Love Divine

Studies in 'Bhakti and Devotional Mysticism

Karel Werner

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2013
• ISBN:
  9781136774683
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Scienze sociali
• Subtopic: Studi sull'etnia

Explores the nature and function of bhakti or devotional involvement in religious practice in India in areas where it is seldom sought or where its existence has been doubted or even denied.

1

Bhakti and the Ṛg Veda—Does it Appear There or Not?

JEANINE MILLER

Introduction

Bhakti is a devotional element in the religious life of a people expressed as an intimate relationship between man and a personal God based on love and it also implies the idea of a God who feels intense love for man. This is the kind of bhakti that comes across from the later scriptures and religious literature of India, and it is not generally considered as playing any decisive role in the Vedas, let alone in the RV. The Vedas are usually studied for their mythological, liturgical, sacrificial, or even social and ethical content, but not for their devotional side, if it exists in them at all. The focus is usually on the ritualistic aspect of the Vedic religion, because the Vedas are seen as the composition of the sacerdotal class. Any personal devotional outpouring that the priests may have given vent to is usually either minimized or ignored altogether. Only seldom do we find an admission that the hymns to Varuna border on bhakti.

However, as many hymns were meant to be chanted at the ritual and were even received as inspired visions and composed during the rites, the inspiration was felt by the poets to be dependent on the graciousness and benevolence of the particular visiting deity. And therein lies plenty of room for the expression of a devotional attitude: the poets refer frequently to their heart, their yearning for the deity’s favour and their exaltation in their vision. I maintain that through an examination of the religious intensity of the ṛṣis reflected in the hymns, their devotional traits will come to light.

The Problems

The main reason why the occurrence of bhakti in the RV has not been acknowledged has its root in the widely differing atmosphere of this saṁhitā as against the later bhakti literature. But there is no real incompatibility between the two. A further reason is the fact that there is often a certain lack of insight into the background of the hymns, insufficient understanding of the inner meaning of some of the words employed and the problem of what the Vedic gods really mean to their worshippers and what is the role of sacrifice in relation to bhakti.

In the process of dealing with these problems one cannot avoid dealing to some extent with the question of what is the heart of the RV and what are its main values, with the problem of the song as the medium of devotion and therefore the vehicle of bhakti in the RV and with the question of the ultimate purpose.

General Comments

The consensus of scholarly opinion about the question of bhakti in the RV is summed up in one sentence by M. Das Gupta: ‘Bhakti involves an attitude of mind hardly compatible with the Vedic and Brahmanic idea of worship and ritualism.’¹

Some scholars, however, did seek the origin of the bhakti movement in India in the Vedas. The origins of bhakti as such are, of course, in the human heart, but we may certainly say that the first traces of its expression in India can be found in the Rgvedic hymns and not merely in those addressed to Varuṇa. Thus Solomon recognizes that ‘… certain elements in Vedic literature … are similar to the personal devotion and affectionate fellowship with the sacred which characterize Bhakti’.² He further mentions A.B. Keith as having ‘localized the origin of Bhakti in part in the Vedic hymns to Varuṇa’. This is what Keith says:

The thought of India started from a religion which had in Varuṇa a god of decidedly moral character, and the simple worship of that deity with its consciousness of sin and trust in the divine forgiveness is doubtless one of the first roots of Bhakti, a conception the foreign origin of which has now been abandoned generally.³

Bhakti expresses itself in different ways and the ways of the ancient ṛṣis were of course quite different from the ways of medieval bhaktas who cast aside the sacrificial mould and the priestly language. But what bhakti implies remains ever the same irrespective of conditions under which it flourishes and forms through which it expresses itself: faith, trust, devotion and worship. These stem from the human heart.

Nārada describes bhakti as ‘dedication of all acts to God and the intense anguish when one fails, or slips from one’s absorption in God’ (Bhakti Sūtra 19). The sage Kapila in BP (3.29.7), the purāṇa of bhakti par excellence, says: “The characteristic of pure devotion to the Supreme Being is that it has no motive and is incessant’.

That bhakti has no motive might be experienced in its highest stages, but in practice the devotee has always the burning desire to be close to his beloved deity, or to be forgiven in order to draw closer, and his every action is motivated by such desire. This motivation is love and all that it implies. Thus the great Sufi mystic Rabia, described by Attar as the ‘woman on fire with love’ and ‘consumed with her passion [for God]’ had but one desire, one motive: ‘O my Lord, if I worship thee from fear of hell, burn me in hell; and if I worship thee from hope of paradise, exclude me thence; but if I worship thee for thine own sake, then withhold not from me thine eternal beauty.’⁴

It is in the very essence of human weakness to ask, and the devotee is no exception, but his asking centres around the presence of the ‘Beloved’. This asking from God’s beneficence (whether of one or more gods) can be traced back to the ṛṣis of the RV. Their worship is a complete dedication to their god(s). What one does not find with them is the constant stressing of love for God as the be-all and the end-all of existence as was to be prevalent among the bhaktas of later India and in love mysticism elsewhere, particularly in the Sufi movement.

There is, in the RV, no god-intoxication in the later sense when only God is the sole ultimate reality and life is not worth living except in communion with God; no one-pointed search for God based on the longings of the love-intoxicated heart, the expression of love pure and simple, or love forbidden, or love in separation, or love in union, as e.g. in the poems of a Mahadeviyaka, culminating in complete self-naughting:

He bartered my heart,

looted my flesh,

claimed as tribute

my pleasure, took over

all of me.⁵

Nor is there in the RV any protest against established rites or customs, any defiance of social hierarchy, as with some bhakti movements, such as Vīraśaivism. But occasionally the bards do rise to heights of ecstatic rapture and pour out their praises on the gods in moments of enthusiasm, though not as passionately as the Āḻvārs among the Vaiṣṇavite saints of Tamil Nadu, or the Nāyaṉmārs among the Śaivite saints, in later centuries. The tone of the RV is, by comparison, rather sober. The aspiration is, e.g. for the ‘true sun’ or ‘the loftiest light beyond the darkness’ (1.50.10) ‘which mortals behold not’ (1.105.16), or for the heavenly light, or for entrance in the divine realms, or for a share of the divine grace or munificence or forgiveness. But appeals to particular gods and dialogues, or simulated dialogues, betraying an intimate attitude full of devotion, are there and have to be recognized. The intimation that the Lord alone is worth aspiring for is still missing, but a strong bhakti does transpire within the song, in the offering to the gods and in the attitude of the ṛṣis.

The question of grace looms large in the bhakti tradition. It later developed into two schools illustrated by the ‘cat’ and ‘monkey’ principles, respectively. In the former the soul is saved by God’s grace without effort on its own part as the kitten is carried by the scruff of its neck, in the latter some effort is needed as in the case of the monkey infant having to cling to its mother when being transported.

Favour or grace implies a certain unpredictability: to all appearances it is a gift, and the devotee never knows when it will be upon him. In the RV the ‘grace’ of a particular deity appears as a ‘favour’ granted by the deity, or the favourable or auspicious attitude of the god, his benevolence (sumati, bhadra). It manifests itself as blessings bestowed upon the worshipper, for the gods are by their very nature bounteous, munificent, bestowing abundantly (sudāvanāḥ), bound to hear the petitioner in his need or distress. But the prayers are not for deliverance from the shackles of this life or for perpetual bliss in the bosom of the deity, though some come close to the bhakta’s attitude in the oft repeated petition: ‘Be gracious unto us’ (6.15.9), as especially in the following: ‘O companions, we beg for the divine graces that the Lord of Prayer may exalt us, that for the bounteous god—him who gives from afar as a father—we may be sinless (7.97.2; cf. 8.19.4cd & 1.44.14).

Bhakti and Theism versus Henotheism

Some scholars claim that the path of bhakti is a path of utter consecration to one God. Grierson claims that ‘… devotional faith implies not only a personal God but one God. It is essentially a monotheistic attitude of the religious sense.’⁶

This can be challenged on the ground that from the narrower point of view there is but one God, but on the wider spectrum each worshipper woos a different aspect or form of the Deity with a different name. Due to the limitation of his mind man is incapable of conceiving the Absolute, but conceives one aspect of It, projects it on the screen of the cosmos and calls it God the Unique. Thus for one devotee there is but one God, namely Kṛṣṇa, for another there is equally but one God, namely Śiva, and for yet a third there is no other God but Allah, or Christ. Each has a completely monotheistic and intransigent attitude, conforming to his particular conception of God which may not correspond to that of the others. An impartial observer, however, may view the phenomenon of bhakti throughout the world and recognize that there is indeed one God for each devotee, but appearing to each one in a different form. Kabīr puts it very succinctly:

O Lord Increate, who will serve Thee?

Each votary offers his worship to the God of his own creation;

each day he receives service—

None seek Him, the Perfect, Brahma, the Indivisible Lord.

They believe in ten Avatars; but no Avatar can be the Infinite

Spirit, for he suffers the results of his deeds;

The Supreme One must be other than this.

The Yogi, the Sannyasi, the Ascetic, are disputing one with another:

Kabīr says, ‘O brother! He who has seen that radiance of love, he is saved.’⁷

The many gods of the ṛṣis did not produce the intransigence of later monotheists. In the moment of worship or need there is, for the ṛṣi, only one particular god he is addressing, though he may be aware at the back of his mind of the other manifestations to whom he may turn in due time. This awareness of the many masking the One is often expressed, e.g.: ‘Seers speak in many ways of what is One in nature; they call it Agni, Yama, Matariśvan’ (1.164.46). But while worshipping one particular god, the devotee gives to him his complete attention, his heart, his sacrificial offering. His devotional attitude is truly the same as is found in later bhakti. Even Grierson admits (ibid.):

We occasionally come across what is difficult to distinguish from bhakti even in Vedic hymns, especially those dedicated to Varuṇa. But this incipient monotheism fell still-born from the singer’s lips. The origin of monotheism from which bhakti sprang must be sought elsewhere than among the Brahmans of Northern India.

In emphasizing monotheism as a criterion of bhakti Grierson ignores the fundamental meaning of devotion which is inherent to human nature and can be shown to mother and father, brother and sister, and lover. The ṛṣis display true attitude of love to their gods which cannot be dismissed as ‘still-born’ only because it does not fit the monotheistic pattern. The evidence of devotion is obvious in the RV in many monologues and also in many dialogues between man and god. A personal relationship is established between them in the appeals, offerings and lively and loving or friendly communications which fully fall within the range of bhakti.

Henotheism is not, as M. Das Gupta put it, ‘mendacious flattery’, but rather, as contended by MacNicol, ‘the worshipper’s vivid realization of the presence and personality of one particular deity to whom he bows his head’.⁸ Or, as expressed by A.C. Bose, ‘… in henotheism there is a general devotional attitude towards the Divine and this attitude remains unchanged even if the Deities addressed are changed’.⁹

For the Vedic devotee even all the divine names are worthy of homage, praise and worship since they are the various aspects of what is one in nature (cf. 10.63.2; 10.114.5; 1.164.46). The idea of oneness recurs many times in different saṁhitās: ‘Mighty is the one godhead of the shining ones’ (RV 3.55.1). ‘In him all the gods become the one alone’ (AV 12.4.21; cf. also RV 3.54.17). The devotee gives his worship to the various aspects, forms and names of that which he knows is ‘that state of Being hidden in secret, wherein all find one resting-place; in That all this unites, from That all issue out. Omnipresent, It is warp and woof amidst creatures (YV 32.8; cf. also YV 40.8. and AV 4.16.8).

That Being—sat or state of being—to which the sages referred simply as tat, ‘That’, ‘whose shadow is death, whose shadow is immortality’ (RV 10.121.2) is itself beyond worship, imagina...