Buddhism in India

The Bhakti Movements 213

avatar of Visnu, was said to have had the role of deceiving the

wicked. We have seen in Chapter 5 how the puranas used this to

justify slaughter of Buddhists and other ‘heretics’. Once again, the

fundamental conflict of Brahmanic and Buddhist ideas is clear.

The Meaning of Bhakti

Some major issues emerge out of this brief survey of the vast range

of bhakti movements in India. One is the problem of historical

records and ‘voice’. The institutions, including the record-keeping of

the movements were not really controlled by the low-caste devotees

themselves, however popular and charismatic individuals may have

been. All the places of pilgrimage and temples were under control

of Brahman priests; all the records of the movements and thus their

interpretations were done by Brahmans or a few other literate

‘high’ castes. This presents a problem for historians and for con-

temporary interpreters of the movements. This fact must have also

played a crucial role in defining the directions for the santsthem-

selves, who did not control their own traditions and so could not

access easily the true thoughts and life of the devotees who had

gone before them. To this degree, each had to reinvent his or her

own revolt.

In assessing all these sant-poets, the way in which we ‘know’ of

their songs and their meanings has to be taken into account. Parita

Mukta has pointed out the distortions about Mirabai’s life given in

various versions of—the Rajputs, Gandhi, the films and cassettes of

today—by comparing them with songs she could collect even in the

1990s from among the people which show, a different Mira and in

which new themes emerge. The research on and translations of

Kabir by Linda Hess and Shukdev Singh have revealed a radicalism

that is not evident in lines of his that are most often quoted in India

today. Hess also suggests a Buddhist connection of Kabir that has

otherwise not been brought out. Eleanor Zelliot is bringing out new

aspects of Cokhamela and his family. Our reading of Tukaram, the

recent work of A.H. Salunkhe, and the essays of contemporary

Dalit-Buddhist writers suggest a very radical and much more

‘Buddhist’ Tukaram than is supposed in the popular view. One

wonders how much would a detailed reading/analysis of other

santsof the bhakti movement reveal similar radicalism? What

would genuine critical editions of the texts really show?

From such examples Basu argues that the five were not Vaishnavite
poets but ‘mighty pillars of the...crypto-Buddhist community of
Utkal’ (Basu 1982: 114). However, the basic spirit of this quota-
tion, asserting the existence of a supreme deity who is identified
with the Buddha, suggests instead an absorption into Brahmanic
ideas. This is similar to the way the Buddhist term sunyata, which
had clearly become widely known by the second millennium in the
region, was appropriated as ‘Sunyam’ by Ramai Pandit, apparently
a Brahman scholar and ‘guru’ of the movement. Pandit describes
Sunyamas

He who has neither a beginning nor an end, nor a middle...neither

hands nor feet, neither body nor voice, neither form nor image; and

who is afraid neither of birth nor death—He who is knowable only by

the greatest of Yogis, sages; who underlies and upholds all classes of

men; who is the sole lord of all the worlds; who brings about the

realization of the desires of his devotees and confers boons upon gods

and men alike (ibid.: 9–10).

Here a Buddhist term is used but the meaning is more Brahmanic
in spirit than Kabir’s nirguna bhakti. If this represents ‘crypto-
Buddhism’, it would seem here that the use of Brahmanic ideas was
overwhelming the Buddhistic elements. In Orissa, as elsewhere, the
course of the bhakti movement shows an appropriation and rein-
terpretation by the literate upper castes who distort the fundamen-
tal protest of the radical sants.
The methodological issue therefore emerges once again: the
records of the bhakti movement in Orissa as elsewhere were in the
hands of the upper castes. Only a more thorough exploration of
the life and songs of the Orissa santswill make it possible to assess
their meaning.
How can the impact of Buddhism on society be really measured?
The identification of sunyata/Buddha as Brahma is like the adop-
tion of the Buddha as an avatar of Visnu. It shows the power of
Buddhism in society, but by itself it is not so much an evidence of
Buddhist influence as a part of the strategy of Brahmanism, exem-
plified in the absorption of the idea of ‘non-violence’ by ending
animal sacrifice (by the upper castes), but with little of the basic
teachings being taken up. Just as the legendary guru Brhaspati was
said to have taught the materialism of the Lokayata tradition to the
asuras in order to mislead and deceive them, so the Buddha, as an

212 Buddhism in India