianapolis, February 23
2001 Presenter of ‘India’, with ISIS Distance Learning Programs on ‘World
Cultures’ to Grade VII students, Lebanon Middle School, IN, February 16
2000 Joint Speaker on ‘Ideas for Teaching about South Asia’, in Teaching about
Asia: A Workshop for K-12 Teachers, Annual Midwest Conference on
Asian Affairs, October 6
2000 Presenter of “The Daily Culture of India” to the Grades I-V students,
Lanesville Elementary School Summer Camp ‘Crossing the Continents: A
Classroom without Walls’, with ISIS Distance Learning Program, June 6
2000 Guest Speaker on Hinduism at the First Christian Church: Disciples of
Christ, Bloomington, June 4 and 25
2000 Presenter of ‘The Daily Culture of India’ to Grade II students of the Central
Elementary School, Indianapolis, with ISIS Distance Learning Program,
April 19
2000 Host nation consultant for India in the Overseas Student Teaching Project
Spring Workshop, Indiana University School of Education, April 8
2000 Joint-speaker on Hinduism in Bloomington Chamber of Commerce Panel
on ‘Faith Communities’, March 21
2000 Speaker on Hinduism in ‘Panel on Religion’ at Bloomington North High
School, February 25
1998 Respondent for video “Preferred Sex, Desired Numbers” and discussion
on ‘Regional Population Issues: India (and Africa)’, International Studies
Institute Summer Workshop, Indiana University–Bloomington, July 16

7
Committee Work
2002- Member of the Baccalaureate Committee of the Indiana University Board
2003 of Trustees (University Ceremonies)

NON-ACACEMIC WORK EXPERIENCE

2009 Consultant (Role Player) for SRAP Richard Holbroooke’s Interagency
Civilian-Military Integrated Training Course, organized by McKellar
Corporation in conjunction with U.S. Department of State (DoS), U.S.
Department of Defense (DoD), Department of Agriculture (USDA), and
United States Agency for International Development (USAID), at
Muscatatuck Center for Complex Operations, IN, July 11-16

1991- In-Charge of the office at a doctor’s clinic in Indore, India: Responsible

1995 for scheduling appointments, receiving patients, and dealing with the
paper-work

RESIDENCY ABROAD
India: as citizen 1969-1982, 1984-1996
Nigeria: 1982-1984
USA: as permanent resident 1996-1998, 1999-2009
Spain: 1998-1999
USA: as citizen 2009-present