Hit Harivansh: The Tradition Where She Is the Deity

The distinctive position, and it is worth setting out carefully because it is easy to get wrong.

What every Vaishnava tradition says

Radha is important. Since Jayadeva's Gita Govinda in the twelfth century, and increasingly after it, Radha is central to Krishna devotion.

And in most of the traditions she is the supreme devotee: the model, the highest example, the one whose love is what everybody is trying to have. Krishna is the deity and Radha is the perfect lover of the deity.

The Gaudiya position, for example, is that Radha is Krishna's own pleasure potency, hladini shakti, so that she is not separate from him and is the highest thing there is, and the practitioner aspires to serve her.

What the Radhavallabh tradition says

Radha is the deity.

Not the supreme devotee. Not the highest example. Not his energy. The one who is worshipped.

And Krishna is worshipped as hers. He is Radhavallabh, the beloved of Radha, and his standing in the tradition derives from that relationship rather than the other way round.

What follows from it

One. The name.

In the Radhavallabh tradition, and in Braj generally under its influence, the name people say is Radhe.

Radhe Radhe is the greeting in Vrindavan, said instead of hello, instead of goodbye, and in the street, by everybody, all day.

Shri Radhe, Jai Shri Radhe, Radhe Radhe are what you hear, and the fact that a whole town greets itself with a woman's name is a direct consequence of this tradition and its neighbours.

Two. Krishna is subordinate in the aesthetic.

In the poems, he is the one waiting, asking, hoping, apologising, and being refused. Radha's mood governs the situation.

Three. There is no cosmology.

The tradition does not treat creation, the avataras, the destinations after death, or the systematic questions that occupy Vedanta and the Gaudiya theologians.

Its whole content is the nikunja, the grove, and the two of them in it, and everything else is left out as beside the point.

Four. Vani over shastra.

And this is the most striking doctrinal position.

Vani means the utterance, and in this tradition it means the words of Hit Harivansh and the acharyas after him.

The position: the vani is the authority, and the shastra, the scriptural corpus, is not authoritative over it.

Which is a very unusual thing for an Indian tradition to say out loud. Most traditions establish themselves by showing that they are consistent with scripture. This one holds that the direct utterance of somebody who has seen is the higher authority and does not require validation from texts.

Five. Rasa over vidhi.

Vidhi means rule, procedure, the prescribed way. Rasa is the emotional and aesthetic state.

The tradition privileges rasa: the practice is not primarily about correct performance of prescribed acts, and the elaborate ritual apparatus of the other sampradayas is not what it is organised around.

Six. No initiation mantra in the usual sense.

The tradition's entry is through the name of Radha and through association, and it does not centre on a formal mantra transmission in the way most sampradayas do.

A note on how to hold all of this

These are the positions of one tradition among several, and the other Vaishnava traditions of Braj disagree with parts of it and have their own reasoning.

This app is not adjudicating. What is stated above is what the Radhavallabh sampradaya holds, stated as its own position, and the differences between it and the Gaudiya, Nimbarka, Pushtimarg and Haridasi traditions are real, old, and argued about within Braj by people who all live in the same town.

Eighty four verses, in Braj bhasha, and that is the central text of the tradition.

Chaurasi means eighty four. Hit is his own name and also means beneficial, dear, close.

What is in it

The nikunja, and almost nothing else.

No cosmology. No account of creation, no discussion of the soul's nature, no argument with other schools, no list of avataras, no description of the afterlife.

What there is: the grove, the two of them, the light, the flowers, the time of day, the mood, and the sakhis attending.

The technique

It is descriptive rather than narrative.

Most devotional poetry about Krishna tells you something: he did this, then that happened, then she said this. The Hita Chaurasi mostly does not. It describes a state, in detail, and stops.

Which follows from the doctrine. If the lila is eternal and continuous rather than a sequence of events, then there is no story to tell; there is only a scene to attend to.

The vantage point

The poems are written from where a sakhi stands.

Not from Krishna's position and not from Radha's. From the position of somebody who is present, whose whole business is the two of them, and who is describing what she can see.

Which means the poems are full of attention and empty of demand. The speaker is not asking for anything, is not comparing herself to anybody, and is not in the situation.

Its status

The Hita Chaurasi is treated in the tradition as scripture, and this is the practical form of the vani over shastra position: the eighty four verses of a sixteenth century Braj poet outrank the Sanskrit corpus for the people in this sampradaya.

It is sung daily in the tradition's temples, and recordings exist.

The other texts

• Sphuta Vani, further verses of his
• Radha Sudhanidhi, two hundred and seventy Sanskrit verses in praise of Radha. Its authorship is disputed, between Hit Harivansh and Prabodhananda Saraswati of the Gaudiya tradition, and the dispute is old and is not settled. It is a significant text either way
• The vani of the later acharyas, which continues to be authoritative in the tradition

The temple

Radhavallabh Mandir, Vrindavan, and it is one of the seven principal temples of the town.

Its distinctive features:

• There is no image of Radha in the sanctum. There is a crown, placed beside the deity, which represents her
• The reason given: no image could be made of her, and the tradition does not attempt one
• Which means that in the tradition where Radha is the deity, Radha is the one thing not depicted
• The deity Radhavallabh is Krishna, dressed and served, and the crown is next to him
• The seva is elaborate and aesthetic, with great attention to dress, flowers, season and light

Its history: like the other Vrindavan deities, Radhavallabh was moved during the period of Aurangzeb, to Kaman in what is now Rajasthan, and later returned. The other Vrindavan deities moved at the same time include Govind Dev to Jaipur and Gopinath and Madan Mohan to Karauli and Jaipur, and several never came back.

Braj today

The Radhavallabh sampradaya remains a live tradition, with its temple at Vrindavan, its hereditary Goswami acharyas, its daily seva and its singing.

And the greeting it helped make universal is what you will hear the moment you get off the bus at Vrindavan: Radhe Radhe, from everybody, including from people selling you things.

One. He was told to get married on the way.

The founder of a devotional order, travelling to Vrindavan, was instructed in a vision to stop, marry two women, and continue as a householder, and did.

And the tradition has been a householder tradition ever since, with hereditary acharyas and no requirement of renunciation, in the same town and the same decades as celibate orders that slept under different trees.

Which is worth knowing if you have absorbed the assumption that seriousness requires giving things up. Several traditions in this series say otherwise, and this one was founded on an instruction to marry.

Two. The name is hers.

Braj says Radhe Radhe to each other, all day, instead of hello, and it is a direct consequence of this tradition and its neighbours.

As a practice: it costs nothing, it is what an entire region does, and it puts a woman's name in the mouth of everybody who says it.

Three. The vantage point of the sakhi.

The Hita Chaurasi is written from the position of somebody present who is not in the situation: not the lover, not the beloved, but the friend whose whole business is the two of them.

What that produces in the poems: attention without demand. The speaker is not asking for anything and not comparing herself to anybody.

And as a stance, it is available outside the tradition: the position of somebody watching two people they love be happy, with nothing at stake and nothing wanted.

Four. The crown instead of an image.

In the tradition where Radha is the deity, there is no image of Radha. There is a crown beside the deity, and the reason given is that no image could be made.

Which is a striking piece of restraint in a tradition otherwise entirely devoted to the aesthetic and the visual, and it is worth sitting with: the thing at the centre is the thing not depicted.

Five. Vani over shastra.

The position that the direct utterance of somebody who has seen outranks the scriptural corpus, and does not require validation from it.

A guide should note what this cuts both ways. It is a genuinely liberating position, and it is also the position that removes the external check. Traditions with no authority above the founder's word are more vulnerable to whoever is currently claiming to be the successor.

And the standing caution: any teacher who claims that their word is above examination, who requires money for blessings, who isolates you from your family, who demands secrecy, or whose conduct would not survive being described plainly, is failing regardless of what tradition they cite. Police 112, women's helpline 181, Childline 1098, Tele MANAS 14416.

A daily practice from this entry:

• Radhe Radhe, which is the whole thing in this tradition
• One verse of the Hita Chaurasi, in translation, read as description rather than as instruction
• At Vrindavan, the Radhavallabh temple, and notice the crown
• And the sakhi's stance, tried once: watch two people you love be glad about something, wanting nothing from it

A closing thought

A young man from a family in Mughal government service set out for Vrindavan, and on the road a man he had never met appeared in a dream and asked him to marry his two daughters, so he stopped, married them both, and went on to Vrindavan with a wife, a second wife, and a deity his new father in law had handed him.

He founded a tradition in which the deity is not the man in the sanctum but the woman who is not depicted there at all, whose presence is a crown set beside him, and in which he is not called by his own name but by what he is to her.

He wrote eighty four verses in Braj bhasha describing a grove, and his tradition treats them as outranking the Sanskrit scriptures.

And four and a half centuries later everybody in that town, including the people trying to sell you flowers, greets you with her name.

Since this entry and several others in this series are about Vrindavan, the map is worth having.

Vrindavan in the sixteenth century was rebuilt from almost nothing, in about seventy five years, by four or five separate traditions working at the same time, and their differences are still visible in the town.

One. Gaudiya

• Chaitanya, of Bengal, sent the Six Goswamis in the 1510s
• Rupa, Sanatana, Jiva, Gopala Bhatta, Raghunatha Bhatta, Raghunatha Dasa
• Renunciates, and rigorous ones
• Systematic theology in Sanskrit: the Bhakti Rasamrita Sindhu and the rest
• Radha as hladini shakti, the highest, but Krishna as the deity
• Temples: Govind Dev, Madan Mohan, Radha Raman, Radha Damodar

Two. Radhavallabh

• Hit Harivansh, 1502 to 1552
• Householders, hereditary succession
• Radha as the deity, Krishna as her beloved
• Vani over shastra, rasa over vidhi
• Almost no systematic theology and no cosmology
• Temple: Radhavallabh

Three. Haridasi

• Swami Haridas, sixteenth century, treated in his own entry
• Music as the practice, dhrupad, and one of the roots of Hindustani classical
• Nitya vihara: the lila as continuous rather than as narrative
• Sakhi bhava
• Two branches, renunciate and householder
• Temple: Banke Bihari, and the Tatiya Sthan

Four. Nimbarka

• Older, traced to Nimbarkacharya, treated in his own entry
• Dvaitadvaita, difference and non difference
• The earliest tradition to give Radha a fully developed theological position
• Centres at Salemabad in Rajasthan and in Braj

And Pushtimarg

• Vallabhacharya, treated in his own entry, and his son Vitthalnath
• Centred on Shrinathji, who was at Govardhan and is now at Nathdwara in Rajasthan, having been moved during Aurangzeb's period
• Householder, hereditary, and the Ashtachhap poets including Surdas belong to it
• Highly developed seva aesthetics

What they share

• Braj bhasha as the poetic language
• The nikunja and the Braj landscape
• Radha's centrality, in different formulations
• Music and the aesthetic as central rather than decorative
• A sixteenth century rebuilding of the same landscape

What they disagree about

• Whether Radha is the deity or the supreme devotee
• Whether renunciation is required
• Whether scripture or the vani is authoritative
• How much theology is necessary
• The details of seva

And they have been arguing about it in the same small town for four hundred and fifty years, which is worth knowing before you assume any single account of Vrindavan is the account.

Visiting

• Vrindavan is around 15 kilometres from Mathura and around 150 from Delhi
• The principal temples are within walking distance of each other
• Banke Bihari and Radhavallabh are close together and are both crowded
• Holi at Vrindavan and Barsana is extraordinary and is also extremely crowded; go informed
• A practical note: monkeys at Vrindavan take glasses, phones and bags, systematically and expertly. Keep them secured.
• And on widows in Vrindavan: the town has a long standing population of widowed women, many abandoned by their families, living in ashrams and on charity. This is a real and documented social problem, government and NGO programmes exist, and it is worth knowing about rather than not noticing

Who: Hit Harivansh Mahaprabhu, 1502 to 1552, founder of the Radhavallabh sampradaya at Vrindavan. Of a Gaur brahmana family originally of Deoband, whose father Vyasa Mishra held a position at the Lodi court at Delhi.

The founding journey: travelling to Vrindavan, he stopped near Charthawal, where a brahmana named Atmadev appeared to him in a vision and asked him to marry his two daughters, Rukmini and Tara. He did, and continued to Vrindavan with them and with the deity Radhavallabh, which Atmadev gave him. The tradition has been a householder tradition ever since, with hereditary acharyas and no requirement of renunciation, in the same town and decades as the celibate Gaudiya Goswamis and Swami Haridas.

The distinctive doctrine: Radha is the deity, not the supreme devotee and not Krishna's energy. Krishna is worshipped as Radhavallabh, the beloved of Radha, named from her side. Consequences: the name people say in Braj is Radhe; Krishna is subordinate in the aesthetic; there is no cosmology, no discussion of creation or the avataras, and the whole content is the nikunja; the vani, the utterance of the acharyas, outranks the shastra; rasa outranks vidhi; and there is no initiation mantra in the usual sense.

The Hita Chaurasi: eighty four verses in Braj bhasha, the tradition's central text and treated in it as scripture. It is descriptive rather than narrative, since a continuous lila has no story to tell, and it is written from the vantage point of a sakhi, somebody present who is not in the situation, which produces attention without demand.

The temple: Radhavallabh Mandir, Vrindavan, one of the seven principal temples. There is no image of Radha in the sanctum, only a crown beside the deity, on the reasoning that no image of her could be made. In the tradition where Radha is the deity, Radha is the one thing not depicted.

Other texts: the Sphuta Vani, and the Radha Sudhanidhi, two hundred and seventy Sanskrit verses whose authorship is disputed between him and Prabodhananda Saraswati.