Vaishnava

Name denoting a devotee (bhakta) of
the god Vishnu, in any of his myriad
forms. Vaishnava theology is most
prominently characterized by the doctrine of the ten avatars, or divine incarnations: Fish, Tortoise, Boar, Man-Lion,
Vamana (dwarf), Parashuram, Rama,
Krishna, Buddha, and Kalki. It is generally accepted that the avatar doctrine
provided a way to assimilate smaller
regional deities into the larger pantheon
by designating them as forms of Vishnu,
and it is in the form of these avatars that
Vishnu is most commonly worshiped.
Of the ten avatars, the two most important ones have been Rama and
Krishna, although in the early centuries of the common era, the Boar
avatar and the Man-Lion avatar were
influential regional deities.
Early Vaishnava religion is cloudy
and mysterious. Although Vishnu
appears in several hymns in the Vedas,
the oldest Hindu religious texts, he was
clearly a minor deity, and it is difficult to
get from there to being the supreme
power in the universe. Some scholars
have speculated that the cult of
Krishna—a deified local cowherd
hero—originally came from outside
the Vedic religious matrix, and that
Krishna was identified with Vishnu as a
way to assimilate Krishna’s cult into
respectable Vedic religion. Such ideas
are intriguing but have little hard evidence to support them. Inscriptional
evidence clearly shows that the worship
of Krishna was well-established by the
first century B.C.E. These devotees are
generally described as Bhagavatas
(“devotees of the Blessed One”), a name
that for the next thousand years is used
to refer to Vaishnavas in general. One
particular subset of this early Bhagavata
community was known as the
Pancharatrikas (“followers of the
Pancharatra”), who later evolved distinctive cosmological doctrines. These
mainstream Bhagavatas expressed their
devotion to Krishna by composing texts,
including parts of the Bhagavad Gita,
the Harivamsha, and various puranas,
culminating with the Bhagavata
Purana in about the tenth century.
The tone of Vaishnava devotion took
a dramatic turn with the advent of the
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Vaishnava
Alvars, a group of twelve devotional
(bhakti) poet-saints who lived in southern India between the seventh and tenth
centuries. Singing their hymns in the
Tamil language, the vernacular tongue
of their times, the Alvars propounded a
bhakti that was marked by passionate
devotion to God and characterized by a
profound emotional attachment
between deity and devotee. Along with
their Shaiva counterparts, the
Nayanars, the Alvars spearheaded the
revitalization of Hindu religion vis-à-vis
the Buddhists and the Jains, and in the
process, transformed the tradition as the
devotional wave they had begun moved
northward. The period between the
twelfth and sixteenth centuries saw the
development of various Vaishnava communities, often stemming from a particular charismatic religious figure.
This process began in southern
India, where the philosopher Ramanuja
(11th c.) founded the Shrivaishnava
community, while the philosopher
Madhva (1197–1276) founded the community that bears his name. The next
great center was in Maharashtra, particularly in the Varkari Panth, which
was centered on the temple of Vithoba
in Pandharpur; some of this community’s greatest figures were Jnaneshvar
(1275–1296?), Namdev (1270–1350),
Chokamela (d. 1338), Eknath (1533–
1599), and Tukaram (1598–1650). The
Maharashtra region also saw the rise of
the Mahanubhav sect, from the thirteenth century. At Puri on India’s eastern coast one finds the worship of
Jagannath, a tribal deity assimilated
into the pantheon as a form of
Krishna. This was well established by
the twelfth century, as the poet
Jayadeva’s Gitagovinda clearly shows.
Finally, in northern India one finds several vibrant religious groups. A very early
figure is the twelfth-century philosopher
Nimbarka, whose Nimbarki community
bears his name; several centuries later
came Vishnuswami, about whom little
is known. The greatest explosion of
northern Indian devotionalism came
in the sixteenth century, with the
philosopher Vallabhacharya founding
the Pushti Marg, the Bengali saint
Chaitanya founding the Gaudiya
Vaishnava community, and the poetsaint Harivamsh (d. 1552) founding the
Radhavallabh community. All these
were based in the Braj region that is
Krishna’s mythic home, and all of them
worshiped Krishna: The Pushti Marg
and the Gaudiya Vaishnavas considered
him to be the supreme divinity, whereas
the Nimbarkis and the Radhavallabh
community worshiped him in conjunction with his consort Radha, whom they
considered Krishna’s wife and equal. It is
also in northern India that the worship
of Rama has its deepest roots, as exemplified in the songs of the poet-saint
Tulsidas (1532–1623?). Many of these
schools with long histories are still vital
in modern times.
The final Vaishnava community that
must be addressed is comprised of
ascetics. Vaishnava asceticism is a more
recent development than that of the
Shaivas (though dates are uncertain),
and it is largely located in the northern
part of India (the Shaivas are spread
throughout the country). Vaishnava
ascetics are known as Bairagis (“dispassionate”) and are primarily organized
into four sampradays (religious sects
distinguished by unique bodies of
teachings), each connected with a major
Vaishnava figure. By far the most powerful is the Shri Sampraday of the
Ramanandi ascetics, which traces its
spiritual lineage through the poet-saint
Ramananda to the southern Indian
philosopher Ramanuja, whom they
claim was Ramananda’s guru. The
Sanaka Sampraday of the Nimbarki
ascetics traces its spiritual lineage to the
philosopher Nimbarka. The Rudra
Sampraday of the Vishnuswami ascetics
traces its lineage through the philosopher Vallabhacharya to an earlier figure,
Vishnuswami. Finally, the Brahma
Sampraday, an ascetic subset of the
Gaudiya Vaishnava ascetics, traces its
spiritual line through the Bengali saint
Chaitanya to the southern Indian
philosopher Madhva.
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Each of these sampradays is differentiated not only by its founder, but also by
its tutelary deity or deities. The
Ramanandis worship the god Rama,
whereas the others worship the god
Krishna and his consort Radha, but differ in the position that they give to
Radha. Scholars have noted that these
historical claims are either highly suspect or completely spurious and that the
distinctions among the sampradays are
largely academic. Given that the overwhelming majority of these ascetics are
Ramanandis, the others seem important
only for symbolic reasons, to include a
representative from each of the great
Vaishnava religious figures.