Ramanandi

Renunciant ascetics, devotees (bhakta)
of the god Vishnu, who are by far the
most numerous and most influential of
the Vaishnava ascetics. The Ramanandis
claim that their order was founded by
the religious teacher Ramananda, about
whom little is definitely known. For
some time the Ramanandis maintained
that Ramananda had been a disciple of the
southern Indian philosopher Ramanuja,
and thus that their sect had sprung out
of Ramanuja’s Shrivaishnava religious
community, but this claim was formally renounced after a dispute at the
Kumbha Mela festival in the city of
Ujjain in 1921. Ramananda is also traditionally thought to have been the
guru of many northern Indian bhakti
figures, most notably Kabir, Ravidas,
Pipa, and Sen, although on this matter
too there is little hard historical evidence.
553
Ramanandi
All of the stories about Ramananda,
however, point to someone who was
firm in his commitment to devotion and
was willing to initiate people from all
walks of society.
The tutelary deity for the Ramanandi
ascetics is Rama, particularly as described
in the Ramcharitmanas, a vernacular version of the epic Ramayana written by
the poet-saint Tulsidas (1532–1623?).
Tulsidas portrays Rama as God incarnate, come to earth for the benefit of his
devotees, and the text’s primary theme
is on the power of devotion. Yet within
the larger confines of the Ramanandi
fold there are several distinct variations
on practice, which have little or nothing
in common with one another. One
strand is that of the tyagis, who stress
renunciation and asceticism. A second
strand is that of the Nagas, who in earlier times were fighting ascetics but
whose military organization is now
important only during the bathing
(snana) processions for the Kumbha
Mela. The final strand is that of the
rasiks (“aesthetes”), whose religious
practice is based on highly complex
patterns of visualization in which they
imagine themselves as present in the
court of Rama itself; this sort of visualization was undoubtedly imitated
from the patterns of Krishna devotion
as practiced in the Braj region. The
rasik tradition is by far the most literate and sophisticated; the tyagis and
the Nagas perform similar sorts of rites
as other ascetics, although their interpretation and their chosen deity is
unique to their order. For further
information see Peter van der Veer,
Gods on Earth, 1988.