THE CULTS OF SHIVA AND KRISHNA....

The cults of Krishna and Shiva The further development of Vaishnavism is characterised by the rise of the Krishna cult. Krishna was no longer regarded as only one of the incarnations (avatara) of Vishnu, but as the highest god himself. The Bhagavata Purana, perhaps the greatest of all Puranas, which was composed in the tenth or eleventh century, was devoted to this elevation of Krishna. The mysticism of the Krishna cult found its most vivid expression in the poet Jayadeva’s Gitagovinda, composed around 1200 either in Bengal or Orissa. The poet describes in emotional and erotic terms the love of Radha and Krishna. The quest of the soul (Radha) for the unificationwith god (Krishna) is symbolised in this way. At the same time, god is visibly attracted to the soul—hence his being praised as Radhakrishna, the god who is identified by his love. Nimbarka and Vallabha, two South Indian Brahmins, settled down at Mathura (near Brindaban) which is associated with Krishna’s life on earth. Here they pursued their metaphysical speculations concerning this relationship between Radha and Krishna. To them, Radha became a universal principle which enables god (Krishna) to communicate with this world. Not much is known about Nimbarka’s life. Vallabha lived from 1479 to 1531. He was the founder of the Vallabhacharya sect, which became known for its erotic Radhakrishna cult. Vallabha’s contemporary was Chaitanya (1485–1533), who is still revered today as the greatest saint of the Vaishnavites. Born in Navadvipa, Bengal, he was the son of a Brahmin and was worshipped even in his lifetime as an incarnation of Krishna. He spent the last two decades of his life at Puri in Orissa, devoting himself to the ecstatic worship of Jagannath, the highest form of Krishna. Often in a state of trance for hours, he would also swoon or rave in emulation of Radha distressed by Krishna’s absence. After his death he is said to have merged with the statue of Jagannath. Neither a teacher nor a philosopher, Chaitanya left it to his followers to record his sayings. At his behest Mathura was chosen by his disciples as the centre of the Krishna cult. This was a very important decision because, in this way, Northern India emerged from several centuries’ eclipse by the rapid development of Hinduism in South and Central India. The region now began to regain religious importance. During the reign of the Great Mughal, Aurangzeb, the Rana of Mewar secretly removed the statue of Krishna from Mathura in order to install it more safely near his capital, Udaipur, where the temple of Nathdvara is still one of the greatest and richest centres of pilgrimage in India, even today. The head of this temple is regarded as the highest priest among the Vaishnavites. Shaivism also gave rise to many popular sects. They all agreed that the ‘Great God’ (Mahadeva) was the very foundation of the universe, but they gave different answers to the great question about the relation of god to the individual soul and to inanimate matter. They also had very different rites with which they distinguished themselves from each other, as well as from the Vaishnavites. In North India the most prominent school of thought was Kashmir Shaivism, founded by Vasugupta, a renowned teacher, in the early ninth century. Vasugupta advocated a kind of monism which, in contrast to that of Shankara did not regard the real world as illusion; rather, it was an emanation of the divine spirit. Shiva becomes compared to a painter who creates the image of the world within himself and needs neither canvas nor colours. Because this school of thought aims at the recognition of Shiva in this image created by him, it is referred to as
the ‘philosophy of recognition’. It is said that this cosmology was also influenced by Mahayana Buddhism. The most prominent exponent of Kashmir Shaivism was Abhinavagupta, who lived in Kashmir in the eleventh century and was also known for his writings on the theory of Sanskrit literature. Kashmir Shaivism was nearly eradicated in its birthplace when Islamic conquerors overran Kashmir in the fourteenth century. But even today many pandits belong to this school of thought which provides an unparalleled combination of monist philosophy, the practice of yoga and the worship of the Great God. South Indian Shaivism—originally shaped by the thought and poetry of the Nayanars—produced in later medieval times the school of Shaiva Siddhanta and a famous reform sect, the Lingayats. Shaiva Siddhanta (‘the definitive system of Shaivism’) can be traced back to the Nayanars, but it attained its final form only in the thirteenth and fourteenth centuries. With this new system the Shaivites could match the overpowering influence of Ramanuja’s Vaishnavite philosophy which had put them on the defensive for quite some time. This system served the same purpose of reconciling earlier orthodoxy with the ideas of the Bhakti movement. But even though both Vaishnavism and Shaivism had now achieved a new synthesis, the conflict between Brahmins and heterodox popular movements arose again and again in the course of the Middle Ages and spawned new sects. Whereas the Christian church in Europe fiercely suppressed such sectarian movements (e.g. the Albigensians), Hinduism usually absorbed or reintegrated these sects. The Lingayat sect is an exception to this general rule.......