Madhavendra Puri as the founder of the new sampradaya
Caitanya was not a philosopher or theologian. It is appropriate to speak of him as a mystic (although this is a debatable term for me personally), absorbed in emotional bhakti towards Krishna. Therefore, strictly speaking, Caitanya was not the founder of a new sampradaya like were Shankara, Ramanuja, Madhva, Vallabha or Ramananda). Because of this, Caitanya’s followers in the eighteenth century had great problems.
Long before Caitanya, there were already many Krishna-bhaktas or Vaishnavas in Bengal, praising the relationships of Krishna and Radha, Krishna and gopis, Krishna and women, etc. The most famous authors describing the love relationship of Krishna and Radha were Jayadeva (12th century), Vidyapati (14th–15th centuries), Candidasa (14th–15th centuries), Shridharadasa (13th century) and others.
Their works, being predominantly literary, the followers of Caitanya presented them in a religious sense, interpreted them in their own way, and integrated them and theirs into the rasa-theory. The rasa-theory or bhakti-rasa is a generic term that includes different “rasa-theories”, which had their own author-playwrights who developed rasa-theories for theatrical performances.
In ritualism, Caitanya’s followers used a compound of tantric, agamic and pancaratra elements. The theology is based on Vedanta. The concept of bhakti-rasa, developed by Rupa and deepened by Jiva, is based on Sanskrit poetics, in general, and on Vopadeva/Hemadri (13th century), in particular, apart from the dramatic basis of the rasa-theory.
Krishna-bhakti was prevalent in Bengal long before Caitanya. However, Caitanya’s followers still insist that it was Caitanya who proclaimed Krishna-bhakti and the chanting of the God’s names. Incidentally, they believe that this was not on a local — Bengali level, but on a universal scale (“However, the pure moods of devotion were first revealed to the world by Shripada Madhavendra Puri” (cf. comm. Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati on Caitanya-bhagavata 9.160, ed. Sri Chaitanya Bhagavata. The Acts of Sri Chaitanya. Commentaries by Srila Bhakti Siddhanta Sarasvati Thakura, Adi-Khanda; Caitanya-caritamrta 1.9.10 and 3.8.33).
If Krishna-bhakti was already present in South India in the sixth and tenth centuries, then maybe Caitanya invented sankirtana after all and was able to spread it? But even here Caitanya was not a pioneer. Sankirtana was with the same Alvars, reaching as far as the parampara of Ramanuja and Madhva (13th century). I am not talking about other currents after the thirteenth century, including regions of North India and Bengal.
Incidentally, the Gaudiyas themselves consider Madhavendra Puri, the diksha-guru of Ishvara Puri (the diksha-guru of Caitanya), to be the main preacher of bhakti, not Caitanya. But the statement that Madhavendra was from the Madhva-sampradaya came only in the 18th century, not before.
Madhavendra took sannyasa in his old age, in Shankara’s sampradaya. All Gaudiya biographers in one way or another see Madhavendra Puri as the “source” of the Gaudiya-Vaishnava religion.
Besides Advaitacarya and Ishvara Puri, Madhavendra’s disciples were Paramananda Puri, Keshava Bharati, Brahmananda Puri, Brahmananda Bharati, Vishnu Puri, Krishnananda Puri, Shri-Nrsimha Tirtha and Sukhananda Puri, Ramachandra Puri, and Ramanandaraya’s guru, Raghavendra Puri. The list itself has a few interesting points. Firstly, it includes Keshava Bharati. Secondly, Vishnu Puri is known from other sources, namely as the author, or better to say compiler, of the Sanskrit work Bhakti-ratnavali. Thirdly, the mix of Advaitic and Vaishnava names is interesting. All the titles (Puri, Bharati, Tirtha) refer to the three (out of ten) monastic orders founded by Shankara, two of which (not counting Tirtha) were under the Shringeri Matha in South India (Karnataka. 90 kilometres from Udupi). The sannyasins of this Matha were often given the name “Caitanya”. There is no doubt that Caitanya’s mysticism was decisively influenced by the views and outlook of the representatives of the circles within the monastic system of Advaita Vedanta created by Shankara.
But first of all, it should be noted that it is the Shringeri Matha and not the entire monastic system of Shankara that is in question. There is other evidence to show that within Advaita certain groups attached much more importance to bhakti than might be expected on the basis of its (Advaita’s) basic philosophical tenets.
S. К. De points out that at a later stage there was a “class of mystic-emotional (Shankara-) sannyasins”. One of its early representatives was Shridhara Svamin (1350–1450), author of the famous commentary on the Bhagavata-purana, the Bhavartha-dipika.
Madhavendra Puri considered bhakti to be superior to knowledge (jnana), and the chanting of the names of God to be a form of bhakti. He practised the mood of separation from Krishna (viraha-bhakti). Madhavendra saw/thought himself as a gopi in separation from his lover (Krishna). Furthermore, Madhavendra never mentions Radha. Thus, Caitanya was “following in the footsteps” of Madhavendra in his form of bhakti as emotional identification with the gopis.
Madhavendra attempted to unify the various local cults of Krishna worship and integrate the ideas associated with the worship of Gopala, Gopinatha and Jagannatha.
The Gaudiya authors hardly describe what Madhavendra’s bhakti was like and how it manifested itself, but they describe Caitanya abundantly. A comparison of Madhavendra’s bhakti and the literary features of the works of the Alvars, Bilvamangala’s Krishna-karnamrta and the forerunners of the Visistadvaita-sampradaya: Nathamuni, Yamunacarya, etc. (Ramanuja’s lineage), allows us to suggests that they share a great deal of similarity. The influence of these authors on Madhavendra Puri is difficult to dispute — the same style, the same patterns, the same techniques and the same emotional expression; sometimes the words are the same. One can trace a serious influence of Krishna-karnamrta on the pattern of which Madhavendra modelled his poems. In turn, the Krishna-karnamrta may be related to other works which are inspired to some extent by the Alvars. Such influence prior to Madhavendra’s sannyasa can be attributed, according to tradition, to Madhavendra’s South Indian origin.
All these writings, by and large, represent an example of the same bhakti. Moreover, their authors represent different schools and religious movements. On the one hand, the Visistadvaitins (Nathamuni, Yamunacharya and Vedantadeshika) received a certain religious inspiration from the Alvars. On the other hand, the Bhagavata-purana shows a very close resemblance to the writings of the Alvars, though it is certainly not a Visistadvaitic work and cannot, in spite of its pronounced Advaitic tendencies, be directly connected with the school of Shankara.
In Bilvamangala we do not find any sign of any philosophical-religious school. His Krishna-karnamrta is an independent poetic-religious creation. F. Hardy attributes this to the general religious milieu underlying and influencing the higher forms of religion (philosophical sampradayas). This milieu was created by the Alvars and was confined to South India between 900 and 1200. It is not surprising, therefore, that we find the influence of this milieu in some branches of Shankara’s Advaita as well (Shridhara Svamin, Vishnu Puri and Madhavendra Puri). Madhavendra’s bhakti has clear links with the South Indian bhakti milieu for formal and historical reasons, but it too is heterogeneous.
In the historical background of Bengali Vaishnavism and Caitanya’s mysticism itself, other mystical-religious movements of India are seen. It is understandable, for no school or movement exists in a vacuum. The only question is the degree of influence. Madhavendra Puri became the central figure of the Caitanya tradition and bhakti. What we consider to have begun in and with Caitanya rather had a different source — Madhavendra Puri.
It is not without reason that Gaudiya authors call him bhakti-rasa adi-sutra-dhara — “the founder of bhakti-rasa.” But considering Madhavendra’s life, his poems, the expression “the founder of bhakti-rasa” finally becomes understandable. Madhavendra Puri is the founder of one particular local tradition in the territory of medieval Bengal. Could this also indicate to us the origin of the gopala-mantra as the diksha-mantra of the Gaudiya Sampradaya and why it became the basis of the new religious tradition that Madhavendra created by synthesising several also localised cults of Gopala, Gopinatha and Jagannatha worship?
And yes, Madhavendra Puri was not a Madhvaite. He was not born in a Madhvaite family, nor was he a sannyasin of the Madhva school. Madhavendra was a native of the south and started a new religious movement in Bengal that later became Caitanya’s Gaudiya Sampradaya. It is with him that the Gaudiya diksha-parampara begins. The minor cult of Gopala has faded (?) into oblivion, but maybe we see echoes of it in the diksha-mantra of Caitanya’s followers. In any case, the diksha-mantra of the Gaudiyas is launched by Madhavendra Puri and received by him outside the authoritative Vaishnava tradition, and is therefore fruitless as it says Baladeva Vidyabhushana and Padma-purana. Just at some point Madhavendra decided to initiate people with this mantra. In time, it gained the status of an official diksha-mantra and has survived to this day. But its origins may well be in a local small cult rather than in the authoritative Vedanta Sampradaya.
A conglomerate of different parts of the same cults became a new religious current that Caitanya continues, explaining it in his own way. After Caitanya’s death, his followers had to create some structure and system out of the largely disparate or “raw” ideas that had come down to them, supplementing and enriching them with new philosophical and religious aspects.
From a formal-poetic and historical point of view, it seems likely that Madhavendra himself was influenced by a particular South Indian bhakti milieu. The line that leads us from Caitanya through Madhavendra to South India is, after all, only one line, and there are many such lines in the Caitanya cult alone, along with philosophical and tantric practices, as well as the rasa-theory. This is another very important stream. But the 700 years between the Alvars and Caitanya have obviously brought about significant changes, modifications, expansions of the nature of bhakti.
