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An early testamentary document in Sanskrit

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  24 December 2009

Tarapada Mukherjee  and
J. C. Wright
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Extract

Among manuscripts and documents collected for the Vrindaban Research Institute (VBI) from the Rādhādāmodara Temple in Vrindaban (Uttar Pradesh) are two (referred to below as documents A and B) which contain the text of testamentary depositions in the name of Jiva Gosvāmī. He is known to have founded the Rādhādāmodara Temple and to have been alive at the dates given in the text. It was Jīva who, consolidating the work of his uncles Sanātana and Rūpa, definitively established Vrindaban as the headquarters of the Caitanyapanthī Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava sect. The testament, which envisages both posthumous implementation and possible revocation, contains Jlva's provisions for succession to the custody of the temple, idols, and library. The principal parties involved are known from other documents in the collection, and most names recur in Bhaktamāl and other related literary sources. Its over-riding importance lies, however, in the fact that no written Will has hitherto come to light in India, except those that are clearly influenced by European practice.

Type
Research Article
Information
Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies , Volume 42 , Issue 2 , June 1979 , pp. 297 - 320
Copyright
Copyright © School of Oriental and African Studies 1979

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References

1 Professor Burrow is a member of the Council of the International Association of the Vrindaban Research Institute, a registered charity dedicated to the task of conserving India's heritage of manuscripts, documents, and artifacts. Without the support of such scholars in Britain and overseas, many thousand manuscripts and historical documents such as the one described here would already be victims of progress in this area of UP, cradle of important Buddhist, Jaina, and Hindu civilizations.

The Association, with the help of the British Academy, the Leverhulme Trust, the School of Oriental and African Studies, the British Library, and the India Office Library, has been able to organize and finance the conservation and cataloguing of much of this material since 1975. Already there have appeared: Catalogue of Sanskrit manuscripts in the VRI, i-n (ed.M. L. Gupta, R. D. Gupta, and J. C. Wright, Vrindaban, 1977, 1978); Catalogue of Bengali manuscripts in the VRI (ed. T. Mukherjee, London, 1978); Catalogue of Hindi manuscripts in the VRI, I (ed. R. D. Gupta, Vrindaban, 1979); ‘Photographic documentation of the Braj area: a list of colour slides taken during the IAVRI research project in Vrindaban’ (comp. A. W. Entwistle, IAVRI Bulletin, v, 1978).

2 The documents are, according to the unpublished handlist (available at Vrindaban Research Institute and SOAS), numbered respectively VRI, ser. 1, ace. 79A and VRI, ser. 2, ace. 79. For a discussion of relevant biographical and historical data, see section V below. For a discussion of Wills in India before the period of the Anglo-Indian courts, see section VI.

3 Gadādharabhaṭṭa, according to Bhaktamāla and Bhaktanāmāvali, was a kathak invited to Vrindaban by Jiva Gosvāml.

4 As mere debased Sanskrit, its interest might be small indeed; but it is perhaps more likely that an Apabhramśa tradition has vanished leaving little trace than that a pure Sanskrit one should virtually disappear. It will be noticed that even in this oldest surviving specimen of the genre, there is a most pronounced preoccupation with problems of comprehensibility and authenticity, and the Sanskritization is doubtless in some measure due to a search for clarity. (Rightly or wrongly, this is the motive alleged by the Ādi Granth's commentator for Sanskritization in that context: C. Shackle, ‘The Sahaskriti poetic idiom in the Ādi Granth’, BSOAS, XLI, 2, 1978, 310 Google Scholar.) The hybrid Sanskrit of document A begins to look silly when ‘restored’ and transposed into standard Nagari script by the copyist of document B. The modern copy is not generally comprehensible in essentials, and it is only by the most extreme good fortune that even a fragment of the original survived to reach the eyes of a competent archivist.

The corresponding description ‘Sanskritized Bengali’ could equally be applied to the modicum of Bengali-script material. Though this is in a linguistically pure Sanskrit in the deposition section, it is also formulaic and lacking in cohesion. The Bengali signature is more frankly hybrid. It is first miswritten with a ‘Kaithism ‘ (haridasa-) and then corrected; and the formulaic manner of signing (simply haridasasya, soil, [matam]) is different from the Nagari styles, themselves many and varied, that are attested in this particular document. There is an apparent correlation between an Apabhramsa style of signature (sāṭi gopīnāthajī;… gopīnā thadāsu) and the ostensible senility of the handwriting involved.

After this flirtation with Sanskrit c. A.D. 1600, related documents are generally bilingual in Persian and Braj, the latter written in a more standard Nagari script and orthography. The Kaithi script survived into the nineteenth century in Awadh and Bihar, but the copyist of B at Vrindaban was generally unable to decipher it where it occurs in A.

6 This hybrid is attributed to Guru Arjan, an exact contemporary of Jiva Gosvami, and to other earlier Panjabi writers. See Shackle's study of this form of Panjabi, loc. cit., 297–313. It is possible to conjecture that the process of Sanskritization reached a peak precisely at the period of our Will c. A.D. 1600 (but no detailed comparison of different versions of the same text is yet available: ibid., 308, n. 25).

A definitive explanation of the term Sahaskrti is still wanting. As Shackle shows, sahasakiratā (i.e. *sahaskrtā) occurs as a spelling of Pj. saxṃskrtā, used in the sense of ‘Vedic texts’. It is easy to imagine that a defective spelling of samskrtā, say *sasakiratā, was wrongly identified by a copyist, who had to fall back on xṃV sáhaslcrta ‘balena yuktalj (Sāy.)’ for an explanation. The copyist was probably making the same mistake as modern commentators (310, n. 32), and that is not a mistake that should or could be attributed to the original author (otherwise Shackle, 310 f.).

Nor is it necessary to attribute error to whoever was responsible for the application of a similar label (now read as salok sahaskritī) to some of the more highly Sanskritic passages in the Ādi Granth. We should attribute to him rather the label in the formślok saxxṃiskrti, for the term sarxṃskrti is known to have been applied to one of the freer modes of Prakritic prosody (and the correct spelling could hardly have been recovered if the malformation sahaskrti had been involved in the development at any point). At the moment, it seems wiser to infer that the arbitrary Prakrit usage derives from the Ādi Granth context, where there are excellent grounds for labelling a type of vernacular verse as Sarnskrti.

Since there appears to be a correlation between use of the label saxṃskrti and a more advanced degree of Sanskritization, it seems probable that it was intended to mean just ‘Sanskrit', and not ‘bad Sanskrit’. The Pj. tag salok xḍakhaxṃā (Shackle, 312) with clearly adjectival epithet appears to confirm the correctness of the assumption that samskrti has an attributive function in ślok saṃskṛti. The more obvious adjectival form samskrlā had been specialized to mean ‘Vedic’ in the Gurmukhi canon.

6 Following Grierson and Chatterji, there is a tendency to regard all ’ ardhatatsama’ hybrids as half-assimilated loans from Sanskrit. More probably it iB semi-Sanskritization, i.e. half-assimilated borrowing into Sanskrit from the vernacular, that is substantially involved. If the view taken in n. 5, above, is correct, the term sahaskritī itself is a case in point. A fully assimilated loanword in Panjabi (samskritā) yields a hybrid form (sahaskritī) in a context that passes for Sanskrit; this is subsequently available for borrowing into Panjabi vernacular usage without further modification.

Chatterji felt obliged to offer three separate hypotheses, relating to different linguistic epochs, to account for kasaṣa, kixṣaṇ, and keṣṭa as ‘semi-tatsama’ borrowings from Sanskrit kṛṣṇa into older Bengali (ODBL, I, pp. 190 f.). But analogies in the Hindi hybrid (piṣṭa for pṛṣṭha, below) and Panjabi hybrid (Tcita beside krita forkṛta) suggest an alternative hypothesis: the vernaculars are simply adopting a variety of literary hybrid orthographies that were current in different genres. If one chooses to describe this as borrowing from Skt., Pkt., and Ap., it should be remembered that Ap. forms are the oldest and that full Sanskritizations are demonstrably the most recently attested, certainly in Bengali. Only Apabhramsa kannha/kānha, kinnha/kenha need be involved, however, with orthographies variously interpreted as nh, sn, or ṛ according to context. The attested Middle and Modern Bengali forms are then rather to be seen as ‘semitadbhavas’, i.e. vernacular adaptations of orthographically Sanskritized Old Bengali: Middle Bg. *kisana, kixṣaṛ, Modern krṣṇa; Middle Bg. *keṣ(ṭ)ṇa, *keṣṭā, Modern kriṣṭō. Sahaskṛti Panjabi attests the Western or modern forms krisnaṃ, kirsanaṃ (Shackle, 299).

7 The form patrī is attested also in Braj Bengali (Caitanyacaritāmrta; Bhaktiratnākara) in lieu of Bengali pāti. In Bhaktiratnākara (of Narahari Cakravarti, ed. Kamdev Misra, Mursidabad, 1912), the document referred to is a letter from JIva to his Bengali friend Śrinivāsa: patrikā laiyā, kare patrī pātha ‘takes the letter and reads it’.

8 An earlier signature of one witness Viṣṇuvicitra (12 v°) is available for comparison, see plate II: document belonging to Govinda Temple, Jaipur; photograph to be deposited in SOAS Library; dated Samvat 1651 (A.D. 1594).

9 VKI, ser. 5, ace. 33. The plot runs from the Jumna to Kunja Gali, a street still in existence.

10 See Growse, F. S., Mathura: a district memoir, Bulandshahr, 1880, 237 Google Scholar: ‘The temple of Rādha Dāmodara has a special claim to distinction from the fact that it contains the ashes of Jiva, its founder, as also his two uncles, the Gosāins Rūpa and Sanātana’. See also Rādhākṣṇagosvāmī, Sādhanadīpikā, ed. Das, Haridas, Calcutta, 1946, 214 Google Scholar: rādhādāmodaradevah srīrūpakaranirmitaḥ, jīvagosvāmine dattaḥ srīrūpeḥa kḥpābdhinā. Bhaktiratnākara, 139: a Bengali, Śrinivāsa, saw Rūpa's samādhi in the compound, while visiting Jiva.

11 Jiva inherited the libraries of Sanātana, Rūpa, and Raghunāthadāsa (see below). An inventory (VRI, ace. 5452) of the Sanskrit MSS is dated A.D. 1655; a document of A.D. 1706 refers to the pothipatra of the temple. Only a small remnant of the library could be salvaged by the VRI, including autograph manuscripts of Sanātana and Rūpa.

12 Mathura Court, suit no. 23 (1946), list no. 184/C, ser. 11.

13 VRI, ser. 18, aco. 22. No photograph of this document that is adequate for reproduction is available as yet.

14 In Kunjadāsa's document of 1723 (note 13), a similar proviso occurs, again illogically in the same position after the formula… darḥya[ḥ]syāt.

15 Document belonging to Govinda Temple, Jaipur, dated Samvat 1694; a photograph will be among those deposited in SOAS Library.

16 See Sen, Sukumar, Bāngālā sāhityer itihās, i, 1, Calcutta, 1963, 309 Google Scholar. Jiva's death is alluded to in a manuscript dated Śāka 1532.

17 Cc. Ill, 1; see Majumder, Bimanbihari, Śrīcaitanyacariter upādān, Calcutta, 1939, 149 Google Scholar. The commonest reading for the colophon dating of Cc. is śāke sindhvagnibāxṇendau (Ś. 1534, A.D. 1612–13). Possibly, however, it is *bindvagnibāxṇendau (Ś. 1530, A.D. 1608–9) that is the source reading of the variants attested, e.g. ṣindvagni o (VRI manuscript, ace. 708), agnibinduo ( De, S. K., Early history of the Vaṣṇava faith and movement in Bengal, Calcutta, 1961, 56, n. 2)Google Scholar.

18 Of 25 titles attributed to Jiva, Mādhavamahotsava bears the date V.S. 1609, and Oopālacampū V.S. 1649. A Saṃkalpakalpadruma attributed to Jiva in old age (vṃndāraniye jaran jīvaṃ.…, 1.4) cites Oopālacampū, see S. K. De, op. oit., 157.

19 A copy, together with a Persian version, is in the hands of Pradyumna Kumar Goswami, present custodian of Govindadeva Temple, Jaipur, who permitted T. Mukherjee to photograph a number of documents from his large collection mainly of material from the Rajasthan courts. The Goswami had the extreme kindness to sit with him for ten days reading out the contents of the documents as they were photographed.

20 VRI, ser. 3, ace. 37 states that Raghunātha, one of the ‘six Gosvāmis’ of Vrindaban, bequeathed his possessions to Jiva Gosvāmi; VRI, ser. 24, ace. 86 of A.D. 1545 records Raghunātha's purchase of land from the Paṃca of Rādhākuxŗṇḍ for dumping soil from the digging of the Rādhākuxṇḍnd tank; others are sale deeds for properties acquired by him at Rādhākuxŗṇḍ, 14 miles from Vrindaban.

VRI, ser. 68, ace. 3 is a farmān issued in A.D. 1646 by Shāhjahān and recognizing ‘Krxŗṇḍadāsa, a disciple of Jiva GosvāmI’ as legal custodian of a temple, evidently Rādhādāmodara. It would be appropriate to assume that the recognition proceeded on the basis of a scrutiny of Jiva's sarxŗṇḍkalpa at the Mughal Court.

From VRI, ser. 11, ace. 21 and VRI, ser. 12, ace. 30, it is known that the custodianship of the temple and the property remained in the hands of Kxṛṣṇadāsa's descendants for at least a century. After his death, two nephews, Rādhāvallabha and Nandakumāra, came from Bengal to assume the custodianship.

According to VRI, ser. 8, ace. 68, Nandakumāra's son Brajakumāra was custodian in 1691. TTill; widow divided the property between Brajakumāra's nephew Gopiramana and grandson Goplnātha; in a dispute Gopiramana had the support of the men of the Panca for his contention that a daughter's son could not succeed to the custodianship.

The rendering of Kṛṣṇadāsa's second sentence has the Bupport of the Persian translator (who is, however, often wildly inexact): tamāmi postak-hā va tamassuk-ha va isthal [-i] śri brindāban va śri rādhākuṇḍ[-i} khudrā ba jīv gosāī dādand. The authors are indebted to D. J. Matthews, SOAS, for a reading of the Persian and to It. D. Gupta, SOAS, for advice on the interpretation of Braj material.

21 The sevāyat is ‘empowered to do whatever may be required for the service of the idol and for the benefit and preservation of its property’ (B. K. Mukherjea, op. cit., 154).

22 Wilson, H. H., A glossary of judicial and revenue terms, London, 1885 Google Scholar, s.v. M. Monier-Williams (Skt.-Eng. Diet., s.v.; BTL, 531) cites svīkārapattra ‘document or will disposing of one's property’.

23 See Mandlik, V. N., The Vyavahāra mayūkha, Bombay, Appendix 2, 331–44Google Scholar: Hemādri, Dānakhaṇḍa; Kamalākara Bhaṭṭa, Pūrtakamalākara and Dānakamalākara; Nilakaṇṭha, Pratiṣṭhāmayūkha; and Raghunandana, Pratiṣṭhātattva. See also Derrett, J. D. M., Dharmasāstra and juridicial literature, Wiesbaden, 1973, 19 and 56 fGoogle Scholar. Manu, II, 1 if. could be referring to this ritual context when yajṣṭa is described as rooted in saxṃkalpa; and a connexion with saxṃkalpa as ‘disposition of property’ might be suspected in the case of saxṃkalpamūta kāma, if we recall Jiva's saxṃpraṇetā…atra mātsaryaṃ, kariṣyati.

24 Quoted from Phillips, and Trevellyan, , The law relating to Hindu wills, London, 1914, 12 Google Scholar.

25 See the cases cited in Montriou, W. A., The Hindu will of Bengal, Calcutta, 1870 Google Scholar.

26 The Hindu law, Calcutta, 1871, 226 f.Google Scholar, 229. Granted that Cowell's definition of Will here may be a lax one, the commonly received idea that Wills as generally understood were entirely unknown in pre-modern India is indefensible. G. S. Henderson postulated an English origin for Hindu Wills, and justified their absence by arguing that the right to dispose of property by Will was a departure from the principle underlying the joint Hindu family which did not allow the individual a right of property. Thelaw of testamentary devise as administered in India, Calcutta, 1889, 19 Google Scholar ff. There are, however, large areas of Hindu society where traditional Smṛti and the joint family system do not operate. The Gaudlya Vaiṣṇava community in particular evolved in Haribhaktivilāsa ‘asmṛti of its own on the basis of its own sectarian scriptures’ (S. K. De, Early history, 409). The Judicial Committee in 1856 admitted that ‘the strictness of the ancient law has long since been relaxed, and throughout Bengal a man who is the absolute owner of property may now dispose of it by will as he pleases, whether it be ancestral or not’ (Phillips and Trevellyan, 2). None of the wills cited by Montriou, for example, is older than the nineteenth century; but on the evidence of Jīva's Will, Cowell was right in concluding that ‘the law of wills amongst Hindus is a part of the Hindu law of succession, and not a mere usage which has grown up in the modern times borrowed from English usage’.