Mark Juergensmeyer (trans.), Songs of
the Saints of India, 1988.
Sureshvara
Philosopher in the Advaita Vedanta
school, and one of two attested
disciples of the school’s founder,
Shankaracharya(788–820?), the other
being Padmapada. The Advaita school
upholds a philosophical position known
as monism, which is the belief that a sin-
gle Ultimate Reality lies behind all
things, and that all things are merely dif-
fering forms of that reality. Advaita pro-
ponents exemplify this belief in their
claim that reality is nondual (advaita)—
that is, that all things are nothing but the
formless, unqualified Brahman, despite
the appearance of difference and diver-
sity. For Advaita proponents, the
assumption that the world is real as per-
ceived is a fundamental misunderstand-
ing of the ultimate nature of things and
a manifestation of avidya. Although
often translated as “ignorance,” avidya
is better understood as the lack of gen-
uine understanding, which ultimately
causes human beings to be trapped in
karmic bondage, reincarnation (sam-
sara), and suffering.
In Hindu thought, Sureshvara is the
only explicit proponent of leap philoso-
phy, although one can see traces of this
in the other figures in Advaita Vedanta,
particularly in his teacher. Leap philoso-
phy affirms that one can attain com-
plete freedom from bondage, which in
the Indian context is identified as the
end of reincarnation and final liberation
of the soul (moksha), but that such free-
dom cannot be gained by a precisely
specified sequence of causes and
effects. According to Sureshvara, since
the ultimate problem stems from one’s
mistaken understanding, the only solu-
tion can come from purified, correct
understanding. Sureshvara’s path, such
as it is, is to use a negative dialectic to
distinguish clearly what the Self is not,
and when one’s mind has been pre-
pared, to gain a flash of mystic insight
through hearing one of the mahavakyas
(“great utterances”) that identify the
Self with Brahman. Sureshvara affirms
that actions can have no part in this
process, since action is bound up with
the world and is pervaded by igno-
rance. For further information see A. J.
Alston (trans.), The Naiskarmya Siddhi
of Sri Suresvara, 1959; and Karl H. Potter
(ed.), Advaita Vedanta up to Samkara
and His Pupils, 1981.Sursagar
(“Ocean of Sur”) Corpus of poetry in the
Braj Bhashalanguage ascribed to the
northern Indian poet-saint Surdas.
Traditional versions of the Sursagarare
divided into twelve parts, to mirror the
structure of the Bhagavata Purana,
which is the most important Sanskrit
source for the mythology of the god
Krishna. Surdas was a Krishna devotee
(bhakta), and this arrangement is a way
to confer the luster of an authoritative
Sanskrit text on vernacular religious
poetry. Just as the Bhagavata Purana
lavishly describes Krishna’s youthful
exploits, the Sursagaris most commonly
associated with poems painting
intimate and affectionate pictures
of Krishna’s childhood.
Although the poetry published in
editions of the Sursagaris ascribed to
Surdas, most of it is certainly pseudony-
mous. The oldest manuscripts of
Surdas’s poetry have at most a few hun-
dred poems, and the size of this corpus
roughly doubles every century, reaching
the five thousand poems in the present
Sursagar. The general tone of the earliest
poems also shows a marked thematic
difference. Although they include
Krishna’s childhood, a far greater per-
centage express the poet’s pangs of sep-
aration (viraha) from Krishna or com-
plaint (vinaya) about his spiritual trou-
bles. Even the earliest manuscripts show
no common body of poems, and it
seems likely that from the very begin-
ning the “Surdas” poetic tradition was
drawn from the songs of wandering
singers, a characterization that fits well
with the image of the poet himself. ForSursagar