Mahakavi Bhudhardas: Ek Samalocanatmak Adhyayan.

• Author: Cort, John E.
• Position: Reviews of Books

Mahakavi Bhudhardas: Ek Samalocanatmak Adhyayan. By NARENDRAKUMAR JAIN SASTRI. Ajmer: SRI VITRAG VIJNAN VUNAN SVADHYAY MANDIR TRAST, 1997. Pp. xxvi + 456. Rs 80 (cloth); Rs 30 (paper).

Bhudhardas was a Khandelval Digambar Jain pandit and poet who lived in the first half of the eighteenth century in Agra. The author of the study under review estimates his dates as Ca. 1700 to Ca. 1765. There is little reliable information on his life, but we do know from contemporary references that he regularly gave sermons and led discussions (sastra-sabha) in the temple in Shahganj in Agra, and that he was a leading proponent of the school (mat) or style (saili) of Digambar mysticism known as Adhyatma, a style that had been centered in Agra since the time of Banarsidas in the early seventeenth century. Bhudhardas authored three major works: the prose Carca Samadhan, a question-and-answer text in which he addresses 139 issues in Jain metaphysics and practice; the epic poem Parsva Puran, a telling of the story of the twenty-third Jina Parsvanath and his arch-foe Kamath through nine prior lives; and the poetic Jain Satak, a collection of slightly more than one hundred verses concerning devotion, mysticism, m orals, and renunciation. Other of his verses were drawn together in a collection known as Bhudhar Pad Sangrah or Bhudhar Vilas, and still other verse compositions are found in Digambar manuscript libraries throughout northern and central India. He wrote in the Braj Bhasa of his native Agra, interspersed with Khari Boli forms and Sanskrit, Prakrit, Arabic, Persian, and Rajasthani words. He was deeply versed in Digambar literature; he cites eighty-five Digambar texts in the Carca Samadhan.

In the book under review, Narendrakumar Jain Sastri provides an exhaustive study of the poet. Since there is relatively little known about the poet from outside sources, the bulk of this book consists of a detailed study of the poet's writings in terms of language, style, and content. The author frames his study by viewing Bhudhardas within the larger context of the north Indian Hindi sant tradition best known through the works of Kabir, Raidas, Nanak, and Dadu. In his emphasis on the need for one to have a direct experience (anubhav) of one's soul (atma), and the need to realize (vijnan) the difference (bhed) between the pure eternal soul and the impure transient world of phenomena, Bhudhardas sounds quite similar to other sant poets...