Gaudiya Vaisnava Studies Mapping The Field PDF

Religions of South Asia 9.
3 (2015) 305–331 ISSN (print) 1751-2689

doi:10.1558/rosa.v9i3.32197 ISSN (online) 1751-2697
Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava Studies:

Mapping the Field
Lucian Wong1
University of Oxford
Faculty of Theology and Religion
Gibson Building, Radcliffe Observatory Quarter, Woodstock Road
Oxford OX2 6GG
UK
lucian.wong@theology.ox.ac.uk
ABSTRACT: Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism, which traces its origins to the ecstatic Ben-
gali Kṛṣṇa devotee, Kṛṣṇa Caitanya (1486–1533), has indelibly shaped the socio-
religious landscape of Bengal and significantly impacted other regions of the
Indian subcontinent, such as Orissa, Bihar, Assam, Manipur, Uttar Pradesh, and
Rajasthan. The present article provides a current map of the field of the study of
the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava tradition, from its inception to the early twentieth century,
based largely on recent critical English-language scholarship. Adopting a thematic
historical approach, it highlights the contextual specificity of recent scholarship
and provides a heuristic framework for understanding the tradition and its his-
torical dynamics.
KEYWORDS: Bengal; bhakti; Caitanya; Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism; gosvāmī; Vrindavan.
Introduction
Some time toward the beginning of the sixteenth century a young brāhmaṇa
teacher of Sanskrit grammar named Viśvambhara Miśra (1486–1533) trav-
elled from his home in the town of Nabadwip, situated some 75 miles north
of present-day Kolkata, West Bengal, to the holy city of Gaya to perform
funeral rites (śrāddha) for his father, Jagannātha. The trip would prove piv-
otal, for Viśvambhara personally as well as for the region more broadly, for
he returned from Gaya radically transformed. Hitherto known as a bright and
1. Lucian Wong is a DPhil Candidate in Theology at the University of Oxford, Faculty of Theol-
ogy and Religion. His thesis explores the subject of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism in colonial Bengal,
with special reference to the life and thought of the prominent late nineteenth-century
Gauḍīya figure Kedarnath Datta Bhaktivinod. He holds an MA in Indian Religions from the
School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London, and currently teaches at the
Oxford Centre for Hindu Studies.
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2016, Office 415, The Workstation, 15 Paternoster Row, Sheffield S1 2BX.
306 religions of south asia
charming, if somewhat supercilious, young man, Viśvambhara now exuded

an uncommonly intense devotion (bhakti) to the dark-hued pastoral deity,
Kṛṣṇa. His new-found devotional zeal soon attracted a small but loyal follow-
ing, who readily participated in the distinctive form of Kṛṣṇa bhakti that he
had begun to practise and promulgate, characterized most notably by impas-
sioned group chanting of the names of Hari or Kṛṣṇa (hari-nāma-saṅkīrtana).
This appears to have created quite a stir in Nabadwip, a town then under the
rule of the Muslim sultan of Bengal, Husain Shāh (r. 1493–1519), and famed for
its rigorous brāhmaṇic intellectual culture and śākta-tāntrika religious milieu.
These early devotional exploits of Viśvambhara and his companions in
Nabadwip, which can be situated within a broader ‘wave of devotionalism’
that was sweeping across northern India during this period (Dimock and
Stewart 1999: 5), mark the inception of a movement that would not only
indelibly shape the socio-religious landscape of Bengal, but also have sig-
nificant impact on other regions of the subcontinent, including present-day
Orissa, Bihar, Assam, Manipur, Uttar Pradesh, and Rajasthan. The move-
ment would in time become a distinct religious community or tradition
(sampradāya) known as ‘Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava’, a nomenclature indicating both
its broad association with other Viṣṇu-oriented devotional traditions and
its specific Bengali provenance (‘Gauḍīya’ being an adjectival derivation of
‘Gauḍa’, the name of a region roughly coextensive with the west-central part
of Bengal). The tradition is also sometimes styled ‘Caitanya Vaiṣṇava’ in refer-
ence to its source of devotional inspiration, Viśvambhara, who received the
appellation ‘Kṛṣṇa Caitanya’ upon entering the renounced order of Hindu
socio-religious life (sannyāsa) at the age of 24. While it has been argued that
‘Caitanya Vaiṣṇava’ better reflects the tradition’s transregionality (e.g. Gupta
2014a: xi; Haberman 1988: 169; O’Connell forthcoming a), playing down as it
does any ostensibly restrictive geographical associations, in what follows I
retain the term ‘Gauḍīya’ as being still the designation most widely used and
recognized in the academy, and also that with which adherents of the tradi-
tion have most readily identified over the centuries (Broo 2003: 33–34; Stew-
art 2010: 5n). Tony K. Stewart (Clooney and Stewart 2004) and Kenneth Valpey
(2011) offer helpful general outlines of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism—its history, the-
ology, and religious practice.
The Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava tradition has garnered a fair amount of scholarly
interest over the years. As Stuart Elkman (1986: xiv) writes, ‘it may safely be
said that no other Vaiṣṇava movement can claim such an abundance of sec-
ondary literature’. While Elkman is probably overstating things somewhat—
one thinks, for instance, of the profusion of studies, in both European and
Indian languages, on the South Indian Śrī Vaiṣṇava tradition—the general
thrust of his observation is nevertheless not entirely inapposite. Interest in
recent global institutional developments within the Gauḍīya tradition—most
notably, the International Society for Krishna Consciousness (ISKCON)—is
likely an important factor at play here. This is, however, by no means the sole,
© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2016.

Wong Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava Studies 307
or even primary, factor, for an appreciable body of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava-related

scholarship had already formed by the mid twentieth century, largely the
result of educated Bengalis turning to the tradition as a source of religious
and cultural inspiration in the latter decades of the nineteenth century (a sub-
ject to which I return on pp. 319–23). Early interest in the tradition was often
prompted as much by Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism’s broad impact on the region’s cul-
tural imaginary as by its more strictly ‘religious’ contributions (Bhatia forth-
coming). Caitanya’s advent came to be seen as something of a watershed in
the history of Bengali literary production (Kaviraj 2003). Some of the more
notable publications among this body of early Bengali‑ and English-language
scholarship on the tradition include those of eminent Bengali literary histo-
rians such Dinesh Chandra Sen (1911, 1917, 1922), Sukumar Sen (1935, 1940),
Biman Bihari Majumdar (1939), and Sushil Kumar De (1942) (De’s work is still
commonly regarded as ‘the standard book in English on the subject, and the
best of its kind in any language’ (Dimock and Stewart 1999: 77)). It was, how-
ever, the pioneering and sensitive ‘History of Religions’-style scholarship of
Edward C. Dimock (e.g. 1963, 1966), that can be said to have properly inaugu-
rated Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava studies in the West, Melville Kennedy’s still valuable
early twentieth-century English-language monograph (1925) on Vaiṣṇavism
in Bengal notwithstanding.
Recent decades have witnessed a flourishing of English-language scholar-
ship on the Gauḍīya tradition, which, though undoubtedly indebted to the
advances made by the studies mentioned above, has taken the field to new
depths of understanding. At the obvious risk of overgeneralization, one might
say that much of this more recent scholarship has displayed a distinct ten-
dency toward particularity, departing from an earlier trend of treating the
tradition broadly, often by extrapolating from fairly restricted data (most
commonly, textual sources forming the early layer of the tradition’s vast
corpus). Recent work on the tradition has thus often consisted of focused
examination of particular figures, texts, periods, and places, displaying, on
the whole, a greater sense of contextual specificity than its antecedents. This
development would seem only natural—the symptom, I would suggest, of a
maturing field.
In view of these developments, it seems opportune to take stock of the
present state of the critical study of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism. In what follows I
attempt to provide a current map of the field based largely on recent criti-
cal English-language scholarship. I order this material under four sections
pertaining to key phases of the tradition’s development, which I broadly
characterize as: (1) foundation; (2) consolidation; (3) re-articulation; and (4)
institutionalization. In doing so, I address some of the central issues that have
come to define the study of these phases, as well as indicate areas inviting
further exploration. While it is by no means the only way of approaching the
material, the thematic historical approach I adopt should serve to bring into
focus the aforementioned contextual specificity of recent scholarship, as well

as provide a potentially useful heuristic framework for understanding the

Gauḍīya tradition and its historical dynamics.
Before proceeding, a few important caveats should be noted. I adopt an
admittedly narrow reading of the tradition, forgoing a discussion of litera-
ture on Vaiṣṇava antecedents in pre-Caitanya Bengal, as well as the plethora
of tantric or sahajiyā and popular folk Vaiṣṇava currents.2 I also refrain from
dealing with literature on ISKCON and other recent global Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava
expressions, restricting my discussion to developments within the tradition
up until the early twentieth century.3 These delimitations have been deter-
mined primarily by considerations of space; each of these areas could rightly
constitute an article in itself. For similar reasons, I avoid systematic treatment
of the extensive body of Bengali‑ and Hindi-language scholarship on Gauḍīya
Vaiṣṇavism,4 familiarity with which, it must be said, is indispensible to any
advanced critical engagement with the tradition.
Foundation
Biographers
The notion that Caitanya was not merely a saintly devotee of Kṛṣṇa but also
some form of descent (avatāra) of the god himself appears to have gained cur-
rency among his followers during his lifetime, providing crucial impetus for
the community of devotees that developed around him to produce narrative
accounts of his life. The first generation of such sacred biographies or hagi-
ographies of Caitanya, which appeared in both Sanskrit and Middle Bengali in
2. For a recent annotated bibliography of scholarship on tantric Vaiṣṇavism, see Hayes (2012).
3. Such developments are central to an understanding of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism’s recent his-
tory, not least because they point to the tradition’s diffusion beyond the borders of the
Indian subcontinent. The body of critical literature relating to ISKCON is especially vast,
with ISKCON receiving, for instance, its own entry in Oxford Bibliographies (Valpey 2013).
Rochford (2007) and Bryant and Ekstrand (2004) are good points of departure for explor-
ing the history of and major themes relevant to the study of ISKCON. One must also bear in
mind that Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism is still very much a living tradition within the subcontinent
and beyond the parameters of ISKCON and related institutions, particularly if one is to avoid
presuming the tradition’s teleological fulfilment in these global developments (a narrative
that creeps into some scholarship on the tradition). In this regard, Sukanya Sarbadhikary’s
sensitive and theoretically rich ethnography (2015) of the multiple and diverse facets of
the contemporary tradition in its preeminent pilgrimage centre, Nabadwip, is especially
worthy of mention (other notable work on aspects of the broader contemporary Gauḍīya
landscape includes that of Broo 2003; Case 2000; Haberman 1994; Nicholas 2003: 28–61;
Packert 2010).
4. I refer here to both Western-style critical scholarship and the invaluable detailed research
of scholarly practitioners. Gupta (2013) includes some of the most essential among such
works in his annotated bibliography of scholarship on Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism. For more com-
prehensive bibliographies of Bengali- and Hindi-language secondary sources on the tradi-
tion, see Stewart (2014) and Dimock and Stewart (1999: 1061–65).

the decades following his passing in 1533, form a major component of the ear-
liest layer of the tradition’s textual corpus. Dimock and Stewart (1999: 82–95)
provide succinct introductions to each of the principal early Caitanya hagiog-
raphies (for a comprehensive annotated bibliography of primary and second-
ary sources on the Caitanya hagiographical tradition, see Stewart 2014).
Generations of scholars have looked to these works as the primary ‘mate-
rials for a study of Caitanya’s life’ (De 1942: 26). Bringing historical-critical
methods to bear on this corpus, various scholars have made attempts to dis-
tinguish the veridical from the fanciful, the most impressive being that of
Majumdar (1939). Some, however, raise concerns regarding the validity of this
approach to the material. Stewart, for example, whose work is the most com-
prehensive recent critical examination of these texts (see especially 1985 and
2010),5 calls attention to a central yet oft-overlooked feature of these compo-
sitions: like all hagiography, they are ‘religiously motivated discourse, not the
history of a religious subject’ (1991: 232). Agreement among the narratives
alone is thus, according to Stewart (1991: 231), no guarantor of their histo-
ricity. Rebecca Manring (2005) expresses similar concerns in her pioneering
work on the less prominent corpus of hagiographies relating to Caitanya’s
elder intimate companion, Advaita Ācārya, charging Majumdar with over-
looking the ‘religious motivation for the creation of such texts’ (2005: 149), a
tendency she regards as characteristic of the ‘historical positivism’ underly-
ing his approach to these materials.
Others, nevertheless, continue to discern an element of historicity in
these works. Joseph O’Connell (1993), for one, problematizes what he deems
‘docetic’ readings of Caitanya’s hagiographies (e.g. Dimock 1976), which fore-
ground their mythic dimensions to the extent of occluding their historical
ones. O’Connell argues that the authors of these texts were compelled to
record many empirical details of the events surrounding Caitanya’s life pre-
cisely because of their distinctive religious faith, which professes Caitanya’s
divinity and perceives his activities on earth as the concrete manifestation of
divine play (līlā), generating a form of ‘myth in quest of history’ (1993: 103).
O’Connell thus makes use of these early biographical sources to explore some
of the significant social implications of the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava tradition in its
early phases: its contribution to social integration (O’Connell 2011); its social
anatomy (forthcoming b); Vaiṣṇava perceptions of Muslims in Bengal (1983);
and Vaiṣṇava relations with Muslim regimes in the region (forthcoming c).6
5. A number of Professor Stewart’s published articles on the hagiographies of Caitanya and

other aspects of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism have been made available on his personal website. See
http://as.vanderbilt.edu/religiousstudies/people/stewart.php.
6. These articles often build upon Professor O’Connell’s important doctoral thesis (1970) and
are due to be published, in revised forms, in a posthumous collected volume of his writings,
Caitanya Vaiṣṇava Studies, which will no doubt become an essential resource for the study of
Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism.

Determining the precise nature of Caitanya’s divinity was naturally a task

central to the efforts of his early hagiographers. These writers collectively
grappled with how to reconcile Caitanya’s perceived godhood with his patent
devotional proclivities. Stewart’s doctoral study (1985) of the principal early
hagiographies of Caitanya presents an insightful structural analysis of the
key components of the conceptualization of Caitanya’s divinity as it plays out
in these texts. He highlights a discernible diachronic shift in the ‘biographi-
cal images’ of Caitanya—essentially, the ascendency of the divine feminine,
namely Rādhā, and the aesthetic modality of sweetness (mādhurya) in rep-
resentations of him (1985: 452). In his more recent work on this corpus, The
Final Word: The Caitanya Caritāmṛta and the Grammar of Religious Tradition (2010),
Stewart turns his attention to the concrete social-historical implications of
the early narratives about Caitanya. Suggesting that a hagiography does not
merely represent the voice of its author but rather that of an entire ‘lineage,
a community of like-minded practitioners’ (2010: 16), Stewart reconstructs a
‘secondary history’ of the hagiographies themselves, shedding light on the
complex relationship dynamics between the major Gauḍīya communities that
had begun to emerge in Bengal during this foundational period.
The manifold short Brajabuli devotional lyric compositions (pada) pro-
duced by Caitanya’s poetically inclined contemporaries and their followers,
which began to proliferate during his lifetime, are another major source of
insight into the early Gauḍīya community and its perceptions of Caitanya.
Though much Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava padāvalī centres on Kṛṣṇa, padas celebrat-
ing Caitanya (referred to as ‘gaura-pada’) comprise an appreciable section of
this material. This poetry, which draws upon the language and style of ear-
lier pada composers like Vidyāpati and Caṇḍīdāsa, would come to play an
integral role in the daily ritual lives of Gauḍīya practitioners, primarily in
the context of kīrtana (Dimock 1958). Stewart (2014) provides an annotated
bibliography of the principal old and modern pada compendiums, and of key
secondary literature on the corpus. While a number of Bengali scholars have
undertaken extensive work in this area (for an early encyclopedic English-
language treatment of this poetry and its authors, see Sen 1935), it would
seem that the padāvalī corpus remains largely unexploited by recent English-
language scholarship on the Gauḍīya tradition (a notable exception being
Stewart 2010).
Gosvāmīs
With the exception of a handful of Sanskrit verses traditionally attributed

to him, which express, according to De (1942: 84), a ‘simple and passionate
faith’, Caitanya appears to have left little in the way of his own writing. While
the early biographies of Caitanya no doubt articulated theology, much of this
was embedded in narrative. The bulk of the systematic doctrinal and ritual

exposition of the fledgling tradition was instead left to a group of scholarly

devotee-ascetics, known honorifically as ‘gosvāmī’ (literally ‘lord of cows’),
who began to settle in Vrindavan, the legendary birthplace of Kṛṣṇa in the
Mathura district of present-day Uttar Pradesh, in the early decades of the
sixteenth century. The principal gosvāmī theologians, famously a group of six
known as the ‘Six Gosvāmīs’ (ṣaḍ-gosvāmī), wrote extensively, exclusively in
Sanskrit, on theology, drama, poetry, and ritual. The town of Vrindavan at
this time appears to have been the site of ‘an explosion of lively and imag-
inative activity initiated by various scholars, poets, and saints’ (Haberman
2003: xxxv; for a detailed overview of the colourful cultural and political his-
tory of the region, see Entwistle 1987). Written amidst this rich cultural set-
ting, the works of the gosvāmīs betray manifold influences and familiarity
with an impressive array of textual sources, Vaiṣṇava and non-Vaiṣṇava. It
is perhaps largely on account of the intellectual breadth and creativity on
display in their writings, as well as the foundational nature of their theolog-
ical enterprise, that the gosvāmīs claim a preeminent place within Gauḍīya
Vaiṣṇava studies. De’s monograph (1942) is still the most comprehensive
English-language account of the lives and works of all six gosvāmīs (for a thor-
ough Bengali-language study, see Jana 1970). Useful biographical information,
drawn largely from second-generation Gauḍīya hagiographies, is also pro-
vided by Steven Rosen (1991) and O. B. L. Kapoor (1995a).
The writings of Jīva Gosvāmī, the youngest and most prolific of the famous
six, have over the years drawn more critical attention than those of any other
writer of the tradition. Jan Brzezinski (2007) provides a detailed overview of
Jīva’s biography and writings, which span the fields of theology and philoso-
phy, commentary, grammar, poetics, and poetry. Studies that purport to be
accounts of the theology of the tradition in toto, such as those of Sudhindra
Chandra Chakravarti (1969) and Kapoor (1976), often tend to rely heavily on
Jīva’s works. This is hardly surprising for, as De explains, in the context of
the early post-Caitanya Gauḍīya tradition, Jīva served as ‘the highest court
of appeal in doctrinal matters so long as he lived’ (1942: 112). Jīva’s contribu-
tion to the broader world of Indian thought was deemed sufficiently notable
to have found a place within volume 4 of Surendranath Dasgupta’s landmark
History of Indian Philosophy (1949: 396–438).
Interest in Jīva has continued to build in recent years, often taking shape
as the translation and/or detailed study of a specific text from among his
impressive textual oeuvre, most notably his magnum opus, the Bhāgavata- or
Ṣaṭ-sandarbha. This grand project attempts to thematically reconfigure the
theology of the Bhāgavata-pūrāṇa to provide a comprehensive exposition of
Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava doctrine and devotional practice. Drawing upon De’s more
extensive analyses (1942: 193–320), Ravi Gupta (2007: 201–207) provides suc-
cinct summaries of all six (ṣaṭ) of Jīva’s treatises (sandarbha)—namely, the
Tattva-, Bhagavat-, Paramātma-, Kṛṣṇa-, Bhakti-, and Prīti-sandarbas (see also
Dasa 2007). The Tattva-sandarbha, the first and shortest of the six, has been

translated into English by Stuart Elkman (1986), Satyanarayana Dasa and

Kundali Dasa (1995), and Gopiparanadhana Dasa (2014). S. Dasa, as part of an
ambitious Sandarbha translation project (www.sandarbhas.jiva.org), has also
published translations of the Bhakti-sandarbha (Dasa and Martin 2005–2006)
and Bhagavat-sandarbha (2014). Ravi Gupta (2007) presents a critical edition
and translation of the final portion of Jīva’s Paramātma-sandarbha, a section of
the text that functions as a commentary on the foundational first five sūtras of
the Brahma-sūtra. In the extended introduction to his translation of the Tattva-
sandarbha, Elkman (1986) argues that Jīva’s thought represents something of a
departure from that of Caitanya. Elkman (p. 180) contends that Caitanya was
likely much less opposed to the ‘non-dualism’ (advaita-vāda) of Śaṅkara and
his followers than he was claimed to be by Jīva, who expounds the doctrine of
the ‘inconceivable difference and non-difference’ (acintya-bhedābheda) of God
(bhagavān) and his powers (śākti). Taking his cue from De (1942: 112n), Elkman
(1986: 16) grounds his case on biographical reports of Caitanya’s avowed
appreciation for the renowned fourteenth-century Bhāgavata-pūrāṇa com-
mentator Śrīdhara Svāmī, whose thought apparently exemplified a ‘devo-
tional brand of Advaita’. Gupta (2007), on the other hand, who examines in
some detail Jīva’s attempt in the Sandarbhas at bridging multiple discourses—
particularly those of vedānta, purāṇa, and bhakti—argues that Śrīdhara’s the-
istic non-dualism was of a kind quite removed from that of Śaṅkara (2007:
68), and that Jīva’s engagement with Śrīdhara, far from being mere lip ser-
vice to Caitanya, as Elkman suggests, is extensive and forms an integral part
of his systematic theology (2007: 77); it is precisely such engagement, Lutje-
harms argues (2016), that leads to a re-envisioning of the place of Vedānta
in Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava theological discourse. Gupta (2014b) elsewhere presents
a lucid overview of Jīva’s acintya-bhedābheda position as delineated in the
Ṣaṭ-sandarbha. Other aspects of Jīva’s thought that have also recently been
examined include: his understanding of the nature of scriptural authority
(Edelmann and Dasa 2014); his notion of agency (Dasa and Edelmann 2014);
his philosophy of education (Holdrege 2014); his treatment of the body in
relation to devotional practice (Holdrege 2015); and his creative use of San-
skrit grammar as a means to inculcate devotion (Manring 2008).
The writings of Rūpa Gosvāmī, Jīva’s paternal uncle, also feature promi-
nently in scholarship on the tradition. Before joining Caitanya, Rūpa, like his
elder brother and guru, Sanātana Gosvāmī, served as a high-ranking officer
in the court of Husain Shāh. Rūpa lays claim to a particularly esteemed posi-
tion within the tradition, as is indicated by the fact that Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavas
commonly refer to themselves as ‘followers of Rūpa’ (rūpānuga)—an expres-
sion found in the writings of as early a Gauḍīya author as Raghunāthadāsa
Gosvāmī (Lutjeharms 2012: 387). Neal Delmonico (1993) provides an account
of Rūpa’s life, notable family members, and early commentarial reception.
Rembert Lutjeharms (2012) has similarly offered an introduction to the life,
writings, and theology of Rūpa. While, as Lutjeharms’ article makes clear,

Rūpa’s literary output was vast and diverse, he is perhaps best known for
his Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu (for an outline of the structure and content of
this work, see Haberman 2003: xlix–lxvii). Along with its supplement, the
Ujjvala-nīlamaṇi, the Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu, translated into English by David
Haberman (2003), is the tradition’s first and most authoritative analysis of
bhakti, innovatively treated in terms of the Sanskrit aesthetic notion of rasa
(roughly ‘aesthetic enjoyment’). Against the general trend of reading Rūpa’s
bhakti-rasa theory in the light of the influential aesthetic theory of the tenth-
century Kashmiri Śaiva polymath Abhinavagupta (e.g. De 1942; Kinsley 1979;
Wulff 1984), Delmonico (1990) argues that Rūpa’s understanding of rasa is best
understood in the light of the aesthetics of the eleventh-century Rajasthani
king Bhoja (Lutjeharms (2014) also underscores the influence of Bhoja on
Rūpa’s treatment of rasa). Rūpa’s bhakti-rasa theory, with its construal of bhakti
as ‘participation in the dramatic world’ of Kṛṣṇa (Haberman 1988: 36), would
profoundly shape Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava religious practice. Haberman (1988)
undertakes a comprehensive analysis of the tradition’s understanding of
devotional practice (sādhana-bhakti) in its higher mode, known technically as
‘passion-pursuant’ (rāgānuga). It is through rāgānuga-sādhana-bhakti—a form
of practice that integrally involves, as Haberman (1988: 70) sees it, the ‘imi-
tation’ (anusāra) of ‘paradigmatic individuals’, that is, passionate (rāgātmika)
devotees already participating in Kṛṣṇa’s play (līlā)—that a Gauḍīya practitio-
ner ultimately realizes his place in the eternal cosmic drama. Donna Wulff
(1984) explores the centrality of drama to Gauḍīya devotion through an in-
depth analysis of Rūpa’s Vidagdha-mādhava—a play intended as a means for
devotional connoisseurs (rasika bhakta) to relish bhakti-rasa (1984: 37)—sup-
plying a translation of the play’s concluding act. It is essential to bear in mind
that metaphysical concerns deeply inform Rūpa’s treatment of bhakti as rasa.
In this regard, Jessica Frazier (2009) creatively teases out the ‘realist ontology’
that underpins his aesthetics and ethics of devotion, and, more recently, has
explored Rūpa’s recourse to the concepts of ‘fullness’, ‘manifestation’, and
‘evocation’ in articulating his distinctive vision of the divine (Frazier forth-
coming a; forthcoming b).
In spite of the recent advances in this area of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava studies,
significant features of this foundational Sanskritic Gauḍīya milieu remain
conspicuously neglected. For instance, barring a few notable exceptions
(Brzezinski 1992; Buchta 2014; Lutjeharms 2010) there has been a dearth of crit-
ical focus on early Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava poetics, a particularly germane theme of
investigation since medium is often integrally related to message in the work
of these talented devotional scholar-poets. Certain key gosvāmī figures also
stand in need of further exploration. The aforementioned Sanātana Gosvāmī,
for instance, is a much overlooked early author despite his having contributed
one of the most influential and widely read texts within the tradition to this
day, the Bṛhad-bhāgavatāmṛta (summarized in Haberman 1988: 47–51; lucidly
translated in G. Dasa 2002–2003). The South-Indian-born brāhmaṇa Gopāla

Bhaṭṭa Gosvāmī remains a similarly neglected figure. Gopāla Bhaṭṭa is credited

by Jīva himself with having provided the notes on which the aforementioned
Sandarbhas were based (e.g. Tattva-sandarbha, 1.4–5) and is also commonly
associated with the composition of the Hari-bhakti-vilāsa, an exhaustive com-
pendium of scripturally enjoined devotional acts (vaidhi-bhakti) relevant to
Gauḍīya practitioners (summary in De 1986: 340–402; French-language dis-
cussion in Joshi 1959; translation of sections pertaining to the ekādaśī-vrata in
B. Dasa 2001). This neglect could be attributed to a trend among scholars of
the tradition to privilege the study of rāgānuga-sādhana-bhakti over that of the
less esoteric but far more widely practised vaidhi-sādhana-bhakti (noteworthy
exceptions are Broo 2003; Holdrege 2015; Valpey 2006).
CONSOLIDATION
As alluded to above, the decades immediately following the passing of Cai-

tanya in 1533 saw the formation of multiple Gauḍīya groupings, each of
which coalesced around one of Caitanya’s prominent associates. With refer-
ence to the Gauḍīya scene in Bengal, De (1942: 82) speaks of a lack of ‘real co-
ordination’ between these various groups. Dimock (1966: 71) reiterates this
notion of a communal ‘mitosis’ within the early post-Caitanya tradition in
Bengal, which he sees as having developed largely ‘along caste lines’—such as
the ostensible discord between the staunchly brāhmaṇical community estab-
lished by Advaita Ācārya and the more socially liberal, though nevertheless
brāhmaṇa-led, Nityānanda group. He suggests, however, that the principal
division within the tradition was that which emerged between ‘the devo-
tees of Bengal’, on the one hand, and ‘the scholars and theologians of Vrinda-
van’, on the other (1966: 71). Similar views have been expressed by the likes
of Chakrabarty (1985) and Sanyal (1985). While such influential narratives of
fissure and factionalization may oversimplify what appears to have been a
complex network of relationships among the various Gauḍīya communities
within and between Bengal and Vrindavan (Lutjeharms 2015; Stewart 2010:
18), they nevertheless call attention to the unmissable centrifugal forces at
play within the early post-Caitanya tradition.
Efforts to bring about greater doctrinal and communal coherence within
the tradition were led primarily by students of the gosvāmīs of Vrindavan. Piv-
otal at the level of discourse was the Caitanya-caritāmṛta of Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja,
a writer in the unique position of having studied under all of the principal
Vrindavan gosvāmīs (Stewart 2010: 23). Likely completed in Vrindavan around
1615, Kṛṣṇạdāsa’s monumental work, largely in Bengali verse (payāra and
tripadī) but furnished with copious Sanskrit composition and quotation, per-
formed the task of consolidating the various biographical narratives and their
respective visions of Caitanya, propounding their fulfillment in what would
henceforth become the canonical image of Caitanya as the dual descent of

Kṛṣṇa and Rādhā—more precisely, Kṛṣṇa endowed with the mood (bhāva)
and lustre (dyuti) of Rādhā (Caitanya-caritāmṛta 1.1.5). Kṛṣṇadāsa furthermore
embedded his master narrative within the framework of what was presented
for the first time as the ‘system’ of gosvāmī theology (Stewart 2010: 195). As
Stewart (1985, 1994, 2010) persuasively argues, the Caitanya-caritāmṛta thus
effectively brought together two Gauḍīya worlds—Sanskritic (Vrindavan) and
Bengali (Bengal)—providing coherence to a religious tradition that lacked ‘a
clear line of leadership or centralised institutional base’ (2010: 9). Dimock and
Stewart (1999) present a critical translation of the text, often supplying addi-
tional insights that draw upon Radhagovinda Nath’s commentary from his
now-classic Bengali edition (1948–1952). Their comprehensive introduction
to this landmark publication includes helpful overviews of the background to
the Caitanya-caritāmṛta, the life of its author, essential features of the text, a
history of its scholarly reception, and some of its key themes.
It would take the sustained organizational endeavours of three enterpris-
ing Vrindavan-trained emissaries from Bengal and Orissa for the tradition to
begin to realize the kind of discursive unity achieved by the Caitanya-caritāmṛta
at the concrete level of community. According to popular second-generation
hagiographies like the Prema-vilāsa, the famed devotee trio of Śrīnivāsa,
Narottama, and Śyāmānanda were deputed by their mentor Jīva Gosvāmī to
travel from Vrindavan to Bengal to disseminate the teachings of the gosvāmīs
some time in the latter part of the sixteenth century. Armed with the works
of the gosvāmīs, along with what Stewart (2010) dubs their essential ‘primer’,
the Caitanya-caritāmṛta, the trio worked hard to propagate the new theo-
logical and ritual standards throughout Bengal and neighbouring regions.
Chakrabarty (1985: 201–55) provides a detailed outline of the trio’s various
propagatory activities in Bengal and Orissa (for an excellent Bengali-language
account, see Sanyal 1989). Their strategy often involved gaining support from
local royalty and other influential figures. Śrīnivāsa, for instance, won over
to his cause the rājā of the Mālla kingdom of Vishnupur, Dhārā Vīra Hāṃvīra,
whose new-found Vaiṣṇava faith inspired the building of myriad distinctive
temples in the kingdom in the seventeenth century (Ghosh 2005; Wright
2014). The trio also established working relations with the various Gauḍīya
communities in the region. This was achieved perhaps most crucially through
the organization of large public kīrtana festivals (mahotsava). The most signifi-
cant among these was the famed month-long festival at Kheturi in Rajshahi
district, present-day Bangladesh, organized by Narottama some time in the
latter decades of the sixteenth century. Numerous scholars (e.g. Chakrabarty
1985: 229–43; Sanyal 1985; Stewart 2010: 290–96, 2011) have highlighted the
pivotal function of this festival in the context of the tradition’s history, pro-
viding as it did a concrete platform for the various Vaiṣṇava groups in Bengal
to meet and come to a mutual understanding on doctrinal and ritual mat-
ters ‘under the influence of the Gosvāmī system’ (Sanyal 1985: 35). As Stew-
art sees it, Kheturi marked the tangible point at which ‘like-minded devotees

coalesced into the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava community’ (2011: 329; italics added).
Stewart (2011) has vividly detailed the concrete processes by which the com-
munity achieved durable coherence at this time. He highlights in particular
the essential yet tacit mechanism of the maṇḍala, which provided the emerg-
ing Gauḍīya community and its successive generations a replicable unifying
structure ‘in the absence of any other authority’ (2011: 303).
Each member of the devotee trio still awaits a detailed study in English of
the kind Nirad Prashad Nath (1975) and Jimutabahan Ray (1984) have presented
in Bengali, on Narottama and Śrīnivāsa respectively. Of the three, Narottama
has received the most critical attention in recent English-language scholarship.
This is not surprising, for he was by far the most literarily productive. His writ-
ings apparently ‘set the tone and tenor of theological exposition for the rest of
the seventeenth century’ (Stewart 2010: 337). Among these, two poetical col-
lections, Prārthanā and Prema-bhakti-candrikā, have been especially influential.
Along with an introduction to Narottama’s life and musical contribution to
the tradition, Guy Beck (1996) presents an English translation of Prārthanā, an
anthology of Bengali padas dealing with the cultivation of a proper devotional
temperament. O’Connell (1981) closely examines the phenomenology of ‘deliv-
erance’ (uddhara) articulated in the opening poems, or ‘entreaty’ (vijñāpti), in
Prārthanā. O’Connell (1991) also offers a translation of the Prema-bhakti-candrikā,
a collection of Bengali padas pertaining to rāgānuga-sādhana-bhakti—more spe-
cifically, a variety of such practice known as mañjarī-sādhana, the ‘disciplined
imitation of the feelings and behaviour of … servants of the female friends
(sakhī) of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa’ (O’Connell 1991: 316), which Narottama did much
to propagate (for more on Narottama’s role in the development of this esoteric
devotional practice, see Haberman 1988: 108–12; 1993).
Besides the evident need for more focused research on these three epoch-
making devotees, other important Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava players within this con-
solidative milieu, such as Nityānanda’s second wife Jāhnavā Devī, and his son
Vīrabhadra Gosvāmī, about whom second-generation hagiographies often
have much to say, also await further critical examination. Jāhnavā, who is
reported to have forged links with the Vrindavan gosvāmīs and worked hard
for the ‘unification of the various Bengali sub-sects’ in the late sixteenth cen-
tury (Chakrabarty 1985: 175), would make a particularly intriguing and impor-
tant subject of investigation, as a prominent instance of female leadership
in what has otherwise historically been an undeniably patriarchal religious
community (for outlines of her leading role in the community, see Brzezinski
1996: 67–72; Chakrabarty 1985: 174–83).
Re-Articulation
The late seventeenth to the mid eighteenth century witnessed innovative

Gauḍīya theological developments in the Vrindavan and Jaipur regions. While

these developments within the tradition in North India overlap the consol-
idative developments outlined in the preceding section, both temporally
and programmatically, they were nevertheless shaped by a markedly differ-
ent socio-political context and its associated concerns. A key figure in this
context was Mahāraja Jaisingh II (1688–1743), Kachvāhā ruler of Jaipur (r.
1700–1743), whose family historically had strong links with the Gauḍīya tra-
dition, as exemplified by their patronage and eventual appropriation of Rūpa
Gosvāmī’s deity (vigraha), Govindadeva (Case 1996; Horstmann 1994, 1999).
Jaisingh II appears to have sought to project the image of a moral or ‘dhar-
mic’ king in order to buttress his authority in the broader context of a declin-
ing Mughal state (Horstmann 2006, 2009). His court in Jaipur was the setting
for a number of official religious disputes surrounding the moral and institu-
tional legitimacy of the Gauḍīyas (for summaries of these disputes, see Burton
2000: 101–28; Okita 2014a: 33–40). As O’Connell (1970: 273) observes, leading
Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavas in this milieu were thus at pains to demonstrate the ‘pro-
priety’ of, and secure a ‘good public image’ for, the tradition, while remaining
‘careful not to sacrifice their unique heritage’.
Baladeva Vidyābhūṣaṇa was a figure central to the task of clarifying and
re-articulating Gauḍīya doctrinal positions to meet the specific challenges
presented by Jaisingh II’s rule. Born near Remuna in Orissa, Baladeva is
reported to have become affiliated with the Mādhva Vaiṣṇava tradition in
Karnataka shortly after his primary studies. He was, however, won over to the
Gauḍīya fold by the influence of a prominent Vaiṣṇava leader in Puri named
Rādhādāmodaradāsa, who introduced him to Jīva’s Ṣaṭ-sandarbha. Baladeva
soon relocated to Vrindavan, becoming a leading theological light within the
tradition, celebrated particularly for his successful defence of the tradition in
some of the key disputes in Jaisingh II’s court. Accounts of Baladeva’s life and
work have been provided by Sudesh Narang (1984: 1–23), Elkman (1986: 25–50),
Michael Wright and Nancy Wright (1993), Adrian Burton (2000: 82–100), Del-
monico (2006: 39–42), and Okita (2014a: 13–17). In view of Baladeva’s geo-
graphically diverse background, Buchta (2007) underscores the importance
of being attentive to the ‘multi-regional influences’ evident in his theology,
the intellectual impact of which was deemed significant enough to earn him
an entry, alongside Jīva, in Dasgupta’s History of Indian Philosophy, volume 4
(1949: 438–48). Narang (1984) and Okita (2014b) provide helpful synopses of
Baladeva’s epistemology, ontology, ethics, and other aspects of his thought.
Above all, Baladeva is famed for his magnum opus, the Govinda-bhāṣya, the
first Gauḍīya commentary on the Brahma-sūtra. Srisa Chandra Vasu (1912)
contributed what is still the only complete English rendering of this Gauḍīya
theological milestone. While, contrary to traditional accounts, the work
was likely composed after Jaisingh II’s reign (Burton 2000: 109), it needs to
be read, as Okita (2014a) argues, in the light of the issues upon which the
aforementioned disputes in Jaipur centred. One of the major bones of conten-
tion was the Gauḍīya tradition’s sampradāya affiliation. The issue had become

especially pressing in light of Jaisingh II’s advocacy of the notion that there
were only four legitimate Vaiṣṇava traditions (catuḥ sampradāya), an idea
that had likely begun to take shape some time in the mid seventeenth cen-
tury (Hawley 2015). Baladeva famously propounded Gauḍīya affiliation with
the Mādhva tradition. Okita’s detailed analysis (2014a) of key sections of the
Govinda-bhāṣya highlights Baladeva’s strategic utilization of Mādhva termi-
nology and ideas in the service of the Gauḍīya Vedānta he sought to formu-
late. Gupta (2005) similarly calls attention to the ‘careful balancing act’ that
Baladeva performed in negotiating the relationship between the Mādhvas
and the Gauḍīyas in his Prameya-ratnāvalī, a concise supplementary text to the
Govinda-bhāṣya (English translations in Delmonico 2006; Gupta 2014c). While
Baladeva may have helped to settle the question of the Gauḍīyas’ sampradāya
status in this context, his claim of Mādhva-Gauḍīya affiliation has continued
to provoke debate both within the tradition and beyond (e.g. Deadwyler
1992; Elkman 1986; Hardy 1974; Hawley 2013, 2015; Kapoor 1976: 36–52; Okita
2008, 2014a). Other aspects of Baladeva's Gauḍīya Vedāntic thought that have
also recently received some attention include: his complex textual engage-
ment with other Vedāntic traditions (Buchta 2016; Okita 2011); his refutation
of Pātañjala Yoga (Buchta 2005); and his theological vindication of female reli-
gious authority (Buchta 2010).
Kṛṣṇadeva Sārvabhauma Bhaṭṭācārya, the other major player in the Jaipur
disputes, has also recently begun to receive critical exposure. As well as being
the chief priest (mahant) of the Rādhāvinodajī temple in Jaipur, Kṛṣṇadeva
served as Jaisingh II’s theological counsellor from 1715 (Burton 2000: 69).
Burton (pp. 67–81) and Monika Horstmann (2009: 90–98) provide outlines of
Kṛṣṇadeva’s life and work, charting in some detail his intimate role in Jai
singh II’s court. Though the stature of Kṛṣṇadeva’s writings within the tradi-
tion appears to have waned somewhat since Jaisingh II’s demise, in their day
they carried considerable weight amongst Gauḍīyas of the ‘western branch’,
stamped as they were with the seal of royal authority (Horstmann 2004). As
is to be expected, Kṛṣṇadeva’s works often mediate issues with which Jai
singh II was himself concerned. Horstmann (2005, 2009) reads his Karma-vivṛti
(German translation: Horstmann 2009: 213–90), for instance, as responding to
the controversy surrounding the works of one Rūpa Kavirāja, who expounded
an idiosyncratic yet influential reading of the practice of rāgānuga-bhakti that
challenged the dharmic social order Jaisingh II was at pains to establish. A
series of tribunals over which Kṛṣṇadeva presided eventually led to the offi-
cial censure of Kavirāja’s works (for more about the Kavirāja affair, see Delmo-
nico 1999; Haberman 1988: 98–104; Horstmann 2009: 75–86). Kṛṣṇadeva was
also centrally involved in debates over the lawful (svakīya)/unlawful (parakīya)
status of Kṛṣṇa’s love with the gopīs, another matter of pressing concern to
Jaisingh II, who was naturally eager to promote the svakīya position. The issue
even spilled over into courts in Bengal, where Kṛṣṇadeva’s attempt to cham-
pion svakīyavāda on behalf of the king appears to have come to no avail (for

more about these debates, see Burton 2000: 111–15; Horstmann 2009: 98–120;
for theological background to the issue, see Brzezinski 1997; Okita forthcom-
ing). While Horstmann’s pioneering English‑ and German-language publi-
cations have done much to bring Kṛṣṇadeva’s significance for the Gauḍīya
tradition to light, there is still much work to be done on this interesting
Gauḍīya theologian, an example of the nexus between theology and politics
in early modern South Asia.
A third figure integrally related to this milieu of Gauḍīya re-articulation
is Viśvanātha Cakravartī, a Vrindavan-based Bengali brāhmaṇa renunciate,
who led the Gauḍīya community in the region during the late seventeenth
and early eighteenth centuries. Burton (2000: 9–63) provides a detailed over-
view of Viśvanātha’s life and works (also Horstmann 2009: 86–90). While
Viśvanātha was literarily active from 1679 to 1713 (Burton 2000: 13), and thus
likely very old or no longer present by the time of the disputes in Jaipur, he
nevertheless exerted influence in them through Baladeva and Kṛṣṇadeva,
both of whom were his disciples, as well as through his numerous writings,
which appear to have been popular in Jaisingh II’s court (pp. 41–42). With
regard to the Rūpa Kavirāja controversy, for instance, Viśvanātha formu-
lated an explicit rebuttal of the ideas of his contemporary Kavirāja, which no
doubt informed the views of his students and of Jaisingh II (for a summary
of this rebuttal, see Haberman 1988: 104–108). The scant critical attention
Viśvanātha has received would appear rather incongruous with the enduring
influence of his writings within the Gauḍīya tradition as a whole. Klostermaier
(1974) and O’Connell (1991) have offered translations of two of Viśvanātha’s
shorter treatises—the Bhakti-rasāmṛta-sindhu-bindu and Rāga-vartma-candrikā,
respectively. More recently, Edelmann has provided valuable insight into
Viśvanātha’s mode of engagement with sacred texts (2013) and theological
account of the cause of devotion to Kṛṣṇa (2015). Burton’s doctoral study
(2000) of Viśvanātha’s Sārārtha-varṣiṇī commentary on the Bhagavad-gītā is
still, however, the only sustained examination of one of his works (Burton
supplies a critical edition and translation of the first three chapters of the text
as an appendix). Viśvanātha’s manifold writings thus remain a fecund though
largely untapped source for critical investigation, particularly for those with
an interest in the workings of the mind of an innovative theological inter-
preter of the Gauḍīya tradition.
Institutionalization
The nineteenth and early twentieth centuries mark another major phase
in the development of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism. British colonial presence in the
subcontinent during this period entailed intense and prolonged exposure to
challenging currents of western modernity for many South Asian religious
traditions. Calcutta (now Kolkata) being, until 1911, the centre of colonial

rule, Vaiṣṇavism in Bengal was no exception. The fortunes of Vaiṣṇavism at

this time are intimately bound up with the emergence of an urban British-
educated Bengali middle class that had begun to take shape by the middle of
the nineteenth century. Members of this small but significant social group,
commonly referred to as the bhadraloka (‘cultured people’) were initially dis-
posed to denounce the tradition as a source of cultural embarrassment (Fuller
2005: 124). However, by the latter decades of the century, as the cultural cli-
mate began to change, a substantial section of the bhadraloka had begun to
turn to Vaiṣṇavism for religious and cultural inspiration (Bhatia 2009: 5–8).
With the printing press, bureaucratic training, and other newly imported
resources at their disposal, bhadraloka Vaiṣṇava enthusiasts set about fash-
ioning a ‘“modern” urban Vaiṣṇavism’ (Clooney and Stewart 2004: 180).
O’Connell (1999) argues that this period marks the advent of ‘hard’, that is,
‘centralised, coercive, politicised’, institutions within the Gauḍīya tradition,
which, he suggests, had hitherto tended to avoid such mechanisms for orga-
nizing and transmitting its ‘value orientations’.7
Chakrabarty (1985: 385–452) provides an extremely useful, if rather clut-
tered, overview of some of the key Vaiṣṇava developments and protagonists in
Bengal during this period. One figure that plays a particularly critical role in
this context is Kedarnath Datta Bhaktivinod (1838–1914), an employee in the
subexecutive and subjudicial branch of the Indian Civil Service, under whose
direction, Chakrabarty (1985: 394) remarks, ‘Vaiṣṇava journalism as well as
Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava organization in Bengal really became meaningful’. Bhakti
vinod’s prolific writing, publishing, and organizational endeavours, which led
to the eventual birth of the pan-Indian Gaudiya Math in 1918, and its vari-
ous institutional offshoots in the mid twentieth century (including ISKCON),
have begun to garner appreciable critical attention. Shukavaka Dasa’s pio-
neering monograph (1999) is an indispensable introduction to Bhaktivinod’s
life and his key Sanskrit, Bengali, and English writings. Jason Fuller (2003,
2005, 2016) turns to Bhaktivinod as an appropriate site for exploring the ‘dis-
cursive arena’ of bhadraloka religion, calling attention to his effective use of
‘colonial technologies’, such as the periodical, the novel, historiography, car-
tography, and the colonial market, in the creation of the modern brand of
Vaiṣṇavism he sought to create and propagate. Varuni Bhatia (2009) exam-
ines Bhaktivinod’s role in the process of ‘Vaiṣṇava recovery’—that is, the ‘sal-
vaging, institutionalizing, and authenticating’ of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism (2009:
2)—which she sees as broadly defining bhadraloka Vaiṣṇava activity in this
context. Abhishek Ghosh (2014) attends to Bhaktivinod’s systematic response
to nineteenth-century Western discourses on ‘world history’ and ‘world reli-
gions’. Santanu Dey (2015: 256–306) probes Bhaktivinod’s autobiographic
7. The developments within the tradition instigated by Jaisingh II outlined in the preceding
section appear to complexify O’Connell’s tripartite typology of institutions (1999), as they
stand somewhere between his ‘medium’ and ‘hard’ institutional modalities.

self-representation as a colonial middle-class Vaiṣṇava reformer, and traces

shifts in constructions of his life in the hagiographical tradition that devel-
oped around him. Much of this recent work on Bhaktivinod has naturally
emphasized the evident bhadraloka facets of his religious enterprise. This
should not, however, cause one to lose sight of the fact that, as in the case
of other key urban middle-class Vaiṣṇava types of the period, Bhaktivinod
established intimate relations with pre-existing local Vaiṣṇava communi-
ties, who had a discernible impact on his thought (Wong 2014). Bhaktivinod’s
enterprise nevertheless had unmissable modernizing universalist aspira-
tions. Valpey (2006: 81–103) highlights some of the distinctly universalist
dimensions of Bhaktivinod’s thought and traces their development in the
institutionalizing missionary work of his fifth son, Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati
(1874–1937), architect of the Gaudiya Math. Brzezinski (2004) explores key ele-
ments of Bhaktisiddhanta’s programme of Vaiṣṇava reform, inspired largely
by Bhaktivinod, such as his advocation of a spiritually-based socio-religious
order (daivi-varṇāśrama-dharma) and rejection of hereditary Vaiṣṇava guru lin-
eages. Ferdinando Sardella (2013) undertakes a more extensive study of these
and other important features of Bhaktisiddhanta’s institutionalizing work,
locating him within the complex matrix of modern Hinduism.8
The attention that players central to prominent contemporary global
Gauḍīya developments have recently begun to receive should not, however,
detract from the many other significant figures, institutions, and communi-
ties that constituted the Gauḍīya tradition during this period. In this regard,
Bhatia (2009, 2011, forthcoming) highlights the activities of the Bengali jour-
nalist, writer, and patriot Sishir Kumar Ghosh (1840–1911), a capable orga-
nizer and leading participant in the processes of Vaiṣṇava recovery, whose
overt regional-nationalist concerns nevertheless set him apart from his con-
temporary and one-time collaborator, Bhaktivinod. Gerald Carney (e.g. 1998,
2004, 2007) has called attention to Baba Premananda Bharati (1857–1914), a
Vaiṣṇava sannyāsī born into an influential Bengali middle-class family, who
journeyed to New York at the beginning of the twentieth century to propagate
Caitanya’s teachings, becoming perhaps the first Gauḍīya missionary in the
West. A new, annotated edition of Bharati’s principal English-language work
Śrī Kṛṣṇa: Lord of Love (2007), originally published by his New York-based soci-
ety Krishna Samaj in 1904, has recently appeared. Dey’s doctoral study (2015)
of the ‘resuscitation’ and ‘restructuring’ of Vaiṣṇavism in the late nineteenth
and early twentieth centuries deals with an impressive range of Gauḍīya char-
acters and institutions in Bengal that have hitherto received little attention.
Hena Basu and T. K. Stewart (Basu 2009) have compiled a comprehensive list
of the myriad Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava periodicals in circulation in Bengal from the
8. The life and work of Bhaktivinod formed the theme of a recent issue of the Journal of
Vaishnava Studies 23 (1) (Fall 2014) to which a number of the aforementioned scholars
contributed.

mid nineteenth century, which provides clear indication of the diversity and
dynamism of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism during the period. One should bear in mind,
of course, that not all of this flurry of Vaiṣṇava-related bhadraloka activity
was directly associated with the tradition in its various institutional modali-
ties. In this regard, Bhatia (forthcoming) draws a useful heuristic distinction
between institutional forms of Vaiṣṇavism that were rooted in the theological
canon of the Gauḍīya tradition, or ‘Gaudiya Vaishnavism’, on the one hand,
and the ‘multiplicity of devotional life-worlds associated with the figure of
Chaitanya, as well as with the complex of Radha-Krishna worship in the
Bengali-speaking region of the subcontinent’, or ‘Bengal Vaishnavism’, on the
other. She closely examines the significant role the latter played in the consti-
tution of a ‘modern and authentic’ Bengali cultural identity.
Vaiṣṇavas beyond the bhadraloka fold also remained a significant feature of
the broader Gauḍīya landscape during this phase of the tradition’s develop-
ment. Some valuable work has been undertaken on representatives of these
older, often less vocal Vaiṣṇava currents. Drawing upon the Bengali-language
groundwork laid by Haridas Das (1951), Kapoor (1992, 1995b) offers hagio-
graphical, though nevertheless useful, English-language accounts of the lives
and activities of prominent Bengal- and Vrindavan-based priestly (gosvāmī)9
and renunciate (vairāgī or bābājī) Vaiṣṇavas of the period (see also McDaniel
1989: 29–85). Manring (2005) sheds light on developments within the gosvāmī
community tracing lineal descent from Advaita Ācārya, which, in the face
of colonially-driven cultural and social change, appears to have sought to
reassert its brāhmanical pedigree within the tradition through the produc-
tion of hagiographies of their prestigious ancestor (for English translations
of key texts from this corpus, see Manring 2011). O’Connell (1982) offers a
useful sketch of the Jāti-Vaiṣṇavas, a predominantly subaltern ‘subcaste (jāti)
without caste (varṇa)’, which comprised a sizable component of the Gauḍīya
tradition in Bengal. He draws attention to intriguing brāhmanicizing devel-
opments within the community in the early twentieth century (for more
on the Jāti-Vaiṣṇava and other subaltern Vaiṣṇava communities during this
period, see Bandyopadhyay 2004: 77–107; Chakrabarty 1985: 320–45; P. Chat-
terjee 1993: 173–99; Openshaw 2006; Sanyal 1981; Sarkar 2009: 69–120).
This area of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava studies has witnessed a surge of critical
interest in recent years.10 Work on the tradition during this period, how-
ever, remains fairly Bengal-centric. While some headway into Vaiṣṇava-
related developments in regions such as the hinterland of Northeast India
9. The title gosvāmī had by this time become the standard designation for the tradition’s
brāhmaṇa householder leadership.
10. A research project entitled ‘Bengali Vaishnavism in the Modern Period’, which aims to
map, collect, translate, and investigate material pertaining to the tradition from the mid
eighteenth to the mid twentieth century, was recently launched by the Oxford Centre
for Hindu Studies (www.ochs.org.uk/research/bengali-vaishnavism-modern-period). A
volume based on research presented at the project’s inaugural workshop is in preparation.

(I. Chatterjee 2013), Orissa (Malinar 2001; 2007), and Vrindavan (S. Ray 2012)
has been made, further exploration of the tradition in these and other regions
would provide a more balanced picture of the broader Gauḍīya landscape.
Another lacuna is that of the state of the tradition in the late eighteenth and
early nineteenth centuries, that is, the period immediately preceding the
bhadraloka’s turn to Vaiṣṇavism. Assumptions about Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava activ-
ity, or lack thereof, during this period still appear to be largely shaped by rep-
resentations projected by the bhadraloka, who naturally had vested interests
in framing the tradition as broadly in need of being ‘recovered’.
Conclusion
The map that I have attempted to sketch should have drawn some atten-
tion to the distinct emphasis on specificity evinced by much recent schol-
arship on Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism. As should be apparent, studying the Gauḍīya
tradition has in recent years often involved a turn to particular authors,
texts, periods, and places. This has served to flesh out earlier, often more
generic characterizations of the tradition. Admittedly, the broadly histori-
cal approach I have adopted here has entailed the privileging of some criti-
cal material at the expense of others. While the field undoubtedly remains
dominated by the kind of text-historical and social-historical research upon
which the present article has primarily drawn, recent years have seen com-
pelling studies of the tradition employing other important research meth-
ods. For example, a number of scholars have brought creative philosophical
and theological approaches to bear on Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism’s rich intellec-
tual world. Edelmann (2013), for instance, chalks out a potentially productive
direction for constructive theological work beyond ‘first-order’ critical analy-
sis. Frazier (2009) and Leena Taneja (2008a, 2008b) bring the tradition’s theol-
ogy into fruitful conversation with various strands of continental philosophy,
and Michelle Voss Roberts (2014) has similarly engaged the tradition in com-
parative theological dialogue with medieval Christian mysticism. Moreover,
the map reveals thematic gaps that need filling out. In addition to those
already highlighted in each of the relevant sections of the article, Gauḍīya
Vaiṣṇavism’s relations to other religious traditions would appear to call for
further investigation. While some notable work has been undertaken on the
tradition’s relations with Śāktism (e.g. Bordeaux 2015; Kinsley 1975; McDan-
iel 2000; McDermott 2001), and Islam (e.g. Nicholas 2003: 28–46; O’Connell
1983, forthcoming c; Stewart 1999, 2001, 2013), further systematic inquiry
into its dealings with these and other religious traditions (e.g. other Vaiṣṇava
communities, Buddhism, tribal traditions, Christianity, etc.) would shed vital
light on Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism’s influences from and upon the broader religious
world of South Asia and beyond. Nevertheless, as the map I have proffered
hopefully illustrates, Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava studies in the Western academy have

come a long way since their inception in the middle of last century. The gen-
eral picture that seems to have emerged is that of a religious tradition and its
representatives in constant negotiation with the concerns and challenges of
particular contexts—a tradition very much embodying, in the words of Mari-
lyn Waldman, ‘a modality of change’ (cited in Valpey 2006: 82).11
Acknowledgments
I would like to express my gratitude to Tony K. Stewart, Kiyokazu Okita, Ishan

Chakrabarti, the two anonymous reviewers, and, above all, Rembert Lutje-
harms for providing valuable suggestions for improving this article. I am
also very grateful to Suzanne Newcombe for having provided the initial idea
for this article, as well as for kindly and patiently helping to see the article
through to publication.
References
Bandyopadhyay, S. 2004. Caste, Culture and Hegemony: Social Domination in Colonial Bengal. New Delhi:
Sage Publications.
Basu, H. (ed.). 2009. Vaisnava Periodicals in Bengal, 1856–1983: Authors, Editors, Publishers. Kolkata:
Basu Research and Documentation Service.
Beck, G. 1996. ‘An Introduction to the Poetry of Narottam Dās.’ Journal of Vaishnava Studies 4 (4):
17–52.
Bharati, Baba Premananda. 2007. Śrī Kṛṣṇa: The Lord of Love. Kirksville, MO: Blazing Sapphire Press.
Bhatia, V. 2009. ‘Devotional Traditions and National Culture: Recovering Gaudiya Vaishnavism in
Colonial Bengal.’ PhD thesis, Columbia University.
— 2011. ‘Images of Nabadwip: Place, Evidence, and Inspiration.’ In A. Murphy (ed.), Time, History,
and the Religious Imaginary in South Asia: 167–85. Abingdon: Routledge.
— Forthcoming. Unforgetting Chaitanya: Vaishnavism and Cultures of Devotion in Colonial Bengal. New
York: Oxford University Press.
Bordeaux, J. 2015. ‘The Mythic King: Raja Krishnacandra and Early Modern Bengal.’ PhD thesis,
Columbia University.
Broo, M. 2003. As Good as God: The Guru in Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism. Åbo: Åbo Akademi University Press.
Bryant, E. F., and M. L. Ekstrand. 2004. The Hare Krishna Movement: The Post-Charistmatic Fate of a
Religious Transplant. New York: Columbia University Press.
Brzezinski, J. 1992. ‘Jīva Gosvāmin’s Gopālacampū.’ PhD thesis, School of Oriental and African
Studies, University of London.
— 1996. ‘Women Saints in Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism.’ In S. J. Rosen (ed.), Vaiṣṇavī: Women and the Worship
of Kṛṣṇa: 59–86. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
— 1997. ‘Does Kṛṣṇa Marry the Gopīs in the End? The Svakīya-vāda of Jīva Gosvāmin.’ Journal of
Vaishnava Studies 5 (4): 49–110.
11. The Journal of Vaishnava Studies (ed. Steven J. Rosen and Graham M. Schweig) has been a
vital English language resource for the critical study of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism for the past
two decades or so. While the present survey has highlighted a number of key articles pub-
lished in the journal, it has obviously not been possible to refer to all relevant material
contained therein. Anyone embarking upon critical study of the Gauḍīya tradition would
be well advised to consult this important resource.

— 2004. ‘Charismatic Renewal and Institutionalization in the History of Gaudiya Vaishnavism and
the Gaudiya Math.’ In Bryant and Ekstrand 2004: 73–96.
— 2007. ‘Jiva Goswami: Biography and Bibliography.’ Journal of Vaishnava Studies 15 (2): 51–80.
Buchta, D. 2005. ‘Baladeva Vidyābhūṣana and the Vedāntic Refutation of Yoga.’ Journal of Vaish-
nava Studies 14 (1): 181–208.
— 2007. ‘Baladeva Vidyābhūṣaṇa’s Multi-Regional Influences.’ Journal of Vaishnava Studies 15 (2):
81–94.
— 2010. ‘Gārgī Vācaknavī as an Honorary Male: An Eighteenth Century Reception of an
Upaniṣadic Female Sage.’ Journal of Hindu Studies 3 (3): 354–70. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jhs/
hiq028
— 2014. ‘Pedagogical Poetry: Didactics and Devotion in Rūpa Gosvāmin’s “Stavamāla”.’ PhD thesis,
University of Pennsylvania.
— 2016. ‘Devotion and Karmic Extirpation in Late Vedānta: Viṭṭhalanātha and Baladeva
Vidyābhūṣana on Brahmasūtra 4.1.13-19.’ Journal of Hindu Studies 9 (1): 29-55. http://dx.doi.
org/10.1093/jhs/hiw002
Burton, A. P. 2000. ‘Temples, Texts, and Taxes: The Bhagavad-gītā and the Politico-Religious Iden-
tity of the Caitanya Sect.’ PhD thesis, The Australian National University.
Carney, G. 1998. ‘Baba Premananda Bharati (1857–1914), an Early Twentieth-Century Encounter
of Vaishnava Devotion with American Culture: A Comparative Study.’ Journal of Vaishnava Stud-
ies 6 (2): 161–88.
— 2004. ‘Baba Premananda Bharati’s “Privileged View” of Christianity.’ Journal of Vaishnava Studies
13 (1): 77–102.
— 2007. ‘Bābā Premānanda Bhāratī and Sree Krishna—The Lord of Love.’ In Bharati 2007: xxv–
lxxxix.
Case, M. H. 2000. Seeing Krishna: The Religious World of a Brahman Family in Vrindaban. New York:
Oxford University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:oso/9780195130102.001.0001
— (ed.). 1996. Govindadeva: A Dialogue in Stone. New Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Centre for the
Arts.
Chakrabarty, R. 1985. Vaiṣṇavism in Bengal 1496–1900. Calcutta: Sanskrit Pustak Bhandar.
Chakravarti, S. C. 1969. Philosophical Foundation of Bengal Vaiṣṇavism. Calcutta: Academic Publish-
ers.
Chatterjee, I. 2013. Forgotten Friends: Monks, Marriages, and Memories of Northeast India. New Delhi:
Chatterjee, P. 1993. The Nation and Its Fragments: Colonial and Postcolonial Histories. Princeton, NJ:
Princeton University Press.
Clooney, F. X., and T. K. Stewart. 2004. ‘Vaiṣṇava.’ In S. Mittal and G. Thursby (eds.), The Hindu
World: 162–84. Abingdon: Routledge.
Das, H. 1951. Śrī śrī gauḍīya vaiṣṇava jīvana. 2 vols. Nabadwip: Haribola Kuṭīra.
Dasa, B. 2001. Dearest to Viṣṇu: Ekādaśī and Dvādaśī According to the Hari-bhakti-vilāsa. Helsinki: Abso-
lute Truth Press.
Dasa, G. (trans.). 2002–2003. Śrī Bṛhad Bhāgavatāmṛta of Śrīla Sanātana Gosvāmī. 3 vols. Los Angeles:
Bhaktivedanta Book Trust.
— (trans.). 2014. Śrī Tattva-sandarbha of Śrīla Jīva Gosvāmī. Vrindavan: Girirāja Publishing.
Dasa, S., and K. Dasa (trans.). 1995. Śrī Tattva Sandarbha of Śrīla Jīva Gosvāmī: The First Book of the Śrī
Ṣaṭ Sandarbha. Vrindavan: Jiva Institute.
Dasa, S., and Martin, B. (trans.) 2005–2006. Śrī Bhakti Sandarbha of Jīva Gosvāmin. 3 vols. Vrindavan:
Jiva Institute.
Dasa, S. 2007. ‘The Six Sandarbhas of Jiva Goswami.’ In E. Bryant (ed.), Krishna: A Sourcebook: 373–
408. New York: Oxford University Press.
— (trans.). 2014. Bhagavat Sandarbha: God—His Qualities, Abode and Associates. Vrindavan: Jiva
Institute.
Dasa, S., and J. B. Edelmann. 2014. ‘Agency in the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava Tradition.’ In M. R. Dasti and

E. F. Bryant (eds.), Free Will, Agency, and Selfhood in Indian Philosophy: 279–307. New York: Oxford
University Press.
Dasa, S. N. 1999. Hindu Encounter with Modernity: Kedarnath Datta Bhaktivinoda, Vaiṣṇava Theologian.
Los Angeles, CA: Sanskrit Religious Institute.
Dasgupta, S. 1949. History of Indian Philosophy. 4. Indian Pluralism. Cambridge: Cambridge Univer-
sity Press.
De, Sushil K. 1942. Early History of the Vaishnava Faith and Movement in Bengal. Calcutta: General
Printers and Publishers Limited.
Deadwyler, W. 1992. ‘The Sampradāya of Śrī Caitanya.’ In S. Rosen (ed.), Vaiṣṇavism: Contemporary
Scholars Discuss the Gauḍīya Tradition: 127–40. New York: Folk Books.
Delmonico, N. 1990. ‘Sacred Rapture: A Study of the Religious Aesthetic of Rupa Gosvamin.’ PhD
thesis, University of Chicago.
— 1993. ‘Rūpa Gosvāmin: His Life, Family and Early Vraja Commentators.’ Journal of Vaishnava
Studies 1 (2): 133–57.
— 1999. ‘Trouble in Paradise: A Conflict in the Caitanya Vaiṣṇava Tradition.’ Journal of Vaishnava
Studies 8 (1): 91–102.
— 2006. The Fundamentals of Vedānta: Vedantic Texts for Beginners. Kirksville, MO: Blazing Sapphire
Press.
Dey, S. 2015. ‘Resuscitating or Restructuring the Tradition? Issues and Trends among Gauḍīya
Vaishnavas in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Century Bengal.’ PhD thesis, Jawaharlal
Nehru University.
Dimock, E. C. 1958. ‘The Place of Gauracandrikā in Bengali Vaiṣṇava Lyrics.’ Journal of the American
Oriental Society 78 (3): 153–69. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/595285
— 1963. ‘Doctrine and Practice among the Vaiṣṇavas of Bengal.’ History of Religions 3 (1): 106–27.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/462474
— 1966. The Place of the Hidden Moon: Erotic Mysticism in the Vaiṣṇava-sahajiyā Cult of Bengal. Chicago:
University of Chicago Press.
— 1976. ‘Religious Biography in India: The Nectar of the Acts of Caitanya.’ In F. E. Reynolds and
D. Kapps (eds.), The Biographical Process: Studies in the History and Psychology of Religion: 109–17.
The Hague: Mouton. http://dx.doi.org/10.1515/9783110805833.109
Dimock, E. C., and T. K. Stewart (trans.). 1999. Caitanya-caritāmṛta of Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja. Harvard
Oriental Series. Cambridge, MA: Department of Sanskrit and Indian Studies, Harvard Univer-
sity.
Edelmann, J. 2013. ‘Hindu Theology as Churning the Latent.’ Journal of the American Academy of
Religion 81 (2): 427–66. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jaarel/lfs132
— 2015. ‘The Cause of Devotion in Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava Theology: Devotion (bhakti) as the Result of
Spontaneously (yadṛcchayā) Meeting a Devotee (sādhu-saṅga).’ Journal of the American Oriental
Society 135 (1): 49–69. http://dx.doi.org/10.7817/jameroriesoci.135.1.49
Edelmann, J., and S. Dasa. 2014. ‘When Stones Float and Mud Speaks: Scriptural Authority and
Personal Experience in Jīva Gosvāmin’s Sarvasaṃvādinī.’ Journal of Hindu Studies 7 (1): 70–97.
http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jhs/hiu003
Elkman, S. 1986. Jīva Gosvāmin’s Tattvasandarbha: A Study on the Philosophical and Sectarian Develop-
ment of the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava Movement. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
Entwistle, A. 1987. Braj: Centre of Krishna Pilgrimage. Groningen: Egbert Forsten.
Frazier, J. 2009. Reality, Religion, and Passion: Indian and Western Approaches in Hans-Georg Gadamer
and Rūpa Gosvāmī. Plymouth: Lexington Books.
— Forthcoming a. ‘Śakti Vedānta: Divine Being as “Fulfilled Powers” in the Acintya Bhedābheda
of Rūpa Gosvāmī.’
— Forthcoming b. ‘Rasa-Vedānta: Divine Manifestation as “Solid Bliss” in Rūpa Gosvāmī’s Aes-
thetic Pariṇāma-vāda.’
Fuller, J. D. 2003. ‘Re-membering the Tradition: Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura’s ‘Sajjana-toṣaṇī’ and the
Construction of a Middle-Class Vaiṣṇava Sampradāya in Nineteenth-Century Bengal.’ In

A. Copley (ed.), Hinduism in Public and Private: Reform, Hindutva, Gender, and Sampraday: 173–210.
New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
— 2005. ‘Religion, Class, and Power: Bhaktivinode Thakur and the Transformation of Religious
Authority Among the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavas in Nineteenth-Century Bengal.’ PhD thesis, Univer-
sity of Pennsylvania.
— 2016. ‘Colonial Devotional Paths.’ In B. Hatcher (ed.), Hinduism in the Modern World: 80–95. Abing-
don: Routledge.
Ghosh, A. 2014. ‘Vaiṣṇavism and the West: A Study of Kedarnath Datta Bhaktivinod’s Encounter
and Response, 1869–1909.’ PhD thesis, University of Chicago.
Ghosh, Pika. 2005. Temple to Love: Architecture and Devotion in Seventeenth-Century Bengal. Blooming-
ton, IN: Indiana University Press.
Gupta, R. M. 2005. ‘Walking a Theological Tightrope: Controversies of Sampradāya in Eighteenth-
Century Caitanya Vaiṣṇavism.’ ISKCON Communications Journal 11: 39–51.
— 2007. The Caitanya Vaiṣṇava Vedānta of Jīva Gosvāmī: When Knowledge Meets Devotion. Abingdon:
Routledge.
— 2013. ‘Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism.’ In Hiltebeitel, www.oxfordbibliographies.com
— (ed.). 2014a. Caitanya Vaiṣṇava Philosophy: Tradition Reason and Devotion. Farnham: Ashgate.
— 2014b. ‘Where One is Forever Two: God and World in Jīva Gosvāmī’s Bhāgavata-sandarbha.’ In
Gupta 2014a: 35–60. Farnham: Ashgate.
— (trans.). 2014c. ‘A Pearl Necklace of Propositions: Baladeva Vidyābhūṣaṇa’s Prameyaratnāvalī.’
In Gupta 2014a: 113–30.
Haberman, D. L. 1988. Acting as a Way of Salvation: A Study of Rāgānuga Bhakti Sādhana. New Delhi:
Oxford University Press.
— 1993. ‘Shrines of the Mind: A Meditative Shrine Worshiped in Mañjarī Sādhana.’ Journal of
— 1994. Journey through the Twelve Forests: An Encounter with Krishna. New York: Oxford University
Press.
— (trans.). 2003. Bhaktirasāmṛtasindhu of Rūpa Gosvāmin. New Delhi: Indira Gandhi Centre for the
Arts; Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
Hardy, F. 1974. ‘Mādhavendra Purī: A Link between Bengal Vaiṣṇavism and South Indian Bhakti.’
Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society of Great Britain and Ireland 106 (1): 23–41. http://dx.doi.org/
10.1017/S0035869X00131375
Hawley, J. S. 2013. ‘How Do the Gauḍīyas Belong? Kavikarṇapūra, Jaisingh II, and the Question of
Sampradāya.’ Journal of Hindu Studies 6 (2): 114–30. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jhs/hit008
— 2015. A Storm of Songs: India and the Idea of the Bhakti Movement. Cambridge, MA: Harvard Univer-
sity Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.4159/9780674425262
Hayes, G. 2012. ‘Tantra.’ In Hiltebeitel, www.oxfordbibliographies.com
Hiltebeitel, A. (ed.). Oxford Bibliographies Online: Hinduism. www.oxfordbibliographies.com
Holdrege, B. A. 2014. ‘Meditation as Devotional Practice in Jīva Gosvāmin’s Philosophy of Educa-
tion.’ ISKCON Studies Journal 2: 45–70.
— 2015. Bhakti and Embodiment: Fashioning Divine Bodies and Devotional Bodies in Kṛṣṇa Bhakti. Abing-
don: Routledge.
Horstmann, M. 1994. ‘Govinddevjī of Vrndaban and Jaipur.’ In A. Entwistle and F. O. Mallison
(eds.), Studies in South Asian Devotional Literature: Research Papers 1988–1991: 82–93. New Delhi:
Manohar.
— (ed.). 1999. In Favour of Govindadevji: Historical Documents relating to a Deity of Vrindavan and Eastern
Rajasthan. New Delhi: Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts.
— 2004. ‘A Theological Statement by Krishnadeva Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya.’ In N. Krishna and
M. Krishna (eds.), The Ananda-Vana of Indian Art: 367–74. Benares: Indica Books and Abidha
Prakashan.
— 2005. ‘Why Ritual? An Eighteenth Century Debate.’ In J. Gengnagel, U. Hüsken and S. Raman

(eds.), Words and Deeds: Hindu and Buddhist Rituals in South Asia: 277–90. Wiesbaden: Otto
Harrassowitz.
— 2006. Visions of Kingship in the Twighlight of Mughal Rule. Amsterdam: Royal Netherlands Acad-
emy of Arts and Sciences.
— 2009. Der Zusammenhalt der Welt: Religiöse Herrschaftslegitimation und Religionspolitik Mahārāja
Savāī Jaisinghs (1700–1743). Weisbaden: Otto Harrassowitz.
Jacobsen, K. A., H. Basu and A. Malinar (eds.). 2009–2014. Brill’s Encyclopedia of Hinduism. 6 vols.
Leiden: Brill.
Jana, N. 1970. Vṛndāvanera chaya gosvāmī. Calcutta: Calcutta University Press.
Joshi, R. V. 1959. Le Rituel de la Dévotion Krishnaite. Pondichéry: L’Institut Français d’Indologie.
Kapoor, O. B. L. 1976. The Philosophy and Religion of Sri Caitanya. Delhi: Munshiram Manoharlal
Publishers.
— 1992. The Saints of Vraja. Caracas: Saravatī Jayaśrī Classics.
— 1995a. The Gosvāmīs of Vṛndāvana. Caracas: Sarasvatī Jayaśrī Classics.
— 1995b. The Saints of Bengal. Caracas: Sarasvatī Jayaśrī Classics.
Kaviraj, S. 2003. ‘The Two Histories of Literary Culture in Bengal.’ In S. Pollock (ed.), Literary Cul-
ture in History: Reconstructions from South Asia: 503–66. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Kennedy, M. T. 1925. The Chaitanya Movement: A Study of Vaishnavism in Bengal. Calcutta: Association
Press.
Kinsley, D. 1975. The Sword and the Flute: Kālī and Kṛṣṇa, Dark Visions of the Terrible and the Sublime in
Hindu Mythology. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press.
— 1979. The Divine Player: A Study of Kṛṣṇa Līlā. Delhi: Motilal Banarsidass.
Klostermaier, K. 1974. ‘The Bhaktirasāmṛtasindhubindu of Viśvanātha Cakravartin.’ Journal of the
American Oriental Society 94 (1): 96–107. http://dx.doi.org/10.2307/599733
Lutjeharms, R. 2010. ‘The Splendour of Speech: The Theology of Kavikarṇapūra’s Poetics.’ PhD
thesis, University of Oxford.
— 2012. ‘Rūpa Gosvāmī.’ In Jacobsen, Basu and Malinar 2009–2014: 4.379–87.
— 2014. ‘An Ocean of Emotion: Rasa and Religious Experience in Early Caitanya Vaiṣṇava Thought.’
In Gupta 2014: 175–215.
— 2015. ‘Caitanya and the Gosvāmīs of Vṛndāvana: A Reappraisal of Early Caitanya Vaiṣṇava Intel-
lectual History.’ Paper presented at the 12th International Conference on Early Modern Lit-
eratures in North India, University of Lausanne, 19 July.
— 2016. ‘“Why do we still sift the husk-like Upaniṣads?” Revisiting Vedānta in Early Chaitanya
Vaishnava Theology.’ In T. Williams and J. Hawley (eds.), Texts and Traditions in Early Modern
India. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Majumdar, B. B. 1939. Śrī caitanya caritera upādāna. Calcutta: Calcutta University Press.
Malinar, A. 2001. ‘Rādhāramaṇa Cāraṇa Dās und die Caitanya-Nachfolge in Orissa: Zur Textual-
isierung von Charisma.’ In D. W. Lönne (ed.), Toḥfa-e-Dil: Festschrift für Helmuth Nespital: 295–
313. Reinbek: Wezler.
— 2007. ‘Genealogies and Centres: Communities of the Caitanya Tradition in Orissa.’ In G. Pfeffer
(ed.), Centre and Periphery: Studies in Orissan History, Religion, and Anthropology: 27–57. New Delhi:
Manohar.
Manring, R. 2005. Reconstructing Tradition: Advaita Ācārya and Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism at the Cusp of the
Twentieth Century. New York: Columbia University Press.
Manring, R. J. 2008. ‘Does Kṛṣṇa Really Need His Own Grammar? Jīva Gosvāmin’s Answer.’ Interna-
tional Journal of Hindu Studies 12 (3): 257–82. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11407-008-9062-z
Manring, R. 2011. The Fading Light of Advaita Ācārya: Three Hagiographies. New York: Oxford Univer-
sity Press.
McDaniel, J. 1989. The Madness of Saints: Ecstatic Religion in Bengal. Chicago: University of Chicago
Press.
— 2000. ‘The Tantric Rādhā: Some Controversies about the Nature of Rādhā in Bengal Vaish
navism and the Rādhā Tantra.’ Journal of Vaishnava Studies 8 (2): 131–46.

McDermott, R. F. 2001. Mother of My Heart, Daughter of My Dreams: Kālī and Umā in the Devotional
Poetry of Bengal. New York: Oxford University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/0195134
354.001.0001
Narang, S. 1984. The Vaiṣṇava Philosophy according to Baladeva Vidyā Bhūṣaṇa. Delhi: Nag
Publishers.
Nath, N. P. 1975. Narottama dāsa o tā̃hāra racanāvalī. Calcutta: Calcutta University Press.
Nath, R. (ed.). 1948–52. Śrī śrī caitanya caritāmṛta. 6 vols. Calcutta: Sādhanā Prakāśanī.
Nicholas, R. W. 2003. Fruits of Worship: Practical Religion in Bengal. New Delhi: Chronicle Books.
O’Connell, J. T. 1970. ‘Social Implications of the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava Movement.’ Unpublished PhD
thesis, University of Harvard.
— 1981. ‘Gaudiya Vaisnava Symbolism of Deliverance (uddhara, nistara …) from Evil.’ In J. Lele (ed.),
Tradition and Modernity in Bhakti Movements: 124–35. Leiden: E. J. Brill.
— 1982. ‘Jāti-Vaiṣṇavas of Bengal: “Subcaste” (Jāti) without “Caste” (Varṇa).’ Journal of Asian and
African Studies 17 (3/4): 189–207. http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/002190968201700302
— 1983. ‘Vaiṣṇava Perceptions of Muslims in Sixteenth Century Bengal.’ In M. Israel and N. K.
Wagle (eds.), Islamic Society and Culture: Essays in Honour of Professor Aziz Ahmad: 279–313. New
Delhi: Manohar.
— (trans.). 1991. ‘“Moonbeam of Loving Devotion” or Prema-bhakti-candrikā of Narottama-dāsa.’ In
G. Bhattacharya, D. S. Sharma and M. Banerjee (eds.), Prajñājyoti: Prof. Dr. Gopikamohan Bhatt
acharya Commemoration Volume: 315–32. Kurukshetra: Nirmal Book Agency.
— 1993. ‘Historicity in the Biographies of Caitanya.’ Journal of Vaishnava Studies 1 (2): 102–32.
— 1999. ‘Chaitanya Vaishnava Movement: Symbolic Means of Institutionalization.’ In J. T.
O’Connell (ed.), Organizational and Institutional Aspects of Indian Religious Movements: 215–39.
Shimla: Indian Institute of Advanced Studies; New Delhi: Manohar.
— 2011. ‘Chaitanya Vaishnava Devotion (bhakti) and Ethics as Socially Integrative in Sultanate
Bengal.’ Bangladesh e-Journal of Sociology 8 (1): 51–63.
— Forthcoming a. ‘Caitanya Vaiṣṇava Community.’ In J. T. O’Connell, Caitanya Vaiṣṇava Studies.
Abingdon: Routledge.
— Forthcoming b. ‘Social Demographic Analyses of Caitanya Vaiṣṇavas.’ In J. T. O’Connell, Caitanya
Vaiṣṇava Studies. Abingdon: Routledge.
— Forthcoming c. ‘Vaiṣṇava Relations with Muslim Regimes in Bengal.’ In J. T. O’Connell, Caitanya
Vaiṣṇava Studies. Abingdon: Routledge.
Okita, K. 2008. ‘Mādhva or Gauḍīya? The Philosophy of Baladeva Vidyābhūṣaṇa’s Prameyaratnāvalī.’
Journal of Vaishnava Studies 16 (2): 22–48.
— 2011. ‘Quotation in Early Modern Vedānta: An Example from Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism.’ Religions of
South Asia 6 (2): 207–24.
— 2014a. Hindu Theology in Early Modern South Asia: The Rise of Devotionalism and the Politics of Geneal-
ogy. Oxford: Oxford University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/acprof:
oso/9780198709268.001.0001
— 2014b. ‘Caitanya Vaiṣṇavism on Trial: Continuity and Transformation in the Eighteenth Cen-
tury.’ In R. Gupta (ed.), Caitanya Vaiṣṇava Philosophy: Tradition Reason and Devotion: 75–112. Farn-
ham: Ashgate.
— Forthcoming. ‘Ethic and Aesthetic in Early Modern South Asia.’ International Journal of Hindu
Studies.
Openshaw, J. 2006. ‘Home of Ashram? The Caste Vaishnavas of Bengal.’ Fieldwork in Religion 2 (1):
65–82.
Packert, C. 2010. The Art of Loving Krishna: Ornamentation and Devotion. Bloomington, IN: Indiana
University Press.
Ray, J. 1984. Śrīnivāsa ācārya o ṣoḍaśa śatābdhira gauḍīya vaiṣṇava samāja. Shantiniketan: Viśvabhārati
Gaveṣaṇā Prakāśana Samiti.
Ray, S. 2012. ‘In the Name of Krishna: The Cultural Landscape of a North Indian Pilgrimage Town.’
PhD thesis, University of Minnesota.

Roberts, M. V. 2014. Tastes of the Divine: Hindu and Christian Theologies of Emotion. New York: Ford-
ham University Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.5422/fordham/9780823257386.001.0001
Rochford, E. B., Jr. 2007. Hare Krishna Transformed. New York: New York University Press.
Rosen, S. J. 1991. The Six Gosvamis of Vrindavan. New York: Folk Books.
Sanyal, H. 1981. Social Mobility in Bengal. Calcutta: Papyrus.
— 1985. Trends of Change in the Bhakti Movement in Bengal. Occasional Paper, no. 76. Calcutta: Centre
for Studies in Social Sciences.
— 1989. Bāṁlāra kīrtanera itihāsa. Calcutta: P. K. Bagchi.
Sarbadhikary, S. 2015. The Place of Devotion: Siting and Experiencing Divinity in Bengal-Vaishnavism.
Oakland, CA: University of California Press. http://dx.doi.org/10.1525/luminos.2
Sardella, F. 2013. Modern Hindu Personalism: The History, Life, and Thought of Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī.
New York: Oxford University Press.
Sarkar, T. 2009. Rebels, Wives, Saints: Designing Selves and Nations in Colonial Times. Ranikhet: Perma-
nent Black.
Sen, D. C. 1911. History of Bengali Language and Literature. Calcutta: Calcutta University Press.
— 1917. The Vaishnava Literature of Medieval Bengal. Calcutta: Calcutta University Press.
— 1922. Chaitanya and His Age. Calcutta: Calcutta University Press.
Sen, Sukumar. 1935. A History of Brajabuli Literature. Calcutta: Calcutta University Press.
— 1940. Bāṁlā sahityera itihāsa. Vol. 1. Calcutta: Modern Book Agency.
Stewart, T. K. 1985. ‘The Biographical Images of Kṛṣṇa-Caitanya: A Study in the Perception of
Divinity.’ PhD thesis, University of Chicago.
— 1991. ‘When Biographical Narratives Disagree: The Death of Kṛṣṇa Caitanya.’ Numen 38 (2): 231–
60. http://dx.doi.org/10.1163/156852791X00141
— 1994. ‘One Text from Many: Caitanya Caritāmṛta as “Classic” and “Commentary”.’ In W. M. Calle-
waert and R. Snell (eds.), According to Tradition: Hagiographical writing in India: 229–56. Wies-
baden: Harrassowitz Verlag.
— 1999. ‘Surprising Bedfellows: Vaiṣṇava and Shī‘a Alliance in Kavi Āriph’s “Tale of Lālmon”.’
International Journal of Hindu Studies 3 (3): 265–98. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s11407-999-00
12-1
— 2001. ‘In Search of Equivalence: Conceiving Muslim-Hindu Encounter through Translation
Theory.’ History of Religions 40 (3): 261–88. http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/463635
— 2010. The Final Word: The Caitanya Caritāmṛta and the Grammar of Religious Tradition. New York:
— 2011. ‘Replicating Vaiṣṇava Worlds: Organizing Devotional Space through the Architectonics of
the Maṇḍala.’ South Asian History and Culture 2 (2): 300–36. http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/19472498
.2011.553500
— 2013. ‘Religion in the Subjunctive: Vaiṣṇava Narrative, Sufi Counter-Narrative in Early Modern
Bengal.’ Journal of Hindu Studies 6 (1): 52–72. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jhs/hit013
— 2014. ‘Caitanya.’ In Hiltebeitel, www.oxfordbibliographies.com
Taneja, L. 2008a. Tracing the Absence of Faith: Deconstruction, Hermeneutics, and the Gaudiya Vaishnava
Faith. Saarbrücken: VDM Verlag Dr. Müller.
— 2008b. ‘The Other of Oneself: A Gadamerian Conversation with Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism.’ In
R. Sherma and A. Sharma (eds.), Hermeneutics and Hindu Thought: Toward a Fusion of Horizons:
211–31. N.p.: Springer. http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4020-8192-7_11
Valpey, K. R. 2006. Attending Kṛṣṇa’s Image: Caitanya Vaiṣṇava Mūrti-sevā as Devotional Truth. Abing-
don: Routledge.
— 2011. ‘Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism.’ In Jacobsen, Basu and Malinar 2009–2014: 3.379–87.
— 2013. ‘ISKCON (International Society for Krishna Consciousness).’ In Hiltebeitel, www.oxford
bibliographies.com
Vasu, S. C. (trans.) 1912. The Vedānta-sūtras of Bādārāyaṇa: With the Commentary of Baladeva. Sacred
Books of the Hindus. Vol. 5. Allahabad: The Pāṇiṇi Office.
Wong, L. 2014. ‘Negotiating History in Colonial Bengal: Bhaktivinod’s Kṛṣṇa-saṁhitā.’ Journal of
Hindu Studies 7 (3): 341–70. http://dx.doi.org/10.1093/jhs/hiu025

Wright, M., and N. Wright. 1993. ‘Baladeva Vidyābhūṣaṇa: The Gauḍīya Vedāntist.’ Journal of
Wright, S. 2014. ‘From Praśasti to Political Culture: The Nadia Raj and Malla Dynasty in Seven-
teenth-Century Bengal.’ The Journal of Asian Studies 72 (2): 397–418. http://dx.doi.org/10.1017/
S002191181300243X
Wulff, D. M. 1984. Drama as a Mode of Religious Realization: The Vidagdhamādhava of Rūpa Gosvāmī.
American Academy of Religion, Academy Series. Chico, CA: Scholars Press.

Gaudiya Vaisnava Studies Mapping The Field PDF

Uploaded by

Document Information

Original Title

Copyright

Available Formats

Share this document

Share or Embed Document

Sharing Options

Did you find this document useful?

Is this content inappropriate?

Copyright:

Available Formats

Gaudiya Vaisnava Studies Mapping The Field PDF

Uploaded by

Copyright:

Available Formats

Religions of South Asia 9.

3 (2015) 305–331 ISSN (print) 1751-2689

Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava Studies:

KEYWORDS: Bengal; bhakti; Caitanya; Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism; gosvāmī; Vrindavan.

charming, if somewhat supercilious, young man, Viśvambhara now exuded

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2016.

or even primary, factor, for an appreciable body of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava-related

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2016.

as provide a potentially useful heuristic framework for understanding the

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2016.

5. A number of Professor Stewart’s published articles on the hagiographies of Caitanya and

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2016.

Determining the precise nature of Caitanya’s divinity was naturally a task

With the exception of a handful of Sanskrit verses traditionally attributed

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2016.

exposition of the fledgling tradition was instead left to a group of scholarly

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2016.

translated into English by Stuart Elkman (1986), Satyanarayana Dasa and

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2016.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2016.

Bhaṭṭa Gosvāmī remains a similarly neglected figure. Gopāla Bhaṭṭa is credited

As alluded to above, the decades immediately following the passing of Cai-

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2016.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2016.

The late seventeenth to the mid eighteenth century witnessed innovative

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2016.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2016.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2016.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2016.

rule, Vaiṣṇavism in Bengal was no exception. The fortunes of Vaiṣṇavism at

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2016.

self-representation as a colonial middle-class Vaiṣṇava reformer, and traces

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2016.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2016.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2016.

I would like to express my gratitude to Tony K. Stewart, Kiyokazu Okita, Ishan

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2016.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2016.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2016.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2016.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2016.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2016.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2016.

© Equinox Publishing Ltd 2016.

You might also like