early date (1604 ce) and clear history, it is a primary source of early bhakti
literature (Callewaert 2000a, McLeod 1989: 82–101).
Va i s.n.ava devotion and sects were also developing in these centuries. In
Andhra Pradesh, Vallabha ̄ was born to a Telegu brahmanfamily in the late
fifteenth century (Barz 1992). Considered an avata ̄rof the mouth of Kr.s.n.a, he
was to found the Pustimarg, the way of grace, also called the Vallabha ̄samprada ̄y
or “tradition.” Known as a great scholar, he traveled widely and bested advaita
philosophers in debates from a young age, winning the title ofacarya. His argu-
ment was straightforward – a true nondualist philosophy should not divide the
world into an illusory phenomenal world and the One reality behind it; rather
pureadvaita(s ́uddha ̄dvaita) would have to acknowledge that all is God – both
manifest reality and the Oneness underlying it. The followers of Vallabha ̄
worship Kr.s.n.a, particularly through an image that emerged from Govardhan hill
in Vr.nda ̄van of his mountain-bearing form. The songs of eight poets, called the
as.t.achap, constitute the formal liturgy of the samprada ̄y.
The most well-known of the as.t.achappoet-saints is Su ̄rda ̄s, whose songs of
Kr.s.n.a’s childhood and adolescence among the cowherding community of Braj
draw both singers and listeners inside of the emotional world of that divine
drama with its multiple forms of love for the incarnate Lord (Bryant 1978;
Hawley 1984). His collected works, the Sur Sagar(Sur’s Ocean), number over
5,000 songs, and as is the case with all these great medieval poet saints, clearly
not all these were composed by a single individual. Indeed the best we can do is
to identify an early core of tradition attributed to him, as J. S. Hawley and
Kenneth Bryant have done, based on reliable manuscripts. For the most part the
manuscripts we have of the saints’ songs appear initially to record the reper-
toires of singers, with all the variation that this might imply. And successive
singers have expanded the traditions, the saints’ names conferring authority and
indicating a particular style of devotion and poetic expression more than actual
authorship (Hawley 1988).
Su ̄rda ̄s is said to have been blind but describes the emotional landscape
of Kr.s.n.a’s childhood and adolescence in intricate detail. Some of the songs
attributed to him speak of the child Kr.s.n.a, articulating the love of parents for
children (vatsalya) and juxtaposing the Lord of All and the small boy of his incar-
nation. Having seen him eating dirt as boys are want to do, his mother Yas ́oda
grows irritated and says:
“Mohan, won’t you spit out the mud?”... But he wouldn’t obey;
he played a clever trick:
He opened his mouth,
and he showed her,
and the Play unfolded...
(Bryant 1978, 174)
Seeing the divine drama of the cosmos unfold before her as she looks into what
is not only the mouth of her son but also of God, she is completely overwhelmed,
north indian hindi devotional literature 189