Kāma, Preman, and Bhakti in Śrīdhara’s Commentary on Kṛṣṇa and the Gopīs in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa

Our essay is a thematic exploration of the malleability of idioms, imageries, and affectivities of Hindu bhakti across the borderlines of certain Indic worldviews. We highlight the theological motif of the feminine-feminised quest of the seeker (virahiṇī) for her divine beloved in some Hindu expressions shaped by the paradigmatic scriptural text Bhāgavata-purāṇa and in some Punjabi Sufi articulations of the transcendent God’s innermost presence to the pilgrim self. The leitmotif that the divine reality is the “intimate stranger” who cannot be humanly grasped and who is yet already present in the recesses of the virahiṇī’s self is expressed with distinctive inflections both in bhakti-based Vedānta and in some Indo-Muslim spiritual universes. This study is also an exploration of some of the common conceptual currencies of devotional subjectivities that cannot be straightforwardly cast into the monolithic moulds of “Hindu” or “Muslim” in pre-modern South Asia. Thus, we highlight the essentially contested nature of the categories of “Hinduism” and “Indian Islam” by indicating that they should be regarded as dynamic clusters of constellated concepts whose contours have been often reshaped through concrete socio-historical contestations, borrowings, and adaptations on the fissured lands of al-Hind.

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Why Śrīdhara Svāmī? The Makings of a Successful Sanskrit Commentary

Religions ◽

10.3390/rel11090436 ◽

2020 ◽

Vol 11 (9) ◽

pp. 436

Author(s):

Ravi M. Gupta

Keyword(s):

Early Modern ◽

Bhāgavata Purāṇa ◽

Bhagavata Purana ◽

Insight Into

Śrīdhara Svāmī’s commentary on the Bhāgavata Purāṇa, called Bhāvārtha-dīpikā and composed sometime between the mid-fourteenth to the mid-fifteenth centuries, has exerted extraordinary influence on later Bhāgavata commentaries, and indeed, on Vaiṣṇava traditions more generally. This article raises a straightforward question: “Why Śrīdhara?” Focusing on the Caitanya Vaiṣṇava tradition, particularly Jīva Gosvāmī, for whom Śrīdhara is foundational, we ask, “What is it about Śrīdhara Svāmī’s commentary—both stylistically and theologically—that made it so useful to Caitanya Vaiṣṇavas and other Bhāgavata commentators?” This question, to the extent that it can be answered, has implications for our understanding of Śrīdhara’s theology as well as the development of the early Caitanya Vaiṣṇava tradition, but it can also lend insight into the reasons for Śridhara’s influence more generally in early modern India.

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