A History of the Dasnami Naga Sannyasis

Ananda Bhattacharyya

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• eBook ISBN: 9780429942808
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Social Sciences
• Subtopic: Regional Studies
• Index: Social Sciences

Organized Naga military activity originally flourished under state patronage. During the latter half of the sixteenth century and the early part of the seventeenth century, a number of bands of fighting ascetics formed into akharas with sectarian names and identities.
The Dasnami Sannyasis constitute perhaps the most powerful monastic order which has played an important part in the history of India. The cult of the naked Nagas has a long history. The present volume aims to explore new findings which are available in various archives and repositories in order to fill up the lacuna in Jadunath Sarkar's work on the subject as elaborated in the present introduction.

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Chapter 1
Life of Shankarāchārya

The entire course of Hindu life and thought after the age of Buddhism has been dominated by the influence of two intellectual giants and made to flow in two nearly allied channels which were laid down in their teachings. Between them they have divided the empire of Hindu philosophy and religious organisation. Other leaders of thought, I admit, there have been among us; but they were men of lesser note; they have influenced smaller or local sections of the population only, and the philosophy that inspires their teaching has derived itself from one or other of these two originators of thought, sometimes in a modified, sometimes in a hostile form. Among the founders of Vaishnav theology, Nimbārka and Mādhwa Āchārya, Chaitanya and Vallabh Āchārya occupy the highest places and exert the widest influence; Chaitanya dominates the religious life of Bengal, Orissa and (partly) Assam, while Vallabha’s sect prevails in Gujrat, Mewar and some other regions.

These two directors of Hindu religious thought as we know it to-day, are Shankarāchārya and Rāmānuja. Both combined saintly purity with Shastric learning and intellectual acumen of the highest degree; both have continued to be venerated by millions as two incarnations of the God-head. Of them Rāmānuja was later in point of time, and his influence has spread over a smaller circle of men and a more restricted empire than Shankar’s. Moreover, the school of Rāmānuja is professedly a breakaway from that of Shankar, it carries his philosophy on to a new line and therefore implies the previous existence of the latter.

So much for Shankar’s place in the history of the evolution of Indian philosophy. His influence on the daily life of the people has been equally great, and this marks him out from mere abstract philosophers, however, eminent such philosophers might be in thought.

Europe has long debated the question as to how Christianity could convert the Roman empire. A century and a quarter after Gibbon’s famous analysis of the causes of this marvellous success, English scholars have come to the conclusion that the early Christian Church by imitating the administrative organisation of the Roman Empire, built up a system of work which no other religion had adopted and which made its conversion of the Roman world so easy and Speedy. The organisation of the Dasnāmi orders is the eternal monument to Shankarāchārya’s disciples who completed the great Master’s mission on earth, as will be described in Chapter 5 of this book.

Long before the birth of Shankar, monastic orders, or organised brotherhoods of religious devotees living together under the discipline of a superior authority and coordinating the efforts of different houses of the same sect, had been given to India by Buddha. He had valued his monks as instrument of his religion so highly that he had made the Monastic order called Sangha a member of the Buddhist Trinity, equal to Buddha and Dharma: “I seek refuge with the Buddha; I seek refuge with the Dharma, I seek refuge with the Sangha,” this is the cardinal prayer of the Buddhist in every land where that faith is still pure. And monastic regulations called Vinaya, are an essential part of the Buddhist scriptures. Solitary anchorites and religious ascetics living apart from the busy world and seeking their individual salvation had been known in India from the Vedic age, or probably even earlier, from the first dawning of conscience in the human race. But the Dasnāmi orders made Hindu monachism serve the good of the vast body of Hindu society, of which the only parallel was supplied by Mahayan Buddhism in its best days.

The Dasnāmi monks have held the twofold ideal of astra and shastra (sword and scripture), i.e. the cultivation of theology for the spiritual education of the people and the pursuit of arms for the defence of their religion against the attacks of brute force. In this respect they have anticipated the fighting monks of Christianity, who originated as late as the twelfth century;¹ while the Nagas or militant Sannyasis of India first appear in history several centuries earlier. Therefore, a study of these orders must start at its source, with the life and work of Shankarāchārya.

The extant biographies of Shankar were all composed several centuries after his death. Two of them hold a prominent place, namely (1) Samkahepa-Shankara-jayah, written in verse by Mādhavāchārya, and (2) Shankara-Digvijay by Ananta-Ānanda Giri. This second work is much later than Mādhav’s book, though it has been wrongly ascribed by some to Shankar’s personal disciple Ānanda-giri, the famous commentator. Both these works profess to derive their information from a now lost life of Shankar, which is traditionally supposed to have been written by a direct disciple of Shankar. Nearly 800 verses alleged to be quoted from this lost book, are given in the old commentary on Mādhava’s work by Dhanpati Suri, and some more in Ananta-Ānanda-Giri’s book. Thus, the modern historian of Shankar is left with only the legend of Shankar as developed by pious tradition, and he must try to judge of the narratives in the light of probability and the known facts about the Indian world in the supposed age of Shankar.

Leaving out the supernatural legends that have gathered round the name of Shankar in the course of several centuries, we shall trace the outline of his career as far as it is now possible to reconstruct it. There may be questions about the exact epoch of Shankar and the incidents of his life; but there can be no two opinions about his profound influence on Indian religion and philosophy in all subsequent ages. It is his synthetic monist philosophy (Adwaitavad) which is of primary concern to mankind. Therefore, only a brief summary of his legendary life will precede our exposition of his philosophy and our description of the organisation of his church.

More than a thousand years ago, at the village of Keledi in the Kerala country (or Cochin) in the extreme south of the Indian Peninsula, near the bank of the Purnā River, there lived a Brāhman named Vidyādhirāj. He was devoted solely to learning and piety, as the entire village had been granted as a free gift (agrahar) to a Brāhman colony which settled round a temple to the god Shiva, built by an ancient king named Rajashekhar (who must not be confounded with the historical personage, the author of Karpura manjari. His scholarly son Shiva-guru and saintly daughter-in-law Sati, were devoted adorers of Shiva, and by the grace of that god they were blessed with a son of marvellous beauty and superhuman intellectual power. The boy, having lost his father in infancy, was sent at the age of five to a teacher’s house, where in two years he mastered the entire cycle of Hindu learning that others normally take sixteen years to go through. Returning to his mother’s lonely home, this infant prodigy set up as a teacher of the Shāstrās and drew crowds of pupils by his wonderful genius and scholarship. Even the local Raja besought his aid in correcting and improving his own three dramatic compositions in the Sanskrit language. At the age of eight, the boy-professor was inwardly seized with vairagya or the passion for renouncing the world and its joys, while his fond mother was scheming to marry him to a suitable bride and settle him at home. But home is not the place for a redeemer of mankind. Shankar persuaded his mother to set him free and work out his evident destiny. He took up the robe of Brahmachari or theological student and set out from home with a view to learning the rules and practices of monastic devotion from a master of spiritual knowledge (Brahma-vidya).

Going to Onkār-Māndhātā, a rocky island in the middle of the Narmadā River, Shankar entered himself as a disciple of the celebrated philosopher Govindapāda, who was popularly believed to be the ancient sage Patanjali himself, living a thousand years in a state of yogic trance in a cave nearby. The primeval sage awoke at the arrival of his destined disciple and heir to his philosophical mission. Here under his expert teaching, Shankar mastered the full theory and practice of yoga. At last the preceptor addressed him thus: “My son! I have nothing more to teach you, I know that you are Siva himself, come to earth in human shape for teaching the divine lore of Monism (Adwaita Brahma-vidya)…. I have fitted you with knowledge for the task, and I now throw away the earthly body which I had preserved these thousand years solely for this object.” Here Shankar was initiated as a Sannyasi by Govindapāda and clad in the red robe which is the outward mark of Hindu monks. Then after bidding Shankar to go to Benares, the religious centre of all the Hindus, as the best place for his propaganda. Govindapāda passed into the Nirvana of voluntarily suspended animation by yogic power (cf. Kalidas: Yogen-ante tanu-tyajam).

At Benares, Shankar’s new exposition of the Shāstrās and his persuasive commentary on the Brahma Sutra (aphorisms of God-knowledge) and the supernatural genius displayed by such a youthful teacher, created the greatest astonishment among the circle of scholars and devotees who had assembled there from all parts of India. The pandits who presumed to challenge him to controversy, were quickly silenced by his wonderful scholarship, logical keenness, and gift of lucid exposition. At this holy city he made his first disciple, Sanandan, a Brāhman youth from the bank of the Kaveri in the Chola country (Eastern Karnatak), who had come there on a tour in search of a true teacher; he was instinctively drawn towards Shankar, and after having been tested for some days was found to be of the true stuff, and was initiated by Shankar as a monk. He became the great Master’s first apostle under the name of Padmapāda. This disciple lived to be his right-hand man in theological writing and propaganda work.

A charming story is told in Mādhav’s poetical life (Canto VI, Stanzas 25-51), One day Shankar, on his way to the holy river at Benares, met a man of the lowest caste (Antyaja) and shouted to him, “Be off; dont pollute me with your touch”. The seeming sweeper replied, “You consider me as separate from yourself, and yet you profess to be a Monist and to hold that the Divine Soul animates all creation and that the material world is a mere illusion without any real existence; You thus admit that there is a material distinction between a pure and an impure man.” The argument was unanswerable. Shankar was dumbfounded and humbled himself before the stranger, who then revealed himself as the God Shiva in disguise and vanished after pronouncing this blessing, “You will triumphantly esablish the Monist view of the godhead (Adwaita-vad) in the world”.

And at Benares, too, Shankar had another very interesting encounter (Mādhav, Canto VII, Stanzas 1-57). One day, he is said to have been accosted by an old Brāhman looking like a simpleton. It was really Vyās, the composer of the sacred Vedas and the epic Mahābhārat, who had come to test him. The course of their controversy is of extreme interest, but it can be fully appreciated only by readers who have a thorough knowledge of Sanskrit grammar and philosophy. At last the highly gratified sage Vyās revealed himself as his trueself and left after pronouncing this blessing:

“My child: Fate gave you eight years of life; you have earned eight more by your genius (Sudhiya). And by the grace of Shiva you will enjoy sixteen additional years of life, while your commentary (Bhashya) of my (Brahma Sutra) will live as long as the sun, the moon and the stars shall endure. During these sixteen years, with your words which are ever vigilant in uprooting the sprouts of pride in the champions of false faith (Dualism), you will make the opponents of Monism give up their belief in the distinct existence of the Creator and Creation (Bheda Vidya)”.

Thereafter, Shankar was seized with a longing to meet Kumārila Bhatta, the first great Hindu scholar who had raised his head against the dominant Buddhistic philosophy and tried to restore the supremacy of the Vedic religion. He was a Brāhman of the Chola Country² and the paternal uncle of the famous Buddhist philosopher Dharma-Kirti.

Shankar met the aged Kumārila at Allahabad. That venerable scholar was then on the point of death. But he was so impressed by reading Shankar’s commentary on the Brahma Sutra that he blessed the young scholar and predicted that Shankar would establish Vedantic monotheism (Adwaita) for more extensively and triumphantly than he himself had succeeded in doing (Mādhav, Vll. 62-end).

Then, as directed by Kumārila with his last breath, Shankar went to Mahishmati on the Narmadā, in order to meet Mandan Mishra, whom Kumārila held to be his best pupil and almost his second self. Mandan was the highest expert practitioner of the Vedic sacrifices and other rituals in that age. He was blessed with a wife named Saraswati (alias Ubhay Bhārati) who even surpassed him in learning and was popularly held to be the Goddess of Learning (Saraswati) incarnate. She alone was fitted to act as judge in the ensuing theological controversy between her husband and Shankar.

The story goes that when our shaven-headed youthful mendicant from the Kerala country, was rudely turned out by the porters at the gate of Mandan’s palatial residence, he displayed his supernatural yogic powers and effected an entrance into the hall by vaulting over its wall, to the surprise and anger of the aristocratic Mandan Then ensued a word-combat between the two philosophers which is the delight of all who can understand Sanskrit. The play on the double meaning of words and the logical thrust and parry of their rival tongues, which had been sharpened by the constant practice of grammatical and philosophical disputation, in the course of this short preliminary skirmish between the two, have been given in Mādhava’s biography, Canto VIII. It is unique in Sanskrit literature, but defies translation into English without spoiling its full effect.

Then followed a regular intellectual duel. For 18 days in succession the two debated before the lady Saraswati seated in the judge’s seat. At last Mandan admitted himself beaten by the superior learning of Shankar, became his disciple and agreed to write a Vārtika on Shankar’s famous Bhashya of the Brahma Sutra. This work was destined to establish Vedantic monism against Budhism and other hostile creeds in the Indian world of scholarship. Mandan renounced the world and turned sannyasi; his wife gave up her earthly body because a Sanyasi cannot be accompanied by a wife. Such is the legend.

After his long drawn-out victory over Mandan Mishra, Shankar set out on the conquest of the then known world of scholarship. This is the famous Digvijaya or world-empire of the intellect, in the course of which he defeated the champions of Buddhism, Jainism, Tantricism and every other religion that refused to accept Monism. The details fill many pages in his extant biographies (Canto XIV).

Then, at the end of a long tour of pilgrimage (Cantos XI and XII), after visits to Srishailam (an all but inaccessible hilltop in the heart of the Nala Mālāi forest of the Kurnool district), Gokarna on the West Coast, and other famous shrines, Shankar settled for a time at the forest-village of Shringa-Giri (Sringeri) in the Western Chalukya empire. At a Brāhman village named Sriveli, he gained as his disciple, an infant prodigy thenceforth known as Hastāmalak Āchārya. In the pure, lovely and solitary environment of nature which he found at Sringeri, Shankar founded his first monastery, on the bank of the Tungabhadra River, around which a colony of his lay admirers and followers soon sprang up. The Raja of the country and his officers gave every help, thatched cottages for residence were built by the hundred for pilgrims and devotees, so that the place grew into a hermitage or tapovan of Rishis. Among the permanent structures the first to be built was a temple to the Goddess of learning (Sarada). This typified the combination of theological learning with daily devotional rites, which is the cardinal point of Shankar’s creed and the subject of his constant charge to his disciple.³

Shankar passed many years at Sringeri, composing books and teaching his followers. This was the most fertile period of his brain and the literary products of this period have remained as his permanent legacy for the instruction and consolation of seekers after truth.

He had previously enlisted among his disciples three men destined to be leaders after him: Padmapād, Sureshwar and Hastamalak, and now at Sringeri he secured another genius, Trotak Āchārya, formerly called Giri.

These four with other disciples formed a great school of learning and wrote many Sanskrit works popularising Shankar’s teaching in a clear charming style. Sringeri thus became a living fountain of God-knowledge and Hindu scholarship.

From Sringeri Shankar paid a visit to his native villa...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Contents
• Preface to the Second Edition
• Abbreviations
• Introduction
• Foreword
• Preface to the First Edition
• 1. Life of Shankarāchārya
• 2. The Date of Shankarāchārya
• 3. Shankarāchārya’s Teachings
• 4. The Ten Orders or Dasnamis
• 5. Rules and Practices of Dasnami Monks
• 6. The Akharas and their Constitution: Past History of the Akharas
• 7. Householder or Grihastha Gosavis
• 8. Hindu Fighting Priest: Their Early History
• 9. Rajendra Giri Gosain (ad 1751-1753)
• 10. Anupgiri alias Himmat Bahadur: Early Career
• 11. In the Jat Service, 1764-1766
• 12. In Bundelkhand and Oudh Service
• 13. In the Emperor’s Service
• 14. Later Service under the Empire: Anupgiris Diplomacy, 1782-1784
• 15. Mahadji Sindhia and the Gosains: Anupgiri’s Rupture with Mahadji Sindhia and Recovery of Power (November 1784-October 1788)
• 16. The Last Stage 1789-1804 Rupture with Mahadji Sindhia and Migration to Bundelkhand
• 17. Military Services under our Princes
• 18. Gosains in Banking Administration and Civil Administration
• 19. A Short History of Akhara Mahanirvani (Contributed)
• Index