From Bandit Raja to Exemplary Devotee
Vaishnav Accounts of the Kingdom of Bishnupur
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1558/rosa.26038Keywords:
early modern Bengal, Gaudiya Vaishnavism, little kingdom, hagiographies, bandit narratives, MadanamohanabandanāAbstract
This article looks into early modern Vaishnav literary accounts and their representation of the little kingdom of Mallabhum or Bishnupur (the capital), in the southwestern forested region of Bengal. From the second half of the sixteenth century onwards, Bishnupur emerged as the main centre of the resurgent Gaudiya Vaishnav devotional tradition, formulated by the Goswamis at Vrindavan. The article studies the account of the introduction and embracement of Gaudiya Vaishnavism by the ruler of Bishnupur, Bir Hambir, as narrativized in several seventeenth- or eighteenth-century Bengali Vaishnav hagiographies. It particularly explores the various political and ideological connotations of the plotline of the bandit raja and his act of ‘book theft’ in the context of the obscure kingdom situated in the peripheries. The article goes on to address the question of reception by considering how the hagiographical image of Bir Hambir as a bhakt raja continued to sustain and inform other Vaishnav narratives of the kingdom. It particularly considers the local narrative of Madanamohanabandanā, where by the late eighteenth century the figure of Bir Hambir had become synonymous with the kingdom’s heyday. The article thus charts the myriad representations of a little kingdom in early modern Bengal through a study of Bengali Vaishnav narratives.
References
Primary Sources
Bhaktiratnākara by Narahari Chakrabarti. R. Bidyaratna (ed.). 2nd edn. Murshidabad: Radharaman Press, 1912. Cited as BhR by page number.
Karṇānanda by Yadunandana Dās. R. Bidyaratna (ed.). Murshidabad: Radharaman Press, 1912. Cited as KA by page number.
Madanamohanabandanā by Jayakṛṣṇa Dās. Ms. no. 4988 in Asiatic Society collection, Kolkata. Cited as MMBJ by folio number.
Prema vilāsa by Nityānanda Dās. Y. Talukdar (ed.). Calcutta: Patrika Press, 1913. Cited as PV by page number.
Secondary Sources
Akhtar, Shirin. 1973. ‘The Role of Zamindars in Bengal (1707–1772).’ PhD dissertation, School of Oriental and African Studies.
The Akbar Nāma of Abu-l-Faẓl. Vol. 3. H. Beveridge (trans.). Calcutta: The Asiatic Society. 1939.
Bahāristān-i-Ghaybī: A History of the Mughal Wars in Assam, Cooch Behar, Bengal, Bihar and Orissa during the Reigns of Jahāngīr and Shāhjahān. Vol. 1. M. I. Borah (trans.). Guwahati. The Government of Assam, Department of Historical and Antiquarian Studies. 1936.
Burchett, Patton E. 2019. A Genealogy of Devotion: Bhakti, Tantra, Yoga and Sufism in North India. New York: Columbia University Press.
—— 2020. ‘The Rise of Vaisnava Devotion in North India: On the Origin of a Mughal Bhakti Sensibility.’ In Knut A. Jacobsen (ed.), Routledge Handbook of South Asian Religions: 151–171. Oxford and New York: Routledge.
Caitanya Caritāmṛta of Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja: A Translation and Commentary. E. C. Dimock (trans.). Tony K. Stewart (ed.). Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press. 1999.
Chakravarti, Ramakanta. 1985. Vaiṣṇavism in Bengal, 1486–1900. Calcutta: Sanskrit Pustak Bhandar.
Chatterjee, Kumkum. 2009. ‘Cultural Flows and Cosmopolitism in Mughal India: The Bishnupur Kingdom.’ The Economic and Social History Review 46 (2): 147–82. https://doi.org/10.1177/001946460904600201
Chattopadhyay, Brajadulal. 2012. The Making of Early Medieval India. 2nd edn. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Cherian, Divya. 2023. Merchants of Virtue: Hindus, Muslims and Untouchables in Eighteenth- Century South Asia. California: University of California Press.
Curley, David L. 2008. Poetry and History: Bengali Mangal-kabya and Social Change in Precolonial Bengal. New Delhi: Chronicle Books.
Davis, Richard H. 1997. Lives of Indian Images. New Jersey: Princeton University Press.1997.
Dirks, Nicholas B. 1982. ‘The Pasts of a Pāḷaiyakārar: The Ethnohistory of a South Indian Little Kingdom.’ Journal of Asian Studies 41 (4): 655–83. https://doi.org/10.2307/2055443
Doniger, Wendy. 1991. ‘Hinduism by Any Other Name.’ The Wilson Quarterly 15 (1): 35–41.
Ghosh, Pika. 2002. ‘Sojourns of a Peripatetic Deity.’ RES: Anthropology and Aesthetics 41: 104–26.
—— 2005a. Temple to Love: Architecture to Devotion in Seventeenth-Century Bengal. Bloomington, Indianapolis: Indiana University Press.
—— 2005b. ‘Narrating Kṛṣṇa’s Biography: Temple Imagery, Oral Performance and Vaiṣṇava Mission.’ Artibus Asiae 65 (1): 39–85.
Habib, Irfan. 2009–10. ‘Braj Bhūm in Mughal Times.’ Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 70: 266–84.
—— 2014. The Agrarian System of Mughal India, 1556-1707. Third Edition. New Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Habib, Irfan, and Tarapada Mukherjee. 2020. Braj Bhūm in Mughal Times: The State, Peasants and Gosā’ins. New Delhi: Primus Books.
Hawley, John Stratton. 2015. A Storm of Songs: India and the Idea of the Bhakti Movement. London: Harvard University Press.
Hawley, John Stratton, Christian Lee Novetzke and Swapna Sharma (eds.). 2019. Bhakti and Power: Debating India’s Religion of the Heart. Seattle: University of Washington Press.
Hobsbawm, Eric. 1981. Bandits. New York: Pantheon Books.
Horstmann, Monika. 2006. The Visions of Kingship in the Twilight of Mughal Rule. Thirteenth Gonda Lecture, Royal Nederland Academy of Arts and Sciences. Amsterdam.
Inden, Ronald B. 1976. Marriage and Rank in Bengali Culture: A History of Caste and Clan in Middle Period Bengal. Berkeley: University of California Press.
Kennedy, Melville T. 1925. The Chaitanya Movement: A Study of the Vaishnavism of Bengal. Calcutta: Association Press.
Kolff, Dirk H. A. 1990. Naukar, Rajput and Sepoy: The Ethnohistory of the Military Labour Market in Hindustan, 1450– 1850. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Kothiyal, Tanuja. 2016. Nomadic Narratives: A History of Mobility and Identity in the Great Indian Desert. Delhi: Cambridge University Press.
Kulke, Hermann, Anncharlott Eschmann and Gaya Charan Tripathi (eds.). 1986. The Cult of Jagannatha and the Regional Tradition of Orissa. New Delhi: Manohar.
Lorenzen, David. 1999. ‘Who Invented Hinduism.’ Comparative Studies in Society and History 41 (4): 630–59.
Majumdar, B. B. 1959. Śri Caitanya Caritera Upādāna. Calcutta: Calcutta University Press.
Mallik, Abhaya Pada. 1921. History of Bishnupur: An Ancient Kingdom of West Bengal. Calcutta: Book Sellers and Publishers.
Novetzke, Christian Lee. 2008. Religion and Public Memory: A Cultural History of Saint Namdev in India. New York: Columbia University Press.
O’Malley, L. S. S. 1908. Bengal District Gazetteer: Bankura. Calcutta: The Bengal Secretariat Book Depot.
Patel, Sachi. 2022. Politics and Religion in Eighteenth-Century India: Jai Singh II and the Rise of Public Theology in Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism. London, New York: Routledge.
Pauwels, Heidi. 2009. ‘The Saint, the Warlord and the Emperor: Discourses of Braj Bhakti and Bundelā Loyalty.’ Journal of the Economic and Social History of the Orient 52 (2): 187–228.
Pauwels, Heidi, and Emilia Bachrach. 2018. ‘Aurangzeb as Iconoclast? Vaishnava Accounts of the Krishna Images’ Exodus from Braj.’ Journal of Royal Asiatic Society 28 (3): 485–508. https://doi.org/10.1017/S1356186318000019
Peabody, Norbert. 2003. Hindu Kingship and Polity in Precolonial India. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
Petievich, Carla R. 1990. ‘Poetry of the Declining Mughals: The Shahr Āshob’, Journal of South Asian Literature 25 (1): 99–110.
Ray, Satish Chandra (ed.). 1915–27. Padakalpataru: An Anthology of Vaiṣṇava Lyrics. 4 vols. Calcutta: Bangiya Sahitya Parishat.
Ray, Aniruddha. 2010-11. ‘General President’s Address: An Approach to the Study of Morphology of Selected Towns and Cities of Medieval Bengal, C. 1500 to C. 1727.’ Proceedings of the Indian History Congress 71: 1–27.
Rosen, Steven J. 1991. The Six Goswamis of Vrindavan. Vrindavan: Rasbihari Lal & Sons.
—— 2017. ‘The Reincarnation(s) of Jaya and Vijaya: A Journey through the Yugas.’ Journal of Vaishnava Studies 8 (9): 1–7. https://doi.org/10.3390/rel8090178
Saha, Prabhat Kumar. 1995. Some Aspects of Malla Rule in Bishnupur (1590–1806). Calcutta: Ratnabali.
Salim, Ghulam Husain. 1902. The Riyazu-S-Salātīn: A History of Bengal. Maulavi Abdus Salam (trans.). Calcutta: The Asiatic Society.
Sen, Dinesh Chandra. 1917. Vaisnava Literature of Midiaeval Bengal. Calcutta: University of Calcutta.
Sen, Sukumar, 1347 BS/1940. Bāṃlā Sahityar Itihās. Vol. 2. Calcutta: Modern Book Agency.
Sengupta, Sureshchandra. 1310 BS/1903. Madanamohanabandanā. Bankura: Mukhopadhyay Print.
Sharma, Sunil. 2004. ‘The City of Beauties in Indo-Persian Poetic Landscape.’ Comparative Studies of South Asia, Africa and Middle East 24 (2): 73–81.
Shulman, David. 1980. ‘On South Indian Bandits and Kings.’ The Indian Economic and Social History Review 17 (3): 283–306.
Sinha Surajit. 1995. ‘State Formation and Rajput Myth in Tribal Central India.’ In Hermann Kulke (ed.), The State in India: 1000–1700: 304–42. Delhi: Oxford University Press.
Stewart, Tony K. 2010. The Final Word: The Caitanya Caritāmṛta and the Grammar of Religious Traditions. New York: Oxford University Press.
Talbot, Cynthia. 1995. ‘Inscribing the Other, Inscribing the Self: Hindu–Muslim Identities in Pre-Colonial India.’ Comparative Studies in Society and History 37 (4): 692–722.
Wagoner, Philip B. 1996. ‘“Sultan Among Hindu Kings”: Dress, Titles and the Islamicization of Hindu Culture at Vijayanagar.’ Modern Asian Studies 55 (4): 851–80.
Williams, Tyler W. 2014. ‘Sacred Sounds and Sacred Books: A History of Writing in Hindi.’ PhD dissertation, Columbia University.
Williams, Richard David. 2016. ‘Krishna’s Neglected Responsibilities: Religious Devotion and Social Critique in Eighteenth Century Northern India.’ Modern Asian Studies 50 (5): 1403–40. https://doi.org/10.1017/s0026749x14000444
Wright, Samuel. 2014. ‘From Praśasti to Political Culture: The Nadia Raj and Malla Dynasty in Seventeenth-Century Bengal.’ The Journal of Asian Studies 73 (2): 397–418.
