CKP (Chandraseniya kAyastha-s)

Motivation

  • “Gupte (1919, pp. 6-7) reports that the question of the Vedic rites for the CKPs began with Balāji Avaji’s desire to have the upanayana ceremony performed for his elder son in Sake 1591 (1669AD). However, Shivāji’s Brahmin ministers Moropant Pingle and Raghunathpant Amātya opposed this notion. Shivāji then sent this dispute to Anantadeva and Gāgābhaṭṭa in Banaras.”

Later reignition

  • “Nāyak (1877) provides important local narratives explaining some of the reasons why the fights between the Prabhus (CKP as well as Pathare/Pattanes) and the Chitpavan Brahmins may have reignited in the region of Konkan in the middle of the 18th century.”
  • “The first reason Nayak offers is that the Prabhus were appointed as officers by the Portugese in areas like Vasai close to Mumbai, where they were required by the Portugese to force all Hindus including Brahmins to join in forced labor (Veth). The Brahmins and the Chitpavans in the region in particular held the Prabhus responsible for this.”
  • “The second reason offered is that the Prabhus in the region of Mumbai built the Siddhivinayak Ganesh temple in Mumbai, and offered the priest-ship to Deshastha Brahmins, disregarding the claims of the local Chitpavan Brahmins. This apparently enraged the Konkan Brahmins to take their fights to local officials of the Peshwas.”

Support

  • They claimed descent from kShatriya-s (see theory page) by a story which explained their functioning as accountants. Generic arguments in support of kShatriya existence in kali age is described in the theory page.
  • Gāgābhaṭṭa allowed them the ceremony of Upanayana, only as a rite of passage (samskāra), but did not allow them the study of the Veda. There is a letter sent out by Raghunātha Paṇḍita, a minister of Shivāji, to the CKPs that refers to Anantadeva and Gāgābhaṭṭa and says that these great scholars had resolved the question of the Kṣatriyahood of the CKPs and their eligibility for Upanayana.
  • “Another work, Parabhūjātinirṇaya (BORI mss 567/1883-1884), gives a fascinating account of the fights of CKPs with Brahmins, but the text seems to refer to the disputes covering the period of Sambhāji and Rajaram, and refers to a nirṇaya made by Keśava Paṇḍita.”
  • “Sumitra Kulkarni (1995: 189) reports: The issue whether the Prabhus were the Kshatriyas or not was discussed for two years in a conference held at the Belbag in Poona. It is interesting to note that on this issue the Brahmin caste itself was divided into two groups. Raghavacharya Gajendragadkar, a well known learned pandit and ‘Vajra-Taka’ were of the opinion that the prabhus were the Kshatriyas. The opposite group was headed by Nilkaṇṭhashastri Thatte, a learned pandit and expert on Hindu Dharmashastra.”

Disagreement

ShAhu time

  • “Other Brahmins were not so sympathetic to the cause of the CKPs in later times. A series of documents from the Satara court of Shāhu, Shivāji’s grandson, reveal how the issue erupted and, in spite of Shāhu’s sympathy in favor of the CKPs, was for a while resolved against them under the pressure of a massive demonstration by the Brahmins of Pune, Vai, and Satara. With ten thousand Brahmins converging upon Satara, including representatives of Brahmins from Shringeri and Varanasi, the mass śāstrasabhā decided the issue against the CKPs. Here the documents refer to the story of Dālbhya, but with a new twist. The CKPs are made out to be the sons of a Dāsī of Dālbhya, and hence clearly belonging to the status of śūdras. The Karhada Brahmin, Mr. Athalye, who sided with the CKPs and represented their case at the court of Shāhu, was forced to undergo a prāyascitta “expiation” and admit his mistake.”

Sawai Madhavrao Peshwa

  • Referring to a number of such antecedents, Sawai Madhavrao Peshwa issued a stiff set of conditions on the behavior of the CKPs to which they were forced to agree in writing (katabā lihūn dila)-
    • We shall not perform any of our rites with Vedic mantras. Even if known, we will not utter the Vedic mantras.
    • We will not make rice pindas during the srāddha.
    • We will carry out the worship of Devi and other rites as per the Purāṇas.
    • We will not invite Brahmins for a meal in our homes.
    • We will not do sāligrāma-pūjā.
    • We will worship only at those shrines where the śūdras worship.
    • We will say dandavat to Brahmins.
    • We will not employ Brahmin men and women as servants inside or outside of our homes.
  • “The surviving historical documents indicate to us the political-executive power that the Sawai Madhavrao Peshwa put behind this decision. Vad (1911, 287 fr.) not only provides the text of the order issued by the Sawai Madhavrao Peshwa, he also gives a long list of 196 names of individuals and localities to whom copies of this order were sent and these individuals were advised that any violations of this order would lead to stiff penalties. Without the backing of the executive authority of the Peshwa, the nirṇayapatra would have remained ineffective.”

Nīlakaṇṭha Shastri Thatte and shankarAchArya

  • “In 1825, Balwantrao Chitnis, the secretary of the Satara Raja, requested the śaṅkarācārya of the Sankeshwar Math to resolve the question of the Kṣatriyahood of the CKPs. Without resolving the root question, the śaṅkarācārya simply asserted that each caste should be allowed to continue with its own established tradition, and no change in this practice should be made. However, when the śaṅkaracārya later traveled to Poona, the prominent local Brahmins persuaded him to revise his decision and to declare that the CKPs and the Sonars were no more than śūdras. Among the leading Brahmins opposing the Kṣatriya status of the CKPs were Chintamanrao Patwardhan, the Chief of Sangli, and Bālajeepant Natu, the former assistant to Grant Duff and Mountstuart Elphinstone. Nilakaṇṭha Shastri Thatte was related to Bālajeepant Natu.”
  • “Pandit Nīlakaṇṭha Shastri Thatte (1750-1834AD) of the late Peshwa and early British period in Maharashtra opposed it. He was a great grammarian, who is said to have studied with the great grammarian Vaidyanātha Pāyagunde (1690-1780AD), who was himself a direct disciple of the illustrious grammarian Nāgeśabhaṭṭa (1650- 1730AD), a junior contemporary of the great Gāgābhaṭṭa. He was highly respected at the Peshwa court. Though Nīlakaṇṭha Shastri Thatte never officially served at the Peshwa court, he was the Adalat Shastri in Satara from 1818 to 1821 (S. Kulkarni 1995: 143). It appears that Nīlakaṇṭha Shastri Thatte got involved in the so-called Grāmaṇyas “restrictions” on groups like the CKPs and Sonars who claimed to be Kṣatriyas and Brahmins respectively.”
  • “The issue whether the Prabhus were the Kshatriyas or not was discussed for two years in a conference held at the Belbag in Poona. … Wagle (1980 and 1982) has discussed in detail the daily oscillations during this debate and the narratives discussed by Wagle, with original sources documented by T.V. Gupte (1904 and 1912), K.T. Gupte (1919), and Thakare (1919), seem to suggest that Nilakaṇṭha Shastri Thatte went on changing his positions under pressures of various kind, though finally he comes across from these narratives as an arch opponent of the CKPs.”
  • “Kāyastha-parabhū-dharmādarsa must lie between ad 1823 and ad 1827, the date of the manuscript of this work. The Kāyastha-parabhū-dharmādarsa of Nilakaṇṭha Shastri Thatte[17] is not a serious Dharmaśāstric contribution, but looks like a work of convenience. First he introuduces only one type of Kāyastha, a mixed caste born from the union of a Māhiṣya woman and a Vaideha man. The Māhiṣya woman herself is the progeny of a mixed Kṣatriya+Vaisya parentage, and the Vaideha man is also the progeny of a Vaisya man and a Brahmin woman. Thus, the Kāyastha is a second generation mixed progeny. Such a progeny cannot be Kṣatriya. Then he cites Kamalākara (author of the well known śūdrakamalākara)[18] and says that according to Kamalākara, there are two more types of Kāyasthas, namely the Citragupta Kāyasthas and the Cāndraseniya Kāyasthas. This is somewhat similar to what Gāgābhaṭṭa reports in his Kāyasthadharmadīpa. However, citing some of the same narratives as Gāgābhaṭṭa, Nīlakaṇṭha Shastri Thatte interprets the line rāmājnayā sa dālbhyena kṣatra-dharmād bahiskrtah to mean that, to save the life of the child of the queen of Candrasena, Dālbhya categorically made him un-Kṣatriya. He removed his Kṣatriyadharma, namely his Kṣatriyahood.”

Support

  • “He was clearly not a lone villain, but represented the continuity of the majority Brahmin opinion that had developed during the period of Narayan Rao Peshwa, and reflected in the views of Ayyāshastri, who succeeded the well known Ramashastri Prabhuṇe, as the Nyāyādhisa at the late Peshwa court. … Nilakaṇṭha Shastri Thatte’s opinions were not limited to his own views, they were in line with the arguments offered by large numbers of Brahmins from Satara, Vai and Pune, as seen from the documents (P.N. Patwardhan 1912), and hence collectively they represented a socially and politically powerful force against the defenders of the rights of the CKPs.”

Text manipulation

Observations

  • In subsequent disputes on the same issue, two versions of Gāgābhaṭṭa’s work on the Kāyasthas seem to have appeared. As K.T. Gupte (1919) reports, the Kāyastha-dharma-dīpa became available in two versions at some point.
  • The Kāyastha-dharma-dīpa known to Gupte prescribed non-Vedic rites for Kāyasthas, but then contained a statement that the Cāndrasenīya Kāyastha Prabhus were not to be treated as śūdras, and that Vedic rites for them will be taught in another text, namely the Kāyastha-dharma-pradīpa: “citragupta-cāndrasenīya-kāyasthayor vedokta-mantra-sahitāḥ kriyās, tās tu matkr̥ta-kāyastha-pradīpe draṣṭavyāh. atra tu kapilakṣīrapānenety ādini kāyasthānām vedādhikāra-niṣedha-parāni vākyāny uktāni. tāni tu saṅkaraja-parāni (iti) bodhyam. citragupta-kāyastha-cāndrasenīya-kāyastha-saṅkaraja-kāyasthā iti kāyastha-padasya jāti-traye ‘pi sattvāt kāyastha-padena bhramād dharma-saṅkaro bhavati. tatra ādau asmin granthe śaṅkaraja-kāyasthānām dharma-karmāṇy ucyante. atha kāyastha-dharma-pradipe citragupta-cāndrasenīyayor dharmān vakśyāmi”
  • “There are textual indications that the Kāyastha-dharma-pradīpa as printed by Gupte (1919) is concocted by altering the text of the Kāyastha-dharma-dīpa. The benediction of the Kāyastha-dharma-dipa reads: natvābhīra-kiśoraṁ coraṁ vidyudvad-ambudha(da?)-prakhyam / kāyastha-dharma-dipaṁ gāgābhaṭṭas tanoti līlātaḥ // The benediction of the Kāyasthadharmapradīpa reads: natvābhīra-kiśoram coram vidyudvad-ambudha-prakhyam / kāyastha-pradipo ‘yam gāgābhaṭṭas tanoti lilātah. Here the second line of the verse does not even scan metrically and is ungrammatical. It seems most likely that the Kāyastha-dharma-pradīpa is a slightly altered version of the Kāyastha-dharma-dīpa.”

Conclusions

  • MD - “I have not found this passage in the Kāyastha-dharma-dīpa mss at the BORI (# 342/ 1887— 1891). I have not found any reference to Kāyastha-dharma-pradīpa in the BORI mss.”
  • MD07 - “One needs to carefully go through the available manuscript material and its origin in order to fully understand what is going on. It seems likely that Gāgābhaṭṭa’s original work did offer Vedic rites for the Kāyastha Prabhus of Maharashtra (as seen in the BORI ms of the Kāyastha-dharma-dipa). Then someone produced a version of Gāgābhaṭṭa’s work that treated all Kāyasthas, without exception, as śaṅkaraja śūdras, and took away their Vedic rites.[10] At this point, a pro-CKP pandit inserted the above quoted statement into the text of that work, saying that the vedic rites for the CKPs will be treated in a separate supplementary work, namely the Kāyasthadharmapradīpa, and produced that version.[11] This seems to be a likely course of events, though one cannot be certain without checking all the available manuscript material and its origins.”