The tribes and castes of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh, Volume 1 (of 4)Crooke, William
History
The tribes and castes of the North-Western Provinces and Oudh, Volume 1 (of 4)
Crooke, William
Caste -- India -- History; Hindus -- India; Tribes -- India -- History
presence of the Deity; while the Vadakalai regard it as infinite and
uncreated, and in itself a means (upâya) by which salvation can be
assured. The second point of difference is parallel to the controversy
between the Calvinists and Armenians in the Christian Church. The
Vadakalai, with the latter, insist on the concomitance of the human
will in the work of salvation, and represent that the soul lays hold of
God as a young monkey which grasps its mother in order to be conveyed
to a place of safety. The Tenkalai, on the contrary, maintain the
irresistibility of divine grace and the utter helplessness of the soul
till it is seized and carried off by its mother like a kitten to be
conveyed to a place of safety. From these two curious but apt
illustrations the one doctrine is known as markata kishora nyâya, the
other, as marjala kishora nyâya, the “young monkey theory,” or the
“kitten theory.”
[The Nimbârak sect.] 4. Of the Nimbârak Mr. Growse [196] writes:—“The
word means ‘the sun in a nîm tree,’ a curious designation which is
explained as follows:—The founder of the sect, an ascetic, by name
Bhaskarachârya, had invited a Bairâgi to dine with him, but
unfortunately delayed to fetch his guest until after sunset. Now the
holy man was forbidden by the rules of his order to eat except in the
daytime, and was greatly afraid that he would be compelled to practise
an unwilling abstinence; but at the solicitation of his host the Sun
God, Sûraj Nârâyan, descended from the Nîm tree, under which the repast
was spread, and continued beaming upon them until the claims of hunger
were fully satisfied. Thenceforth the saint was known by the name of
Nîmbarka or Nimaditya. Their doctrines, so far as they are known, are
of a very enlightened character. Thus their doctrine of salvation by
faith is thought by many scholars to have been directly derived from
the Gospel; while another article in their creed, which is less known
but is equally striking in its divergence from ordinary Hindu
sentiment, is the continuance of conscious individual existence in a
future world, when the highest reward of the good will be not
extinction, but in the enjoyment of the visible presence of the
divinity whom they have served while on earth: a state, therefore,
absolutely identical with heaven, as our theologists define it. The one
infinite and invisible God, who is the only real existence, is, they
affirm, the only proper object of man’s devout contemplation. But as
the incomprehensible is utterly beyond the reach of human faculties, He
is partially manifested for our behoof in the book of Creation, in
which natural objects are the letters of the universal alphabet, and
express the sentiments of the Divine Author. A printed page, however,
conveys no meaning to any one but a scholar, and is liable to be
misunderstood even by him; so, too, with the book of the world. And
thus it matters little whether Râdhâ and Krishna were ever real
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