Nimbarkacharya: The Acharya Who Said Both Are True

The position: difference and non difference are both real, at the same time, without one being resolved into the other.

The technical name. Dvaitadvaita, or Bhedabheda, difference and non difference.

How it works. The classic image the school uses.

• Waves and the sea. A wave is not the sea; a wave is not other than the sea. Both statements are true, and neither cancels the other
• Coils and the snake
• The sun and its rays

Applied to the doctrine:

• The soul is different from Brahman, because it is limited, subject to karma, and can be in bondage, none of which is true of Brahman
• The soul is not different from Brahman, because it has no independent existence, cannot be without Brahman, and is a part of Brahman's own nature
• Both, at once, permanently

Why he holds this. Because the scripture says both, and neither set of statements should be subordinated.

• The identity texts, the mahavakyas, say the self is Brahman
• The difference texts, of which there are far more, describe worship, dependence, service, and a distinct Lord
• Advaita makes the difference provisional. Dvaita makes the identity texts figurative. Bhedabheda takes both at face value

The three realities:

• Chit, the conscious souls
• Achit, unconscious matter
• Ishvara, the Lord

Souls and matter are both dependent on the Lord and are both real and eternal, and both are simultaneously distinct from and non distinct from him.

The relation. Svabhavika bhedabheda, natural difference and non difference: the relation is not caused by anything, not the result of any limitation, and does not require removal. It is simply how things are.

Compared to the others:

• Shankara: identity is final, difference is provisional
• Ramanuja: difference is real, and the relation is body to self, inseparable
• Madhva: difference is real and permanent, and there is no identity at all
• Nimbarka: both are equally real, equally permanent, and neither is derived from the other
• Vallabha: the world is real and is Brahman itself, without any transformation

Is Bhedabheda coherent. The objection and the answer, since it is the standard challenge.

The objection: difference and non difference are contradictory. A thing cannot both be and not be another thing at the same time and in the same respect.

The answer: they are not asserted in the same respect. The soul is non different in being, since it has no separate existence, and different in attribute, since it is limited and Brahman is not. That is not a contradiction any more than the wave and the sea are.

Whether that resolves it is one of the long standing debates of Indian philosophy, and the Advaita and Dvaita schools both argued that it does not.

Bhedabheda's history. Worth noting since it is older than Nimbarka.

• Bhartriprapancha, an early figure known mainly from Shankara's refutations of him
• Bhaskara, eighth to ninth century, who held aupadhika bhedabheda, difference caused by limiting conditions
• Yadavaprakasha, Ramanuja's own first teacher
• Nimbarka, holding svabhavika, natural rather than caused
• Vijnanabhikshu later
• And the Gaudiya position, achintya bhedabheda, inconceivable difference and non difference, which is Chaitanya's tradition

Achintya bhedabheda is worth flagging: it says the relation is real and is inconceivable, that is, not resolvable by logic, which is a different move from Nimbarka's.

The Nimbarka sampradaya's most consequential contribution is theological, and it concerns Radha.

What the school holds:

• The supreme is Radha Krishna together, as a couple, not Krishna alone
• Radha is not a devotee, not a gopi elevated, and not a symbol of the soul
• She is the hladini shakti, the bliss power, of Krishna, eternally with him, and is his equal in the sense that neither is complete without the other
• The object of worship is the yugala, the pair
• They are worshipped together, never separately

Why this matters historically. Because it is early.

Radha does not appear in the Bhagavata Purana, which is the principal Krishna text. The gopis are there and one is treated as favoured, but Radha is not named.

She appears in:

• The Brahma Vaivarta Purana and the Padma Purana
• Jayadeva's Gita Govinda, twelfth century, which is where she becomes a major literary figure
• Nimbarka's theology, which gives her a formal doctrinal position
• And then in Vallabha, the Radhavallabha sampradaya, the Gaudiya tradition, and the whole Braj devotional world

Nimbarka's contribution is that he made her a theological rather than a literary or devotional figure: part of the definition of the supreme rather than part of the story about it.

The Dasha Shloki's opening. His ten verses begin by describing the supreme as being worshipped by Radha and surrounded by her companions, which puts her in the first line of the doctrinal statement.

What follows from it, practically:

• In Nimbarka temples the deity is Radha Krishna, never Krishna alone
• The mantra of the sampradaya includes both names
• Radhashtami, Radha's appearance day in Bhadrapada, is a major festival
• Seva is offered to the pair

The wider Radha traditions. Since this is where they begin.

• Nimbarka: Radha and Krishna as the eternal couple, the supreme
• Vallabha: Radha central, though the Pushtimarg emphasis is on the child Krishna as well
• Radhavallabha, of Hit Harivansh: Radha is primary, and Krishna is her beloved, which reverses the usual order
• Gaudiya, of Chaitanya: Radha is the highest devotee and Chaitanya is understood as Krishna having taken her mood and colour
• Haridasi, of Swami Haridas: the pair as Kunj Bihari and Kunj Bihari

The Radhavallabha position is worth flagging because it is the furthest: in that sampradaya, Radha is the object of worship and Krishna is approached through her, which inverts the standard arrangement entirely.

On Radha's status generally. A note for a reader.

The question of whether Radha is Krishna's wife is one the traditions answer differently, and it has produced substantial literature.

• Some traditions hold they were married, in Braj, with Brahma performing the ceremony, and cite the Brahma Vaivarta Purana
• Others hold the relationship is parakiya, outside marriage, and that this is theologically necessary because it makes the love unconditioned by duty
• The Gaudiya tradition, after debate, settled substantially on parakiya as the higher understanding while treating svakiya as also true at another level
• Nimbarka and several others treat them as eternally united, which makes the question of a ceremony beside the point

How to handle this. It is an internal theological question, the traditions genuinely differ, and no external adjudication is required.

What is worth knowing is that the argument exists, that it is old, and that it is about what unconditioned love means rather than about the propriety of anybody's conduct.

Radha in Braj now:

• Barsana, held to be her village, with the Radha Rani temple on the hill
• Rawal, near Gokul, given as her birthplace in some accounts
• Radha Kund, near Govardhan
• The Lathmar Holi at Barsana and Nandgaon
• Radhashtami in Bhadrapada

In Braj the greeting is Radhe Radhe. Not Krishna's name. That is the practical outcome of the theology this entry describes.

Where it is:

• The principal seat is at Salemabad, in Ajmer district, Rajasthan, the Nimbarkacharya Peeth
• Nimbagram, or Nimgaon, near Govardhan in Braj, where he settled
• Substantial presence in Braj, Rajasthan, Bengal, Odisha and the Nepal Terai
• Temples across north India

Salemabad:

• Established in the tradition's later history
• The seat of the Nimbarkacharya, the head of the sampradaya, in a continuous line
• The tradition maintains a long list of successive acharyas

The practice:

• Worship of Radha Krishna together
• The Gopala mantra and the yugala mantra
• Tilaka: two vertical lines with a black dot between them at the base, which is the sampradaya's identifying mark
• Tulsi mala
• Ekadashi
• Radhashtami and Janmashtami
• The Braj pilgrimage: Govardhan parikrama, Barsana, Nandgaon, Radha Kund

The tilaka. Each sampradaya has its own and they are how a person's affiliation is read at a glance.

• Sri Sampradaya: a U or Y shape with a red or yellow central line
• Brahma Sampradaya: two vertical lines with a black line between
• Rudra Sampradaya: two vertical lines
• Kumara Sampradaya: two vertical lines with a black dot at the base between them, representing Radha and Krishna with the Shyama Kund

What the sampradaya is known for. Two things.

One. It is early on Radha. It gave her the formal theological position before the other northern traditions, and much of the later Braj theology builds on it.

Two. It is unpolemical. By comparison with the Advaita Dvaita debates or the Vallabha Gaudiya disputes, the Nimbarka literature is notably uninterested in refutation.

Its founding story is about feeding a Jain guest. Its principal text is ten verses. Its philosophical position accepts both sides of the central dispute rather than picking one.

That combination has made it less prominent than the others and it is why most people have not heard of it.

Key later figures:

• Srinivasacharya, his direct disciple, author of the Vedanta Kaustubha, the commentary that expands the Vedanta Parijata Saurabha
• Keshava Kashmiri Bhatta, a major acharya of the tradition, who by the Gaudiya tradition's account debated Chaitanya as a young man at Nabadwip and was defeated, which the Nimbarka tradition tells differently
• Harivyasa Devacharya, sixteenth century, who reorganised the sampradaya and established the Salemabad line
• Parashurama Devacharya, who established the Salemabad seat

The Chaitanya debate. Worth a note because it is how many people first hear of the sampradaya.

The Gaudiya biographies of Chaitanya record that as a young scholar at Nabadwip he debated Keshava Kashmiri, a travelling digvijayi scholar of the Nimbarka tradition, and defeated him.

The Nimbarka tradition does not accept that account.

How to handle it: as two traditions' accounts of the same event, told from opposite sides, which is normal in Indian sectarian history and does not need resolving by a reader.

Reading the tradition:

• The Dasha Shloki, ten verses, with translation
• The Vedanta Parijata Saurabha, short, in translation
• Srinivasacharya's Vedanta Kaustubha for the expansion
• Secondary accounts of Bhedabheda
• The tradition's devotional literature, which is substantial in Braj Bhasha and Hindi

The distinctive intellectual move of this school is worth taking away independently of the theology, because it is a general habit of mind.

What Nimbarka does. He is presented with an apparent contradiction in scripture, and instead of resolving it by subordinating one side, he holds both.

The standard moves available, and what each costs:

• Pick one and explain away the other. Clean, but requires calling a large body of scripture figurative
• Rank them, with one provisional and one final. Also clean, and is what Advaita does
• Hold both and specify the respects in which each is true. Harder, less tidy, and does not produce a slogan

Why the third is intellectually respectable. Because reality frequently is like that.

Things are commonly both continuous with and distinct from their context, and the demand that one of those be finally true is a demand of the framework rather than of the thing.

Where the same move appears elsewhere:

• Achintya bhedabheda in the Gaudiya tradition, which adds that the relation is not logically resolvable at all
• The Jain doctrine of anekantavada, many sidedness, and syadvada, the sevenfold predication, which is the most developed Indian treatment of holding multiple truths
• The Buddhist two truths doctrine
• Shaiva Siddhanta's iron in fire image, where the iron takes on the fire's qualities and remains iron

Anekantavada deserves the mention. The Jain position is that reality has infinite aspects, that any statement is true only from a standpoint, and that dogmatism consists in mistaking one standpoint for the whole.

The blind men and the elephant story is the standard illustration and it is a Jain and Buddhist story before it is anybody else's.

Where this is practically useful. Two places.

One. In devotion. People routinely hold that God is both personal and beyond form, both here and everywhere, both a person they talk to and the ground of everything.

The philosophical schools each resolve that; ordinary practice usually does not, and does not need to.

A person can light a lamp to a form and also hold that the form is not the limit of what is there, and there is no requirement to settle which is finally true before proceeding.

Two. In argument. The habit of asking in what respect a claim is true, rather than whether it is true, is generally more productive.

Most religious disputes and a great many others turn out to be two parties asserting things that are true in different respects and treating them as contradictory.

The limits of it. Worth stating so the point is not overdone.

• Not everything can be held both ways. Some claims genuinely exclude each other
• Bhedabheda is not relativism: Nimbarka thinks Advaita and Dvaita are wrong, and argues so
• Holding two positions because you cannot decide is not the same as holding two positions because you have worked out the respects in which each applies

And the practical instruction the school gives. It is very simple and it is the same as everybody else's.

Prapatti and seva: surrender, and service to the divine pair, with the mantra, the tilaka, the tulsi and the daily worship.

The philosophy is ten verses. The practice is a lamp in front of two figures who are never worshipped apart.

Places

Salemabad:

• In Ajmer district, Rajasthan, around 70 kilometres from Ajmer and 100 from Jaipur
• The Nimbarkacharya Peeth, the principal seat
• The Sarveshwar temple
• Quiet, and not on the usual tourist circuits

Nimbagram, Govardhan:

• Near Govardhan in Mathura district, Uttar Pradesh
• Where he is said to have settled and where the neem tree story is placed
• Part of the Govardhan parikrama circuit

Braj generally. The sampradaya's devotional home.

• Govardhan, and the 21 kilometre parikrama
• Barsana, Radha's village, with the hill temple
• Nandgaon
• Radha Kund and Shyam Kund
• Vrindavan and Mathura
• The Braj chaurasi kos parikrama, the eighty four kos circuit

When to go:

• Radhashtami, in Bhadrapada, August or September, which is the sampradaya's principal festival
• Janmashtami
• Holi in Braj, which runs for weeks and includes the Lathmar Holi at Barsana and Nandgaon
• Kartik, when Braj is at its busiest and the parikramas are done
• October to March for weather; Braj summers are extremely hot

Practice

The Yugala worship:

• Radha Krishna together, never separately
• A picture or image of the pair
• Radhe Radhe or Radhe Shyam as the name, which is the Braj greeting and the sampradaya's practice
• Tulsi offered

The Dasha Shloki:

• Ten verses, the whole doctrine
• Short enough to learn
• Available with translation

Ekadashi and the ordinary Vaishnava observances.

On the four sampradayas. A practical note for a reader trying to place themselves.

Most people in India belong to a tradition by family and region rather than by choice, and do not know which sampradaya their household practice descends from.

If you want to find out, the indicators are:

• The tilaka your family uses, if any
• The mantra given at initiation, if there was one
• Whether the deity at home is Radha Krishna, Vishnu Lakshmi, Rama Sita, Venkateshwara, Krishna alone, or something else
• The matha or peeth your family names, if any
• The temple your family goes to and who administers it

And if the answer is that there is no particular affiliation, which is very common, that is not a deficiency. The great majority of Hindu households are not formally affiliated to a sampradaya and never have been.

A closing thought

A Jain ascetic who could not eat after sunset arrived at a brahmana's house too late.

Rather than send him away, or ask him to break his rule, or explain that the timing was not his host's fault, Nimbarka arranged for the sun to be visible in a neem tree until the guest had finished eating.

That is the story the sampradaya took its founder's name from.

And the philosophy he wrote afterward, in ten verses, is that two things which look like they cannot both be true generally are.