On the Growth and Composition of the Sanskrit … Truth is philosophically and epistemologi-cally...

Published in November 2016 by Croatian Academy of Sciences and Artsand Ibis grafika, Zagreb

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On the Growth and Composition of the Sanskrit Epics and Purāṇas Relationship to Kāvya. Social and Economic ContextProceedings of the Fifth Dubrovnik International Conference on the Sanskrit Epics and Purāṇas August 2008

Edited byIvan AndrijanićSven Sellmer

General EditorMislav JežićFellow of the Croatian Academy of Sciences and Arts (Zagreb)

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Textual Strategies, Empowerment and “True” Discourse in the Bhāgavatapurāṇa

Abstract

The Bhāgavatapurāṇa, a foundational text of Vaiṣṇava devotionalism, is one of the most important and influential of all Hindu scriptures. What gives this text and its embedded discourse its power and authority? How is it able to exert the discursive effect that its authors and expositors intend? In this article I will explore the Bhāga-vatapurāṇa in terms of four features: 1. meta-authorship, that is, the employment of the various fictional creators and narrators who enunciate the discourse; 2. meta-per-formative aspects, that is, the creation of audiences before whom this enunciation takes place; 3. the text’s own claims of its efficacy and power; and 4. the appropria-tion of Vedic authority with the simultaneous propagation of post-Vedic devotional bhakti theology, an apparent contradiction which I call the “purāṇic paradox”. Some of these features are already well documented in the literature in terms of what they are, but they have not been extensively theorized before. The novelty of the current approach is to attempt to show why these features have been incorporated and, more significantly, how they impact upon readers and listeners in the “insider’s camp”, i.e., the purāṇic interpretive community.

1. Introduction

When assessing the veracity, validity or truth of a text, we bring to bear our own em-pirical experience and reason, but there is also an infrastructure that enables texts to function as their authors intended. Situated within a given epistemic community, we are often so inured to this framework, it is so taken for granted, that it may be barely perceptible. This “regime of truth”, to use Foucault’s term, contains the hidden rules and assumptions that exert an influence on our assessment of truth at a preconscious level. The regime consists of socially constructed sets of conditions that enable dis-course to function as “true”.

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Each epistemic community has its own truth regime. The preconditions for a true statement in one epistemic community will not necessarily gain traction in another. What gives the Bhāgavatapurāṇa its canonical power and scriptural authority? What textual features are employed by its authors to maximize its impact on their intended audiences? In other words, what enables the Bhāgavatapurāṇa to function as “true discourse” for a reader or listener within a purāṇic epistemic community?

First, we need to define some terms for this discussion. I am drawing a distinction between what is True in an absolute or universal sense and what is “true” in a local, relative and contingent sense. Absolute Truth is philosophically and epistemologi-cally problematic and, in the final analysis, is perhaps a matter of faith. It therefore lies beyond the scope of this investigation. The second term, “truth” may be regard-ed by observers outside the epistemological community in which it was formulated as local and contingent. I am concerned with discursive statements which members of a given epistemic community, in this case the readers and hearers of the Bhāgav-atapurāṇa, regard as “true”. These “true” statements function as Truth for members of that community.

There are many ways in which a text can become “true”, powerful and authorita-tive: its role in oral tradition, the authority of the guru and lineage which perpetuate it, its function as a focus of ritual activity, or through its status in a given school of thought. This study will focus on the Bhāgavatapurāṇa’s own claims to authority and on the stylistic strategies adopted by its creators to empower and elevate its dis-course. In particular, I will explore the ways in which various literary tropes render the Bhāgavatapurāṇa powerful and effective as a written or heard text. These strat-egies, taken together, I will argue, render it effectively “true” for a reader or hearer situated within what we might call a brahminical, Hindu “interpretive community”, or the Sanskritic episteme.1 One of Lincoln’s questions for religious texts is, “Who is trying to persuade whom of what?” (Lincoln 2006: 251). I would like to expand on this by asking, “How do they do it”?

Integral to this approach is reader-response criticism, particularly with the ide-as of Jauss, who suggests that any reader in a given historical period encounters a text with a specific “horizon of expectations” (Jauss 1982). Myriads of people have read and, more importantly, heard the narratives of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa through-out its history, and continue to do so even today. A reader or hearer conversant with the purāṇic tradition, an inhabitant of the Sanskritic thought-world, is subject to a set of receptive conventions which inform the creation of meaning and the deter-mination of what counts as “true.” Reader-response theory posits an “internalized literary competence” shared by members of such a community (Culler 1980). The process of creation of meaning may be understood as an interaction between the

1 Of course such a community is not restricted to individuals who call themselves brahmins. It is the epistemic community in which brahminical discourse is hegemonic.

Textual Strategies, Empowerment and “True” Discourse in the Bhāgavatapurāṇa 341

intentions of the creator of the text and the predispositions of the receiver within the “interpretive conventions” of the brahminical thought-world. A certain horizon of expectations pertains among readers and hearers of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa, and they may be observed to respond to the truth-claims of the text in certain ways. The historical reception of the discourse is beyond our reach, yet the Bhāgavatapurāṇa remains one of the key texts of contemporary Hinduism. Public week-long readings of the text are very common today, especially in centres of the Kṛṣṇa tradition like Vṛndāvana and Mathurā. They are possibly becoming more common as the newly affluent Indian middle class seeks to invest its growing wealth in spiritual pursuits. The contemporary audience at a week-long event may consist of tens of thousands of individuals (Taylor 2010, 2011, 2012, 2016). My task is to explore the ways in which Iser’s “implied reader” (1978) or Fish’s “informed reader”, i.e. the purāṇic audience, responds to the discourse of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa (Fish 1980). This is in effect a reversal of the usual direction of Indological scholarship, which has traditionally been preoccupied with the processes of production of text and discourse, rather than their reception.

This project was stimulated originally by an idea formulated by Sheldon Pollock, who coined the term “shastric paradigm” to describe the means by which śāstric texts sought to establish, express and exert their authority and normative power (Pol-lock 1985). I developed this idea further when I described a “regime of truth” for the discourse of social division in the famous cycle of fables, the Pañcatantra of Pūrṇabhadra (Taylor 2007). My current aim is to explore the broader “regimes of truth” for the corpus of purāṇic literature, beginning with the Viṣṇu-, Brahma-, and Śivapurāṇas (Taylor 2008a; Taylor 2008b; Taylor 2008c).

In the following pages, I will explore the Bhāgavatapurāṇa in terms of four textual strategies: 1. meta-authorship, that is, the employment of various fictional creators and narrators to enunciate the discourse; 2. meta-performative aspects, that is, the creation of audiences before whom this enunciation takes place and the setting for the event; 3. the text’s own claims of its efficacy and power; and 4. the appropria-tion of Vedic authority, and the simultaneous propagation of post-Vedic theology, an apparent contradiction which I call the “purāṇic paradox”. Some of these four have been remarked on in the literature previously, and yet none has been thoroughly the-orized. Previous scholarship may have described these phenomena; it tells us what they are. I propose to take this analysis a step further to explore why they are includ-ed in the text, and to suggest how they exert a discursive influence on a reader/hearer situated within a purāṇic epistemic community. I hope thereby to reveal the internal workings and reader-reception of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa in a new light.

I will begin this study, in the next ten or so paragraphs, with a brief overview of the contents of the Śrīmadbhāgavatamāhātmya (“The greatness of the glorious Bhāgavata[purāṇa] = BhM”). The māhātmya, found originally in the Uttarakhaṇḍa

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of the Padmapurāṇa, is now included as an introduction to some (but not all) modern editions of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa, including the Gita Press, Paṇḍita-pustakālaya and Motilal Banarsidass editions. It consists of seven short chapters (a total of 504 vers-es) the goal of which is to describe the efficacy of a seven-day recital of the Bhāga-vatapurāṇa. It contains an allegorical narrative describing the rejuvenating effects of a purāṇic recital on a young woman named Bhakti, and a second salvific narrative about Gokarṇa and Dhundhukārī in which a character called Ātmadeva attains Kṛṣṇa through reading the tenth skandha of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa. The final chapter of the māhātmya contains a comprehensive set of instructions for the correct conduct of a seven-day recital. I will summarise the main points of these narratives below.

The māhātmya may or may not be regarded as a part of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa proper, but as the text is performed today, it exerts an important impact on how the main discourse is received. The māhātmya constitutes an important part of the “pa-ratext” (Genette 1997), and occupies as much as a full day of contemporary week-long purāṇic recitals (Taylor 2010). The māhātyma and the opening chapters of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa contain the narratives where many of these four empowering tex-tual strategies are exercised.

In the opening scene of the māhātmya, Śaunaka, the leader of a community of ascetics in the Naimiṣa forest, asked the main narrator of the purāṇa known as the Sūta, for the antidote to the ills of the Kaliyuga, the present era of suffering. In response, the Sūta began to relate an allegorical tale in which the divine sage Nāra-da came upon a lethargic young woman named Bhakti (“Devotion”). She was ac-companied by her two sons Jñāna and Vairāgya (“Knowledge” and “Renunciation”) who paradoxically appeared to be decrepit old men, even though they were in fact merely boys. Nārada was able to rouse all three, but only slightly, with the sounds of the Veda and Vedānta, and with repeated recitations of the Bhagavadgītā (0,2.27: vedavedāntaghoṣaiśca gītāpāṭhair muhur muhuḥ).2 The sage then set out to find a means to revive them fully, and eventually met the four Sanatkumāras, the mind-born sons of Brahmā. They convinced Nārada of the efficacy of a week-long recital of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa by which “all these ills in the age of Kali will be dispersed like wolves scattered by a lion’s roar” (0,2.62: pralayaṃ hi gamiṣyanti śrīmadbhāga-vatadhvaneḥ | kaler doṣā ime sarve siṃhaśabdād vṛkā iva || 62 ||).

Nārada resolved upon such a recital, and they all repaired to a place called Ānan-da on the banks of the Gaṅgā near Haridvāra, where the Sanatkumāras gave a long account of the manifold benefits of the purāṇa. At the conclusion of their exposition, Bhakti and her two sons were miraculously rejuvenated. Seeing this, Kṛṣṇa himself

2 References without preceding abbreviations refer to the BhP. Those in the form 0.n.n refer to the māhātmya, while others refer to the main text. A version of the māhātmya with some alternative readings has been posted online by the Indira Gandhi National Centre for the Arts at http://ignca.nic.in/sanskrit/bhagavata_mahatmyam.pdf.


descended from his heavenly realm of Vaikuṇṭha and entered the hearts of all his devotees who were present at that occasion.

After the boy-sages had praised the benefits of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa, they re-lated the rambling salvific parable-within-a-parable of the good and bad brothers, Gokarṇa and Dhundhukārī (0.4.15–0.5.87). The wicked brother drove his father from their home, caused his mother’s suicide and squandered his inheritance on prostitutes, who eventually murdered him. He returned as a hungry ghost, but his virtuous brother Gokarṇa was unable to propitiate his spirit even with hundreds of Vedic-style offerings of food and water known as śrāddha. Gokarṇa finally suc-ceeded in liberating the tormented spirit by causing it to hear the Bhāgavatapurāṇa, whereupon attendants of Viṣṇu arrived and bore Dhundhukārī to the Vaikuṇṭha par-adise in a shining celestial chariot. Some time later, Gokarṇa performed a second week-long reading of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa. This time Viṣṇu himself appeared in a divine carriage to cries of “Victory!” and “Homage!” (0,5.80). The entire audience, including all the residents of a nearby village—right down to the dogs and out-castes—were transported on celestial chariots to Viṣṇu’s divine realm.

After the Sanatkumāras had described the benefits of a week-long recital of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa and illustrated its salvific powers with the above parable, they imparted to Nārada the actual procedure for conducting such a performance (0,6.1–69). They described the processes for determining an auspicious date, sending out invitations, preparing the site, finding a suitable expositor, the preliminary rites and prayers, the daily conduct of the recital, the dietary and other restrictions to be ob-served by listeners, the concluding rites, and the giving of gifts to brahmins and to the expositor himself.

Many aspects of the performance described in this section enhance the text’s ability to function as “true” discourse, I argue, and are important for this discussion, but much of this chapter is similar or indeed identical to material in the ŚP (ŚP 0,6.1–65). Many verses in the two sources differ only in the name of the text or the deity they extol. As I have explored this intensively elsewhere (Taylor 2008b), I will not dwell on it here.

Once the Sanatkumāras had finished giving these instructions to Nārada, they also gave a week-long recital of the purāṇa, but no details are given at this point, other than that at its conclusion Bhakti, Jñāna and Vairāgya were thoroughly re-vived—again! (0,6.73).

Towards the end of the māhātmya, Śuka, one of the main meta-narrators of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa proper, arrived at the scene and he too praised the text (0,6.78). At the end of Śuka’s eulogy, Viṣṇu himself appeared with the other deities, and all the assembled throng began to sing his praises. Bhakti, Jñāna and Vairāgya now danced about in the midst of the assembly. Viṣṇu, well-pleased with the event, granted his devotees the boon that he would always attend such recitals in person. From that

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time onwards, we are told, he always enters the hearts of Vaiṣṇava devotees when-ever they recite the text. At this point, the sūta concluded his account for Śaunaka with further resounding words of praise for the purāṇa and the benefits accruing to those who recite or hear it.

The first skandha of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa follows the māhātmya. This section contains the background material, the “meta-history”, of the text. The skandha opens with a second discourse between Śaunaka and the sūta in the Naimiṣa forest, the same performative setting we encountered in the māhātmya. This dialogue provides a framing device for the entire Bhāgavatapurāṇa. We will return to the role of this setting in some detail below. On this occasion, Śaunaka requested the sūta to tell the assembled sages about Viṣṇu, his acts and his incarnations, especially Kṛṣṇa.

The sūta began his description for Śaunaka with a story about Vyāsa. This great sage had arranged the Vedas and composed the Mahābhārata, but he still felt dis-gruntled. Nārada, whom we met above, arrived at Vyāsa’s ashram and discovering Vyāsa in this state, Nārada told him that he would find satisfaction if he were to describe the deeds of Viṣṇu. Nārada told Vyāsa how in a previous age he had been born as the only son of an ignorant servant-girl of a community of yogins. Because of his good character and the fact that he had been purified by eating the yogins’ left-overs and hearing their “songs of Kṛṣṇa” three times a day, he had developed a great sense of devotion and attained a high state of spiritual development (1,5–6). Nārada then left Vyāsa, and wandered off, singing songs of Viṣṇu to the accompani-ment of his stringed-instrument known as a vīnā, something like a Sanskritic Chuck Berry “with no particular place to go” (1,6.38: yayau yādṛcchiko). Hearing of the liberational qualities of the stories of Viṣṇu from Nārada, Vyāsa resolved to compile the Bhāgavatapurāṇa. Having done so, in the passage of time, he regained his good humor and eventually taught the purāṇa to his son Śuka (1,7.8). Back in the Naimiṣa forest, Śaunaka then asked the sūta about the circumstances in which Śuka learned the purāṇa, and the latter explained how a king by the name of Parīkṣit came to be cursed by a brahmin.

King Parīkṣit was the son of Abhimanyu and grandson of Arjuna of Mahāb-hārata fame. Parīkṣit had been out hunting and, being hungry and thirsty, asked a meditating sage for water. Receiving no reply, Parīkṣit flew into a rage and with the end of his bow draped a dead snake around the sage’s shoulders (1,18.30). Seeing this outrage, the sage’s son cursed the king to be bitten by Takṣaka, a snake-prince, and to die eight days later. Stricken with remorse, the king returned to his city and sat down on the banks of the Gaṅgā to await death in the company of a host of sages (1,19.9–10).3 Parīkṣit asked Śuka, who was among the sages, about the acts that should be performed by those who are about to die (1,19.24). His reply, which

3 On the trope of death in this purāṇa, see Jarow, E. H. R. 2003. Tales for the dying: the death narrative of the BhāgavataPurāṇa. Albany NY, State University of New York Press.


begins in the second skandha and fills the following eleven skandhas, is the bulk of the purāṇa. It includes stories of various incarnations of Viṣṇu, some accounts of the old Vedic deities, the histories of the legendary human dynasties and the famous skandhas on the life of Kṛṣṇa.4 Towards the end of the final skandha, in accordance with the curse, the snake-god Takṣaka bit Parīkṣit. The king’s body instantly turned to ashes and he achieved final liberation. The purāṇa concludes with an overview of the purāṇic corpus, a synopsis of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa itself and some final reflec-tions on its greatness.

It may seem strange to skim over the contents of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa in just a few short paragraphs, but the focus of this inquiry is on the factors which enable the discourse to function as “true”, not on the discourse itself. Reader-response criticism sensitizes us to the perceived effects of the text and the ways in which it achieves those effects, rather than on its contents as the object of study. Many of the enabling factors to which we are about to turn are found in the paratext, the “packaging” of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa—that is, the māhātmya, the introductory “meta-historical” material, and in the devices that frame the discourse, rather than in the main body of the narrative.

Having completed this overview, we will now begin our inquiry into the four themes outlined above: meta-authorship, meta-performance, the power claims, and the “purāṇic paradox”.

2. Meta-authorship

The Bhāgavatapurāṇa as it exists today is a collective, anonymous work which probably evolved into its current form over a long period, as many unknown authors and editors added new material and expanded existing sections. Scholarly consensus holds that it evolved in Southern India under the influence of the Āḻvārs (Hardy 2003). We know nothing about the actual historical creators of the text, but they at-tributed their collective work to specific divine, semi-divine and (probably) mythical human creators, whom we might call “meta-authors”.

Doniger makes the point that when we hear a story that claims to be true, we ask, Where did you hear that story? and Who told you? Pre-empting these questions of authenticity, narratives in the Indian story-telling tradition often provide the line-ages by which they were created and propagated (Doniger 1993: 31). In this section we will examine the lineages of meta-authors of the māhātmya and the Bhāgavata-purāṇa, particularly in terms of the characteristics attributed to them.

4 A summary of the contents of each skandha is given by Rocher, L. 1986. The purāṇas. Wies-baden, Harrassowitz.

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The māhātmya gives the following details of its own “textual history”: the four Sanatkumāras, the mind-born sons of Brahmā, were its original creators. They be-stowed it on the divine sage Nārada at Ānanda (0,3.4–9). Vyāsa’s son Śuka attended the Sanatkumāras’ recitation and heard the māhātmya there. He conferred it “secret-ly” on the sūta (0,1.24), who in turn related it to Śaunaka in the Naimiṣa forest (0,1.3). Similarly, we can reconstruct the following lineage for the creation and transmission of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa itself. Viṣṇu revealed the core of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa to Brahmā in order to assuage Brahmā’s fear of cyclical existence (2,9.43, 12,13.10, 12,13.20). Brahmā narrated the Bhāgavatapurāṇa to Nārada (0,1.22, 2,9.43), and he transmitted it to Vyāsa (2,4.25, 2,9.44). Vyāsa passed it to his son Śuka (1,3.41, 1,7.6–8, 2,4.24, 12,6.35). Śuka narrated it to Parīkṣit while the latter waited for death on the banks of the Gaṅgā (1,3.42, 2,1.1). The sūta, who was present at that occasion, heard the narration and subsequently told the entire Bhāgavatapurāṇa to Śaunaka and the ascetics in the Naimiṣa forest (1,1.4, 1,3.44). The account of dialogue be-tween the sūta and Śaunaka is ultimately retold by Vyāsa (1,2.1 and 1,4.1). From this we can construct a lineage, a paraṃparā, of meta-authors for both narratives. The māhātmya’s lineage consists of the Sanatkumāras, Nārada, Śuka, the sūta and Śaunaka. The Bhāgavatapurāṇa has Viṣṇu, Brahmā, Nārada, Vyāsa, Śuka, the sūta and Vyāsa again. In the following section we will explore in order of “seniority” the identity and attributes of these characters.

We may begin by passing very briefly over the two deities Viṣṇu and Brahmā. Viṣṇu is of course the divine godhead, the Universal Absolute, the ultimate font of all creation, and the object of devotion of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa. Brahmā is the four-faced deity responsible for all creation, but in the purāṇic tradition, he is pointedly inferior to Viṣṇu and acts solely on his instructions. Viṣṇu and Brahmā are two of the most important deities in the Hindu pantheon.

The Sanatkumāras, the four boy-sages, Sanaka, Sanandana, Sanātana, Sanatsu-jāta, were manifested by Brahmā as his mind-born sons at the beginning of creation (1,3.6). They were residents of Viṣṇu’s divine realm of Vaikuṇṭha and constantly engaged in singing the praises of that deity. By doing so, they managed to keep Time at bay, and even though they were immeasurably old, being “born before our ancestors”, they always retained the appearance of five-year-olds, hence their name, which means roughly “forever-boys” (0,2.46–48). They are described as “unblem-ished sages” who “shine like ten million suns” (0,1.25, 0,2.44). They are wise and knowledgeable yogins, who have “reached the further shore of the Vedas” (0,3.2). The Sanatkumāras also appear in the Devībhāgavata- and Bhaviṣyapurāṇas, but do not seem to be very popular elsewhere in the archive. The Sanatkumāras recounted the māhātyma to Nārada.

Nārada is one of the best-known figures in the Sanskrit thought-world. He is a divine sage who wanders freely between divine and earthly realms, and like Gan-


dalf, pops up unexpectedly in many parts of the brahminical archive, including the purāṇas, the Rāmāyaṇa and Mahābhārata. In the Bhāgavatapurāṇa, he also appears to be a son of Brahmā, being born from the deity’s lap (0,1.80; 3,12.23). He is al-ways on the move and says of his wanderings: “I have come to the Earth, knowing that it is the best of all realms. I am wandering through sacred places including Puṣkara, Prayāga, Kāśī, Godāvarī, Harikṣetra, Kurukṣetra, Śrīraṅga, and the place where the bridges was built [by Rāma, Rāmeśwara]” (0,1.28–29). As we have seen, he is usually carrying a stringed instrument called a vīnā, and in the context of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa, he is always singing songs in praise of Viṣṇu (1,5.7). Commuting at will between the two worlds, Nārada frequently plays the role of go-between for gods and men.

Nārada has all the desirable attributes of the prefect sage, including excellence and austerities; he is the “jewel on the head of the dispassionate ones, is always foremost among the servants of Śrī Kṛṣṇa and is the sun [that illuminates] yoga” (0,2.54). He is modest and discerning, and is a “wise treasure-house of yoga” (0,3.4; 0,3.45). Vyāsa praises him for his unfathomable understanding, his knowledge of all secrets and for the fact that he worshiped the ancient Puruṣa, the Cosmic Man. Vyāsa says, “Wandering in the three worlds you are like the sun and as the witness of the Self you are like breath that moves within” (1,5.5–7). Nārada was the mid-dleman who transmitted the māhātmya from the divine Sanatkumāras to the human meta-narrator Śuka. Similarly, he was the intermediary in the transfer of the Bhāga-vatapurāṇa from Brahmā to Vyāsa.

So much has been written about the character of Vyāsa that we need not repeat it here, other than to note that he is reputed to have arranged the Vedas (Rocher 1986; Doniger 1993; Sullivan 1999; Hiltebeitel 2001; Narayana Rao 2004). The Vedas are cosmogonic, predate Creation and are therefore without origin. Vyāsa is said to have divided them into four so that they could be practiced more effectively. Because the Vedas were forbidden to women and members of “lower” or non twice-born castes, Vyāsa compiled the Mahābhārata so that all people could access the sacred tradi-tions. In addition, he is accredited with some form of “authorship” of all eighteen great Sanskrit purāṇas.

As we saw above, there is an interesting twist in the Bhāgavatapurāṇa with regard to Vyāsa, and which reflects well the seemingly boundless creativity of San-skrit authors. In spite of arranging the Vedas and compiling the Mahābhārata, we find that Vyāsa—“best among those who know the scriptures”—was still dissatisfied with his labors because he had not yet had the opportunity to fully extol the “highest dharma”, i.e. the glorification of Viṣṇu (1,4.14–1,6.42).

Next in the chain of transmission for both the māhātmya and the Bhāgavata-purāṇa is Vyāsa’s son, Śuka. Though he played only a minor role in the māhātmya, Śuka is the main meta-narrator of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa, as it was he who conveyed

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the purāṇa to Parīkṣit. There are five interrelated tropes centering on the body of Śuka which reveal his character: renunciation, wandering, nakedness, physical per-fection and wisdom. The second verse of the māhātmya contains the following eu-logy:

yaṃ pravrajantam anupetam apetakṛtyaṃ dvaipāyano virahakātara ājuhāva | putreti tanmayatayā taravo ’bhinedus taṃ sarvabhūtahṛdayaṃ munim ānato ’smi || (0,1.2)

I bow to the sage who has become the heart of all beings; who had not yet taken [the sacred thread] but who had renounced action; and to whom [Vyāsa], pained by his departure, cried out “son!” when he was setting forth, whereupon the trees them-selves replied on account of their identification with [Śuka].

This is an opaque and complex passage, but it contains two important points: firstly, Śuka was a great renunciant even at a young age, and second, that he had so success-fully merged himself with all moving and non-moving objects—he had become “the heart of all things”—that his identity had fused with even inanimate objects. Such was his identity with even the trees that they responded on his behalf when they heard his father’s anguished cries (Doniger 1993: 34).

Secondly, his “wandering at will” is an embodied performance of renunciation. Elsewhere he is depicted as roving about while singing the Bhāgavatapurāṇa to himself (0,6.79). Drifting from place to place, he pauses at the homes of individuals only for the time taken to milk a cow, but even in that brief time his presence sanc-tifies the fortunate establishment (1,4.8; 1,19.39). “[Vyāsa’s] son is a great yogin who regards all things impartially, is not dependent on knowledge derived from the senses, whose mind is focused, unsleeping, mysterious, like a crazy man” (1,4.4). Elsewhere Śuka is “wandering like a mad, dumb imbecile” (1,4.6). Craziness and lack of fixed abode suggest a lack of attachment, not only to home and family, but to the mundane and conventional in general.

Like wandering, nakedness is a physical expression of renunciation. In another episode, Vyāsa, fully clothed, was following Śuka, who went naked in the manner of an ascetic, along the banks of a river. Father and son passed some celestial nymphs who were bathing there. At the sight of Śuka these divine women felt no shame and made no effort to conceal themselves, but they scrambled for their clothes as soon as they saw Vyāsa. When the sage inquired into this strange reaction, they replied that while Vyāsa still made a mental distinction between male and female, Śuka, with his greater spiritual advancement and “pure vision” had transcended such dualities (1,4.5). Śuka’s nakedness indicates transcendence, divestment of social conventions, and freedom from the bonds of quotidian limitations.

Related to the tropes of renunciation, wandering and nakedness is physical per-fection. Later we find this description of Śuka:


The blessed son of Vyāsa appeared in that location, wandering the world at will, free of expectation, bearing no particular marks [of caste, stage of life, etc], satisfied in the attainment of the self, surrounded by children, having dispensed with clothing. He had the physique of a sixteen-year-old, with tender feet, hands, thighs, arms, shoulders and cheeks; his face had lovely large eyes, a prominent nose, symmetrical ears and fine brows; his neck was a beautiful as a conch-shell; his collarbones were not visible; his chest was broad and strong; his navel spiraled inwards; his abdomen had attractive folds; he was naked; his loose hair fell about his face; his arms hung down; he had the excellent appearance of the best of immortals; his youthful form was perpetually handsome, attracting the attention of women with his splendor and his sweet smile.… He was surrounded by hosts of brahminical, royal and divine sag-es, the greatest among the great. He was resplendent just like the moon surrounded by the planets, constellations and stars. (1,19.25–30).

Physical descriptions of this kind are common in Buddhist texts, particularly those recounting the marks of buddhahood, but they seem to be quite rare in the brahmini-cal archive (Powers 2009). There is perhaps an Indic premise that individuals’ exter-nal forms mirror their inner natures, that is, virtuous heroes are always attractive and handsome, while wicked and depraved individuals are physically repulsive. In this Sanskritic thought world, one can indeed tell a book by its cover. Śuka exhibits all the marks of physical perfection, including a flawless, perfectly symmetrical body. His appearance which highlights on the one hand his transcendence of the mundane and on the other his physical perfection is the external manifestation of his great inner spiritual accomplishment.

Śuka is the master-yogin, the guru of sages, the best of those who are self-pos-sessed, and is the Absolute in bodily form (0,6.80; 1,2.3; 1,3.41; 12,13.21). Like the moon, he exerts a “tidal pull on the ocean of spiritual knowledge” (0,6.79). He is dispassionate and indifferent to the world (1,7.9). As the king Parīkṣit said to Śuka when the latter arrived on the banks of the Gaṅgā, merely by thinking of the sage, a person’s domicile is purified. How much greater the impact of seeing him, touching him, washing his feet and offering him a seat? The mere presence of Śuka is suffi-cient to expunge instantly even the vilest misdeeds (1,19.33–34).5

The sūta, who transmitted both the māhātmya and the Bhāgavatapurāṇa to the sages in the Naimiṣa forest, was Ugraśravas the son of Romaharṣaṇa (also written as Lomaharṣaṇa) (1,2.1; 3,20.7). The character and role of Romaharṣaṇa and sūtas in general have already been well covered (Shastri 1970; Rocher 1986; Brockington 1998; Sharma 2000). In short, sūta, means charioteer, and because of the enunciative role that charioteers (like Sañjaya in the Mahābhārata) are assumed to have played,

5 In contemporary discourse, Śuka continues to figure as the paragon of the celibate saint. In his private correspondence, Gandhiji wrote: “To reach the level of Shukadeva is my goal. I have not been able to achieve it. Otherwise in spite of the generation of semen I would be impotent and the shedding will become impossible” Kakar, S. 1996. Indian identity. New Delhi, Pen-guin Books.

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it also means purāṇic bard. When the sense of bard is implied, the sūta is assumed to be a brahmin (Shastri 1970: 1 n.2). When the word is taken to mean driver, the sūta is said to be the descendant of a warrior father and a brahmin mother following the fanciful but influential definition of Manu (ManuSm 10.11). In the Bhāgavata-purāṇa, the sūta seems to be a brahmin, but we find a single interesting reference to his mixed descent (vilomajātāḥ, 1,18.18). In some purāṇic traditions, Sūta is as-sumed to a personal name rather than the caste or office of the narrator. The simplest solution to this puzzle is the one suggested by Rocher: sūta means different things in different contexts (1986: 56). The fact that the sūta of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa is the son of Romaharṣaṇa is an example of a certain textual power play that I call purāṇic leap-frog, to which we will return.

There is surprisingly little detail about the sūta in the Bhāgavatapurāṇa, but we find the following “observations”: his “brilliance which equals ten million suns de-stroys the darkness of ignorance”; he has not only studied but has expounded on the purāṇas, the histories and the treatises on dharma; he was assigned by the Creator as the helmsman of the ship for those who want to cross the ocean of existence; he is highly fortunate and is the best of orators (0,1.4; 1,1.6; 1,1.22; 1,4.2).

Based on the very slender evidence provided by two instances of the words “Vy-āsa said”, it appears that the actual voice in which the Bhāgavatapurāṇa is enunci-ated is his: it is Vyāsa who tells us about the encounter between Śuka and Śaunaka (1,2.1; 1,4.1). In any case, Vyāsa’s authority already looms large enough in our story to render this little uncertainty irrelevant. Enough has been said about Vyāsa above, so we may now proceed to summarize this discussion of meta-authorship.

The divine meta-authors Viṣṇu, Brahmā and his mind-born sons, the Sanat-kumāras, are all perfect beings and are by definition above impeachment. Their ut-terances have the status of divine revelation. The divine sage Nārada serves as inter-mediary between the celestial and the mundane, and transmits the Bhāgavatapurāṇa from Brahmā in the world of gods to Vyāsa in the world of men. Holdrege argues that the purāṇic appropriation of Vyāsa is a strategy to endow purāṇic discourse with Vedic authority (Holdrege 2006). This is undoubtedly true, but Vyāsa’s name brings with it more than Vedic authority. As the author, arranger and editor par excellence across the Sanskritic archive, his name alone has great canonizing power. Vyāsa’s son, the perfect renunciant, Śuka, is the most significant narrator, and his renuncia-tion and advanced spiritual development are manifest in all aspects of his physical form. Finally, the discourse passes to the important canonical figures of the sūta, whom the human authors of the purāṇa endow with many archetypal virtues. All these are conventional power-figures. The human creators of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa have, I suggest, a distinctive earthly agenda in placing their discourse on such illus-trious lips. We will return to this in the conclusion.


3. Meta-performance

All the key narratives of the māhātmya and the Bhāgavatapurāṇa are enunciated or “performed” by the above meta-authors in particular locations. For example, the dia-logues between the sūta and Śaunaka, which provide the outermost narrative frames, are set in the Naimiṣa forest (0,1.3). Nārada met the young woman Bhakti and her prematurely aged sons on the banks of the Yamunā river (0,1.37–41). The Sanat-kumāra’s discourse on the Bhāgavatapurāṇa and the recital which followed took place at Ānanda on the banks of the Gaṅgā.

Bonazzoli identified the place at which each of the great purāṇas was “originally” narrated. Such a place is “something more than a mere geographical or topographi-cal problem”, as it provides the “structure or inner logic” of the purāṇas themselves (Bonazzoli 2002: 241). The places correlate with, and are indicative of, “layers” of purāṇic evolution. Bonazzoli argues, not entirely convincingly, that, for example, a purāṇa narrated at Puṣkara—a location sacred to Brahmā—must have undergone a stage in which that deity and the stories about him were the dominant elements (Bonazzoli 2002; Schweig 2007). Thus a study of the supposed place at which a given purāṇa was recited could lead to an understanding of the evolution of the text. I prefer to discuss the role of place, rather than in textual-historical terms, in the reception of the text in terms of the truth-effect it might exert on a purāṇic audience.

Lyrical descriptions of place are an important aspect of the meta-performance of purāṇic narratives:

[Ānanda is] frequented by various hosts of sages, inhabited by gods and siddhas, and is covered with various trees, plants, and fresh soft sand. It is pleasant, remote and perfumed by golden lotuses. No enmity dwells in the minds of beings who live in that vicinity. You should perform the “knowledge-sacrifice” (of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa) with diligence there. In that location the story will be characterized by unprecedented charm. (0,3.5–7)

The king Parīkṣit, learning that he was fated to die, sat on the bank of the Gaṅgā:

Which person on the point of death, would not resort to the river rendered excellent by the dust from the feet of Kṛṣṇa mixed with glittering tulasī pollen, and which pu-rifies the worlds both here and hereafter, along with the gods? (1,19.6)

These and the other important sites of performance of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa—Naim-iṣa, Haridvāra, Yamunā and Gaṅgā—are all pre-eminent power-places in the Sanskrit thought-world. By locating the performance of the discourse in these power places, I suggest that the human creators of the discourse effectively appropriate the power and prestige of the location for their own narrative. The sanctity and power of place is transferred by implication to the narrative and empowers it. The most sublime lo-cation is the natural site for the most sublime discourse to be performed, and a given act is sanctified and rendered effective by association with its performative location.

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We can extend this logic to the types of audience before whom the discourse was performed, or more realistically, the types of audiences that the historical creators fashioned for their narrative. For example, the following passage describes the scene when the Sanatkumāras instructed Nārada to read the Bhāgavatapurāṇa at Ānanda:

Having spoken thus, the boy-sages then hastily proceeded with Nārada to the banks of the Gaṅgā for the purpose of imbibing the story. When they reached the bank, a tumult arose on earth, in the realm of the gods, and in the realm of Brahmā. All those who crave the elixir came running to imbibe the nectar of Śribhāgavata, with the Vaiṣṇavas at the fore. Bhṛgu, Vasiṣṭha, Cyavana, Gautama, Medhātithi, De-vala, Devarāta [Yājñavalkya], [Paraśu]rāma, [Viśvāmitra] son of Gādhi, Śākala, [Mārkaṇḍeya] son of Mṛkaṇḍu, [Dattātreya] son of Atri, Pippalāda, the two lords of yoga Vyāsa and Parāśara, the counter-part of Śuka (chāyāśuka)—all these hosts of sages headed by Jājali and Jahnu, filled with great desire, came with their sons, disciples and womenfolk. The Vedāntas, Vedas, mantras and tantras, the seventeen purāṇas and the six śāstras all came in bodily form. The rivers headed by Gaṅgā, the lakes headed by Puṣkara, the sacred fields, all the directions and the forests head-ed by Daṇḍaka were there. The gods, celestial musicians, the dānavas, the nāgas and the rest were there. Because he was the eldest, Bhṛgu reminded those who had failed to come, and brought them there. Then the boy-sages, who had been initiated, were given excellent seats by Nārada, and, honored by all, were seated, intent upon Kṛṣṇa. Vaiṣṇavas, renunciants, nyāsins, and brahmacārins were seated at the front, with Nārada at their head. On one side were the hosts of sages, on the other, the denizens of heaven. The Vedas and the Upaniṣads sat on another side, and the sacred fords and the women were in another part. There was the cry of “victory!”, and the cry of “homage!”, the blare of conches, and there was a very great shower of pow-dered sandalwood, parched rice and flowers. Having mounted their celestial chariots, several of the leaders of the gods showered everyone there with flowers from the wish-granting tree. (0,3.10–22)

This represents a Who’s Who of the brahminical thought-world and includes many of the major sages, all the major genres of scriptures, sacred sites and places of pil-grimage in bodily form, as well as all the older generation of Vedic deities.

Similarly, when Śuka recited the Bhāgavatapurāṇa to Parīkṣit on the banks of the Gaṅgā, the celebrity audience was packed with the most illustrious names in the archive: Atri, Vasiṣṭha, Cyavana, Śaradvān, Āriṣṭanemi, Bhṛgu, Āṅgiras, Parāśara, the son of Gādhi (Viśvāmitra), Paraśurāma, Utathya, Indrapramada, Idhmavāha, Medhātithi, Devala, Ārṣṭiṣeṇa, Bhāradvāja, Gautama, Pippalāda, Maitreya, Aurva, Kavaṣa, Agastya, Vyāsa, Nārada “and other excellent divine sages and great sages, and excellent royal sages headed by Aruṇa” (1,19.9–10).

It is difficult to imagine that the historical authors could have created a more eminent reception for the meta-performance of their discourse. By unfolding their narrative before the “creamy layer” of the brahminical imaginary universe, the im-plication seems to be that the ultimate discourse naturally deserves the ultimate audi-ence, or to express the equation in other terms, because it was expounded before the


ultimate audience, this must indeed be the ultimate discourse. Just as the power of place was used to empower the text, so too the authority and nobility of the audience are exploited by the creators of the text to authorize and ennoble their discourse.

4. Power claimsThose who are truly wise do not need to distinguish between the origin of the Vedas [the syllable oṃ], the mother of the Vedas [the Gāyatrī mantra], “The hymn of the Cosmic Man” [Puruṣasūkta RS 10,90], the three Vedas [Ṛk, Sāman and Yajus], the Bhāgavatapurāṇa, the twelve-syllable mantra [Oṃ namo bhagavate vāsudevāya], the Sun, [the pilgrimage destination of] Prayāga, Time, brahmins, the fire-sacrifice, Surabhi [the wish-fulfilling cow], the twelfth day [of the bright and dark lunar fort-nights], the tulasī plant, the season of spring and Viṣṇu. (0,3.34–36)

The authors of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa place their text on an equal footing with all that is held sacred in the Vaiṣṇava tradition: the most hallowed mantras, the Vedas, the most significant recipients of worship and veneration in heaven and on earth. They have bathed their creation in multifarious statements of its own excellence. For example, the Bhāgavatapurāṇa is said to “delight both good men and the deities”, it is “the best of the good”, “eternally efficacious”, “an elixir for the ears” and “the treasure of the Vaiṣṇavas” (12,13.11; 0,1.7; 0,1.4; 0,6.83). It is also the subject of this forerunner of the product endorsement: “Even the master-sage Śāṇḍilya who resides on Citrakūṭa mountain, and who is submerged in the bliss of the Ultimate, reads this meritorious history” (0,5.89).

The Bhāgavatapurāṇa is often compared favorably with other purāṇas, and claims to be “the essence of stories”, and “the head-ornament (tilaka) of the purāṇas”. “The other purāṇas shine in the company of the worthy until the Bhāgavatapurāṇa itself is seen” (0,1.4; 0,6.83; 12,13.14).

Like the Gaṅgā among rivers, like Viṣṇu among the gods, like Śiva among the Vaiṣṇavas,6 so too is this among the purāṇas. Just as Kāśī is unexcelled among all the places of pilgrimage, so too is the Glorious Bhāgavata unexcelled in the genre of purāṇas, O brahmins. (12,13.16–17)

All eighteen mahāpurāṇas are supposed to have five defining characteristics (lakṣaṇa), that is, they should cover these five topics: 1. original creation of the universe, 2. subsequent re-creations, 3. genealogies of gods, etc, 4. the periods of the Manus, and 5. histories of various dynasties.7 While it has been demonstrated that only a small fraction of the typical purāṇic text actually concerns these topics, they

6 That is to say, just as Śiva is the foremost devotees of Viṣṇu, so too is this text foremost among the purāṇas. This is a wonderful example of purāṇic one-upmanship, a topic to which we will return below.

7 These five lakṣaṇa are sarga, pratisarga, vaṃśa, manvantara and vaṃśānucarita.

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are nevertheless regarded as the hallmark of purāṇic canonicity in the indigenous tra-dition (Bailey 1995: 13 n.7). Instead of exhibiting the standard five characteristics, the Bhāgavatapurāṇa, in contrast, boasts of ten: 1. original creation, 2. re-creations, 3. law and order, 4. welfare, 5. enjoyments, 6. periods of the Manus, 7. stories of the Lord, 8. physical annihilation, 9. liberation, and 10. the ultimate resort (2,10.1). In subscribing to the lakṣaṇa system, the Bhāgavatapurāṇa exerts its canonicity and indicates its membership of the purāṇic genre. At the same time, in a textual pow-er-play, it trumps other members of the genre by exhibiting not just the five usual characteristics, but a total of ten, a move which Matchett describes as “conscious self-aggrandizement” (2005: 136).

The Bhāgavatapurāṇa only compares itself favourably with other purāṇas, but more ambitious comparisons are drawn between it and sacred texts from other gen-res: a person who has been satisfied by drinking the nectar of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa will find no pleasure in anything else; it is “derived from all doctrinal systems”; and listening to the Bhāgavatapurāṇa is better than all other dharmas (12,13.15; 0,1.9; 0,6.77).

What is the use of the numerous orally transmitted texts [i.e. the Vedas], sacred treatises and purāṇas which cause confusion? The Bhāgavata treatise alone resounds with the gift of liberation. (0,3.28)

The Bhāgavatapurāṇa is the chosen resort of the wise, just as Lake Mānasa at the foot of Mt Kailāsa is the abode of that paragon of purity, the wild goose. Other texts are for lesser beings and are like bathing places for the humble crow (1,5.10).

Sanskrit authors employ boundless creativity to elevate their text above its com-petitors. Here are three such allegorical narratives, subtler than the power-claims above, but similar in their discursive aims. As we saw earlier, Nārada came upon the great sage Vyāsa, sitting miserably in his hermitage. Even though Vyāsa had arranged the Vedas and composed the Mahābhārata,—the two most significant feats in the Sanskritic thought-world—he was still dissatisfied. Nārada suggested that he would only be restored to good humor once he had composed the Bhāgavatapurāṇa (1,5.5–9). The subtext is that the Bhāgavatapurāṇa is able to deliver a degree of spiritual satiety and uplift beyond that provided by either Vedas or the epics. In the second example, the “jar of nectar” story to which we will return in detail below, Brahmā carried the Bhāgavatapurāṇa to heaven where he weighed it on a set of scales and found it to be heavier than all the other texts, thus demonstrating its incomparable worth (0,1.18–19). Third, at the meta-performance of the Bhāgavata-purāṇa at Haridvāra, all the other important texts appeared in bodily form to hear the recital, and to sing praises of the text. As we saw above, these included the Vedāntas, Vedas, the mantras and tantras, the seventeen other mahāpurāṇas and the six śāstras. All are shown to be subservient to, and in awe of, the Bhāgavatapurāṇa (0,3.15).


The Bhāgavatapurāṇa is often compared to the Vedas, but I will consider this special case of textual comparison in the following section on the “purāṇic paradox”. Before we do so, let us first examine power claims of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa in terms of the goal of liberation.

The week-long recital will confer the religious, sensual, material and liberational goals of life: “of this there is no doubt” (0,6.66–69, 0,6.99). Indeed, “nothing in the world is unattainable for one who listens with restraint to the Bhāgavatapurāṇa or for one who recites it with faith” (0,6.104). In most post-Vedic Indic thought, all living beings are trapped in an endless cycle of birth, death and rebirth. The highest goal of all Hindu spiritual practice—its fundamental problematic—is to obtain lib-eration from cyclical existence. The driver of cyclical existence is action (karman): misdeeds add to one’s karmic debt, but positive actions enable a person to acquire merit. When, over many lifetimes, individuals have accrued sufficient merit, they may achieve liberation.

One of the recurrent themes of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa is its capacity to burn off negative karman and to purify the faithful. The Bhāgavatapurāṇa is “the best of the best, the most purifying among the purifiers” (0,1.7; 0,3.31; 0,6.71; 0,6.99); “there is nothing other than this alone for the purification of the mind” (0,1.12); “this su-preme purifying story heard once will burn away all accumulations of misdeeds” (0,5.62; 0,5.90). There is nothing like it for destroying sins in the age of Kali (0,4.9). Continual recitation of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa will destroy the sins accumulated in millions of previous lives; even the foolish and the wicked, even animals and birds are cleansed of misdeeds by hearing it (0,3.37; 0,4.8). It can expunge the sins of the wicked, those who delight in bad conduct, who are on the wrong path, who are burned by the fire of anger, the dishonest, the amorous, liars, those who offend their parents, those who are envious, who do not adhere to the correct behaviour for each stage of life, hypocrites, the violent, those who practice deceit and fraud, the cruel, the demonic, the uncompassionate, those who live off brahmins, adulterers, the impure and the malicious (0,4.11–14). Whenever a week-long recital takes place all the Sins tremble, lamenting to one another, “This story will instantly cause our destruction!” (0,5.54) just as fire burns wet, dry, thick and thin sticks, so too hearing the Bhāgavatapurāṇa can burn all categories of misdeeds committed through any act of voice or mind (0,5.55). When a week-long reading is heard, the knot in one’s heart is cut, all doubts are dispelled and one’s negative actions are dissolved (0,5.65).

As mentioned above, in the first section of the purāṇa, the divine sage Nārada told Vyāsa how in one of his previous incarnations, he was born as the son of a serv-ant girl. By hearing the Bhāgavatapurāṇa from his brahmin masters, even this child of very lowly status was able to achieve a high level of spiritual development (1,5–7) (Srinivasan 1980: 199–200).

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When individuals’ negative karman has been burned away, when they have be-come perfectly pure, they are ripe for liberation. The Bhāgavatapurāṇa frequent-ly boasts of its power to liberate the faithful (0,6.71; 0,6.83; 0,6.99; 0,6.103–104; 12,13.18). It claims to be the panacea for overcoming the afflictions of the Kali age and can provide complete liberation in seven days (0,1.6; 0,1.9; 0,1.21; 0,5.65; 0.5.90). Merely by hearing the text, liberation is placed in the palm of one’s hand (0,3.24). The Bhāgavatapurāṇa “dispels the fear of being swallowed by the jaws of the serpent of death” (0,1.11). Reciting with one’s own lips half a verse or even quar-ter of a verse of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa leads to the “supreme destination” (0,3.33).

How can we tell you of the glorious mass of rewards which is stored in the narratives through a sacrifice in the form of a week-long reading? Those who hear a single syllable of Gokarṇa’s story were not born again. (0,5.87)

Those who listen to the Bhāgavatapurāṇa with faith will escape the Lord of Death. Having seen one of his minions setting forth with a noose in his hand to rope in those who are destined to die, Yama whispered in his servant’s ear, “Ignore those who are drunk on the stories of the Blessed One. I am the master of the others, but not of the Vaiṣṇavas” (0,6.100).

Liberation from cyclical existence is often expressed in terms of reaching prox-imity to the deity or merging with him—here, as elsewhere, the appellations Govin-da, Kṛṣṇa, Hari and Viṣṇu are used interchangeably. Hence, a person who hears a sentence of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa at the time of death is invited to the paradise of Vaikuṇṭha by Govinda himself (0,3.40; 0,6.102). By reading the Bhāgavatapurāṇa daily with restraint one can achieve Kṛṣṇa (0,1.7; 0,4.81; 0,6.77). From a week-long hearing one draws close to Hari in this very world and becomes one with the deity (0,5.62; 0,6.102). Goloka, Kṛṣṇa’s heavenly realm, which cannot be reached even by the sun, the moon or the most accomplished spiritual practitioners, can be attained by listening to the Bhāgavatapurāṇa (0,5.86).

The text is not just a means of attaining the deity: the physical textual artefact is the deity. As Kṛṣṇa no longer resides in this world, and the faithful can no longer access him directly, he left the text as his mundane proxy, his representative on earth, and imbued it with his essence.

[Kṛṣṇa] placed his own vital power (tejas) into the Bhāgavatapurāṇa. Having dis-appeared he entered this ocean of the glorious Bhāgavatapurāṇa. Hence this is the body of Hari in visible verbal form. (0,3.61–62)

As the physical manifestation of the lord in the mundane world, the textual artifact is as deserving of veneration and is as productive of merit as the deity himself. It is to he honoured and worshipped like any other sacred form of the divine:

One should worship diligently and affectionately the Glorious Bhāgavata with in-cense and lamps in the prescribed manner. Holding a coconut one should pay hom-


age, and then one should offer praise with a calm mind: “This work by the name of Glorious Bhāgavata is Kṛṣṇa himself in person. You have been taken up by me, O Lord, so that I may gain liberation from cyclical existence.” (0,6.28–30)

Now that Kṛṣṇa has gone to his own abode…, this sun in the form of a purāṇa has now risen for those who have lost their sight in the Kali age. (1,3.45)

The adoration of the physical text, or the “cult of the book” as Mackenzie Brown described it, seems to be common to many purāṇic traditions, including the ŚP, and indeed to many other works in the Sanskritic archive (Mackenzie Brown 1986; Tay-lor 2008b).

Just as due attention to the text is said to yield all that is good and desirable, fail-ing to listen to the Bhāgavatapurāṇa, or worse still wilfully ignoring it, are attended by terrible consequences. In these cases, the stress is on the futility of life and the inescapability of existence: “Those who are deprived of hearing the story are born to perish like bubbles on water or like mosquitoes among animals”, “the lives of people in this realm of Bhārata [i.e. India] who do not hear this story are said by the learned in the assembly of the gods to be fruitless”, “what is the use of having a body if one does not hear the Bhāgavatapurāṇa?”, “if the śāstra of Śuka does not reach ones’ ears even for a moment, then one will wander in ignorance in this cycle of existence” (0,5.63; 0,5.56; 0,5.57; 0,3.27).

A wicked person who has paid little attention [to the Bhāgavatapurāṇa] all his life, and has not drunk the story of Śuka’s treatise is, alas, like an outcaste or like a don-key. His own life will be in vain and his mother will have endured the pangs of labour for nothing. A wicked person who has heard none of the words of Śuka’s treatise is called a living corpse. The leaders of the society of gods in heaven say, “Fie on that man. He is like a beast. He is merely a burden on the earth.” (0,3.42–43)

Let us now turn from the soteriological claims of the text to its claims of secrecy. It is perhaps fundamental to the human condition that we all want the things we can-not have. The less attainable an object, the more desirable it becomes—the more it tantalizes us. The Bhāgavatapurāṇa, like all other purāṇic texts, is freely available today to anyone who wishes to buy, borrow or download it. We may assume that in pre-modern times, any devotee with sufficient resources could cause a manuscript to be copied, and we know from the descriptions in this and other sources that public expositions of the texts were just that—open, public events, which anyone “with the exception of the wicked” could attend. Some tantric texts are indeed “secret”, that is, they are bestowed by a guru only upon those practitioners who have received the appropriate initiations, but the Bhāgavatapurāṇa does not fall into this category. And yet, the supposed secret nature of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa is a common empow-ering trope. The text is described as the “supreme secret” and the “secret purāṇa”; Śuka passed the māhātmya “secretly” to the sūta and Vyāsa revealed this “secret” to Śuka (0,6.102; 1,2.3; 0,1.24; 1,1.8). The rarity and special nature of the text is often

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stressed: it is “difficult to obtain” and is only accessed when an individual has accu-mulated enough merit through ten million rebirths (0,3.44).

Many paths have been described by sages in the world: all of them can be accom-plished with effort, and in general they lead to heaven. But the path that leads to Vai-kuṇṭha is secret—a person generally only receives instruction in it by good fortune. (0,2.56–57)

The final class of power-claims centres on the process of copying and propagating the text. In pre-modern times copying a manuscript required a substantial investment of resources, as teams of scribes would have to be employed, and possibly housed and fed, for weeks or even months. In the unforgiving Indian climate, palm-leaf manuscripts are highly perishable, and have a shelf-life of about 150 years. The per-petuation of a spiritual tradition was to a large extent dependent on the maintenance of the tradition’s key manuscripts, and this required copying and recopying. The authors of chain-letters make all sorts of promises of wealth, fame, success, etc. and threats of death, disaster and misfortune to ensure that the recipient of the letter does not break the chain, that is, to ensure that the textual tradition remains unbroken. The authors of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa adopt some familiar strategies:

One who gives a Vaiṣṇava a copy of this [text] with a stand in the form of a golden lion will certainly obtain a state of absorption with Kṛṣṇa. (0,3.41)

If one is able, having procured a lion of gold weighing three palas,8 a copy of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa written in beautiful letters should be placed on it. Having hon-oured it with invocations, rituals etc. and having given it as the fee, along with gar-ments, ornaments, fragrances, etc. to the self-controlled and learned man who con-ducted the ritual, the wise person will be freed from the bonds of rebirth. (0,6.66–68, 12,13.13, and ŚP 0,7.42–46)

To conclude, we have seen in this section how the creators of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa spiked their narrative with all sorts of claims of its efficacy and potency. In particular they compared the Bhāgavatapurāṇa favorably with other purāṇas and normative texts. We saw how the authors claimed that as little as a single syllable of the Bhāga-vatapurāṇa could lead to liberation from cyclical existence, proximity to the deity, or a direct flight to heaven, all of which are among the ultimate goals of Hindu spir-itual practice. In the absence of the deity, the text is to be worshipped as his proxy. Claims that the text and its embodied discourse are secret all serve to “rarify” it, and render it more unique, desirable, effective and powerful.

8 Approx. 45g.


5. The purāṇic paradoxThe story of the Bhāgavata arose from the essence of the Vedas and Upaniṣads, and appears to be the most excellent of them... Just as the sap which fills [a plant] from the root to the tip is not sweet, but accumulating in the individual fruit is enjoyed by all; just as ghee which is latent in milk cannot be tasted, but when separated, in-creases the contentment of the gods; just as sugar fills the sugarcane from the middle to both ends, but is sweet when extracted, so too is the story of the Bhāgavata. This purāṇa by the name of Bhāgavata, equal of the Vedas, has been promulgated for es-tablishing devotion, knowledge and renunciation. (0,2.67–71)

The very fact that the Bhāgavatapurāṇa was written in Sanskrit, the cosmopolitan language of the day, suggests, as Pollock argues, that its creators had something universal to say (Pollock 2006). Just as Sanskrit was the cosmopolitan language of power, Vedic occupied a special niche within that genre. The Vedas are often thought to be the bedrock of Brahminical orthodoxy, in theory if not in practice. Therefore, to endow a Sanskrit text with Vedic form is to attempt to align it with the ultimate sources of power and authority. The authors of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa mimicked the style of the Vedas to an extent by purposely adopting archaic forms of grammar and vocabulary (van Buitenen 1968). In addition to grammar and vocabulary, other strat-egies for co-opting Vedic authority are at play. In this section I will address three top-ics: first, I will discuss the well-known phenomenon of co-option of Vedic authority, and I will give examples of this practice in relation to the Bhāgavatapurāṇa (Butcha 2006; Holdrege 2006). Secondly, I will show how despite of its need for Vedic valo-risation, the authors of this purāṇa often seek to present their discourse favourably in comparison with the older tradition, even to the extent of ridiculing the older deities and practices. Thirdly, I will look at what I call the “purāṇic paradox”. Hopkins hints at the existence of this paradox when he states that the Bhāgavatapurāṇa represents:

“the almost complete break with the traditional religious ceremonies based on the Vedas.… The Bhāgavata meets the minimum requirements of Hindu orthodoxy by not denying the authority of the Vedas, but Vedic religion is generally damned with faint praise when it is not openly criticized. Some effort is made to preserve continu-ity with the Vedic tradition by the identifying of the Vedas with the manifested Lord; thus it is said that ‘the Veda is Nārāyaṇa in person’….” (Hopkins 1966: 11–12)

The paradox centres on the Bhāgavatapurāṇa’s need for Vedic authority for epis-temological reasons of credibility. For a text to function as “true” in the Sanskritic brahminical thought-world, it must demonstrate that it is derived from the Vedas or at least show that it rests on Vedic authority. To be “Vedic” is by definition to be “true”. But the very reason for the Bhāgavatapurāṇa’s existence is to promulgate a distinctly post-Vedic spiritual practice, in the form of personal devotion to Viṣṇu-Kṛṣṇa. That is, the Bhāgavatapurāṇa needs to co-opt Vedic authority to appear to be authoritative, but at the same time needs to subvert Vedic theology. I call this

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simultaneous requirement for Vedic confirmation and Vedic rejection the “purāṇic paradox”.

Let us begin with the co-option of Vedic authority. The Bhāgavatapurāṇa de-scribes itself as “consisting of the Vedas” (brahmātma), as being “the equivalent of the Vedas” (brahmasaṃmitam), and is referred to as a śruti, that is, a text which, like the Vedas, consists of eternal sound and which was “heard” by divine sages (0,3.74; 1,3.40; 1,4.7). It is the quintessence of all the Vedas and histories, the essence of all Vedāntas, and is “essentially the same as the Gāyatrī mantra” (1,2.3; 1,3.42; 12,13.12; 12,13.15; 0,6.62, see also ŚP 0,7.37). The purāṇas (together with the epics) constitute the “fifth Veda” (1,4.20). The purāṇa’s famous introductory verse stresses the claimed link between this purāṇa and the earlier authoritative tradition: “The Bhāgavatapurāṇa is the nectar-filled fruit of the wish-granting tree of the Vedas, fallen from the mouth of Śuka.” (0,6.81; 1,1.3. Note the gentle pun on the name Śuka, which also means “parrot”, Doniger 1993a).

While the Bhāgavatapurāṇa co-opts Vedic authority to bolster its own credi-bility, for theological reasons it also needs to excel Vedic texts. We can see how it achieves this in the following examples. Vyāsa’s melancholy was not dispelled by the Vedas or the Mahābhārata, but by the Bhāgavatapurāṇa alone. Similarly, Nārada was unable to rouse the young woman Bhakti and her two decrepit sons by reciting the Vedas or the Vedānta: “their eyes did not see, both were yawning and lethargic, their hair was in general as white as a crane, and their limbs were as dry as sticks of wood” (0,2.27–28). The Vedas and Vedāntas attended the recital of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa at Haridvāra in the bodily form of cheerful supplicants and grate-ful participants. By the use of these various textual strategies, the creators of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa relegated the older traditions to an inferior, secondary position.

In addition to belittling Vedic texts, the Bhāgavatapurāṇa disparages the Vedic gods, as we see in the following passage from the māhātmya:

When Śuka had taken his place in the assembly to narrate this story before Parīkṣit, the deities arrived there as one, holding a pot of nectar [of immortality]. Having bowed to Śuka, all the gods who were skilled in accomplishing their own ends said, “Accept this nectar and give us the nectar in the form of the story. If you agree to such an exchange, the king may drink our nectar, and we will all drink the nectar of the glorious Bhāgavata.” “How can your nectar compare with this story? How can a glass bead compare with a great jewel in the world of men?” Having reasoned thus, Śuka then laughed at the gods, it is said. Realising that they were not devotees, he did not give them the nectar in the form of the story. It is difficult even for the gods to obtain an account of the glorious Bhāgavata. (0,1.13–17)

In addition to discerning in this passage some of the power-claims that we have just described, there is something novel here. The gods, although unnamed, are undoubt-edly the older generation of Vedic deities, headed by Indra or Brahmā. They are unable to persuade Śuka to swap the Bhāgavatapurāṇa for their own nectar of im-


mortality. They are humiliated and are laughed off the stage. The authors of this nar-rative represent the gods of the earlier tradition as impotent, ineffectual and risible.

In other passages, the old Vedic deity Indra was targeted. He was the supreme king of the old gods, and was the paragon of matchless strength and wealth. Indra was the god of storms, the thunderbolt was his weapon, and he is invoked in one quarter of the hymns of the Ṛgveda, far more than any other deity (Macdonell 1976: 41, see also Doniger O’Flaherty 1994: 139):

Indra is of vast size; thus it is said that he would be equal to the earth even if it were ten times as large as it is. His greatness and power are constantly dwelt on: neither gods nor men have attained to the limit of his might; and no one like him is known among the gods. (Macdonell 1976: 42)

In the Bhāgavatapurāṇa he is treated rather differently. In the following section I will draw on several episodes in which Indra plays a part, and I will discuss briefly the discursive implication of his treatment.

The cow-herding folk by whom Kṛṣṇa was raised are said to have lived a wan-dering, nomadic existence. To ensure rain for themselves and their livestock, they made sacrifices to Indra (indrayāga 10,24.1). When Kṛṣṇa asked his adoptive father Nanda why they did so, he received the following reply:

The Blessed Indra is the rain god (Parjanya) and the clouds are his own bodily forms. They shower down water, which is the giver of life and pleasure for all beings. We and other people, O beloved, worship that deity, the lord of the clouds, with sub-stances produced from his seed. People subsist on the remnants of his sacrifices for the attainment of the three goals.9 The rain god is the provider of results for people engaged in productive activities. A man who would reject these traditional ways be-cause of desire, greed, fear or anger will not prosper. (10,24.8–11)

In the subsequent passage, Kṛṣṇa rejected the idea that rain was the result of sacrifice to Indra, and argued that all pleasure, pain, fear and happiness arose according to in-dividuals’ karman, and not as the result of divine intervention. He provided a lively, many-sided argument to support his contention: if there were a god who handed out the results of action to the doer, he would have no power over those who abstained from action. What power does Indra have over those who are subject solely to their own karman? It is actions themselves which lead to happiness in life: it is they who should be revered as the deity. He also offered a materialistic explanation for precip-itation: “Clouds, impelled by the elemental force known as rajas, shower down rains in all directions. These waters enable the people to thrive. What does the great Indra have to do with this?” Kṛṣṇa further suggested to Nanda that as nomadic cowherds, they should sacrifice to the entities that matter to them. Accordingly, the materials that had been gathered for the sacrifice to Indra were offered instead to the brahmins

9 i.e. the spiritual, material and sensual goals of life.

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and to the mountain on which they grazed their herds, and they fed the sacrificial grass to their cattle (10,24).

Realizing that his sacrifices had been interrupted, the enraged Indra unleashed a terrible storm with thunder, lightning and hailstones to destroy the cowherds, but Kṛṣṇa uprooted the mountain Govardhana and held it aloft like an umbrella to pro-vide shelter for his folk. On witnessing this feat, Indra, astonished, chastened and hu-miliated, placed his head at Kṛṣṇa’s feet, and saluted him as the father, preceptor and supreme lord of the Universe (10,27.6). Kṛṣṇa forgave Indra and was consecrated by him as “Govinda”, after which the god returned to his own heavenly abode (10,27).

Many scholars have written about the devotional and ritual aspects of this Govardhana narrative (Vaudeville 1980; Toomey 1992; Toomey 1994; Corrigan 2004). Hawley sees Kṛṣṇa’s victory over Indra as part of a cosmic battle to ensure that the elements, in this case water, are maintained within their proper limits and that Kṛṣṇa is in his proper place at the centre of the cosmos (Hawley 1979: 201). Vaudeville simply notes that:

In the Harivaṃśa and the Viṣṇupurāṇa, Kṛṣṇa-Gopāl exhorts his fellow-tribesmen, the Gopas, to give up the cult of the Vedic god Indra and to stick to their own reli-gious tradition as cowherds by celebrating the “autumnal festival” in honour of hills and cows. (Vaudeville 1980: 4)

Vaudeville writes as if the Vedic-style sacrifices to Indra are some undesirable in-novation that the cowherds should shun. I think Tagare’s interpretation is closer to the mark:

These stories show that Kṛṣṇa directly over-rode the older Vedic gods, especially Indra, and that the Kṛṣṇa cult superseded local and contemporaneous divinities in-cluding the great god Indra of the Vedic period. Indra’s attempt to punish the cow-herds by downpour of heavy rains and his final discomfiture by Kṛṣṇa who protected the cowherds with their cattle and other belongings under the umbrella of mount Govardhana lifted by him, show the recession of the Vedic religion and the positive advance of the Kṛṣṇa cult. (Tagare 1976–1978: 1409–1410, note 1)

Here the bhakti tradition and the worship of Kṛṣṇa are presented as if they are some-thing new. I would like to take this analysis a step further and test the discursive implications of Kṛṣṇa’s victory over Indra, and the allegorical ascendancy of bhakti traditions over Vedic sacrifice. By showing Kṛṣṇa overcoming and humiliating In-dra, by showing the ascendance of the new devotional forms of religious expression over the older Vedic practices, and in depicting the latter as irrational and ineffective, the authors of these narratives seek to empower and valorise their own bhakti dis-courses and to strengthen their reformist agenda. Further, we might read this narra-tive against the grain, and perceive evidence of resistance among Vedic practitioners towards the bhakti tradition of the Bhāgavatas.


Other examples of the treatment of Indra reinforce this perception of textual power-play in progress. After King Parīkṣit had been bitten by the snake-prince, his enraged son Janamejaya sought to destroy all snakes in a great sacrificial fire. The serpent-king Takṣaka was able to avoid immolation as he was protected by Indra. The brahmins who were conducting the sacrifice forcefully invoked both the god and the snake, whereupon Indra and his celestial chariot fell from the sky. Here, too, the old Vedic deity is shown to be impotent and subservient (12,6.17–24).

At the end of the Sanatkumāra’s week-long recital of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa, the god Śiva, his consort Pārvatī, Brahmā, and various other divine and semi-divine beings appeared and began to praise Viṣṇu and to receive his blessing. It was indeed a jolly scene:

Prahrāda kept time by clapping his hands, Uddhava played the cymbals, Nārada played the vīnā; Arjuna sang the melody because of his musical talents; Indra played the drum; and the Sanatkumāras cried out “Victory! Victory” during the eulogy. (0,6.87)10

The discursive impact of Indra playing the drum in the back row of what was in ef-fect a Hare Krishna combo could not have been lost on the intended audience.

Let us turn now from Indra to the other great god, the four-faced creator-deity Brahmā. While not strictly a Vedic deity like Indra, Brahmā is prominent in the purāṇic genre, but always seems to play second fiddle to the central purāṇic deity, whether Śiva, or in the case of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa, Viṣṇu/Kṛṣṇa. As Matchett puts it,

Although Brahmā is never regarded as supreme in the Purāṇas his status, as creator of the trailokya, the triple world of gods, mortals, and demons, is much higher than that of the other devas…. (Matchett 2005: 139)

Brockington makes these comments on the nature and role of this deity:

By the middle of the period of growth of the epics, not only are Viṣṇu and Śiva becoming more significant but also the figure of Brahmā becomes important for a time, in the last century or two BCE and the first century or so CE. Basically Brahmā represents a fusion of the Upaniṣadic absolute, Brahman, with the concept of a cre-ator deity, and so he is credited with some of the cosmogonic myths told in the later Vedic period about Prajāpati..., but already in the later parts of the epics Viṣṇu and Śiva have totally eclipsed Brahmā, just as the importance of Indra has significantly declined. (Brockington 2005: 119)

What is the role of Brahmā in the Bhāgavatapurāṇa? He is still the great creator deity, but is always depicted as subordinate to Viṣṇu. His subordination is empha-sized by the fact that he arose from Viṣṇu’s navel, as this places him in a father-son

10 I have followed Tagare’s translation here. I have been unable to verify some of these obscure terms independently.

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relationship with that deity (1,3.2; 3,8.15). Brahmā gives long discourses on how he created the Universe, but only under the authority of Viṣṇu. Brahmā eulogises Viṣṇu in the following words:

I am composed of the Vedas. I am composed of austerities. I am honored as the lord of the Prajāpatis, established in yoga, perfect in the practice of meditation, but I do not understand him from whom I was born. I bow down to the feet of the one who severs cyclical existence. (2,6.34–35)

Certainly the Bhāgavatapurāṇa derives great advantage from spring-boarding off the authority of Brahmā to bolster the prestige of Viṣṇu/Kṛṣṇa. For example, it is said that Brahmā desired to witness Kṛṣṇa’s transcendental feats. He therefore abducted all the cowherd boys, along with all the calves, and hid them away (10,13.15). To spare both the mothers and the cows the pains of separation, Kṛṣṇa used his powers of creative illusion—his māyā—to manifest himself simultaneously in the forms of all the missing children and animals. His trick was so successful that both the com-munity and the cattle were deceived and neither noticed that their real offspring were missing. In fact, as all the illusory boys and calves were manifestations of Kṛṣṇa, their respective mothers’ love for them grew even more intense than before. A year later, when Brahmā returned, even he was unable to distinguish the manifested be-ings from the real ones, and was astonished to see the boys and calves playing as be-fore. At that moment, at Kṛṣṇa’s behest, all the manifestations suddenly reappeared in the form of Viṣṇu, so dazzling that Brahmā had to avert his gaze. The astonished deity stood dumbfounded and rigid, so that he resembled the image of “a little vil-lage deity” (10,13.56). Kṛṣṇa then dispelled the illusion and Brahmā’s normal vision was restored:

Having beheld [Kṛṣṇa], he descended swiftly from his vehicle, and threw to the ground his body which resembled a golden staff. He bowed down, touched Kṛṣṇa’s feet with the tips of the diadems on his four heads, and consecrated them with excel-lent tears of joy. (10,13.62)

From examples such as these we can see how the purāṇic authors gained consider-able leverage by building up the greatness of Brahmā, and then demonstrating that in spite of his greatness, he too was completely subordinate to Viṣṇu and to his avatar.

We have now seen how the Bhāgavatapurāṇa co-opts Vedic authority by com-paring itself favourably with Vedic texts, and how it co-opts the authority of the older deities, especially Indra and Brahmā. Let us turn to its treatment of Vedic ritual practice. In the older Vedic tradition, the sacrifice of clarified butter into a fire or the oblation of a vegetable extract known as soma, accompanied by appropriate recitation, was held to nourish the deities, who in turn would sustain the world. In later traditions, sacrifice was still held to be the surest way to the deities’ hearts, but the definition of sacrificial action was broadened to include the practice of austeri-


ties, knowledge, yoga, and later still, meditation, pilgrimage, etc. Together we might call all these “brahmanical orthopraxis”. As the following examples illustrate, the Bhāgavatapurāṇa generally draws favourable comparisons between itself and the devotional practice on the one hand, and all other forms of orthopraxis on the other:

Hari is attained not by austerities, the Vedas, knowledge or sacrificial action, but by devotion: the gopis are proof of that. (0,2.18; 0,3.50)

The goal that is reached by hearing a week-long recital [of the purāṇa] cannot be attained by those who subsist on wind, water and leaves; by those whose bodies are emaciated; by frightful austerities practiced for long periods; or by yogic exercises. (0,5.88)

Have done with vows! Have done with pilgrimage! Have done with forms of yoga! Have done with sacrificial oblations! Have done with stories and discourses on knowledge! Devotion alone bestows liberation. (0,2.21)

A week[-long recital of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa] roars more than [i.e. is superior to] sacrifice; a week roars more than vows; a week roars more loudly than austerities; a week always roars more than pilgrimage; a week roars more than yoga; it roars more than meditation and spiritual knowledge. What can we say about its roaring? Hey! Hey! It roars! It roars! (0,3.51–52)

The benefits deriving from a recital of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa are compared with those of austerities, well-performed sacrifice, and Vedic recitation (1,5.22). Con-tinual recitation of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa is equal to the highest forms of Vaiṣṇava practice, namely meditation on Viṣṇu, tending a tulasī plant (the holy basil which is sacred to the deity), and worshipping or husbanding cattle (0,3.39). Kṛṣṇa’s realm of Goloka is “difficult to obtain even for yogins”, (0,5.85) but can be reached by hear-ing the Bhāgavatapurāṇa. Listening to the purāṇa is more efficacious than visiting the great pilgrimage destinations of the Gaṅgā, Gayā, Kāśī, Puṣkara and Prayāga (0,3.32; 0,6.99).

Purāṇic authors frequently invoke the authority of sacrifice and either equate it with the devotional practice they seek to promote, or claim that bhakti as prescribed in the Bhāgavatapurāṇa trumps sacrifice. For example, in the opening pages, the sages in the Naimiṣa forest asked the sūta for the most efficacious sacrificial action (karman) to dispel mental suffering: he responded by reciting the Bhāgavatapurāṇa narrative (1,1.11). In a later passage, reading the Bhāgavatapurāṇa is said to be a “knowledge-sacrifice” which surpasses the Vedic sacrifice of substances (such as ghee and soma), and sacrifices in the form of austerities, yoga and Vedic recitation (0,3.1–2; 0,4.11; 0,2.59–60). One who reads half a verse or a quarter of a verse of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa always receives the merit of a royal inaugural sacrifice or a horse-sacrifice (0,3.38, ŚP 0,1.16). Thousands of horse-sacrifices and hundreds of soma-sacrifices are not worth a sixteenth part of the story of Śuka’s treatise (0,3.30,

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ŚP 0,1.39). This divine story of highest excellence bestows the fruit of ten million sacrifices (0,6.54, ŚP 0,7.20).

Another Vedic practice is the offering of water and food to nourish and sus-tain one’s ancestors in the after-life (śrāddha). The authors of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa claim that their text, recited at a śrāddha, brings satiety to the deceased (0,5.90). That is to say, it is the purāṇa that provides the efficacy of the ritual and effective-ly usurps the function of the offerings themselves. Elsewhere it is stated that the Bhāgavatapurāṇa is more effective than hundreds of śrāddha offerings (0,5.33). In the parable of the good and bad brothers, Gokarṇa and Dhundhukārī, we read that a recital of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa was successful in propitiating the ghost of the bad brother even though hundreds of śrāddhas and experts in yoga, spiritual knowledge and the Vedas had failed (0,5.34–38).

The Bhāgavatapurāṇa requires Vedic authority to function as “true” (“I am the equal of the Vedas”), but at the same time needs to falsify Vedic texts, deities and practices to empower and propagate its distinctly post-Vedic devotional theology (“I am better than the Vedas”). Under this purāṇic paradox things Vedic are simul-taneously verified and falsified. I propose to resolve the paradox by adopting the concept of “alignment”.11 The way in which the Bhāgavatapurāṇa springboards off Vedic authority and simultaneously subverts it are actually in alignment in terms of the overall strategic goals of the text, as both functions can be seen as empowering and elevating the discourse. As the “essence” of the Vedas, and the “equal” of the Vedas, the Bhāgavatapurāṇa is necessarily “true” for any member of the Sanskritic, brahminical epistemic community. By demonstrating that it is superior to the Ve-dic deities and orthopraxis, the Bhāgavatapurāṇa becomes even “truer”. Under this schema, the Bhāgavatapurāṇa’s internal monologue becomes, “Vedic texts, deities and praxis are powerful, but I am even more powerful”. Thus the two claims are not in contradiction, but they are aligned in terms of power discourses. The purāṇic paradox is perhaps more apparent than real.

6. Conclusions

In these concluding paragraphs I will draw together the various threads of my argu-ment and I will compare these findings with those made in relation to other purāṇic texts. First, I have demonstrated how the human authors of these narratives placed their own words in the mouths of the deities Viṣṇu and Brahmā; of the divine sages known as the Sanatkumāras and Nārada; and of the wisest of the wise, Vyāsa, Śuka and the sūta. By doing so, the discourse of the purāṇa’s human authors is elevated to

11 I would like to acknowledge the inspiration of my friend and colleague Ashvin Parameswaran in this context.


the status of divine revelation. The fallible, the contingent, the constructed and the human are experienced as unimpeachable “true” discourse by the purāṇa’s intended audience within the Bhāgavata epistemic community.

Secondly, we saw how the creators of the narrative situated each major meta-per-formance at one of the power-places of the Sanskritic thought-world: the Naimiṣa forest, the Gaṅgā or the Yamunā rivers. In addition, these events took place before glittering celebrity audiences of divine sages and earthly seers, a Who’s Who of the brahminical tradition. I suggested that the power of place and the gravitas of the audience both serve to imbue the discourse that is delivered in their presence with credibility and authority. A discourse enacted in this ultimately divine ambience and before such unsurpassable audiences is experienced as the ultimate, divine and un-surpassable discourse.

Third, the creators of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa lavished fulsome praise on their text, comparing it favorably to all other purāṇas and to major works of other genres. Due recitation of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa and devotion to its central deity will render all the fruits of regular Vaiṣṇava orthopraxis, and will hasten the accomplishment of all the spiritual, mundane, sensual and soteriological goals of life. So powerful is the text that even village outcastes and dogs can achieve liberation through hearing it. By these claims, devotion to the deity in the tradition of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa ren-ders obsolete all other spiritual endeavor. These power-claims, I argue, elevate the authority of the discourse.

Fourth, as is well known, and in common with many other normative and di-dactic Sanskrit texts, the Bhāgavatapurāṇa claims Vedic authority, but also co-opts the authority of brahminical orthopraxis, including sacrifice, pilgrimage and ascetic practice. The creators of these narratives have taken the mightiest god of the Vedic tradition, Indra, and the later deity Brahmā, and have subverted their prestige and authority to add leverage to their own discourse. These four elements all function in concert to exert a “truth-effect” on the discourse and render it “true” for members of its intended audience.

How do these findings in relation to the Bhāgavatapurāṇa compare with other purāṇas? Similar textual strategies of meta-authorship, meta-performance and pow-er-claims are employed in the ViP, BP and ŚP, but the actual details vary in each context. In the ViP, for example, meta-authorship extends from Brahmā in a long lineage to Parāśara and to his son Vyāsa. In the BP, the meta-authors are Brahmā, Vyāsa, and especially the sūta, Lomaharṣaṇa. Vyāsa and the sūta also feature promi-nently in the ŚP, with the addition of the deity Śiva. In terms of place and audience, Naimiṣa forest is an important power-place for both the ViP and BP, and the latter adds Mt Meru and Kurukṣetra. In all purāṇas, celebrity audiences of sages and seers are de rigueur. The sorts of power-claims are similar in all four texts, although the deity mentioned in each depends of course on the devotional leanings of the purāṇa

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in question. Vedic comparisons are also common to these purāṇas, but I feel that while the first three are content to be “the equal of the Vedas”, the Bhāgavatapurāṇa alone strives to be superior.

There are several features that seem unique to the Bhāgavatapurāṇa or at least to be more conspicuous in it. One is that authority is not won in the Bhāgavatapurāṇa simply by belittling other deities—quite the opposite, in fact. There would be lit-tle to be gained in demonstrating that a particular deity was more powerful than a weakling. The strategy here is to elevate the “opposition”. We heard, for example, the paeans of praise that Nanda heaped on Indra, and Brahmā’s self-praise as creator of the universe. They might well be the mightiest and most potent of deities, and yet Viṣṇu/Hari/Kṛṣṇa are even greater than they are.

This strategy of empowerment in which the purāṇic authors gather momentum by elevating a power-figure and then launching their own discourse off his shoul-ders, we might call power leapfrog, or purāṇic one-upmanship. Śiva, potentially Viṣṇu’s greatest competitor in the purāṇic stakes, is not humbled or demeaned, but is named as the latter’s foremost devotee (12,13.16). In the version of the Bhāgav-atapurāṇa māhātmya which is found in the Padmapurāṇa, Śiva and Pārvatī are the narrators, that is, Śiva narrates the whole story of Viṣṇu’s greatness.

Just as Viṣṇu/Hari/Kṛṣṇa overleap the prestige of Indra, Brahmā and Śiva, the Bhāgavatapurāṇa overleaps the Vedas. The Vedas are acknowledged as the great, ultimate cosmogonic ur-text, and yet the Bhāgavatapurāṇa surpasses even them. We also see this pattern of one-upmanship in two filial relationships of meta-authors: by placing the great Bhāgavatapurāṇa in the mouth of the sūta, the creators of the nar-rative have overleapt his father, the other great Sanskritic sūta, Romaharṣaṇa. They borrow his prestige, but go one step further. Yes, Romaharṣaṇa was great, but his son who narrated this purāṇa was even greater. Similarly, Śuka, the other principal meta-narrator, out-classes his father, Vyāsa. The Bhāgavatapurāṇa with ten charac-teristics seems to exceed the other purāṇas which have only five.

The Bhāgavatapurāṇa also springboards off the textual authority of the Mahāb-hārata by insinuating itself into the plot of the latter (Malinar 2005). The Mahāb-hārata is told in the course of a snake-sacrifice performed by Janamejaya, the son of Parīkṣit, in order to avenge Parīkṣit’s death. The Bhāgavatapurāṇa has been in-terpolated into this meta-historical sequence of events and was narrated to the king Parīkṣit as he lay dying on the banks of the Gaṅgā. The Bhāgavatapurāṇa co-opts the authority of the Mahābhārata narrative tradition and overtops it by presenting itself as its temporal forerunner.

The second pattern of empowerment that seems to be unique to the Bhāgavata-purāṇa, and the final point that I would like to make, is in relation to the trope of youth. We have seen this trope at play when the sons, the sūta and Śuka, surpassed their respective fathers Romaharṣaṇa and Vyāsa. We also encountered the Sanat-


kumāras, the “forever-boys”, who are the perpetually youthful “mind-born” sons of Brahmā. They were rendered eternally young through their non-stop recitation of the Bhāgavatapurāṇa and have the unaging bodies of five-year-olds. Similarly, Bhakti’s two sons, the prematurely aged Jñāna and Vairāgya, were rejuvenated by the Bhāgavatapurāṇa. Generally in the Sanskritic episteme old trumps new, and age trumps youth (Pollock 1985; Taylor 2007). Important discursive statements are often uttered by wise old men. But here it is the young who have seized the enunciative function. This cult of youth seems a fitting metaphor for rejuvenating sea change in the Sanskritic thought-world which was occasioned by the rise of the bhakti tradition cantered as it was on the playful figure of the young Kṛṣṇa.

Is it possible to prove conclusively that these tropes enable the Bhāgavatapurāṇa to function as “true” discourse? No, but there is plenty of evidence that points in this direction. Firstly, we know that the textual tradition has been preserved and has flourished for at least a millennium. In addition to its chronological durability, there is its spatial dispersion: the Bhāgavatapurāṇa exists in countless manuscripts from all parts of the Indian subcontinent. Considering the effort involved in copying a very substantial manuscript like the Bhāgavatapurāṇa, we would have to ask why anyone would go to the trouble of commissioning a copy if they did not regard it as “true”. Secondly, the Bhāgavatapurāṇa is represented as being divine revelation, and it is difficult to imagine that a Vaiṣṇava could regard the words of his or her supreme deity as anything other than “true”. For a practitioner to disbelieve the words of his or her god would make a nonsense of religious practice. Thirdly, we have observable, empirical evidence from contemporary Vaiṣṇava practitioners and there is nothing to suggest that the Bhāgavatapurāṇa was regarded as any less true by reader-devotees of an earlier age.

Acknowledgement

I would like to thank my friend and colleague Dr Simon Brodbeck and the two anony mous reviewers for the many helpful suggestions for improving this paper.

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