Vīrarāghavācārya was a 20th c. Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedāntin whose editorial and commentarial contribution to his school will remain impressive for many generations to come. Personally, I am particularly pleased by his attempts to think along the tradition in a creative way.

Within his subcommentary on Vedānta Deśika’s Seśvaramīmāṃsā, Vīrarāghavācārya is at times closer to Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta than Vedānta Deśika’s pro-Mīmāṃsā attitudes. At other times, he just elaborates further on Vedānta Deśika’s hints. In one of such cases, he describes how the choice of words in Pūrva Mīmāṃsā Sūtra 1.1.2 (codanālakṣaṇo ‘rtho dharmaḥ ‘Dharma is that goal which is known through Vedic injunctions’) was not at all casual. Rather, each word had a direct meaning and also further suggested something more. For instance, codanālakṣaṇa is not just the same as codanāpramāṇa, but rather suggests that the Vedic injunction also defines what dharma is. dharma is also to be interpreted etymologically as ‘instrument of dhṛti‘, where dhṛti means prīti ‘happiness’. Similarly, artha indicates that bhakti is the result to be achieved, consisting in pleasing God. Then he sums up:

Through the word dharma, which means instrument for dhṛti, Jaimini also suggests that this ritual action devoid of desire which is a purpose in itself (svayamprayojana) is different than the instruments for the results consisting in the four human aims, which are expressed with reference to their own contents (svaviṣaya) [only]. [He suggests it] because through this [word dharma] also pleasing the Revered one (bhagavat) is communicated (uddeśya).

dharmapadena dhṛtisādhanavācinā caturvargaphalopāyāḥ ye svaviṣayāḥ vācyāḥ tais saha anlat svayaṃprayojanaṃ niṣkāmakarmāpy asūcayat bhagavatprītes tatroddeśyatvāt.

In other words, bhakti points beyond oneself, to God, whereas all other purposes remain confined to oneself.

To Rāmānuja (traditional dates 1017–1137) are attributed, with more or less certainty, a series of Vedāntic works, namely the Śrī Bhāṣya (henceforth ŚrīBh) commentary on the Brahma Sūtra (henceforth UMS), which is his philosophical opus magnum, both in length and philosophical depth, the Gītabhāṣya on the Bhagavadgītā (henceforth BhG), a compendium of his philosophy, the Vedārthasaṅgraha, and two shorter commentaries on the UMS, namely the Vedāntadīpa and the Vedāntasāra.
Beside these works, the Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta school, at least since the time of Sudarśana Sūri and Veṅkaṭanātha (also called Vedānta Deśika, traditional dates 1269–1370), recognised Rāmānuja as the author of also three extremely short works (about 3–4 pages each), namely the Śaraṇāgatigadya, the Śrīraṅgagadya and the Vaikuṇṭhagadya, and of a manual of daily worship called Nityagrantha.

The terms bhakti `devotional love’ and bhakta `devotee’ are not very frequent in the ŚrīBh, where they are mentioned slightly more than ten times, a portion of which in quotes (some of which from the BhG). By contrast, the Śaraṇāgatigadya mentions bhakti 19 times in its only 23 sentences, and adds further elements to it (such as Nārāyaṇa instead of Kṛṣṇa as the object of devotion, and the role of prapatti ‘self-surrender’, see immediately below). Does this mean that the Śaraṇāgatigadya is not by Rāmānuja and represents a further stage in the theological thought of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta? Alternatively, one might suggest that Rāmānuja addressed different audiences in his philosophical and in his religious works. In other words, the difference between the position of the ŚrīBh and that of the Śaraṇāgatigadya could be only due to the fact that the first develops a philosophical discourse about God, whereas the latter enacts the author’s relationship with Him.

In the ŚrīBh, bhakti is the (only) way to make sense of the previous obligations taught in the karma- and in the jñānamārga, which it therefore subsumes. For instance, the next two passages show how bhakti leads to the cessation of nescience and results in the attainment of brahman/God.

hṛdayaguhāyām upāsanaprakāram, upāsanasya ca parabhaktirūpatvam, upāsīnasya avidyā-vimokapūrvakaṃ brahmasamaṃ brahmānubhavaphalaṃ ca upadiśya upasaṃhṛtam | (ad 1.2.23)

I have taught and now sum up the modality of contemplation in the cave of one’s heart, the fact that veneration has the form of supreme bhakti, and the result, being the experience of brahman, which is tantamount to the brahman and is caused by the cessation of nescience in the one who venerates.

The word upāsana is even more clearly connected with the jñānamārga, insofar as Rāmānuja shows how the salvific knowledge which can defeat nescience must consist of upāsana, since a sheer cognition would not be enough (see Marlewicz 2010):

atrocyate – yad uktam – avidyānivṛttir eva mokṣaḥ, sā ca brahmavijñānād eva bhavati iti, tad abhyupagamyate. avidyānivṛttaye vedāntavākyair vidhitsitaṃ jñānaṃ kiṃrūpam iti vivecanīyam – kiṃ vākyād vākyārthajñānamātram, uta tanmūlam upāsanātmakaṃ jñānam iti. na tāvat vākyajanyaṃ jñānam […] ato vākyārthajñānād anyad eva dhyānopāsanādiśabdavācyaṃ jñānaṃ vedāntavākyair vidhitsatam (ŚrīBh ad 1.1.1)

In this regard we need to answer [to the Advaitins]: We accept what you said, namely that salvation consists just in the cessation of nescience and that this occurs due to the cognition of the brahman.
It is to be discussed what this knowledge intended to be enjoined by means of the statements of the Upaniṣads for the purpose of ceasing the nescience is like? Is it only the knowledge of the sentence-meaning [arising] from the sentence? Or else the knowledge which has the nature of the devout contemplation (upāsana), based on this (sentence-meaning)? Regarding the first alternative — this knowledge is not originating [merely] from the sentence [\dots] Therefore, the Upaniṣadic sentences enjoin something different than the knowledge of the sentence-meaning, namely a cognition expressed by words such as meditation and devout contemplation.

In the Gītābhāṣya, prapatti is introduced as a preliminary step before bhakti, but so powerful that it can substitute karma- and jñānamārga completely. This move could be due at least also to the second person perspective of the Arjuna-Kṛṣṇa dialogue, which could have oriented Rāmānuja’s understanding of bhakti and prapatti as soteriological means: Arjuna’s desperation makes Kṛṣṇa soothe him by suggesting him an immediate path.

The role of bhakti in the Śaraṇāgatigadya is in harmony with its role in the Gītābhāṣya, namely a preliminary step before undertaking bhaktiyoga. However, the Śaraṇāgatigadya has been traditionally interpreted as a narrative about Rāmānuja’s own act of śaraṇāgati and as enjoining primarily śaraṇāgati. Why?

In fact, the Śaraṇāgatigadya presents an interesting conundrum: It contains most of the themes which will later become standard in the later treatments of bhakti and prapatti, but in a poetic form.
The elements which are deemed to influence for a long time the Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta school, in particular, are:

• The presence of different ways of addressing God, as attested by the endless series of attributes in vv. 1, 5 etc. and explicitly thematised in v. 7 (as against the Northern Indian way to venerate God under one aspect, e.g., as child or as spouse)
• The role of Śrī as mediator: the author does not address directly Nārāyaṇa, but first her and only once her intermediation has taken place does he address Nārāyaṇa.
• The localisation of God, in this case in Śrīraṅga (see v. 19).
• The connection of kaiṅkarya `servitude’ and rati `love’ as opposed to a pure ritualistic servitude or to a differently flavoured love (vātsalya `tender love towards one’s child’, etc.).
• The reuse (non literal in the case of the Śaraṇāgatigadya, literal in later texts) of BhG 18.66 (later known as the caramaśloka `the final verse’) in the context of taking refuge.
• The reuse of other verses of the BhG (see vv. 13–15).
• Prapatti that appears to be performed as a speech act (performed in vv. 1–2 in regard to Śrī and then in v. 5 in regard to Nārāyaṇa) which is not repeatable (v. 6 in fact speaks of it in the past and v. 16 displays what was wished for in v. 1 as already accomplished).
• The author’s feeling the need to ask God to be forgiven for his endless shortcomings (in a way which reminds one of Yāmuna’s Stotraratna and of the Āḻvārs.
• The seeming predominance of prapatti over bhakti (partly against Rāmānuja’s other works, see above and below).
• The fact that nothing is needed to perform prapatti apart from the awareness of not having any other way left. One must feel desperate and derelict, with no other possible way left. In the terminology of the Śaraṇāgatigadya one needs to be ananyaśaraṇa `with no other refuge’.

The last element, namely the awareness of one’s wreckedness, was already present in the Āḻvārs’ poems and, more interestingly, also in Yāmuna’s Stotraratna. This brings one back to the complex relation between Rāmānuja and Yāmuna. The latter is addressed with respect twice (once in the maṅgala) in the former’s Vedārthasaṅgraha, but is not mentioned at all in Rāmānuja’s opus magnum, his ŚrīBh, which seems to focus only on inner-Vedānta issues (more on the “isolation” of the ŚrīBh below).

The most significant element to be discussed in regard to the role of the Śaraṇāgatigadya within Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta is the second to last one. Prapatti is clearly omnipresent in the Śaraṇāgatigadya, but nowhere is it said that it is a different path as bhakti (in fact, the sequence from v. 6 to vv. 13 to 15 appears to imply that bhakti must be accomplished once one has done prapatti). Thus, prapatti remains a preliminary element providing an easy entrance into bhakti, which remains the only salvific path. The later and typically Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta idea of prapatti as an independent path and as the only feasible one, alternative to the unrealistic path of bhakti, appears not to be there yet.

The first person perspective in the Śaraṇāgatigadya
Yāmuna’s Stotraratna is a hymn to God written from the first-person perspective and including the literary persona of its author as a deeply troubled devout, who needs help from God. Probably elaborating on this motif, the Śaraṇāgatigadya presents itself as an invocation to God by a similar kind of believer. The interesting innovation in this case is the fact that the author speaks first to Śrī and then to Nārāyaṇa and, more importantly, that both answer him. Śrī is addressed with many attributes, elaborating on her various aspects (v. 1). The author asks her to let him take refuge (v.2). Śrī accords that with only a few words (vv. 3–4). Next come long invocations (vv. 5–17, especially v. 5) to Nārāyaṇa, containing the request to take refuge in God and then to become a bhakta. In v. 5, God is addressed with a seemingly endless series of attributes, covering approximately 20 lines of Sanskrit, before the crisp request of taking refuge. Similarly, the author describes at length his inadequateness (v. 16). Are all these words just ornamental? Probably not. The long process of uttering God’s attributes and one’s shortcomings might be itself part of the salvific process of becoming aware of His greatness and of one’s inadequacy. In other words, by painfully listing one’s shortcomings the author (and, perhaps, his ideal audience) becomes aware of their all-pervasive nature, and of the fact that they are not emendable. The author says, in fact, that he will continue performing evil acts even in the future (v. 10) and that he therefore absolutely needs God’s help. Nārāyaṇa, unlike Śrī, answers at length (vv. 17–24). The answer is ultimately positive: the author’s desire will be fulfilled (v. 21). He should not doubt it (v. 22–23). Still, Nārāyaṇa comes to this positive result after having Himself enumerated the author’s shortcomings (in a list longer than the author’s one). That is, the wish is ultimately fulfilled, but not automatically and as the result of a compassion that Nārāyaṇa shows to be even more necessary than the author had thought. The narrative and dialogical structure of the text appear, therefore, to have a profound impact on the doctrine propounded, namely, prapatti. Without this structure, the text would occupy only a few lines, stating that once one has obtained prapatti through God’s mercy, one can become a bhakta. Within the structure, however, the same content gets a different connotation, insofar as both the request(s) and the response are delayed enough to show the difficulty of what has just been requested and the wondrous nature of God’s compassion.

Conclusions
Bhakti plays in the ŚrīBh an exclusive role and śaraṇāgati is not even mentioned. Apart from this fundamental difference, many elements in the Śaraṇāgatigadya are altogether absent in the ŚrīBh. These differences have been until now interpreted (see Lester and, for a different and more cautious opinion, Raman) as evidences against Rāmānuja’s authorship of the Śaraṇāgatigadya. At the same time, the Śaraṇāgatigadya is perfectly integrated in the Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta thought, both insofar as it summarises the key elements in its doctrine of prapatti and insofar as it contains several elements already evoked in the Āḻvārs’ hymns and even in Yāmuna’s ones. It is, in this sense, not surprising that Sudarśana Sūri and even more Veṅkaṭanātha saw in the Śaraṇāgatigadya a key text within their tradition (Veṅkaṭanātha’s commentary on the Śaraṇāgatigadya covers 50 pages, whereas the ones on the other gadyas only a few pages each). The case of the Śaraṇāgatigadya, in the sense, rather shows the relative isolation of the ŚrīBh from Śrī Vaiṣṇavism. This text lays the metaphysical foundations of the Viśiṣṭādvaita school, but remained distant from its devotional aspects (for instance, unlike the Gītābhāṣya and the Vedārthasaṅgraha, it does not salute Yāmuna in the initial maṅgala and rather evokes previous Vedānta teachers). Bhakti is discussed within the ŚrīBh as the only way to reach God, but from a detached, third-person perspective. The existential dimension of the difficulties hidden in this ideal picture start coming to the foreground in the Gītabhāṣya (still written from a third person perspective, but incorporating also the second-person perspective of Arjuna’s and Kṛṣṇa’s dialogue) and then more incisively so in the first person perspective of the Śaraṇāgatigadya.

A few random remarks:

1. “God” is an ambiguous term, in fact so ambiguous that I wonder why does not each study about philosophy of religion start with a discussion of what the author means by this word. I pragmatically distinguish between god as devatā ‘deity’ (a superhuman being which is better than a human one, but only insofar as s/he has the same qualities of a human being in higher degree, like the Greek and Roman deities of mythology), god as īśvara ‘Lord’ (the omniscient and omnipotent being of rational theology), god as brahman ‘impersonal being’ (the impersonal Absolute of most monisms, including Bradley’s one discussed by Guido Bonino) and god as bhagavat ‘personal God’ (the personal God one directly relates to in prayers, without necessarily caring for His/Her omnipotence or omniscience, but rather focusing on Him/Her as spouse, parent, child, etc.). Within this classification, Analytical Philosophy of Religion appears to focus on the īśvara aspect of God.
2. It is perhaps self-evident that this approach enables one to discuss logically about God and His/Her attributes. God is not a person one is in relation with (who could have whimsical desires etc.), but rather a perfect being who needs to be logically consistent. The only logical problem relates to God’s alterity, so that one could wonder how far can human logic reach before crashing against its boundaries. Nonetheless, unlike in the case of God as bhagavat, one needs not worry too much about His/Her lying completely outside the realm of thinkability. The mysterium can be understood as a challenge to think deeper something which, at a certain point (in the liberated state) we will all be able to grasp.
3. Consequently, I could listen to several interesting discussions on God’s temporality (does His/Her omnipotence include His/Her producing effects which are temporal, or is rather His/Her own activity itself which is temporal?) and on God’s knowability (having said that God is not fully knowable by living human beings, the purpose of rational theology (continued in analytical philosophy of religion) is to find out whether what we can know about Him/Her is consistent with what we know through revelation).
4. The main topic of the conference was, however, God’s being and its relation to His/Her qualities. Does God have wisdom? Or is wisdom (part of) God? The first definition leads to several problems, well-known to scholars of Sanskrit philosophy, insofar as one could always conceive a substance without its qualities (e.g., the soul in the state of liberation according to Nyāya) and, consequently, God’s relation to His/Her wisdom would end up being adventitious. By contrast, the second solution leads to a different problem: How can one conceive of God as “being” wisdom? Marco Damonte suggested using Frege’s distinction between sense and reference: All Divine attributes have the same referent (God), but different senses.
5. Summing up, it seems that the believers in a bhagavat do not gain so much out of their readings of rational theology or analytic philosophy of religion. This is, in Mario Micheletti‘s words “not foundational”: one can believe even without theology (and, one might add, vice versa: one can enjoy theological thinking even without believing). Nonetheless, rational theology can persuade believers that what they believe can be rationally believed (and it plays a very important role in the metaphysical and philosophical discourse).

Long story short, I am very grateful to the organisers, Daniele Bertini and Damiano Migliorini. My only suggestion for a further improvement would be to allow for even more time for discussion (perhaps with the help of some leading questions by the organisers themselves?), especially insofar as their audacity in putting together physicists, theologians and historians of philosophy made the attempt to find a common language even more challenging than usual.

Suganya has focussed so far on the Vaiṣṇava devotional poetry written in Tamil by the Āḻvārs, the poet-saints who were active in South India approximately between the 6th and the 9th c. AD. She also worked on the medieval Śrīvaiṣṇava commentaries on these works, typically written in Maṇipravāḷam, a sanskritised form of Tamil. She also started researching bhakti literature in general, i.e., by reading Śaiva texts.

E.F.: Tell us about your early formation.
S.A.: Tamil is my mother tongue, but I did not have any classical Tamil at school. I went to a French school, where I took (contemporary) Tamil lessons for a few years only. However, I kept on studying Tamil also with my mother. I then studied English literature as a graduate and post-graduate student.

E.F.: What brought you back to Tamil?
S.A.: At that point I had moved to Paris and was teaching there in the public high school. I got interested in Telegu at the INALCO (http://www.campusfrance.org/en/resource/inalco-institut-national-des-langues-et-civilisations-orientales-paris) and this brought me back to Tamil, so that I took an MA in classical Tamil. Dr. Gérard Colas, a Vaiṣṇava scholar with whom I had started working, introduced me to Jean-Luc Chevillard and he introduced me to Eva Wilden. I did my PhD with her and I learnt a strong philological method through her and the Classical Tamil Summer Seminaries (http://www.efeo.fr/base.php?code=534) she conducts every year.

E.F.: You are clearly interested also in the literary aspect of your translation. Has this interested been fuelled by your studies in English literature?
S.A.: Yes, but not only. Eva too helped me with that, since she produced many translations. With each translation, there is a wish to create a basis for further studies, for the sake of which we produce glossaries in order to check how semantic uses and grammar have evolved. So, translating systematically goes with glossary-making and this enables us to check the evolution of language.
Personally, I make two translations, a first one which is only technical, and a further one that is reader-friendly, but never compromises with the meaning. If possible, I also try to make it beautiful.

E.F.: How did you manage to find enough time and money to make your Tamil studies possible?
S.A.: I was working as a school teacher in the Parisian region and thus I could manage to pay the French fees, which are very reasonable anyway.

E.F.: How did you manage to complete your PhD while working full time?
S.A.: This involved a lot of preparing and a lot of responsibility, since I could only work in the evenings and during the weekends. Still, I managed to complete my PhD in 5 years. In this connection, I have to say that in the previous ten years I had explored all possible aspects of teaching and I really wanted to get out of that, go and explore what is beyond that. My PhD became my hobby, I took the same pleasure in doing it as for a hobby. It would have been great to have had a scholarship for my PhD, but at the same time having a full time job was also highly motivating, although I was permanently tired and overworked. This way, you make the most of whatever little time you have and you become organised because you do not have any other choice.

E.F.: What came after your PhD? How did you start your academic career?
S.A.: I started working as a postdoctoral fellow for the NETamil project in Pondichéry in September 2014. The project will go on until February 2019.

E.F.: Which aspects of the academic life do you enjoy more? What bothers you more?
S.A.: I would like to keep on doing research, but I do not mind teaching, as long as this is related with my research.

As for the negative aspects, non-constructive criticism bothers me, but if you are passionate enough about research, you should use these criticisms as fuel to light your passion instead of taking them as water and allowing them to extinguish it. I learnt that you can feed your passion from such destructive remarks. In general, in order to do research you have to be passionate enough not to give up at the first sign of bad weather.

E.F.: Tell us more about the NETAMIL project as an example of a collaborative project.
S.A.: There can be possessiveness (about one’s field of research for example) and envy in this field like in any other, but my NetTamil colleagues are exempt from such non-constructive attitude and behaviour because of the following reasons: 1. each has his/her own field, so they could not really tread on another’s field. 2. even when there are people working on partly overlapping fields, they believe that working together is good for all parties, the results are better and the learning process which is initiated would not be imitable on one’s own. They in this way empower each other instead of taking each other down. And the field is so vast, that people just need to work together.

We have a shared goal: classical Tamil studies should get the right kind of attention and they should be grounded on a solid basis. The former goal depends on the latter: We are doing solid groundwork, upon which proper research on this field can be done.

Eva Wilden, who started the NETamil project, greatly encourages reading together regularly, as she believes in working together she even reads with people not even connected with the EFEO, so the idea is spreading out of its traditional boundaries.

The beginning of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta as an independent school are usually connected to Rāmānuja (traditional dates 1017–1137), both in India and in Western scholarship (e.g., in the work of the eminent Viśiṣtādvaita Vedānta scholar and former director of the IKGA institute Gerhard Oberhammer). Rāmānuja was indeed the first one to write a new commentary on the Brahmasūtra, thus robustly collocating his school within Vedānta. Again both Indian and Western scholars agree also on the pivotal role of Veṅkaṭanātha (also known with the honorific title of Vedānta Deśika ‘teacher of Vedānta’, traditional dates 1269–1370). My research (see, e.g., Freschi’s Veṅkaṭanātha/Vedānta Deśika, forthcoming on IEPh) suggests that this role is even more important than it has been recognised so far. Veṅkaṭanātha’s systematising efforts have not just re-shaped Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta but, have in fact, shaped it into the school we are familiar with now. It was Veṅkaṭanātha, for instance, to include the heritage of the Tamil saint poets, the Āḻvārs, within Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta, and to recognise as authentic the works on devotion attributed to Rāmānuja. It is indeed true that traces of each of these tendencies can be detected also before Veṅkaṭanātha, but the very idea of looking for such faint traces testifies of how the concept of what should belong to Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta has been influenced by Veṅkaṭanātha’s own philosophical synthesis. In other words, it is because of this synthesis, that both devotees and scholars agree about the importance of devotion, of the Āḷvārs’ sentimental expression of a self-oblivious love for God, of Pāñcarātra ritualism, of the Pūrva Mīmāṃsā hermeneutical tools etc., within Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta.

Thus, any appreciation of Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta must focus on the impact of Veṅkaṭanātha, since it is only through such an analysis that one will be able to recognise innovations and continuities in “Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta” before and after him.

Veṅkaṭanātha was a very prolific author, to whom more than one hundred works in three different languages have been attributed (no reason for scepticism concerning this attribution is known to me). As for his philosophical works, Srinivasa Chari has started some decades ago a series of monographs dedicated to a paraphrase and analysis of many of them. More recently, a monograph on Veṅkaṭanātha’s concept of time by another researcher working at the IKGA, namely Marcus Schmücker, will soon be released. Nothing at all, by contrast, has been dedicated to Veṅkaṭanātha’s confrontation and eventual absorption of the much more ancient and influential school of Pūrva Mīmāṃsā within Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta, although the link to Pūrva Mīmāṃsā can be read (see Freschi’s Śrī Vaiṣṇavism: The making of a theology) as the key factor distinguishing Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta from the other concurrent school within Vedānta, namely Advaita Vedānta. Against Advaita Vedānta, Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta and Pūrva Mīmāṃsā share key tenets, such as the belief in personal souls, in the relevance of following Vedic prescriptions even once one has surrendered to God, etc.

(this post is meant to be a general introduction to the topic, accessible to non-initiated readers. Should you find something in it not understandable, please let me know with a comment below.)

This seems to be one of the moot issues between the two currents within the form of Vaiṣṇavism later to be known as Śrīvaiṣṇavism, since Piḷḷai Lokācārya (13th c.) stresses that loving without reason is superior to loving with a reason, just like Sītā’s ungrounded love for Rāma is superior to that of Lakṣmaṇa, who loves Rāma for his good qualities (see Mumme 1988, p. 150).

Rāma between Lakṣmaṇa and Sītā (r.)

In fact, one might add, Lakṣmaṇa would stop loving Rāma if he were no longer good, or might even start loving someone else, if that other person had better qualities than Rāma. Thus, one who loves with reasons is like a mercenary who is ready to serve a new warlord. Similarly, one might further speculate, one who loves God for His qualities is in fact in love with the qualities, not with God as a person. By contrast, when one loves a person, even her defects seem attractive to one.

This all makes sense, perhaps even a lot of sense. Yet… this means that there is no intrinsic reason to say that loving God is better than loving a demonic being who demands from us that we kill and torture living beings. If we love the latter, we will encounter consequences among human beings, such as jail, and possibily also in the after-life, since God is more powerful than demonic beings and will punish the people whe are not His devotees. Yet, there is no reason whence loving God should in itself be a reason for distinguishing better people. In fact, theoretically there might even be people who love a saintly being who is even ‘better’ (more compassionate, for instance) than God. And yet, they would not be compensated for choosing the more morally perfect being, since God would only compensate His devotees…

What is then the alternative to mercenary love and indiscriminate love for whomsoever?

A Sanskritist-historian, Anand Venkatkrishnan, opened his research on the family of Āpadeva in 16th–17th c. Banaras to this wider issue in a recent article published on South Asian History and Culture*. The backbone of the article is Anand’s research on the production of the intellectuals belonging to the “Deva” family, several of which have been intensely prolific and have even played an important role in the Sanskrit intellectual history. Anand seems to read Sanskrit well and with pleasure, given that he freely travels through genres in order to reconstruct an intellectual flair rather than splitting hairs on specific doctrinal problems. Even more valuable is the fact that he broadens the scope of his research to also Marathi texts —the Deva family moved to Banaras from Mahārāṣṭra. Of particular interest in this connection is a genealogical reconstruction by Anantadeva II (“fl. 1650 CE”), where he speaks of the glory of his family starting with

[…] vedavedīsamanvitaḥ |
śrīkṛṣṇabhaktimān eka ekanāthābhidho dvijaḥ ||

A brahmin, fully endowed with Vedic knowledge,
A devotee of Krishna: Ekanātha by name. (p. 150)

This Ekanātha should be identified, maintains Anand (against Keune and Edgerton and with Pollock, O’Hanlon and Kane) with the Marathi poet-saint Eknāth (latter halfth of the 16th c.) and this throws light on the interesting mix of bhakti and scholarship in the Deva family. The article was perhaps too short to allow Anand to dwell deeper in the issue and discuss, e.g., the frequence of the name Ekanātha in Mahārāṣṭra —one might imagine that many people might have been named after the saint Eknāth— or the reasons for a short mention of such an illustrious predecessor in Anantadeva II’s genealogical reconstruction, as if he were nothing more than a normal devotee. Nonetheless, it remains clear that the family linked an intellectual profile with a bhakti commitment. This mixture is prominent in Anantadeva, who wrote a drama, the Kriṣṇabhakticandrikānāṭaka, in which a Mīmāṃsaka and a Vedāntin discuss and are last converted by a devotee of Kṛṣna. Of particular interest to me is the fact that at times the Mīmāṃsaka seems to be an ally of the devotee:

buddhiṃ parasya bhettuṃ kevalam etad hi pāṇḍityam || 93 ||

Which I would translate plainly as an attack of the Vedāntin as if he were no more than an eristic Buddhist:

In fact, [your] scholarship only consists in this: You destroy the ideas of your opponent [without establishing anything on your own]!

Anand’s translation is slightly different in its first part (honestly, I can not understand the English form of his first clause, that’s why I offered a different translation):

Some scholarship that is: you only deconstruct the ideas of others. (p. 152)

The alliance of Mīmāṃsā and devotion against the Advaita Vedānta approach might be a direction worth exploring further. Anand also hints at the prehistory of this alliance, mentioning a verse of Kumārila’s Bṛhaṭṭīkā quoted by Anantadeva II:

nanu niḥśreyasaṃ jñānād bandhahetor na karmanaḥ |
naikasmād api tat kiṃ tu jñānakarmasamuccayāt ||

‘Surely the highest good arises from knowledge, not from action, that cause of bondage.’**
‘No: It arises nor from one [of these two], but from a synthesis of knowledge and action.’ (p. 158)

According to Sheldon Pollock (which is very present in the theorethical framework of the article), the rise of theistic Mīmāṃsā “produced no systemwide change”. Is this judgement accurate although it necessarily oversimplifies things?

*I am grateful to Anand for having sent me a copy of his article.

(Full disclosure: I am myself very interested in the issue of the links between Mīmāṃsā and theism. After my 2012 book (on a theist Mīmāṃsaka), I have recently published a discussion of the link of Mīmāṃsā and devotion in South India in Puṣpikā 3 (ed. by Robert Leach and Jessie Pons). You can read an early draft of it for free here).

Shail Mayaram, in the introduction of a book dedicated to Daya Krisna and Ramchandra Gandhi, Philosophy as Samvad and Svaraj adds some interesting information about the saṃvādas which have no written record:

A dialogue on bhakti attempted to universalize the phenomenon of devotion and encourage thinking about it philosophically. A dialogue on Śilpaśāstra was held in Amber, Jaipur and brought together traditional sthapatis and architects. I […] was fortunate to be present at the dialogue on Kāshmir [sic!] Śaivism (with a special session in an open ground in Gulmarg). […] Subsequently, two dialogues were held in Lucknow and Hydearabad.

Within the same volume, Mustafa Khawaja reproduces the letter of invitation sent by Daya Krishna to scholars of Islamic philosophy. Daya Krishna predominantely wrote in English, but he was well aware of the risk of neglecting other languages. Thus, the saṃvādas were open to scholars speaking in different languages (as attested also by the proceedings mentioned above) and Daya Krishna was very keen to listen also to marginal philosophical traditions (such as that of the Islamic theologians speaking Urdū). Also the invitation letter is written in two languages and is full of open questions to be debated.
Nonetheless, this openness did not always work. Mayaram writes:

I remember the meeting of the scholars’ group including Daya Krishna, Ram Chandra Dwivedi, Arindam Chakrabarti and Mukund Lath with Laxman Joo, then celebrated as one of the greatest living exponents of the school of philosophy that is popularly known as Kashmir Saivism [I would rather speak of the Pratyabhijñā school, EF]. Laxman Joo responded to their questions with complete silence. […] After their departure, he asked Bettina Bäumer, yeh nāstik kaun the [Who were those non-believers?]

This is an interesting point, because dialogue cannot be imposed on someone, its very “democratic” structure makes this impossible. Thus, what to do with those who do not want to speak? Or is dialogue among people not sharing the same presuppositions (e.g., the same religious praxis) impossible?

On Daya Krishna and his volume on bhakti, see this post and this one respectively. On English as the predominant language, some interesting comments can be read at this post and at the linked ones. I am grateful to Elise Coquereau for sending me a copy of Shail Mayaram’s article.

[…] we have to develop a living relationship with India’s part and to treat it as living […]. [W]hen one treats the traditions as living, one criticises them. One does not venerate them; one does not treat them as sacrosanct (p. 5).

I hope that this is enough to explain why reading Daya Krishna is a worthwile and enlivening enterprise, both for philosophers and for scholars of Sanskrit philosophy.
His Bhakti: A contemporary discussion is the report of a discussion held in Vṛndāvana on the possibility of using bhakti ‘devotion to God’ as an intellectual frame. Is it possible to turn upside down the anti-intellectualism of (part of the) bhakti tradition and see it as an intellectual enterprise?

Is there such a thing as a philosophical tradition of bhakti in India and if so what is it? (p. 9)

Now, if I were to answer, I would think of Veṅkaṭanātha’s philosophical poems and his way of finding a way to speak of bhakti in Mīmāṃsā terms (the sacrificial apūrva, the ‘what has to be done’, is equated to pleasing God). I would also recall the work of Rūpa and Sanātana Gosvāmī, so that it almost seems to me that the answer is too clearly affirmative. It is moreover one of the fields where one can look for ethical reflections and finally find them (ethics is usually not a separate branch of knowledge in classical Indian philosophy).
In fact, one of the participants of the debate, K.V. Archak (about whom I do not know anything else and welcome suggestions by the readers, perhaps especially by Indian ones) took a position quite similar to Anselmus’ credo ut intelligam, intelligo ut credam:

भक्त्या ज्ञानं ततो भक्तिः
Through bhakti, there is knowledge and from knowledge there is bhakti (p. 19).

1. One can treat it as if it were Western philosophy and discuss, e.g., of monotonic or non-monotonic logic in Nyāya,
2. One can deal with it in its own terms, e.g., by describing the inner-Mīmāṃsā controversy about whether one has to study the Veda because of the prescription to study it or because of the prescription to teach it (since, in order for someone to teach, someone else must be learning from him),
3. One can attempt a compromise, looking for how a certain topic is configured in Sanskrit philosophy.

In the case of the topic of free will, it is hard to avoid the third approach. In fact, whereas the topic of free will is one of the major Leitmotivs running throughout the whole history of Western Philosophy, on a pair with ontological issues, it is not formulated as such in Sanskrit philosophy (see Freschi in the volume edited by Dasti and Bryant). Nonetheless, one can look for implicit treatments of it in theological contexts and in in philosophy of action ones.

Veṅkaṭanātha (also known with the honorific title Vedānta Deśika, traditional dates 1269–1370) is one of the most prolific and multi-faceted personalities of Indian philosophy. He attempted to create a philosophic system which should have broadened Rāmānuja’s Viśiṣṭādvaita Vedānta and make it into a more comprehensive philosophical system. Due to its ambition of comprehensiveness, it is legitimate to expect from Veṅkaṭanātha’s system that it deals also with questions relating to the nature of action and of our contribution to it, and, thus, ultimately with the issue of free will.

What do we have at Veṅkaṭanātha’s background?

On the one hand, Veṅkaṭanātha’s relation towards (Pūrva) Mīmāṃsā and Vedānta (and other Indian philosophical systems), on the other his relation with the Vaiṣṇava religious literature he considers authoritative (Pāñcarātra, hymns of the Āḻvārs). Given the fact that most researches on Indian philosophy focus on Sanskrit texts, one runs the risk to neglect the latter component, which is predominant in Veṅkaṭanātha’s non-Sanskrit production.

The Mīmāṃsā background
The Mīmāṃsā school did not explicitly deal with the topic of free will. Nonetheless, its theory of action presupposes that there are real agents and that these can be held responsible for their actions. In this sense, its concept of duty and of responsibility takes free will as self-assumed.

The Vaiṣṇava background
The Vaiṣṇava texts follow a different path, since many of them emphasise the worthlessness of the poet (the Āḻvār) or of his poetical figura (often a woman) and his/her desperate need of God’s mercy, which is the only thing which could save him/her. Interestingly enough, even in these texts, free will is not denied, but rather superseded by God’s intervention. The protagonist is desperate because of her/his sins and states that s/he cannot achieve anything on his/her own. The possibility to achieve salvation through other ways (most notably, through the bhaktimārga, which is based on one’s love for God) is not ruled out. One could theoretically be able to love God and to be saved through that. De facto, however, the protagonists of the Āḻvārs’ hymns feel unable even to do that. Even their love is not perfect, only their surrender is.

Thus, free will seems to remain a pre-condition. But God’s grace can supersede it and save even unworthy ones. Or do Tamil-conversant readers have a better appreciation of what is at stake?

(cross-posted also on the Indian Philosophy blog)