Skip to main content
Log in

Three Brajbhāṣā Versions of the Bhāgavata Purāṇa

  • Published:
International Journal of Hindu Studies Aims and scope Submit manuscript

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.

This is a preview of subscription content, log in via an institution to check access.

Access this article

Price excludes VAT (USA)
Tax calculation will be finalised during checkout.

Instant access to the full article PDF.

Institutional subscriptions

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.

    Google Scholar 

  • 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.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • 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.

    Google Scholar 

  • Dye, Joseph M. III. 2001. The Arts of India: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts. Richmond: Virginia Museum of Fine Arts.

    Google Scholar 

  • 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.

    Google Scholar 

  • 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.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Hein, Norvin. 1972. The Miracle Plays of Mathurā. New Haven: Yale University.

    Google Scholar 

  • 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.

    Google Scholar 

  • Kamphorst, Janet. 2008. In Praise of Death: History and Poetry in Medieval Marwar (South Asia). Leiden: Leiden University Press.

    Book  Google Scholar 

  • Kolff, Dirk H. A. 1990. Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy: The Ethnohistory of the Military Labour Market in Hindustan, 1450–1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

    Google Scholar 

  • Krishna, Anand.1963. Malwa Painting. Varanasi: Bharat Kala Bhavan, Banaras Hindu University.

    Google Scholar 

  • 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.

    Google Scholar 

  • McGregor, Ronald Stuart. 1984. Hindi Literature from Its Beginnings to the Nineteenth Century. Wiesbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.

    Google Scholar 

  • 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.

    Google Scholar 

  • 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.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • 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.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • 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.

    Chapter  Google Scholar 

  • 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.

    Google Scholar 

  • 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.

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Corresponding author

Correspondence to Monika Horstmann.

Rights and permissions

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Check for updates. Verify currency and authenticity via CrossMark

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

Download citation

  • Published:

  • Issue Date:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11407-018-9222-8

Keywords

Navigation