It is fallacious to assume that Assam at the time
of the neo-Vaishnavic revival was nothing more than a welter of religious
perversions. Assam had been an outpost of Aryan culture from very early times.
Epigraphic and archaeological evidences, besides semi-historical works, testify
that the worship of vishnu was not unknown to the people of Assam. Several
fourteenth-century books lay emphasis on the supreme resignation in the name of
Narayana, Damodar, the Lord of Vaikuntha, Daivaki-Nandan and terms attributive
of the Eternal Brahman–a phrase used by Madhav Kandali in his book Devajit (14th
century). Some of the sayings of Dak-Purusha, which were distinctly popular in
character, are also relevant. These bachans condemn those who do not
bend their heads at the feet of Madhav, and recommend “the worship or
veneration of the gods Brahma, Vishnu, Rudra and the Ganges’….From these
testimonies one would conclude that the neo-Vaishnavic cult already existed or
had infiltrated into the land: Sankardev toned it up, broadened its scope and
made it popular.
It must be admitted, however, that in the centuries
preceding the advent of Sankardev the worship of Vishnu was not a ‘popular’
cult. It must have remained confined to a limited number of persons. The rulers
of the land mostly encouraged Saivism, Shaktaism and such cults. In those days
the people were less independent in their religious beliefs than they are now,
so the state impositions had to be countenanced, more or less.
In the fifteenth century Assam was, as it still is,
a land with heterogeneous ethnic units with their uneven grades of culture. The
atmosphere was more confused owing to the lack of a central political
influence. At the time, to the north-east were the Ahoms who had supplanted the
Chutiya, Khamti and other tribes. To the west were the Koches and in between
were the Bhuyan princelings and the no less independent Kacharis. The
Ahoms were a section of the T’ai races and was not yet Hinduised. The Chutiya
priests sacrificed human beings at the altar of the goddess Kali. Human
sacrifice was not unknown to some other Bodo tribes also. The Bhuyans were
strong Shakti worshippers–Sankardev himself was a leading Bhuyan. The temple of Kamakhya was a centre
of the Sakti cult. The Koch king, who was at first a Saiva, rebuilt the temple.
All this shows that Tantricism in some form or other dominated the land. But
there were also practices allied to the Sakti cult but shading off into the dark
recesses of degenerated Buddhism.
Along with Bengal Assam had come to be frequented
by Buddhists probably in greater numbers when the great Brahmanic revival and,
later, the impact of Islam, drove them towards the east of India. Cultivated
secretly, their practices took on a mysterious character, often extolling the
functions of the body. Some of these esoteric cults like that of Night Worship
in Assamese known as Purnasewa or Barsewa have survived to this
day.
The people took to these practices because they
were allured with immediate and tangible gains. The scriptures, too, were not
made available to the common people; the latter’s practices were but rarely
touched with the purifying breath of the knowledge which remained a monopoly of
the Brahmans. So though a narrow stream of vaishnavic faith had been running
along the religious consciousness of a number of people, the time was ripe for
a clean up. When Sankardev started his campaign he was conscious that he was
fighting as much with “the perversions of Buddhists’” as with the ritual-ridden
atmosphere in general.
Sankardev’s mind was to some extent prepared for
religious and socialised activities, for before he started on his twelve-year
long pilgrimage he had more than one bereavement, and a mind steeped in the
higher teachings of the shastras caught readily the spark that came to
it from the great Vaishnavic revival which was stirring southern and northern
India. He probably did not visit South India. He seems to have started
preaching even while he was abroad.
Sankardev’s system was based on Ramanuja’s
Visishtadvaita. He laid emphasis on the Dasyabhava or the relation
existing between the master and the servant. The ultimate master was Narayana,
the Great Purusha, but in practice he gave to his followers Sri Krishna–the
avatara of Narayana, as revealed in the Bhagavata. “The blissful
Brahman,” Ananda Brahma was the attribute of the Great Purusha, and
Prakriti was subservient to Him. Because Sankardev laid emphasis on the complete
surrender to the One, his system is known as the Ekasarana.
The reformer taught: Forget the material world and
focus your attention upon the One God; Nishkam Bhakti is the highest
mode of propitiating the object of devotion; in the presence of God there are
no class or caste distinctions; even a Chandala who is faithful “has Rama in
his heart of hearts” and is as respectable as a Brahmana.
He put Bhakti above Jnana and Karma but he also
seems to have laid stress on Bhakti tinged with Jnana or faith mixed with
knowledge because, as it has been said, it is Jnana which leads one to the ‘Sattva-guna’
which is embodied in Vishnu, one of the three aspects of the Great Purusha (Vide
Vishnupuri Sanyasi’s Bhakti-ratnavali, Chap. I).
The process of initiation into the Ekasarana cult
is known as Sarana and the Mantra is the Nama or Name. To
the first batch of his Brahmana followers he gave the Nama-Mantra himself.
Later, the task was entrusted to his family priest Ram Ram Guru (Vide Dvija
Ramananda’s Guru-charit). This high-handedness on the part of a Sudra as
well as his emphasis on the recitation of the Name only, were taken with an ill
grace by the Brahmanical hierarchy. Sankardev exonerated himself by saying that
though a Sudra might not give the Vedic Mantras, he might give the Nama-mantra
to any person. Tactful as he was, he made it a custom to place an Assamese
version of the Gita or the Bhagavata or even the Kirtana,
composed by himself, in front of the person to be initiated.
To soften the Brahmanical opposition on caste
grounds he set up also a Brahmana, Damodardev, and compromised his stand so far
as to lay down that a Brahmana might go on with his Vedic rituals so long as he
rounded them off with the recitation of the Divine Name.* In the Kirtana he
sings:
Those limbs of the sacrificial rituals which do not
reach completion
Are completed at the recitation of the name of
Hari.
In Sankardev’s insistence on the equality of all
the classes he might have been influenced by Kabir, who had learnt the lesson
of equality from Islam. Sankardev mentions that:
In place; like Benares and Puri,
The devoted sing the songs of Kabir. (Kirtana)
In his second pilgrimage Sankardev visited Kabir’s mutt and there
met the latter’s grand-daughter.
Sankardev prescribed only one God but he did not,
for that matter, disrespect the other gods and goddesses: he just considered
them to symbolise the One. In this respect the Ekasarana system was more
liberal than of Vaishnavism in South India. In his allowance to the Sudra or
the low-caste also of the full right to devotion he seems to be more liberal
than even Ramauja himself. For, as Dr. Barthwall puts it, “The great southern
Acharyas grudged even the right of devotion to the Sudras. They wanted to keep
them in complete ignorance. Ramanuja prescribed for them the Prapattimarga which
means complete dependence on God; his path for the high caste being Bhakti,
by which he means intense meditation on God with a view to the realisation of
His knowledge. Of this sort of Bhakti the Sudra was considered unworthy.” (The
Nirguna School of Hindi Poetry p 12). In a Nam-ghar or the Prayer
Hall instituted by the Assamese reformer, the fisherman, the tribal, the
Brahmana, the Sudra–all sat together and sang to the tune of different kinds of
musical instruments.
True to the north-Indian tradition Sankardev took
into his fold people of all castes, and even Mussalmans. Like Ramananda and
Kabir he also “realized that there had arisen in the hearts of the low caste, a
genuine yearning for devotional life,” and instead of repressing it he gave it
nourishment and thus tried to wear away the sharpness of caste demarcations. It
may be noted that in Assam too a few Mussalman Fakirs, notably Ajan Pir,
composed songs which bear the stamp of neo-Vaishnavism. These songs are known
as Fikir (Cp. Sufi Fiqr-Japa–meditation).
Assamese literature seems to have had a solid
foundation without the contribution of Sankardev and his followers like
Madhavdev. Manuscripts of books belonging to the fourteenth century have been
found and some of them have been published. Sankardev paid homage to his
predecessor Madhav Kandali, the translator of the Ramayana as the
“faultless one.” But neo-Vaishnavism, as in other parts of India, gave an
impetus to the vernacular literature of Assam and even stimulated artistic
activity in general. We shall not deal here with the Sanskrit compositions.
This stimulation was occasioned by two factors.
Sankardev and his chief disciple Madhavdev–not to mention others–were powerful
writers and they harnessed the pen to the propagation of their teachings.
Secondly, the importation of a new outlook from other parts of India, as from
the Sanskrit puranas and kavyas, brought about a renaissance in
the field of Assamese life and letters.
Sankardev himself combined in his personality the
different strands which went to build this new artistic revival, for, besides
being a poet, he was a painter, dancer, dramatist, actor and musician. A Charit-puthi,
or biography written some time after his decease, describes in detail that he
painted scenes to represent the seven Vaikunthas, carved masks and trained the
actors in the staging of his first drama Chihnajatra. The drama is not
extant and it is probable that it was not written down at all for there were
few speeches, dance and pantomime being the salient features. He wrote several
other play’s Rukmini-haran Nat, Parijat-haran Nat, etc. These
contain speeches and songs, mixed with the Brajabuli diction. Madhavdev, too,
wrote a few plays on the theme of Krishna’s childhood days. Madhavdev’s humour
and characterization are probably superior to his Guru’s.
A play was known as Ankia Nat and the
staging wall called Bhaona. An Ankia Nat had no act divisions.
Sankardev translated into verse most of the Bhagavata
himself and also wrote the beautiful Rukmini-haran Kavya. Perhaps
his most significant contribution in order directly to strengthen the new
movement was the collection of prayers and scriptural stories known as the Kirtana.
His poetic talent is amply revealed in this delightful work. With the same
object in view Madhavdev composed his Namghosha or psalms for
recitation, which reflect a deeply religious soul. They also composed a number
of songs known as Bargeets suggestive of beauty and sublimity. The poets
gave to the ragas of these songs local touches and thus differentiated
them as the Assamese type of Indian classical song.
Ram Saraswati translated the Mahabharata in
verse. He wrote some romantic and stimulating Kavyas on episodes culled
from the great epic. A few sections of Madhav Kandali’s Ramayana which
had been lost were re-written by Madhavdev and Sankardev and Anantha Kandali.
It must have been a true renaissance for we come
across a large number of writers and a larger number of books. A Brahmana,
Bhattadev, translated the Gita and the Bhagavata in prose. A few
prose pamphlets on controversial themes–certainly written after the death of
Sankardev–have also come down. Their style is simple and homely, if occasionally
Sanskritic in vocabulary.
The fertility and imagination of these poets were
not attenuated by their religious mission, and poetry flourished in different
forms and in various metres. Sridhar Kandali’s poem Kankhowa, or the
Ear-eater, was based on a metaphysical theme but so homely and appealing was it
that it came to live by being used as a lullaby. Ram Saraswati’s Bhim-charit
is based on the exploits of Bhima, but the poet has given full play to his
fancy and has turned out a humorous book revealing intimate pictures of
Assamese village life.
It must be remembered that all this occurred more
or less in the lifetime of Sankardev (1449–1568). Much of this literary and
artistic activity found an enlightened patron in the Koch king, Naranarayana, whom,
however, the reformer refused to initiate. This was because Sankardev, being
himself once a sort of ruler of men, realized that the tenets of the new faith
might make of the king a good Vaishnava but a bad king.
In respect of the drama in the vernacular and prose
Assamese seems to have been ahead of other contemporary north-Indian
literatures. The tradition of this artistic revival expanded as time passed on
and became less religious when the immediate need for propaganda was no longer
necessary. The larger of the Satras established by the reformer and his
followers have retained to some extent the dance, the institution of the Ojha-Pali–a
sort of choric dance–music, Bhaona,
the custom of writing biography, mask-carving, calligraphy, painting, and such
items popularised by Sankardev.
The neo-Vaisnavic flood did not find in Assam an
easy way. The pioneers of the movement had to level hindrances in the shape of
hostilities, ossified convention and a tumultuous political atmosphere. They were
able to turn the mind of the populace to a cleaner spirituality and a higher
ethics, but as time passed the fabric raised by Sankardev hardened into a
prison of steel bars and instead of helping the spirit proved a weight on it.
The great preacher’s unadorned faith in one God and equality of all men was
ignored. Sects within sects cropped up, thus retarding the growth of a vigorous
community.
* At the dearth of the reformer Damodarev developed along a channel in
which the traditional Brahmanism again came to hold sway. Damodardev’s
teachings were elobrated by the scholar and writer, Bhattadev in his Bhaktivivekaratna–as
yet unpublished.