Abstract
Although the Bhāgavata Purāṇa presents an innovative soteriology of emotion that explicitly identifies kāma as the gopīs’ path to union with Kṛṣṇa, a close reading of his commentary on the rāsalīlā (and other passages treating the gopīs) reveals how Śrīdhara introduces preman into the narrative, sharply distinguishing kāma and preman. Śrīdhara also states that Bhāgavata 10.29–33 portrays Kṛṣṇa’s “victory over kāma” and that devotees who hear and recite the rāsalīlā likewise attain victory over kāma as the reward for their Kṛṣṇa-bhakti. This article shows that such claims disregard the Bhāgavata’s unambiguous statements about the gopīs’ kāma, and thus deny the Purāṇa’s subversive soteriology that legitimates various emotional modes of bhakti in order to enable everyone, including women, to experience an intimate and unmediated relationship with Kṛṣṇa.
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Acknowledgments
Reading Sanskrit commentary did not come easy to me as a graduate student long ago, and I am grateful to my professors Peter Scharf and the late David Pingree, whose extremely patient instruction has been invaluable in my career. Any errors and instances of poor judgment in this article therefore reflect my own limitations, despite my excellent teachers, among whom I include four anonymous scholars whose reviews inspired substantial revisions to an earlier and much weaker version of this article. I especially appreciate the scholarly generosity of reviewer three, whose long, thoughtful, and remarkably erudite comments and questions really challenged me to write a better essay.
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Coleman, T. Kāma, Preman, and Bhakti in Śrīdhara’s Commentary on Kṛṣṇa and the Gopīs in the Bhāgavata Purāṇa. Hindu Studies 24, 283–312 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11407-020-09280-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11407-020-09280-6