Abstract
Central to Vaiṣṇava bhakti as it was propagated in Braj from the sixteenth century is the Bhāgavata Purāṇa. That bhakti spread to the Rājpūt courts, whose patronage spurred the production of sectarian Brajbhāṣā Bhāgavatas that added to versions not directly linked with the courts. This paper presents three vernacular Bhāgavatas, namely, the Puṣṭimārgīya Mahānand Bhāgavata (completed in 1687), the Nimbārka Bhāgavata of Brajdāsī (completed in 1755), and the Gauḍīya Bhāgavata of Vaiṣṇavadās “Rasjānī” (completed in 1774). Focusing on Bhāgavata Purāṇa 10.10, the authors’ perception of translation as a creative act and their ways of negotiating their sectarian positions are discussed.
Similar content being viewed by others
References
Bahura, Gopal Narayan. 1976. Literary Heritage of the Rulers of Amber and Jaipur, with an Index to the Register of Manuscripts in the Potikhana of Jaipur (I. Khasmohor Collection). Jaipur: Maharaja Sawai Man Singh II Museum, City Palace.
Bennett, Peter. 1993. The Path of Grace: Social Organisation and Temple Worship in a Vaishanava Sect. New Delhi: Hindustan Publishing.
Bhāgavata Purāṇa. VS 1963. Bhāgavata Purāṇa [with fourteen commentaries] (ed. Nityasvarūpa Brahmacārī). Vrindaban: Śrī Devakīnandan Mudraṇālaya.
Bhāgavata Purāṇa. 1996 [VS 2053]. Śrīmadbhāgavata-mahāpurāṇam [with Hindi commentary]. Gorakhpur: Gita Press.
Bhāṣābhāgavat. VS 2017, VS 2010. Bhāṣābhāgavat of Rasjānī. 2 volumes (Volume 1: VS 2017; Volume 2: VS 2010). Kusumsarovar (Mathura): Kṛṣṇadās Bābā.
Brajdāsī-bhāgavat. 1996. Śrībrajdāsī-bhāgavat (ed. Rāmprasād Śarmā). 2 volumes. Salemabad [Kishangarh]: Śrī Nimbārkācāryapīṭh.
Brajnidhi-granthāvalī. VS 1990. Brajnidhi-granthāvalī (ed. Harinārāyaṇ Śarmā). Banaras. Nāgarīpracāriṇī Sabhā.
Brown, Katherine. 2003. “Hindustani Music in the Time of Aurangzeb.” Ph.D. Dissertation, School of Oriental and African Studies, London.
de Bruijn, Thomas and Allison Busch, eds., Culture and Circulation: Literature in Motion in Early Modern India. Leiden: Brill.
Busch, Allison. 2014. “Poetry in Motion: Literary Circulation in Mughal India.” In Thomas de Bruijn and Allison Busch, eds., Culture and Circulation: Literature in Motion in Early Modern India, 186–221. Leiden: Brill.
Daljeet and V. K. Mathur. 2013. Ramayana: Indian Miniature Art from the National Museum New Delhi. Brussels: Royal Museums of Art and History.
De, Sushil Kumar. 1961 [1942]. Early History of the Vaisnava Faith and Movement in Bengal: From Sanskrit and Bengali Sources. Calcutta: Firma K. L. Mukhopadhyay.
Delvoye, Françoise “Nalini.” 1991. “Les chants dhrupad en langue braj des poètes-musiciens de l’Inde Moghole.” In Françoise Mallison, ed., Littératures médiévales de l’Inde du nord, 139–85. Paris: École Française d’Extrême-Orient.
Dhvanyāloka. 1982 [1974]. Dhvanyāloka of Ānandavardhana. Critically Edited with Introduction, Translation, and Notes by K. Krishnamoorthy. New Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
Dickinson, Eric and Karl Khandalavala. 1959. Kishangarh Paintings. New Delhi: Lalit Kalā Academy.
Dye, Joseph M. III. 2001. The Arts of India: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Richmond: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.
Gupta, Dīndayālu, ed. VS 2031. Hindī sāhitya kā bṛhat itihās. Volume 5. Banaras: Nāgarīpracāriṇī Sabhā.
Gupta, Ravi M. 2007. The Caitanya Vaiṣṇava Vedānta of Jīva Gosvāmī: When Knowledge Meets Devotion. London: Routledge.
Haidar, Navina. 2011. “Nihal Chand.” In Milo C. Beach, Eberhard Fischer, and B. N. Goswamy, eds., Masters of Indian Painting, 2: 595–606. Zürich: Artibus Asiae Publishers.
Hawley, John Stratton. 2015. A Storm of Songs: India and the Idea of the Bhakti Movement. Cambridge: Harvard University Press.
Hein, Norvin. 1972. The Miracle Plays of Mathurā. New Haven: Yale University.
Horstmann, Monika. 2013. “Caturdās’s Bhāṣā Version of the Eleventh Book of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa.” In Monika Horstmann, ed., Transforming Tradition: Cultural Essays in Honour of Mukund Lath, 47–62. New Delhi: Aditya Prakashan.
Kamphorst, Janet. 2008. In Praise of Death: History and Poetry in Medieval Marwar (South Asia). Leiden: Leiden University Press.
Kolff, Dirk H. A. 1990. Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy: The Ethnohistory of the Military Labour Market in Hindustan, 1450–1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Krishna, Anand.1963. Malwa Painting. Varanasi: Bharat Kala Bhavan, Banaras Hindu University.
Losty, Jeremiah P. 2011. “Indian Painting from 1730 to 1825.” In Milo C. Beach, Eberhard Fischer, and B. N. Goswamy, eds., Masters of Indian Painting, 2: 579–91. Zürich: Artibus Asiae Publishers.
Maheshwari, Hiralal. 1980. History of Rajasthani Literature. New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi.
McGregor, Ronald Stuart. 1984. Hindi Literature from Its Beginnings to the Nineteenth Century. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.
Mishra, Anand. 2014. “The Divine Embrace: The Role of the Senses in Puṣṭimārga.” In Axel Michaels and Christoph Wulf, eds., Exploring the Senses: South Asian and European Perspectives on Rituals and Performativity, 64–77. New Delhi: Routledge.
Niemann, Grahame Ralph. 1981. “Critical Edition of the Bhāgavat Daśam Skandh of Bhūpati.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Cambridge University.
Orsini, Francesca. 2014. “ ‘Krishna is the Truth of Man’: Mīr ‘Abdul Wahid Bilgrami’s Haqā’iq-i Hindī (Indian Truths) and the Circulation of Dhrupad and Bishnupad.” In Thomas de Bruijn and Allison Busch, eds., Culture and Circulation: Literature in Motion in Early Modern India, 222–46. Leiden: Brill.
Pauwels, Heidi R. M. 2006. “Hagiography and Reception History: The Case of Mīrā’s Padas in Nāgrīdās’s Pada-prasaṅga-mālā.” In Monika Horstmann, ed., Bhakti in Current Research, 2001–2003: Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Early Devotional Literature in New Indo-Aryan Languages, Heidelberg 23–26 July 2003, 221–44. New Delhi: Manohar.
Pauwels, Heidi. 2014. “Culture in Circulation in Eighteenth-Century North India: Urdu Poetry by a Rajput Krishna Devotee.” In Thomas de Bruijn and Allison Busch, eds., Culture and Circulation: Literature in Motion in Early Modern India, 247–78. Leiden: Brill.
Pauwels, Heidi Rika Maria. 2015. Cultural Exchange in Eighteenth-Century India: Poetry and Paintings from Kishangarh. Berlin: EB Verlag.
Pauwels, Heidi. 2018. “Śrīmad-Bhāgavata-Pārāyaṇa-Vidhi-Prakāśa: An Early Modern Poetry Workshop?” In this Issue.
Pellò, Stefano. 2014. “Persian as a Passe-Partout: The Case of Mīrzā ‘Abd al-Qādir Bīdil and His Hindu Disciples.” In Thomas de Bruijn and Allison Busch, eds., Culture and Circulation: Literature in Motion in Early Modern India, 21–46. Leiden: Brill.
Poddar, Neeraja. 2014. “Krishna in His Myriad Forms: Narration, Translation and Variation in Illustrated Manuscripts of the Latter Half of the Tenth Book of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Columbia University, New York.
Ritu. 2015. “The Art and Architecture of Khajuraho Temples: Lakshmana and Kandariya Mahadeva.” Ph.D. Dissertation, Kurukshetra University.
Śarmā, Nārāyaṇdatt. 1978. Nimbārka sampradāya aur uske Kṛṣṇa bhakta Hindī kavi. 2 volumes. Mathura: Aśok Prakāśan.
Śarmā, Rāmprasād, ed. 1996. See Brajdāsī-bhāgavat (1996).
Seitz, Konrad. 2015. Orccha, Datia, Panna: Miniaturen von den rajputischen Höfen Bundelkhands (1580–1850). 2 volumes. Köln: Hanstein.
Sheridan, Daniel P. 1994. “Śrīdhara and His Commentary on the Bhāgavata Purāṇa.” Journal of Vaiṣṇava Studies 2, 3: 45–66.
Tattvārthadīpanibandha. 1971. Tattvārthadīpanibandha of Vallabhācārya (ed. with Vallabhācārya’s Ṭīkā and the Snehaprapūraṇī Hindi commentary by Kedārnāth Miśra). Varanasi: Bhāratīya Vidyā Prakāśan.
Tattvasandarbha.1984. Śrītattvasandarbhaḥ of Jīva Gosvāmī [with the Tattvasandarbha-ṭippanī of Baladeva Vidyābhūṣaṇa] (ed. and trans. into Hindi with the Gopālatoṣaṇī-ṭīkā by Śyāmdās). Vrindavan: Vrajgaurav Prakāśan.
Tattvasandarbha. 1999 [1983]. Śrītattvasandarbhaḥ of Jīva Gosvāmī [with the Sarvasaṃvādinī Commentary of Jīva Gosvāmī, the Tattvasandarbha-ṭippanī of Baladeva Vidyābhūṣaṇa, the Commentary of Rādhāmohana Gosvāmī, the Svarṇalatā Commentary of Gaurakiśora Gosvāmī] (ed. with a commentary by Haridās Śāstrī). Mathura: Śrī Gadādhargaurhari Pres.
Tillotson, Giles. 2010. Nagaur: A Garden Palace in Rajasthan. Jodhpur: Mehrangarh Museum Trust.
Topsfield, Andrew. 2011. “Sahibdin.” In Milo C. Beach, Eberhard Fischer, and B. N. Goswamy, eds., Masters of Indian Painting, 1: 391–406. Zürich: Artibus Asiae Publishers.
Ziegler, Norman Paul. 1973. “Action, Power and Service in Rajasthani Culture: A Social History of the Rajpūts of Middle Period Rajasthan.” Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Chicago.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Corresponding author
Rights and permissions
About this article
Cite this article
Horstmann, M. Three Brajbhāṣā Versions of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa. Hindu Studies 22, 123–174 (2018). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11407-018-9222-8
Published:
Issue Date:
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11407-018-9222-8