Acquainted with Grief: Rama, Krsna, and Medieval Debates on the Suffering of God.

• Author: Goldman, Robert P.

Near the beginning of his perhaps satirical Kanhavai, (1) a curious Islamicate version of the life of Krsna, the fifteenth- to sixteenth-century Sufi Avadhi poet Malik Muhammad Jayasi, using names drawn from the Hindu theological lexicon, represents a dialogue between the Supreme Lord Paramesar (Allah) and Bisnu (Visnu), the latter of whom the poet regards as a subordinate creation and agent of the former (Kanhavat 42.1-4). Angered by the arrogance that the evil King Kams of Mathura has shown in killing the newborn sons of DevakT and Vasudev, the Lord orders Bisnu to incarnate himself yet again in order to destroy the wicked tyrant. Bisnu's response to this command is interesting and even somewhat amusing. It also bears directly on the issue I would like to pursue in the following essay. Recalling his most recent incarnation as Rama, Bisnu complains:

dukh payom rama avalara | ah nahim avatarom yahi samsara ||

jaram mor sab bipat mamh bita | ek istirl janom sita || so puni liar ravan laigayil | bahu samtapprithimim jan bhayu || ... jaham maran dukh birahem lauti tahSm kajamvam ||

I experienced only suffering in my avalara as Rama. So now I will not take birth in that world again. My entire life was full of calamities. I knew only one wife. Sita; and Ravana stole even that one away. Since I experienced such great suffering on earth,... why then would I go back there where there is only death and the torment of separation? (Kanhavat 42.5-7, 9)

Presented with this expression of Bisnu's world-weary recalcitrance, the Lord sees that he now has to provide some incentives:

jas vahi jaram gahi tapa saju \ las imh jaram sukh raju || ... solah sahas gopita sajim | te sab to kamh uparajl || geha darom pat tohi sab jogu | aulri jagat manu ras bhog || bairt ker karasi jani cinta | jo taint cahab so homhi taranta ||

Just as that birth was full of pain, so in this birth you will enjoy a realm of pleasure. 1 have created sixteen thousand gopls for you. all beautifully adorned. All the yogins will come to your doorstep. Take on this avalara in the world and you shall enjoy honor and delight. You will not need to worry about your enemies and everything you desire shall instantly come to pass. (Kanhavat 43.3, 4-7)

Bisnu is enticed with this much sweetened deal and is so entranced by the vision of the gopls that the poet tells us:

dekhi sarup istirl. puni maya iapalan | pachil dukh so bisariga, jag avalara an | No sooner did he see those exquisite women, created through the power of illusion, than he forgot all about his previous suffering and took on that avalara in the world. (Kanhavat 43.3, 8-9)

This striking passage brings to the fore a very critical difference in the characterization of the two central avalaras of the Vaisnava tradition of Hinduism, Rama and K.rsna. The most salient feature of differentiation between these two towering figures of South and Southeast Asian myth, literature, art, and theology is the divergent ways in which the avalaras serve as exemplars for their devotees. Rama is generally regarded as a model and strict enforcer of dharmic conduct, while Krsna, in his various representations as a mischievous but loveable child and adolescent, and the ksatriya code-violating trickster of the Mahabharata, serves as a focus of vicarious pleasure through his carefree acting out of counter-normative social behavior. Thus, we often see the two figures, sequential manifestations of the same Supreme Spirit (pitriisollcmui), referred to respectively as maryadapurusottama and lllapurusottama, that is to say, the Supreme Spirit who observes and enforces moral boundaries (maryada) and the Supreme Spirit who exemplifies divine play (Ilia) even when it is disruptive of social and ethical norms.

Both of these characterizations highlight the positive and powerful aspects of the avalaras' personalities, their aisvarya 'lordliness', so to speak. This is hardly unexpected in the case of the principal manifestations of the Lord to whose feet millions cling as the most effective means of salvation. Jayasi's rendition of Paramesar's promise to Bisnu of an existence of uncontested omnipotence and untrammeled pleasure is fully in keeping with most Vaisnava texts' representation of the nature of Krsna. One thinks of representations of his life such as are recorded in texts like the ninth and tenth adhyayas of the Bhagavadglta and the tenth skandha of the Bhagavatapurdna.

But JayasT's rather grim and perhaps parodic characterization of the Rdmavatara seems strikingly out of keeping with this type of representation. Indeed, it is so jarring that his Lord Bisnu himself is reluctant to repeat the experience. And his portrayal of the helplessness, suffering, and general abjection of the deity in his incarnate form seems quite alien to Hindu theology in general, although not to the theologies of other early civilizations.

It is a commonplace in the mythologies and religious systems of the ancient Near East that certain deities undergo suffering and death on the way to resurrection and transcendence. In fact, the death of these deities is actually central to their divine mission as, in the suffering, death, and resurrection of their mortal bodies, they are thought to provide the model and the means for the resurrection of their worshippers. There are numerous examples such as the Babylonian Apsu, the Egyptian Osiris, and, of course, most famously, the Israelite Yeshua, or Jesus. In the latter case especially, the abjection, suffering, and death, or "passion" of the incarnated deity, is regarded as essential to his mission as the Salvator Mundi. For, as a human scapegoat, he takes upon himself the sins and sorrows of the world and offers redemption, resurrection, and eternal life to those who believe in him. Thus, in the King James rendition of the Old Testament's Isaiah 3.53:3, we hear, in the words so memorably set to music by Handel, "He is despised and rejected of men; a man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief: and we hid as it were our faces from him; he was despised, and we esteemed him not." The prophecy of rejection and resurrection is recapitulated in the New Testament, where we see, for example at Mark 10:34, "And they shall mock him, and shall scourge him, and shall spit upon him, and shall kill him: and the third day he shall rise again." The humiliation, torment, and suffering of the deity are thus absolutely central to Christian (and, to varying degrees, Egyptian and other Near Eastern) eschatology. But the prospect of such treatment of one of Hinduism's highest deities is, as Jayasi's text suggests, something that any self-respecting deity, having once experienced, would be unwilling to repeat.

So, what the Kanhavat passage highlights is the very anomaly--in the context of devotional Hinduism--of a representation of the supreme godhead as vulnerable or subject to physical or emotional suffering. And yet there is that one great, outstanding example of divine abjection, that of the Ramavatara as it is first elaborated by the ddikavi, ValmTki. Rama's career is, virtually throughout, marked by all manner of adversity, calamity, and sorrow, including his wrongful banishment from his kingdom on the very eve of his accession to its throne, his long experience of hardship in the wilderness, and his grief amounting to madness over the abduction of his beloved wife, Sita (Pollock 1991: 55-67). Then, too, in order to recover his lost love he must mount a sanguinary battle in which he suffers numerous life-threatening injuries, near-death experiences, and virtually constant mourning for his separation from her and for the real or illusory death of many who are dear to him, including his brother Laksmana, and even STta herself. (2) Even when he has achieved the purpose of his earthly incarnation and has put all his earlier trials and grief behind him, he must live out his long (11,000-year) and otherwise happy reign enduring a second separation from his beloved.

THE SUFFERING OF RAMA

The issue of the suffering of Valmiki's Rama and the way in which it is treated in later versions of the Ramakatha was discussed in Frank Whaling's 1980 monograph concerning the development of the theology of this avalara in medieval India. Whaling, for example, returns several times to the comparison of Rama and Jesus, noting that "Both chose the way of suffering at crises in their lives" (p. 44). (3) Moreover, the anomalous appearance of suffering in a figure understood to be, in fact, the paramatman has led at least one other scholar to see in Rama a parallel to this theme in Western religions. In his preface to Whaling's study, D. H. H. Ingalls noted:

The Rama tradition shows religious attitudes closer to traditional attitudes of European religion than will be found elsewhere throughout the time and space of Indian culture... . Here I shall point to one element only ... which Ramaite religion shares with the traditional religion of Europe. I refer to the religious use of grief. (Whaling 1980: ix-x)

All of this then foregrounds the very stark difference between ValmTki's Rama and virtually all the rest of the Vaisnava avalaras and other Hindu representations of the Supreme Spirit in his or her various manifestations. And yet, despite this difference, which, as we shall see, is especially stark and clearly defined when Rama is compared with Krsna, Rama emerges, but only, it appears, in his medieval an

According to some schools of Vaisnava theology, notably that of the Madhvas. Krsna should be seen as apurnavatara, that is, a 'full incarnation' of Lord Visnu, as distinct from an amsdvatcira 'partial incarnation'. As such, he is thought to be at all times fully aware that his incarnation is, in reality, an illusory manifestation of the paramatman, the Supreme Spirit. He is, in other words. Pitrusottama, who, for the sake of his devotees, agrees to deploy his vaisnavi maya, his power of divine illusion, to appear to enter DevakT's womb in the...