KRISHNAISM, OR THE VISHNU-CULT

By Dr. MAYADHAR MANSINHA, M.A., Ph.D.

(Principal, G. M. College, Sambalpur)

Vishnu is the most important god in the Pantheon of popular Hinduism. He is also the major source of inspiration in Indian literatures. Numberless epics (Puranas) have been written in Sanskrit and other Indian languages to propagate the power and benevolence of this god. In addition to these great literary adventures, there are millions of little devotional songs and lyrics in all these languages dedicated to this deity and daily sung and recited by vast masses of people. The Jatras and Suangs–the open-air song-plays of Indian countryside, which combine in them the essence of the Mystery and the Miracle Plays of medieval England–mainly centre round some one or other of the innumerable aspects of this deity’s adventures. This god that has so permeated the social life of our land appeals to the human imagination through the promise of Grace to the devotees.

India has the glory of being the chief source of the modern Science of Comparative Religion as weft as comparative linguistic, philosophical and mythological studies. Here we see the various strata of human spiritual evolution, the steps in man’s quest of metaphysical, spiritual and ethical verities revealed in literatures of superb beauty and of great historical value. We see in them how the Aryan Man progressed gradually from the worship of the phenomenon to conceiving the Noumenon behind, from the many gods to the One Great behind them all, and then later in the Upanishads from the form to the formless and from the external to the Reality that is inside us as well as outside. And then came great Gautama, the Buddha, who turned man’s attention for the first time in human history from the futilities of mere external rites to the purity of our minds and to good, unselfish conduct as the only form of worship.

But we find to our great astonishment that the next picture after this is the vast Hindu Pantheon, full of gods and goddesses. This anti-climax in the history of religious practices and speculations in India cannot be easily explained. These Vishnus, Sivas, Ganeshas and Kalis are unknown in the Vedas, the very fountainhead of the Sanatana or eternal religion. With the emergence of these multifarious divinities in the racial mind of India, we observe two striking departures from indigenous spiritual currents. One was the anthropomorphic conception of God or gods, the other, the hypothesis of Grace resulting in the now universal Bhakti cult.

India is the one country in the world which has ever conceived of the Divine Power as Law or as Creative Principle. In other religions God is a magnified human being. He sits somewhere high above and commands, rewards and punishes. His habitat is the promised Paradise where only those who have obeyed Him or His agents are permitted to enter and enjoy the glorified earthly pleasures as well as His companionship. The original Indo-Aryan theistic speculations were vastly superior to such conceptions of God where He is a magnified, autocratic tribal leader. Even in the dimly distant Vedic times, the Indian never worshipped stocks and stones; in fact he did not ‘worship’ any thing, in the popular acceptation of the term. The ‘yagna’ of the Vedic Indian was a sort of harvest festival, a thanksgiving ceremony for the gifts of Heaven, a sharing of the joys of earth with the Bright Ones. The Vedic hymns are poetic reactions to the marvels of Nature rather than cringing appeals to any outside Authority for Grace, favour and redemption. That was a very natural religion, considering the pastoral background of the Vedic Indo-Aryan. But, through centuries of intellectual progress, the Indo-Aryan gradually grew out of that primitive level and came to the brilliant and revolutionary speculations of the Vedanta and Buddhism, which astonishingly anticipate the modern theories of science regarding Reality, Creation, Matter and Energy. The Indian had at last come to the conclusion that God is nothing but Energy which perpetually moves on in vast, unending cycles of creation, sustenance and destruction. The Indo-Aryan Seers never so narrowed their speculations as to limit their hypotheses only to Homo Sapiens and shape out a God that was just a glorified chief or king. In all their speculations there was no place for Grace–the idea of a kind, benevolent God bestowing boons in answer to prayers or of his own accord. If God is Law, then things like Prayer and Grace become irrelevant and illogical.

Both these conceptions of a human God and of Grace stand pre-eminently symbolised in Krishna and his cult. His career is a succession of miracles which provide little norm to be followed in our day to day life. But he is deified in the mass mind in India as the grand Philosopher, as he reveals himself in the Bhagavata and the Bhagavad-Gita. That philosophy is largely one of Grace. But as in other religions where this hypothesis of Grace is preached, here too Krishna proclaims his divinity and asks for devotion to himself.

Krishna is believed to be an Avatar (incarnation) of Vishnu, by far the most dominant deity of the Hindu Pantheon. Indologists have traced this God Vishnu to the Sun-God of the Vedas. Etymologically, Vishnu is ‘one that Covers or spreads over all.’ This is a most apt expression in respect of the Sun whose rays cover both earth and heaven in their entirety. And from the natural phenomenon of the Sun drawing water vapours from the earth, the idea of Krishna drawing sixteen thousand Gopis for sport could be an explicable allegory. The combination of the dark Krishna with the fair Radha might have been imagined out of Nature’s daily worked masterpiece of the golden Dawn spreading herself against the dark-grey morning sky. And the other natural phenomenon of the Sun sending back the vapours as the life-giving rain might be the origin of the hypothesis of Grace in answer to prayers or devotion.

The Krishna-legend could thus be explained by reference to the Sun and its actions and influences. Perhaps it is merely an allegory. The emergence of a human God, demanding devotion and promising Grace, in the religious world of India round about the 9th or 10th century still remains mysterious, and has naturally invited the tendentious suggestions from non-Hindu scholars of the silent workings of Christianity or Islam or Hinduism. And parallelisms between Krishnaism and Christianity are so many as to make one naturally suspect that either the Bhagavata or the Gospels have plagiarised from the other.

But the very unique feature of the Vaishnavic concept of Divinity disproves any foreign influence on the Krishna or Vishnu cults. The plagiarism might have occurred the other way round.) In no other religion is God conceived as a blissful pair of cosmic lovers. That the Hindu also knows and believes in Divinity as One, only prejudiced critics will dare deny. But the monotheists forget the simple fact that Divinity can be and is, as a matter of fact, manifested as Many. And as an allegory of the cosmic law of pairs of elemental opposites of which this creation is made, this Hindu conception of Divinity as the combination of the male and female energies of Nature, of the positive and negative forces in matter, looks much more scientific and realistic than either the dogmatically metaphysical conception of God as One, or the happy but illogical notion of that One holding a Court somewhere up in the skies and, like a capricious king, rewarding his praise-singers and punishing the rest.

The romantic concept of Divinity in cosmic wedlock is uniquely Indian and originated on this soil. I believe, from the brilliant speculations of Kapila who in his Sankhya philosophy ignores a personal creator and propounds, instead, the theory of Purusha and Prakriti as the eternally co-eval twin origins of this universe. Sankhya, undoubtedly, is the earliest, and yet a most daring, system of thought in the entire history of mankind. It has had a most profound influence on all subsequent Brahmanical and Buddhist religious thought. The concept of Divinity as a pair of male and female that we meet with in Vaishnavism, Saivism, and also in the later developments of Mahayana Buddhism, is perhaps nothing but the shadow of that distant speculative discovery of Kapila,–the couple of Purusha and Prakriti as the eternal originators of the universe.

Thus I believe, Krishnaism or the Cult of Krishna, or the Cult of Vishnu in general, so deeply eastablished and so widely spread in Indian thought, is an imaginative mixture of the Solar allegory and the Sankhya speculations. It has had a historic growth. There is no eternality about it. It has come out of some highly poetic mind and is a very interesting spiritual allegory. In the Bhagavad-Gita, Krishna is supposed to be the incarnate World-soul. Arjuna’s questionings certainly do not cover all the problems that trouble a thinking man, nor do Krishna’s answers solve them completely. The Gita is nevertheless a great Book. It contains some profound truths. In my humble reading of it, I find that the Book comprises two distinct parts, one thoroughly rational and the other highly emotional. And while profound truths flash out like priceless gems, their qualities are sadly compromised by the emotional portions,–those where the teacher Krishna preaches to and expects his disciples to worship and pray to him to get his Grace. In the rational part of the Gita, God is indeed Law and questions of Worship and prayer are irrelevant. It is in the emotional part that Law deteriorates into a human person preaching worship and grace and redemption. The two parts contradict each other.

The essence of the Gita is the clarion call for vigorous though detached Action. Vishnu is essentially a dynamic deity. Each of his Avataras is a story of mighty actions, resulting in the progress of humanity through the overthrowing of the evil forces. This also was the message of Lord Buddha who preached only the Law, and obedience to it through inner goodness and outer compassion.

I would like that the citizens of free and republican India should now look at their old gods with new eyes. Our ancestors discovered the most scientific and rational concepts about Divinity and Religion. Theirs was no organised Church, no departmentalisation or commercialisation of God. To them religion was the Way of life. That Way was the way of rational and dynamic action, of faith in man’s own endeavour, in the ultimate prosperity of this earth of ours. There is no point in worshipping and hoping for Grace from gods innumerable.

To me Krishnaism or the cult of Vishnu, therefore, is not the worship of an imaginary anthropomorphic god, but the practice in daily life of the dynamic human virtues that the Teacher of that name has preached, and looking upon his story as a combination of a poetic allegory of Nature and of metaphysical speculations.

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