Paper short abstract:

This paper aims to highlight the persistent heterogeneity of technologies of the devotional self and body within Gaudiya Vaishnavism through the examination of vernacular devotional literature produced within a prominent priestly Vaishnava community in early modern Bengal.

Paper long abstract:

The Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition, associated with the Bengali Krishna devotee Sri Krishna Chaitanya (1486-1533), extols participation in the play (līlā) of the cowherd god Krishna as a practitioner's principal soteriological objective. From early on in the tradition's development, the cultivation of a devotionally perfected body (siddha-deha), as distinct from both the present physical (sthūla) and subtle (sūkṣma) bodies, was seen as a prerequisite for such participation. While various kinds of devotional bodies were, in theory, theologically open to the Gaudiya aspirant, over time one such bodily form - namely, that of a young milkmaid (mañjari) - and the devotional relationality this form afforded became the privileged ideal of the tradition. Attempts to standardise the understanding of this ideal, along with the techniques to realise it, were in full swing in Bengal by the early seventeenth century. A plurality of Gaudiya understandings of the devotional body nevertheless continued to circulate amidst these centripetal theological forces. In this paper, I will explore one such variant, which came to be known as 'Meditation on the King of Taste' (rasarājopāsana), developed within a prominent priestly Vaishnava community in this context. In particular, I examine the articulation of this variant in two notable Middle Bengali texts produced by writers associated with the community, namely the Muralī Vilāsa by Rājavallabha Gosvāmai and the Vaṃśī Sikṣā of Premadāsa Mīśra. These texts, I argue, illuminate the persistent heterogeneity of technologies of the devotional self and body within Gaudiya Vaishnavism.