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The Problem of the Agastya Samhita

Supposedly the most important and irrefutable evidence in favor of Ramanand’s early floruit is the ‘Agastya Samhita‘. As a matter of scholarly caution, however, the very fact that the relevant ‘chapters from Agastya Samhita‘ (as Bhandarkar described them) give very precise dates – even the time of birth and death of Ramanand and also of his twelve disciples – should have served as a red flag to scholars. We are told in these chapters that Ramanand was born in Prayag (Allahabad) on the seventh day of the Krishna Paksha of Magha month of Vikrami Samvat [VS] 1356, corresponding to 1299 CE, and passed away the third day of Vaishakh Shukla of 1467 VS, corresponding to 1410 CE. Such precision is as improbable as the remarkable life span. Moreover – another sign warranting caution – these are the dates recognized by the Ramawat Sampraday.

R. G. Bhandarkar was the first to introduce the ‘chapters from Agastya Samhita‘ into scholarly discussion. Writing about Ramanand in his ‘Vaisnavism, Saivism and minor religious systems’ (1913), he mentions the floruit of Ramanand as given by Macauliffe, which was in tandem with what all 19^th century British Indologists got from the then available sources and their informants, and then goes on to repudiate it on the basis of the Agastya Samhita:

Mr. Macauliffe mentions Mailkot as the place of his birth and says he must have flourished in the end of the fourteenth century and the first half the fifteenth century, which, he states, corresponds with a reckoning, which gives 1398 A.D. as the date of the birth of Kabir. The authority I have consulted states that that he was born at Prayaga as the son of a kanyakubja Brahmana named Punyasadana and his wife Susila. The date of his birth is given as 4400 of the Kali age, equivalent to 1356 of Vikrama Samvat. This corresponds to 1299 or 1300 A.D. and is more consistent with traditional statement the there were three generations between him and Ramanuja. The date of Ramanuja’s death is usually given as 1137 A.D., though it makes him out as having lived for 120 years. The lapse of three generations between 1137-1300 A.D. is a more reasonable [sic] supposition than between 1137 and the end of the fourteenth century. This last date, therefore, given for Ramanand is manifestly wrong and that occurring in the book I have consulted appears to be correct in all probability.[15]

Bhandarkar gives a footnote in which he cites his authority – “chapters from the Agastya Samhita with a Hindi translation by Rama Narayana Das completed in Samvat 1960, corresponding to 1904 A.D.” Indeed, Rama Narayana Das’s Agastya Samhita also gives the exact dates of the twelve famous disciples of Ramanand. The question, however, is: are these ‘chapters’ really from ‘Agastya Samhita‘? Or both the Sanskrit ‘original’ and its Hindi translation were composed by the same person – Rama Narayana Das? And why was the authority of the Agastya Samhita invoked to authenticate these chapters?

The book cited by Bhandarkar describes itself as the Shri Ramanand Janmotsva Katha (‘the narrative celebrating the birth of Shri Ramanand’) taken from the Bhavishya Khand (canto of the future) of the Agastya Samhita, commented upon by the ‘resident of Ayodhya, Pandit Rama Narayana Das,’ and finished in Vikrama Samvat 1960″.[16] This book was published by ‘Vaishnava Rama Dasji” of Dakore from Mumbai in VS 1963, i.e. 1906 CE. Sitaramsharan “Rupkala” in his commentary on the Bhaktamal of Nabhadas (first published in 1903) also refers to the “life of Ramanand” as stated in Shri Agastya Samhita Bhavishyottar Khand, but explains that the edition consulted by him was “available from ‘Hazarilal Ganeshprasad’ of Kunjgali, Kashi.”[17] The text, however, is undoubtedly the same, as born out by a couple of slokas cited by ‘Rupkala’.

Thus the earliest reference to the ‘Bhavishya’ or Bhavishyottar Khand’ of the Agastya Samhita is in 1903. The Agastya Samhita proper however contains nothing like a ‘Bhavishya Khand’ – or an ‘Atit Khand’ (canto of the past) either, for that matter.

The tenuousness of this source doesn’t seem to have bothered any scholar dealing with the question of the floruit of Ramanand. In fact, the only scholar who has analyzed the Agastya Samhita in some detail is Hans Bakker, but his concern was the development of the Rama cult in medieval north India, not the time and temperament of Ramanand.

I have in my possession three copies of the Agastya Samhita. One of these is a digital copy of the manuscript originally preserved in Lalchand Research Library, Lahore, now found as manuscript no. M-826 in the library of D.A.V. College, Chandigarh.[18] It consists of 56 folios, five of which are missing. The manuscript is described as, “ancient, incomplete and mutilated”. The second Agastya Samhita in my possession is a photocopy of the edition published from Hitwadi Library, Calcutta in Bengali year 1315, corresponding to 1909 or 1910 CE. This has the slokas in Bengali characters along with a Bengali translation by Shri Kamal Krishna Smrititirtha, who informs the reader in the preface, “I have determined the text on the basis of four manuscripts – one from the Asiatic society, one from Sanskrit College and two from my own village.”[19] The third is the Agastya Samhita, Purva Bhag (the first half), published in VS 2042 (corresponding to 1985 CE) from Haridwar with a Hindi translation by Pt. Mahavir Prasad Mishra, who says in the preface, “this work was found in ‘VidyaVaridhi library’ in mutilated and lamentable condition, and my paternal uncle Pt. Kanhaiya Lal Mishra had decided to work on it, but nothing took place due to his sudden demise in 1927 CE. I have also consulted the manuscript from the library of Alwar state.”[20] He further informs the reader that the text consists of 32 chapters. Due to “financial constraints”, however, he presently is able to publish only eleven of these: hence the “Purva Bhag” in the title. All these copies of the text are exactly the same. Moreover, they tally with the one used and extensively quoted by Bakker.

The Agastya Samhita is undoubtedly one of the most important texts of the Rama cult. Hans Bakker rightly places it in the context of “a tendency to ‘Ramatize’ older forms of Visnuism” and further explains:

The older Vaishnava theology apparently continued in so far as the idol of Vishnu, now said to be that of Rama, was often retained. Neither was there any need to change the essential structure of liturgy (Puja). However, the alterations in the phenomenal aspects of god involved new formulae (mantras), prayers (stotras), mediation (dhyana) etc. in order to invoke, visualize and worship the new pantheon. To provide for this need Ramaite cult texts were composed from the 11^th-12^th centuries, the period from which our first archeological evidence for this new development dated.

The three oldest of these texts appear to be the Ramapurvatapaniya Upanishad (RPTUp), the Ramarakshastotra of Budhakausika, and the Agastyasamhita (AgS). The AgS is by far the most extensive, and not surprisingly it is fully modeled upon the great tradition of Visnuite ritual as laid down in the Pancratra samhitas. The replacement of the vyuha doctrine by the conception of Vishnu’s identity with Rama, however explains why it has been labeled as an ‘apocryphal text’.[21]

Obviously, the Agastya Samhita is an apocryphal text in the sense that its title is supposedly part of ancient Pancharatra Agamas, but its present text has evolved only after the emergence of the Rama cult. This is the ‘most important’ text of the Rama cult, as it helps ‘Ramatize older forms of Visnuism’ on the authority of the ancient, putatively authentic ‘Narada’ Pancharatra of which it is supposed to be a part. It is also referred to as the “Agastya Sutikshna Samvada”, as it is composed in the form of a dialogue between Agastya and Sutikshna.

It seeks to use the older Vaishnava concepts in order to establish the identity of Rama with Vishnu and gives elaborate instructions regarding worship and fasting related to Rama. Two chapters (the 26^th and 27^th) detail the importance and rituals of the Ramanavmi vrata (the fast or vow pertaining to the birth date of Rama) and one of these chapters is, according to Bakker, “quoted by Hemadri in his Caturvargacintamani (c. AD 1260). This vow was apparently unknown in the preceding century, however, since it does not appear in the Vartakanda of Lakshmidhara’s Kriyakalptaru (AD1125-1145)”[22] Bakker’s ‘tentative surmise’ regarding the time and place of the composition of Agastya Samhita arrived at on the basis of internal and external evidence seems to be quite right: “the Agastya Samhita originated in the 12^th century in Varanasi, the bulwark of Hindu orthodoxy, in Brahmin circles possibly related in some way or another to Brahmin families attached to the aforementioned sanctuaries.”[23]

Had the scholars who took at face value the ‘chapters from Agastya Samhita‘ mentioned by Bhandarkar bothered to compare these with the Agastya Samhita proper, the curious fact of a text composed between 1145 and 1260 CE (most probably in the 12^th century itself), giving the birth year of Ramanand as 1299 or 1300 would have surely struck them. To be fair, Pinuccia Caracchi has raised the question as to ‘when were these chapters added to Agastya Samhita?’ Before going into this, however, a brief and comparative introduction of the contents of the copies in my possession and the one used by Bakker would be in order.

The manuscript no. M-826 of Chandigarh and the printed copy from Calcutta, both contain 32 chapters. The Haridwar edition in its present form consists of 11 chapters, but the commentator Mahavir Prasad Mishra informs in a footnote at the end of the preface, “The financial assistance received by us could meet the expenses for publishing 11 chapters only, but the work actually has 32 chapters, the publication of the remaining part will depend on the generosity of the donors.”[24]

The chapters in the manuscript and in the Haridwar edition are left untitled, a colophon at the end of each chapters reads: “here ends the chapter named ‘Param Rahsya Kathanam’ (the exposition of the highest mystery) in the Sri Agastya Samhita“. The published version from Calcutta also follows the manuscript faithfully in this regard. However, the commentator has added a ‘table of contents’ at the beginning, for the convenience of his reader, in which he indicates the theme of each chapter. In this table, the first chapter is titled: ‘Agastya narrates to Sutikshna the dialogue between Shiva and Parvati’, the following chapter deals with, ‘the exposition of the knowledge of the Brahma’, the third is titled, ‘the description of the avatar of Rama’, followed by the exposition of the stotras for the worship of Rama. The commentator, Pt. Kamal Krishna Smrititirtha has followed this pattern till the last, giving the title of the 32^nd chapter as, ‘the description of the Hanuman Mantra and its impact’.

In all the copies available with me, the seventh chapter deals with the ‘Rama mantra’ followed in the eighth by a genealogy of the gurus who gave this mantra to their disciples. The list starts with Brahma the creator himself and ends with Shaunka, the seer. The 26^th and the 27^th chapters deal with the details of the Ramanavmi vow on the basis of which Bakker has surmised about the period of this text. It is important to note at this point that the Agastya Samhita does not at all mention any ‘historical’ person; all the personae mentioned herein are ‘mythological’ and the list includes – Shiva, Rama, Lakshamna, Hanuman, Parvati, Vashishta, and Vyasa etc.

Hans Bakker has quoted the Rama-Mahatmya (the praise of Rama) in full from the tenth chapter of his copy of the Agastya Samhita.[25] It runs into 34 Slokas and tallies exactly with all the copies in my possession. Similar is the case with many more Slokas cited by Bakker. It can be then imagined that the edition used by him was also based on the very manuscripts, which were consulted by Kamal Krishna Smrititirtha in 1909 or 1910 and by Mahavir Prasad Mishra in 1985 and which tally with the manuscript no. M-826 preserved in the D.A.V. College Chandigarh.

At this point, it is extremely important to note that Bakker, even though aware of ‘ten entries under the title, ‘Agastya Samhita‘ in NCC (National Catalogue Catalogorum)’, for his purpose concerned himself, “only with the Agastya Samhita as edited by Ramnarayanadas.”[26] Why is this important? Let us turn to Caracchi at this point.

Pinuccia Caracchi has translated the ‘chapters from Agastya Samhita‘ (by Ramnarayanadas, i.e. those used by Bhandarkar) into Italian. She has also written an introduction, a section of which is titled: “Which Agastya Samhita?”[27] At the outset she raises the question, “It is still to be seen when our text was added to the Agastya Samhita and of which Agastya Samhita it would be a part?”

Believing in the existence of “three or four totally different texts of the Agastya Samhita“, she refers to the one used by Bakker as “Agastya Sutikshna Samvada“(which is quite right, not only for the one used by Bakker but also for those consulted by me) and then says about it:

This, in my assessment is only one of the Agastya Samhitas and has had numerous editions (Lucknow-1898, Ayodhya-n.d., Calcutta-1910, Mysore-1957), while it appears that all the others are found only in the manuscript form. What are more interesting directly to our study are the five chapters that proclaim to be part of the Bhavishya Khanda of the Agastya Sutikshna Samvada. Still, the studies of this Agastya Samhita in the manuscript form and its published versions describe it as divided in 32 or 35 chapters, while our text is to be imagined as being part of a work of vast proportions, divided into Khandas which in turn ought to be sub-divided into a considerable number of chapters. (Only the Bhavishya Khanda consists at least of 135). On the subject being discussed, it is to be noted that the life of Ramanand does not find place in the editions of Agastya Sutikshna Samvada studied by B.Bhattacharya and Bakker. Even the date of its composition proposed by Bakker testifies in favor of the exclusion of life of Ramanand from it… One then needs to think of another Agastya Samhita… Given the considerable number of the manuscripts that are taken under the title of Agastya Samhita, a research in the field to trace the manuscript containing the Ramanand Janmotsva would be welcome. This should be in possession of Ramanandi Sampraday, as most probably it was a Ramanandi, Pandit Ramnarayanadas who took care of publishing the text translated here.[28]

Caracchi mentions the 1910 Calcutta edition of the Agastya Samhita (which I have with me), but fails to note that this was based on four manuscripts as explained by the translator, and then there is remarkable consistency between this edition, the Haridwar edition (based on the Alwar manuscript), and the manuscript from Lahore (presently in Chandigarh). She opines that the Agastya Samhita containing the relevant chapters “should be in possession of Ramanandi Sampraday”. But is that really so? As indicated in the beginning of this essay, the issue of the floruit of Ramanand is deeply implicated in the controversy about Ramanandis’ relationship with Ramanujis. I will discuss it in some detail a little later, but a relevant piece of information will be in order here. By the third decade of the last century, the ‘radical’ Ramanandis under the leadership of Bhagwadacharya had almost convinced the majority of Ramanandis about their sect being completely independent of Ramanujis and about Ramanand having nothing to do with the spiritual lineage of Ramanuja. But the polemics persisted. It was in the course of such polemics that Balbhadra Das, a firm believer in the Ramanuja-Ramanand lineage, published an edition of the Vaishnava Matabaj Bhaskar along with Ramarchan Paddhati in 1928. He wrote a lengthy introduction under the title “Prastuta Prasanga” (‘the matter at hand’, literally; a more appropriate translation indicating the context would be ‘the present controversy’). Demolishing the arguments and blasting the evidences advanced in favor of ‘no connection with Ramanuja’ position, he had this to say regarding the ‘chapters from Agastya Samhita‘:

This work claims to be ‘Agastya Samhita Bhavishyottar Khanda’. But Agastya Samhita has no such Khanda, in fact it has no Khanda division at all, it is simply divided in the ‘Adhyayas’ (chapters), 33 in all, running from first to last. This is true of the published version as well as that of the manuscripts. The abovementioned Bhavishyottar Khanda starts from the 131^st chapter, which proves that the author of this has not even seen the Agastya Samhita. Had he seen the Samhita, he would have certainly begun his Khanda from the 34^th chapter, not from the 131^st. There is still another remarkable feature of this Khanda. It has in the beginning, the Upakrama (“invocation”), which makes it an independent work. Had this been a Khanda of the Agastya Samhita it would not contain the Upakrama… Obviously then, this is nothing but a forgery in the name of Agastya Samhita. [29]

This challenge remained unanswered. The ‘radical’ faction could not produce any manuscript containing the ‘Bhavishyottar’ or ‘Bhavishya’ Khanda – not even Bhagwadacharya, who was the butt of an attack in polemics by Balbhadra Das, and who was known for producing “ancient” manuscripts with remarkable promptness and competence. Bhagwadacharya made a very sharp response to Balbhadra Das, but simply dodged the issue of the authenticity of the said ‘chapters from Agastya Samhita‘. The radical faction’s hesitation in this regard is understandable. The Agastya Samhita was a rare and ‘apocryphal’ work all right, but was still sufficiently well known and revered in Vaishnava, particularly Ramanandi circles, that any ‘innovation’ in the text would be noticed. After all, that was and is the most important work detailing not only the ritual but also the ontology and theology of the Ramanandi Sampraday.

Balbhadra Das was quite right in catching Ramnarayanadas on the wrong foot. But he got it wrong when he said, ‘the author of this has not even seen the Agastya Samhita‘. Ironically enough, the ‘author’ actually had edited the 1898 edition of the Agastya Samhita.

In the light of foregoing, it is not difficult to answer the basic question posed by Caracchi – ‘when was our text added to the Agastya Samhita and of which Agastya Samhita it would be a part?’ To put it quite simply – only between 1898 and 1903. And it would be no part of the Agastya Samhita proper. This addition was done by none other than the editor of the 1898 edition of the Agastya Samhita – the same Pandit Ramnarayanadas.

Caracchi has taken note of the similarity of the name of the editor of 1898 edition and the ‘commentator’ on the Ramanand Janmotsva, “It would be interesting to check if, as the name suggests, this Pandit is the same one who edited the Agastya Samhita published from Lucknow in 1898 and studied by Hans Bakker in which the Adhyayas dealing with Ramanand are not included.”[30]

Indeed he was the same. Hans Bakker says about the editor of Agastya Samhita used by him:

Ramnarayanadas was a Sanskrit scholar who apart from the Ayodhya Mahatmya edited several other Rama Bhakti texts, e.g. the Agastya Samhita (Lucknow, 1898). He claimed spiritual descent from Bhagavannarayana, a pupil of Agradas and lived in the Bara Sthan in Ayodhya under the Mahant ship of Ramamanoharprasda, the 8^th Mahant since Ramprasada.[31]

The author of the chapters translated by Caracchi also gives his guru-parampara (spiritual genealogy) in four and a half Sanskrit slokas printed just beneath the table of contents. It starts with Anantanada, one of the twelve disciples of Ramanand himself, who was the guru of Krishandasa, who in turn was the guru of “Shri Bhagavannarayana.” Thus, clearly this author is also claiming “spiritual descent” from the same person. Moreover he unambiguously identifies himself as “Ayodhya Niwasi, Narayana Vanshi” (a resident of Ayodhya, belonging to the house or dynasty of Narayana) at the end of Shri Ramanandashtakam (eight verses of Ramanand), given before the Ramanand Janmotsva Katha and also at the end of each chapter of the latter. The “belonging to the dynasty of Narayana” part of his identity is extremely significant, as will become clear from the following.

Bakker continues his description:

Until the death of Mahant Ramamanoharprasda, Ramnarayanadas, though himself a Ramanandi, acknowledged the authority of Ramanuja to whom the official Parampara was traced back, and salutation of Ramanuja found at the beginning of his Ayodhya Mahatmya edition testifies to this affiliation. After the death of the Mahant of Bara Sthan, however, most Ramanandi branches broke away from the Ramanuji tradition under the influence of Bhagwaddas [or Bhagwadacharya], another chela of Manoharprasada, which resulted in the declaration of 1921. Ramnarayanadas seemed to have been a reluctant follower of this movement, nevertheless he and Ramavallabhasharana are known in Ayodhya as the authors of several forgeries written in the first decades of the present century, such as the Ramarchan Paddhati ascribed to Ramanand and the Shri Janakibhashya, a commentary on the Vedanta sutras ascribed to Ramprasada. The need for such a commentary became felt once the majority of the Ramanandis had ceased to recognize Ramanuja’s Shri Bhashya, yet the Shri Janakibhashya was never acknowledged by the Mahants of the Bara Sthan and Ramprasada’s authorship is vehemently denied. That, at least, Ramnarayanadas did not shy away from interpolating new ideas into traditional texts is proven by his edition of the Ayodhya Mahatmya.[32]

It was undoubtedly the “same Pandit Ramnarayanadas” – a ‘resident of Ayodhya and belonging to the Narayana dynasty, claiming spiritual descent from Bhagavannarayana’ – who indeed did not shy away “from interpolating new ideas (i.e. the five chapters of the Ramanand Janmotsva) into the traditional text” (i.e. the Agastya Samhita.). The ‘belonging to Narayana dynasty’ component of his identity is significant in as much as it symbolically underlines his faith in the traditional view of Ramanand belonging to the spiritual lineage of Ramanuja – a view that was contested vehemently by the radical Ramanandis under the ‘influence of Bhagwadacharya.’ Ramanuja propagated the Narayana (another name of Vishnu) mantra and worshipped the four-armed Narayana while the radical Ramanandis insisted on the Rama mantra and worshipped the two-armed, bow-carrying Rama.

Ramnarayanadas appended the “Ramanand Bhavotsaha Ashtakam” (eight slokas celebrating the birth of Ramanand) to his own five chapters. Actually the slokas here are ten, the second of which gives the date of the birth of Ramanand as ‘Thursday, the 7^th of the Krishna Paksha of the Magha Masa of the year 1356 of Vikrami Samvat.’ The tenth sloka informs us “this set of eight was composed by Pandit Shri Ramacharan on Magha Vadi the 8^th, 1937 of the Vikrami Samvat.”[33] 1937 VS would correspond to 1880 or 1881 of the Common Era. To the best of my knowledge this is the earliest mention of 1356 VS (i.e., 1299 CE) as the year of Ramanand’s birth. It seems Ramnarayanadas was only following this lead in his own ‘five chapters found in the Agastya Samhita‘.

The central issue of all the debates and polemics within the Ramanandi Sampraday was the guru-parampara. Even if somebody quite ‘innocently’ believed in the veracity of the parampara placing Ramanand ‘fifth in descent from Ramanuja’, it would be logical for him to ‘celebrate’ 1299 or 1300 CE as the year of Ramanand’s birth and then produce the remaining details – the day of the week and date of the fortnight – quite confidently. But as we know, there are paramparas and paramparas, and not all of them place Ramanand in the fifth generation from Ramanuja. Sure enough, all of the Paramparas respected traditionally relate these two figures in some way, and that is why our Pandit Ramanarayandas not only referred to himself as ‘belonging to the dynasty of Narayana’ but also mentioned the years of the birth and death of Ramanuja along with those of Ramanand at the end of the octave composed by “Pandit Shri Ramacharan.” This allowed the ‘traditionalists’ to argue that both these Acharyas had some connection after all. The ‘radical’ Ramanandis, however, could not countenance even a remote connection between the two and their leader Bhagwadacharya, who had made it the mission of his life to change the guru-parampara forever quite often referred sarcastically to Ramanarayandas self-description of ‘belonging to the dynasty of Narayana.’

We will have occasion to discuss the achievements of Bhagwadacharya and their critical import not only for his Sampraday but also for the religious and literary history of north India. One of his early works was Shri Parampara Paritrana (‘Salvaging the Tradition’), written in the form of a spirited response to a set of “insinuations and offensive questions” supposedly sent to Bhagwadacharya by an adversary. The work is a no holds barred attack on anybody not agreeing with Bhagwadacharya’s position. It was composed during the height of the polemics between the ‘traditional’ and the ‘radical’ Ramanandis – probably in 1922 or 1923 CE – since in the work’s Mangalacharan (actually its preface, not its invocation, for it is written in quite a modern, academic style) the author refers to another of his works, the Bhakta Kalpadrum, and gives 1979 VS (1922 or 1923 CE) as the year of its composition.

Like many a missionary in possession of the only possible version of Truth, Bhagwadacharya had neither patience nor respect for those who dared to disagree even mildly. (This, despite the fact, that he actively participated in the Gandhian National Movement, in fact lived in the Gandhi Ashram in Kocharab, Ahmedabad for quite some time and composed an epic in Sanskrit celebrating the life and achievements of Gandhiji!) His motto was simple: You are either with us or against us. He wanted nothing less than full loyalty to the cause. Pandit Ramanarayandas, the author of the Ramanand Janmotsva Katha (the ‘chapters from the Agastya Samhita‘ to which we have often referred), was a Ramanandi, propagated the early floruit of Ramanand which effectively put the connection between Ramanand and Ramanuja in serious doubt, (as for him and others in the sampraday, the guru-parampara consisted of several generations), and yet he somehow believed in this connection – hence his self-description as the one ‘belonging to the dynasty of Narayana’. He, therefore, saw nothing wrong in putting the ‘record’ of the birth and death of both the Acharyas in one place.

Bhagwadacharya, angry at this cardinal deviation, came down hard on Ramnarayanadas:

Well, after all, he belonged to the dynasty of Narayana, so what if he made an irrelevant connection here? And don’t you forget, in 1921 he was not able to answer even one of the several questions put to him in a pamphlet published by the general secretary of Shri Ramanandiya Vaishnava Mahamandala. Don’t expect to get any relief for your misplaced idea of Ramanand being in the lineage of Ramanuja from such irrelevancies.[34]

He was even more sarcastic in his response to another work by Pandit Ramnarayanadas, wherein the Pandit dared to refer to the ‘traditional’ view of his and Bhagwadacharya’s Guru, the Mahant of Bara Sthan in Ayodhya:

Listen, O, questioner. Pandit Ramanarayandasji, belonging to the house of Narayana, pens this. What is beyond him? I am actually grateful to him for not describing my Guru plainly as Ramanuji, but as Ramanandi. Another act of grace: He has not made out our Guru to be a worshipper of the four-armed one (Vishnu) and allowed him remain to be a devotee of bow-carrying, two-armed Rama! Thank God for small mercies![35]

After the death of the Mahant of Bara Sthan and in light of Bhagwadacharya’s increasing influence, Ramanarayandas was left with no choice than to become ‘a reluctant follower,’ as indicated by Bakker.

It seems the ‘radical’ Ramanandis impressed the ordinary Ramanandis and lay people by invoking the Agastya Samhita, and yet were aware of difficulties involved in equating Ramanarayandas’s ‘chapters’ with the Agastya Samhita proper, particularly when having an argument with the rival scholars. The reason is simple. Unlike other texts ‘produced’ by Bhagwadacharya with the claim that these were based on rare manuscripts that survived in his possession alone, the Agastya Samhita was rather well known in Ramanandi and other Vaishnava circles. Its manuscripts were preserved in places from Bengal to Lahore in north India and could be easily consulted for confirmation or disproof. So they confined themselves to vague references and as we saw above, dodging the issue of the authenticity and antiquity of Ramanarayandas’s ‘chapters from the Agastya Samhita‘.

Their aim was to construct a ‘Sanskrit’ Ramanand capable of bestowing orthodox approval on their practical liberalism in the matter of caste rules of purity and pollution. The early or later floruit of Ramanand was only of secondary significance so far as Bhagwadacharya and his supporters were concerned. Bhagwadacharya composed his “Shri Ramanand Digvijay” (‘The universal victory of Ramanand’) in 1927 CE on the assumption of 1356 VS (1299 CE) being the year of Ramanand’s birth, but in the 1967 edition of the same work he quite simply put a footnote to the relevant sloka: “This Samvat has been proved wrong. Maybe we will need to make it a hundred years earlier.”[36]

But the need did not arise as, not only the Sampraday, but the academics also had by this time come around to the early floruit and – more important from Bhagwadacharya’s point of view – to the image of Ramanand as a ‘Sanskrit’ Acharya, a “Shastrasiddha (“well-versed in orthodoxy”) albeit liberal Acharya, as Hazari Prasad Dwivedi was to describe him in his well-known work on Kabir. [37]

Within the Puranic tradition but outside Ramanandi circles, Ramanand continued to be assigned to the 15^th century, all the way up to the 19^th century. This is clear from the sources used by early British scholars and even from a text like Bhavishya Purana, slokas from which are cited by Ramanarayandas. The Bhavishya Purana is plainly an apocryphal text, evolving as late as the 19^th century. Its present version contains quite explicit references to not only the establishment of the British rule in India, but also the events of 1857. True to its title, it describes all these events in the future tense, thus showing the same ‘lack of sense of history’, which Callewaert laments in the context of Anantdas, but like that 16^th century text, the Bhavishya Purana, however apocryphal, nonetheless possesses a generally accurate sense of chronology. It mentions Akbar as son of Humayun and not vice versa, it glorifies Shivaji as a defender of the Hindu faith in the face of onslaughts of Aurangjeb only and not those of Timur. And with such a sense of chronological order, it gives Ramanand’s place of birth as Prayaga, Allahabad, does not mention the names of his parents, only describes his father as a temple priest, reports many miracles performed by Ramanand and gives details regarding his twelve disciples. Most importantly for our purposes, however, it mentions Ramanand only after it has described the invasion of India by Timur, which took place in 1399.[38]

As indicated already, to Bhagwadacharya the floruit was less important than the overall image of Ramanand – the Sanskrit Ramanand replacing the Hindi one – and he had already succeeded in bringing about this metamorphosis. He apparently felt he didn’t have to bother too much about dates. Evidently not: The author of the canonical history of Hindi literature, Ramchandra Shukla, already doubted the attribution of “Vaishnava Bhakta Ramanand’s” authority and name to the Hindi compositions that bore his signature in the medieval anthologies. This meant, effectively, that by the end of third decade of the twentieth century Ramanand had become an orthodox yet liberal Sanskrit Acharya rather than an iconoclastic Hindi poet for many readers of Hindi.

Similar trends were taking hold in English. G.A. Grierson, the well-known linguist and literary historian, relying upon the Bhaktamal in the version it had been given by Rupkala, informed the readers of the Encyclopedia of Religion and Ethics in 1918:

While we may be fairly certain that Ramanand was born in A.D. 1299, the date of his death is involved in some obscurity. The popular tradition is that he died in 1467 Samvat (=1410 A.D.). This would give him a life of 111 years, which is improbable. We can, however, accept the tradition, borne out as it is, by the direct statement of the Bhaktamala that he had an exceptionally long life, and this would authorize us to state that he lived during the greater part of the 14^th century A.D.[39]

In coming to this judgment Grierson chooses to ignore the crucial fact that the ‘all native authorities’ (he uses this phrase in the footnote to the very first paragraph of his piece with reference to ‘the year 4400 of Kaliyuga, corresponding to A.D. 1299′) used by him were no more conclusive about the birth-date of Ramanand than they were about his demise – or rather, they were equally conclusive about both. It does not help to say that ‘the date of his death is involved in some controversy’ if one were to go by the authority of Ramanarayandas’s chapters in the Agastya Samhita and Rupkala’s Bhaktamal, as Grierson was actually doing, his sweeping reference to ‘all native authorities’ notwithstanding. Both these authorities give both the birth and death date and no reason is advanced by Grierson for assuming the former to be reliable and the later “obscure”. It is another matter, however, that even Rupkala is rather ambivalent on the crucial question of the lineage of Ramanand, thus compromising his own belief in the 1299 CE as the birth year of Ramanand. He gives two genealogies for Ramanand, one with Ramanuja and the other without him.[40] Challenges on this point to the ‘consensus view’ about Ramanand persist to the present day, as does the problem of balancing the Hindi Ramanand (speaking out loud and clear from all medieval sources) with the Sanskrit Ramanand constructed by the twentieth century Ramanandis. Grierson, like Bhandarkar five years before him, tried to perform a balancing act in this regard by noting the fact:

The doctrines of his [Ramanand’s] predecessors, the Ramanujis, were in north India, taught only in Sanskrit. Their scriptures were learned books, written for learned men, in a learned language. But for Ramanand, with disciples like Kabir, Pipa, Sena, Dhana and Raidasa who were not Sanskrit scholars, this was intolerable. His teaching was therefore everywhere in the vernacular, and his followers wrote their hymns and other similar compositions in one or other of the various dialects of Hindi [41]

What Grierson and others believing in the early floruit of Ramanand did not realize was this: If Ramanand indeed belonged to the 14^th century instead of the 15^th, then he simply could not have been the Guru of Kabir or anyone else among the Nirguna Bhaktas (also called Sants). More importantly, the ‘early’ Ramanand was also Sanskrit Ramanand – sometimes with a Bhashya to his credit, sometimes not. The academic consensus represented by Grierson and Bhandarkar veered away from Hindi sources and toward the Sanskrit Ramanand, putting its total faith in a 19th century interpolation to a 13^th century text. It chose to ignore completely the Hindi evidence from the medieval period, which painted quite a different picture of the world-view and floruit of Ramanand.

By the second half of the last century, having realized his mission of replacing the Hindi Ramanand with the Sanskrit one of his own making, Bhagwadacharya could sit back and relax. There was no need to reopen the issue of Ramanand’s floruit and ‘take it back a hundred years’. His primary purpose – getting rid of the Ramanuja connection once and for all – had been achieved within the Sampraday and he hardly needed to bother about academic scholars outside the Sampraday, some of whom continued to uphold this connection. For all he cared, Rama was in his heaven and all was now well with the Sampraday.

Having accepted the ‘consensus’ Bhagwadacharya had forged, academic scholars found themselves in quite a different quandary. They now had to discard the traditional consensus that assigned both Ramanand and Kabir to the 15^th century of the Common Era. In other words, they now had to adjust the dates of Kabir to make them agree with the supposed Agastya Samhita dates of Ramanand. And if this adjustment did not somehow work, they had to doubt the Ramanand-Kabir connection. The supposed chapters from the Agastya Samhita thus became the benchmark for determining the historicity of the traditional consensus about Ramanand-Kabir connection. Taking these chapters as the evidence, the scholars either insisted on somehow proving that Kabir actually belonged to an earlier date or found the Ramanand-Kabir connection rather improbable. Pitambar Dutt Barthwal in the late thirties unambiguously insisted on an early date for Kabir, precisely on the basis of the ‘undoubted’ fact that he was a ‘disciple of Ramanand’. Parashuram Chaturvedi in the early fifties tried to present a detailed analysis of the evidence advanced in favor of the Ramanand-Kabir connection. Analyzing the references (to guru) found in the works of Kabir and his contemporaries, he found it rather difficult to uphold the Ramanand-Kabir connection, but while independently determining the dates of Kabir, he tentatively accepted 1448 CE as the death-date for Kabir and maintained that, if this date is correct, then Kabir of course could have been a disciple of Ramanand. Hardly any new evidence or argument has been added to the debate about Ramanand’s time and temperament since Barthwal and Chaturvedi wrote, and since most of the scholars today assign Kabir to the 15^th century, Chaturvedi’s skepticism about Ramanand being the guru of Kabir has been widely upheld.

In his ‘Nirguna school of Hindi Poetry,’ first published in 1936, Barthwal, even while noting that the Bhavishyottar Khanda is a later addendum to the Agastya Samhita, took it’s dates of Ramanand as traditional and rejected the 15^th century floruit of Ramanand on the basis of this ‘later addendum’:

According to Bhavishyottar Khanda, a later addendum to the “Agastya Samhita” which represents the traditions current among the Ramanandis, Ramananda was born at Allahabad in 1299 A.D. and died in 1410. His birthplace according to Macauliffe is Mailkot in Mysore (Sikh, VI, p 328). Farquhar, too, brings him from the south (ORL p 324) and assigns him to the first three quarters of the fifteenth century (ibid p 323). There is nothing, however to disprove the traditional date and it fits well into the chronology as accepted in the present work. [42]

In fact, ‘the chronology as accepted’ in the work of Barthwal was crucially dependent upon his acceptance of the dates of Ramananda contained in the ‘later addendum’ – Bhavishyottar Khanda. He adjusted the dates of Kabir accordingly:

According to prevalent belief, Kabir was born in 1398 A.D. which is too late a date for a disciple of Ramananda that he undoubtedly was. He must have at least been 18 years of age to have an intense spiritual craving, which made him seek Ramananda and made the latter accept him. Even if we keep a margin of two years for association with Ramananda before his death in 1410 A.D., Kabir’s birth must be placed before 1390. Namadeva, who died in 1350 A.D. was surrounded by myth in the time of Kabir. So, we may safely hold Kabir to have been born between 1350 and 1390 A.D. and accept 1370 as his probable date of birth.[43]

Barthwal, having accepted 1356 VS as birth year of Ramanand, continued to believe confidently and enthusiastically that Ramanand initiated Kabir, Raidas, Pipa and others, explaining the obvious time-gap with the help of Nabhadas’s reference to the exceptionally long life enjoyed by Ramanand. He also underlined the ‘reference to Ramanand’ in one of Kabir’s own compositions (pada no.77 of the Bijak) besides referring to medieval sources like Hariram Vyas of Orchha and ‘Dabistan- e-Mazahib’ as evidence in support of the initiator-initiated relationship between Ramanand and Kabir.

In the introductory essay for ‘Ramanand ki Hindi Rachnayen’ (The Hindi compositions by Ramanand), which he compiled from manuscripts found in the Nagari Pracharini Sabha (NPS) as well as from other sources, Barthwal went to great lengths in discussing the metaphysical and ontological questions that arose in reconciling “differences in the philosophical position as reflected in the (Vaishnava Matabaj) Bhaskar and the Hindi compositions of Ramanand.”[44] Yet the main yardstick he used in the course of explaining the ‘differences’ between Hindi Ramanand and Sanskrit Ramanand apparently had to be the Sanskrit compositions.

For the purpose of determining the floruit of Ramanand, Parashuram Chaturvedi also accepted ‘evidence’ provided in the ‘chapters from the Agastya Samhita‘, but unlike Barthwal, he did not make it the sole criterion for deciding the issue of the Ramanand-Kabir connection. Taking into account the other factors, he found it improbable that Ramanand could have initiated Kabir and other Sants. He also highlighted, in this context, the absence of any mention of Ramanand on the part of Kabir and others and expressed serious doubt about them even being contemporaries. But interestingly enough, Chaturvedi, while discussing the possible floruit of Kabir in detail, tentatively accepts 1448 CE as a death-date for Kabir and then, naturally finds his connection with Ramanand quite probable:

If this [1448 as the death date of Kabir] is accepted, then Kabir being a contemporary of, in fact, being influenced by Ramanand will also become acceptable… yes in such a situation his birth date will have to be taken to an earlier period than 1455 V.S. [i.e. 1398 CE] and maybe in that case, this year [1398] will have to be taken as the year of his enlightenment.[45]

Believing the authenticity of the pada attributed to Ramanand in the Adi-Granth, Chaturvedi quite enthusiastically wanted Ramanand to be included among the “early upholders and propagators of the Sant Mat without any doubt.”[46]

It is important to note that, despite seriously doubting the Ramanand-Kabir connection and criticizing Barthwal for reading too much into pada 77 of the Bijak, Chaturvedi did not take Sanskrit Ramanand as a referent and yardstick to explain Hindi Ramanand. Chaturvedi’s ‘overview’ of literature and evidence in this regard is often referred to by those who see the idea of Ramanand-Kabir connection as rooted in attempts to ‘Hinduise Kabir in modern times’ (Vaudeville for example) or to bestow ‘Brahmanical respectability’ on the Sants, even in pre-modern times. It is generally ignored that, even though Chaturvedi accepted the so-called ‘chapters from Agastya Samhita‘ as authentic and hence found it improbable for Ramanand to be a contemporary with the 15^th century Sants, he nevertheless wanted to include Ramanand in his category of ‘the Sants’ (even if he was born a Brahmin) because, according to him, more credence was to be given to the Hindi compositions of Ramanand than to the Sanskrit works attributed to him. He wanted to accept an early date for Kabir before accepting the connection between Ramanand and Kabir.

Chaturvedi realized that Ramanand “occupied an important and neglected space between two competing Hinduisms” (to put it in the words of William Pinch). On the other hand, to use the words of Pinch yet again, “indologists reared on the basic structural oppositions of caste hierarchy” quite confidently view him as representing, “a particularly conservative variety of saguna Vaishnava devotion” (the words used by Dharwadkar to describe the attempts of Ramanandis to ‘absorb’ Kabir) as if Ramanand’s padas in the Adi-Grantha and the Sarvangis had ceased to exist. In any case, in medieval India, the usage of the term ‘Vaishnava’ was not confined to its etymological meaning (i.e. the followers of Vishnu ‘expectedly with a conservative bent of mind’), but was a category that included ‘liberal’ and even ‘interrogative’ trends of thought. In the course of our present argument we will have occasion to read the author of the ‘Dabistan-e-Mazahib’ explaining the sense attached to this word in his times. The detailed treatment of the confusion caused by collating the modern and medieval senses of the term ‘Vaishnava’, however, is outside the scope of this paper.

Working on the social base and the ideology of the Kabirpanth, David Lorenzen took note of the crucial fact of the existence of ‘two competing Hinduisms’ and the complexities of their inter-relationships. Looking at ‘the Sant Tradition to which Kabir belonged’ as ‘the principal expression of non-caste Hinduism’, he rightly emphasized:

It should be noted that neither the caste Hinduism, nor the non-caste Hinduism is sufficiently homogeneous to be regarded as a single undifferentiated cultural entity. At the same time, however, the varied manifestations of each do have many common characteristics, a certain family resemblance. This is true both at the level of the local, non-standardized little traditions and at the level of more widespread and codified great traditions.[47]

Hindi Ramanand is an extremely interesting figure to understand the dynamics of the ‘varied manifestations’ of both caste and non-caste Hinduisms. And so are the attempts to replace him with the Sanskrit Ramanand in the modern times. It is in context of the ‘common characteristics, a certain family resemblance’ that both these contradictory images of the same historical person reveal their cultural and historical significance. Hindi Ramanand is clearly critical of ‘caste Hinduism’ to such an extent that he can be seen as an ‘early upholder and propagator’ of the Sant worldview, even the Sanskrit Ramanand was constructed as being quite liberal within the ideological framework of caste-Hinduism. In both cases, he continues to be a Brahmin by birth and yet transcends the world-view traditionally associated with this Brahmin identity.

The problems faced by scholars ‘reared on the basic structural oppositions of the caste hierarchy’ have only been accentuated by the identity politics that are currently fashionable and the academic discourse that takes these as their base. The assumption that ‘Ramanand, being a Brahmin, could only uphold the caste hierarchy’ – or that, if at all he opposed it, he must have been someone else, ‘of whom we know nothing’ – is taken as a basic point of departure in some academic circles today. The simple empirical fact of every individual carrying multiple identities and having the ability to make moral choices is often ignored in this discourse.

Such assumptions, coupled with the ‘evidence’ of the ‘chapters from Agastya Samhita‘ have made it an act of faith simply to rule out the possibility of ‘Brahmin’ Ramanand having anything to do with ‘weaver’ Kabir. After all, how could the twain ever meet if they belonged to two structurally opposed worlds? And they were not even contemporaries in any case. Even a scholar like John S. Hawley, otherwise so particular, even fastidious, with his facts and sources before coming to a conclusion, tends to make sweeping remarks in this particular context, which are important as they not only reflect his personal opinion, but also the prevalent consensus and dominant view in a most cogent way:

Ramanand solves too many problems on too little evidence. He supplies the missing link that would relate Kabir’s non-theist ‘eastern’ Banarasi side to the theist bhakti personality so prevalent in manuscripts that show up farther west. He locates Kabir in a specific monastic lineage – the Ramanandis’ – while also providing the means for him to have come from a Muslim family, as his name suggests, and then later be aligned by conversion with a kind of bhakti that at least some Brahmins could call their own. It’s all too neat, and too unechoed in the poems [of Kabir] themselves. I have to side with lower-caste critics who think the connection between Ramanand and Kabir was just a pious invention, a way to deny Kabir his roots.[48]

In the first place, if one were to go strictly and exclusively by the manuscripts and their antiquity, ‘the oldest dated manuscript’ (Fatehpur, 1585 CE) containing the poems of Kabir gives no indication of him being a ‘weaver from Banaras’ – a fact noted by Hawley himself. So, was Kabir a ‘weaver from Banaras’ or not? Secondly, the ‘connection’ will not remain ‘unechoed in the poems’ of Kabir, if one listened to Hindi Ramanand speaking in the medieval sources. Moreover, the Ramanand-Kabir connection was first doubted by Bhandarkar and then questioned by Parashuram Chaturvedi and, as chance would have it, both of them were ‘high caste Brahmins’ not ‘lower caste critics.’ So far as the ‘roots’ are concerned, the bulk of Ramanandis belonged in medieval times, and continue to belong in modern times as well, to the so-called lower castes and middle-level castes. Most of these castes are referred to as ‘backward castes’ in the legal and political discourse prevalent in India today. These castes are of course distinct from the castes referred to as ‘Dalits’ in the contemporary political and cultural discourse. And, incidentally, the caste to which Kabir belonged – Julaha amongst Muslims and Koris amongst Hindus – are considered part of the ‘other backward castes’ (OBCs) and not of Dalits. Hence one can see, here also, in the work of ‘lower caste critics’ with whom Hawley wishes to side, an attempt to appropriate Kabir and ‘deny him his roots.’ If one were to accept the ‘authenticity of representation’ argument implicit in Hawley’s choice of sides, one would have to wait for a Kabir critic belonging to the OBCs to receive an authentic Kabir with authentic roots. In any case, the very idea of the roots of a certain kind is a ‘given’ rooted more in contemporary politics of identity, and can hardly be considered sufficient to dismiss the fact of the universal medieval consensus so far as this connection is concerned. Moreover, this connection is upheld in medieval India, not only by Brahmans but others as well. After all, Nabhadas is supposed to have been a ‘Dom’ – the lowest of the low, in caste order. And finally, as we have seen in the foregoing discussion, in fact it is the ‘irrefutable evidence’ of ‘the chapters from Agastya Samhita‘, which is ‘just a pious invention’, that (even if, inadvertently), has worked against the historicity of the Ramanand-Kabir connection. We could of course find, in the future, more solid reasons than these spurious ‘chapters’ to doubt medieval consensus on the issue but, in the meanwhile, let us accept the location of Kabir in the specific ‘monastic lineage’ of Ramanandis as this lineage itself is of the ‘lower castes’ and the OBCs. It was on behalf of this social composition of his Sampraday that Bhagwadacharya took up cudgels with the Brahmanical Ramanujis.

Unlike many scholars in the field, David Lorenzen goes from ‘known to unknown’ in order to determine the floruit of Ramanand, and hence is perplexed about the wide acceptance of the ‘evidence of Agastya Samhita‘:

The only significant evidence for an early date of Ramanand is the A.D. 1299 birth date of Ramanand said to be given in Agastya Samhita, since this date is incompatible with most other evidence, it is curious that several important modern scholars have accepted it.[49]

Lorenzen argues that there are several independent historical tests that show clearly that Ramanand must belong to the fifteenth century. These include the synchronisms of Kabir with Sikandar Lodi and Virsimha Baghel (and hence Kabir’s floruit of about 1480-1520); the 1588 date of Anantdas’s Namdev Parachai; and the floruit of about 1580-1624 commonly given to Nabhadas. In the traditional genealogy accepted by the Ramanandis and others, Kabir is an immediate disciple of Ramanand, Nabhadas is in the fourth generation of Ramanand’s disciples, and Anantdas is in the fifth generation of his disciples. All this fits together nicely and clearly indicates, according to Lorenzen, that Ramanand must belong to the fifteenth century.

Also, instead of dismissing the entire tradition as of no consequence on the basis of spurious ‘chapters from Agastya Samhita‘, and comparing the genealogies given by Nabhadas and Anantdas, Lorenzen notes:

What is the main evidence that supports the existence of this guru-disciple relation? Quite simply, it is the unanimous claim of tradition that Kabir was a disciple of Ramanand. The exact correspondence of the names in the genealogies of Ramanand’s pupils found independently in the works of Ananata-das and Nabha-das is one strong argument in favor of historicity of Ramanand-Kabir connection. Both these works were written within about a hundred years of Kabir’s probable death.[50]

Among the contemporary leaders of the Panth, the erudite Acharya of the Parakh branch, Abhilashdas, even while underlining the uniqueness of Kabir’s worldview and spiritual pursuit and its difference from that of Ramanand, thus making the very idea of any guru for Kabir redundant, still concedes that ‘a seeker after all needs a guru, so it is natural that Kabir went to Ramanand.’ Most importantly, Abhilashdas mentions ‘Sant Nirvan Sahib’ of Surat (Gujarat), a contemporary of Kabir, as welcoming Kabir to his Ashram and singing in a pada that ‘Kabir has taken Ramanand as his guru and lives in Banaras.’[51] This reference to ‘Sant Nirvan Sahib’ obviously deserves to be probed further.

Acharya Vivekdas of the Chaura branch, Banaras, known for his progressive views and organizational activities and also for his polemical acumen, is also quite insistent on the initiator-initiated relationship between Ramanand and Kabir. In fact, in his ‘Amarpur Desh Apna’ (‘I belong to the land of immortals’), an imaginary dialogue between Kabir and his disciple Virsimha Baghel, Vivekdas makes Kabir himself say this of Ramanand by way of explaining the ‘difference between the Guru and disciple’:

He never wanted his disciples to be bound with his own tradition. He gave them freedom to choose and take their own ways. That is why the disciples of Swamiji (i.e. Ramanand) branched out in various traditions. This is actually what he wanted. He desired everyone to protect Indian religion and culture in his own way. The times demanded this as well. He was a Saguna Margi only in appearance. Everyone thought that he worshipped Rama and Sita, but it was all only appearance. Deep down, his way was that of the internal reflection.[52]

Obviously the Panth believes more in ‘medieval’ Ramanand than in his modern construct and has a nuanced understanding of the similarity and dissimilarity of his Hindi and Sanskrit versions. This belief and understanding gives the Kabir of its perception an independence of thought and personality as well as a continuity with the “early upholders and propagators of the Sant Mat” and a location within the “non-caste Hinduism”.

It will not be presumptuous, one hopes, to claim, in the light of the foregoing analysis that it is positively misleading to rely on the so-called ‘chapters from Agastya Samhita’ and push the floruit of Ramanand back into the 14^th century CE. There is no basis whatsoever to dismiss the 15^th century floruit assigned to Ramanand by a consensus in the pre-modern sources. Similarly misleading is the tendency to privilege the Sanskrit Ramanand – a modern construct in fact – over the Hindi Ramanand reflected in the medieval sources. The circumspection shown by the Kabirpanthis is highly instructive in this regard. While being aware of Sanskrit Ramanand and even taking for granted his image as a ‘Saguna Acharya’, they take care not to use this image as the benchmark. In fact, they tend to get around the dilemma by making Ramanand ask his disciples to choose and take their own ways, as is seen in Vivekdas’s treatment of the issue.

---

[15] ‘Vaisnavism Saivism and minor religious systems’, New Delhi, 2001, p 66-67.

[16] “Shrimadagastyasamhitantargat Ramanand Janmotsva Katha Pandit Ramanarayndasji krit Bhashatikalankrita tatkirtabhahshtikayuta Shri Ramanand janmotsvashtakanch, tatkritam ShriRamannadashtakanch” (the story celebrating the birth of Ramanand as found in the Agastya Samhita with a Hindi gloss by Pandit Ramanarayndasji also containing his Hindi gloss of the octave celebrating the birth of Ramanand and his own Ramanand octave along with a Hindi gloss), Mumbai, 1963 (Vikrama Samvat).

I am deeply indebted to Prof. Pinuccia Caracchi for kindly making the photocopy of this rare book available to me.

[17] ‘Shri Bhaktamal’, Lucknow, 2001, p 292.

[18] I am grateful to my research students, Tyler Williams and Dalpat Rajpurohit, for making this electronic copy with the kind permission of the librarian, D.A.V. College, Chandigarh.

[19] I got this copy form the Goyanka Sanskrit Pathshala, Varanasi, with kind permission of the Pt. Indushekhar Tiwari, deputy librarian. The National Library, Calcutta also possesses a copy (call no.180.Jd.90.13) of this edition.

[20] I acknowledge assistance from my close friend Samir Baran Nandi in finding this particular edition of the Agastya Samhita.

[21] Hans Bakker, ‘Ayodhya’, Groningen, 1986, part one, p.67.

[22] Bakker, ibid. P 68.

[23] Ibid. P 70.

[24] Op.cit. p iv.

[25] Bakker, op.cit., p 83-84.

[26] Ibid. P 68, fn. 1.

[27] Pinuccia Caracchi, ‘Vita Di Ramanand’, Torino, 1989. Pp 10-13. I am indeed deeply indebted to Dr.Noorin of the Center of Spanish, Portuguese, Italian and Latin American Studies, JNU, for diligently and promptly translating this part of the introduction.

[28] Ibid.P 11-12.

[29] ‘Shri Vaishnava Matabaj Bhaskar Ramarchan Paddhati Sahit’, Jaipur, Vikrmi Samvat 1985 (1928CA), p 243. I acknowledge the help from Koslendradas, a young activist of Ramanandi Sampraday and a student at the LBS Central Sanskrit Institute, Delhi in obtaining this and other rare works pertaining with the controversy between the ‘traditional’ and ‘radical’ Ramanandis.

[30] Caracchi, op.cit. P 12.

[31] Bakker,(part two) op. cit. p. xv.

[32] Ibid.,p.xv.

[33] Ramnarayanadas, op.cit, p.49.

[34] ‘Swami Bhagwadacharya’ (Volume III), Ahemadabad, 1961,p.104. “Swami Bhagwadacharya” is the general title Bhagwadacharya gave to his own ‘collected works’ running into several volumes. The first of these-his autobiography-appeared in January 1958.

[35] Ibid.,p.113.

[36] Bhagwadacharya,’ Shri Ramanand Digvijay’, Ahemadabad, 1967,p47.

[37] Hazari Prasad Dwivedi, ‘Kabir’ in ‘Hazari Prasad Dwivedi Granthawali’ (Collected Works), Vol.3, New Delhi, 1981,p.70. The work, ‘Kabir’ was first published in 1942.

[38] ‘Bhavishya Maha Puranam’ (Vol.II), Allahabad, 1997,p.606. Here in the sixth chapter the invasion by Timur is described. The very next chapter of this Sarga gives the description of the birth of Ramanand and Nimbarka.

[39] ‘Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics'(Vol.X), ed. James Hastings, Edinburgh,1918, p.571.

[40] See his ‘Bhaktamal’, p. 283 and 296.

[41] Encyclopaedia of Religion and Ethics'(Vol.X),p.571.

[42] ‘Traditions of Indian Mysticism based upon Nirguna School of Hindi Poetry’, New Delhi, 1978,p. 249.

[43] Ibid. p. 252.

[44] Pitambar Dutt Barthwal, ‘Ramanand ki Hindi Rachnayen’, Varanasi, Vikrmi Samvat 2012(1955 CE), introduction, p.23

[45] Parashuram Chaturvedi, ‘Uttari Bharat ki Sant Parampara’ (the Sant Tradition in Northern India’), Allahabad, VS 2008(1951 CE),p. 869.

[46] Ibid. p.228.

[47] “Traditions of Non-Caste Hinduism’ in David Lorenzen, ‘Who Invented Hinduism: Essays on Religion in History’, New Delhi, 2006,p.79-80. This essay was first published in 1987.

[48] John Stratton Hawley, ‘Three Bhakti Voices: Mirabai, Surdas and Kabir in their times and ours’, New Delhi, 2005,p.272.

[49] David Lorenzen, ‘Kabir Legends and Ananta-Das’s Parchai’, Delhi, 1992,p.12-13.

[50] Ibid. P.11.

[51] Abhilashdas, ‘Kabir Darshan’, Allahabad, 1997,p89.

[52] Sant Vivekdas Acharya, ‘Amarpur Desh Apna’, New Delhi, 2006,p.22.

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