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God and madman: Guṇḍam Rāuḷ1
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 24 December 2009
Extract
Guṇḍam Rāuḷ lived in the thirteenth century in Ṫddhipur, a small town in the easternmost part (Vidarbha) of the Marāṭhī-speaking region of India. He appears to have been somewhat mad. Members of the Mahānubhāva sect, a devotional (bhakti) sect native to the region, revere him as the guru of their founder, Cakradhar, and as one of five major incarnations of their one God, ParameŚvara. Reverence for Guṇḍam Rāuḷ does not lead his Mahānubhāva biographers to deny his madness: the present paper will demonstrate this fact, and attempt to explain it.
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- Information
- Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 45 , Issue 1 , February 1982 , pp. 74 - 83
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- Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies, University of London 1982
References
2 For an introduction to the history and teachings of the sect, see Raeside, I. M. P., ‘The Mahānubhāvas’, BSOAS, XXXIX, 3, 1976, 585–600.CrossRefGoogle Scholar
3 V. B. Kolte's edition (Malkapur: Aruṇa Prakāśana, 1944; 5th ed., 1972), the one which will be cited here, is entitled Śri Govindaprabhu Caritra, but this name is not used in the manuscripts. Govindaprabhu is intended as a Sanskritized form of Guṇḍam Rāuḷ's name
4 One important exception is the text's meticulous attention to geography
5 This and other meetings between Guṇḍam Rāuḷ and Cakradhar are reported in the Līḷdcaritra, a biography of Cakradhar roughly contemporary with that of Guṇḍam Rāuḷ. V. B. Kolte, ed., Līḷācaritra (Bombay: Mahārāṣṭra Rājya Sāhitya Saṃskṛti Maṇḍaḷa, 1978)
6 I use the word ‘gone’ rather than ‘died’ in order not to become embroiled in doctrinaldisputes still very much alive in Mahānubhāva circles
7 His name means ‘rounded stone’. It may be an example of what Emeneau calls an ‘apotropaic name’, ‘Towards an onomastics of South Asia’, JAOS, XCVIII, 2, 1978, 113–30Google Scholar
8 Never the devotes; and not, directly, the text itself
9 In the ‘Prastāvanā’ to his edition, pp. 54–5, Kolte reports having seen two commentaries which appear to attempt philosophical and religious rationalizations of Guṇḍam Rāuḷ's behaviour. I have seen neither of these commentaries
10 See, for instance, Majumdar, A. K., Caitanya, his life and doctrine: a study in Vaiṣnavism (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1969)Google Scholar
11 During May-August 1979
12 Mahānubhāva incarnation-doctrine distinguishes three ways in which Parameśvara can take on a body: by becoming an embryo, by taking over the body of someone who has died, or by replacing a jiva in a living body. Although the first chapter of Guṇḍam Rāuḷ's biography states that he was an incarnation of the first type, contemporary Mahānubhāvas hold that he was also an incarnation of the third type—that is, he replaced an embryo already in his mother's womb. See Kolte, V. B., Mahānubhāva tattvajńnā (Malkapur: Aruna Prakasana, 4th printing, 1975), 199Google Scholar
13 The Sūtrapāṭha is the collection of the sayings of Cakradhar. It is edited and translated in Feldhaus, A., The Mahānubhāva Sūtrpāṭha, South Asian Studies, University of Heidelberg (New Delhi: Manohar Book Service, in press)Google Scholar
14 And by the doctrine that the one God has three members (tri-aṃśa). See Feldhaus, part 1, ch. iii
15 See Feldhaus, , ‘The devatacakra of the Mahanubhavas’, BSOAS, XLIII, 1, 1980, 101–9Google Scholar
16 See, for example, Edward Dimock, C., Jr., The place of the hidden moon: erotic mysticism in the Vaiṇṣava-Sahajiyā cult of Bengal (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1966)Google Scholar Mahānubhāvas understand Kṛṣṇa to be, like Guṇḍam Rāuḷ and Cakiadhar, an incarnation of Parameśvara. The Mahānubhāvas' Kṛṣṇa, however, is not primarily the lover of Rādhā and the other gopis, but the more conventional husband of Rukmiṇī. For the Mahānubhāvas, it is Guṇḍam Rāuḷ, not Kṛṣṇa, who is the violator of conventions; and the conventions he violates are not, primarily, sexual
17 Reynolds, Frank E. and Donald, Capps (ed.), The biographical process (The Hague: Mouton and Company, 1976), pp. 3–5CrossRefGoogle Scholar