PART FOUR
EROTIC AND MATERNAL LOVE IN RELIGIOUS CONTEXTS

Six
Krishna's Consuming Passions
Food as Metaphor and Metonym for Emotion at Mount Govardhan

Paul M. Toomey

Here we have a representation of highest an. This beautiful image shows us the principle of nourishment, on which the entire world relies and which penetrates all nature.
—Goethe, "Concerning Myron's Cow"

South Asianists have recently begun to look more closely at categories of emotion and emotional experience in general in Indian bhakti traditions (Lynch, this volume; Hardy 1983). In this chapter I will examine similarities and differences in the way emotions are culturally constructed in three such traditions at Mount Govardhan. Govardhan is a major pilgrimage center in Mathura District, Uttar Pradesh, that area of North India renowned as the birthplace and earthly pastureland of Lord Krishna (hence the name Braj, or "pastureland," which Hindus give to this region). The traditions are the Vallabhite and Chaitanyaite sectarian traditions and the nonsectarian Braj folk tradition.^[1] I This discussion will follow in part directions of other anthropologists who have used a cultural constructionist approach to study emotional life in settings outside India (Abu-Lughod 1986; Lutz 1985, 1988; Potter 1988; Rasaldo 1980; Schieffelin 1976).

Bhakti devotionalism presupposes a culturally specific ideology of emotion, one adapted by medieval theologians from the rasa theory of emotion (see Raghavan 1970; Lynch, introduction to this volume; Bennett, Marglin, and Brooks, this volume). Bhakti selects out of rasa emotional theory only those emotions that are patterned after identifiable human relationships (e.g., mother-child, lover-beloved, fraternal love, etc.). Devotees' experience of Krishna is therefore conceived in terms of one or another of several possible dyadic human relationships; each expresses love and reciprocity. Much has been written about the function of these emotions as aesthetic structures in Braj drama and poetry (Bryant 1978), but there are far fewer explanations of their meaning and significance in the everyday lives and social experience of Krishna worshipers (Bennett 1983).

Efforts of South Asianists to account for the historical significance of bhakti emotionalism rely heavily on the motivational explanations of Freud and

other psychoanalytic theorists (Entwistle 1987:96-103; Hein 1982, 1986; O'Connell 1976). In their view emotionalism represented a response by Hindus———a retreat into either collective fantasy or subjective mysticism—to Muslim control of more rational forms of social and political power in North India. This sort of social psychoanalysis overlooks entirely the problem of how the indigenous system of emotions operates in this cultural context. This analysis not only focuses on the latter as a problem for discussion, but also accepts the constructionist view, put forth by Rasaldo (1984) and others (Lutz 1986), that emotions are culturally constituted, shared, generalized in a social network, and reflective of a cultural knowledge system through which actors in a particular cultural milieu interpret experience.

Of particular interest in the following discussion is devotees' use of food as signifier for emotion. In this culture food is closely tied to sociability within religious communities and to devotees' relationship with the deity. Many vocabulary words for emotion are gastronomic terms. Food metaphors and images, which proceed logically from these key words, also conceptualize emotion. These meanings are then produced and reproduced in cultural practices such as the ritual act of offering food to Krishna. This connection between food and emotion is undoubtedly subject to a greater degree of elaboration at Govardhan than at other Braj pilgrimage places because food and food symbolism play central roles in the myth associated with the hill and the practices of pilgrims who visit the site.

The first section of the chapter explores this link between food and emotion in key words for emotion and in metaphors and images common to Krishna stories and legends. Analysis turns to food rituals in the second half of the chapter, most specifically, to the manner in which the emotion favored for worship in each tradition shapes the pragmatic codes and aesthetic parameters of its food rituals. Data presented should indicate that food beliefs and practices objectify emotion and, as such, constitute emotional experience for members of this culture. This premise follows Bruner's (1986) remark that experience structures expression and expressions in turn structure experience. Applying this insight to the present case, I may further conclude that just as culturally constructed emotions act as sensibilities that inform ritual expressions, so, in the final estimate, they cannot be experienced without these same sensorial expressions.

The Setting

Mount Govardhan, whose name literally translated is "increaser of cattle," is a small hillock some five miles long and only one hundred feet high. The hillock is located in the southwest corner of Braj, the pilgrimage region just south of Delhi celebrated as the birthplace of Lord Krishna and the location of his childhood play on earth (lila). The hill is worshiped by pilgrims as

Krishna's natural form (svarupa) and is a central attraction in the 168-mile pilgrimage route (Caurasi Kos Parikrama) that encircles the region. A large number of towns, shrines, and natural sites, arranged along this route, commemorate the deity's miraculous exploits (Lynch 1988; Mital 1966). This proliferation of sites and the active and colorful pilgrimage culture that continues in the 1980s have their beginnings in the devotional resurgence that swept North India in the sixteenth century. As a result of this resurgence, local Braj culture was profoundly influenced by the languages and cultures of distant regions whose saintly representatives came and settled here in the late medieval period.

Because the hill was one of the few identifiable markers of Krishna's divine play on earth, as it was described in textual accounts, it attracted numerous philosopher saints who sought to establish and strengthen Vaishnava sects (sampradaya) by visiting the region. In the sixteenth century, Vallabha from South India and Chaitanya from Bengal came to Govardhan, where they established sectarian enclaves at either end of the hill.

The Vallabhite sect, which continues to maintain an active center at Jatipura to the south of the hill, is a householder sect, with no ascetic subbranches. Gosvamis, the sect's preceptors, arc lineal descendants of Vallabha, the founder saint; with few exceptions, most are Tailang Brahmans from Andhra Pradesh. Initiates in the sect arc also householders, many of whom belong to the predominantly mercantile castes of Gujarat and adjacent areas of western India and whose families have had connections with the sect for several generations. The sect has evolved a highly ceremonial style of devotional worship that focuses on iconic images of Krishna housed in special temples (haveli). Haveli are also believed to be the homes of gosvami preceptors, with whose persons temple images arc closely linked in sectarian ideology. Because the sect's preeminent icon, Sri Nathji, appeared to Vallabha at Jatipura, this town is especially sacred in the sect. Even after the icon was removed to Nathdwara in Rajasthan, following the emperor Aurangzeb's sack of Braj in A.D. 1670, Jatipura remained an important center of pilgrimage for members of this sect. A lengthy stop at Jatipura and the presentation of resplendent offerings of food at the side of Mount Govardhan is one highlight of the sect's pilgrimage through the region each year.

By contrast, the Chaitanyaite sect in Braj, and elsewhere in India, exhibits tension in its internal social organization between householder and ascetic ritual specialists in the sect, both of whom can be found at various places around Braj. Although the sect's householder Brahmans, also known as gosvamis, preside over the lavish ceremonial temples in nearby Brindaban, Radhakund, to the north of the hill, had historically been the provenance of the sect's many ascetics and monks, who have lived there in retreat since Chaitanya discovered the town beneath paddy fields. Addressing the issue of structural tensions in a sect with a comparable social organization to

Chaitanyaites, the Swaminarayan sect of Gujarat, Williams (1984:25-57) concludes that it is not uncommon for sects that have both householder and ascetic ritual specialists in their folds to develop different, often competitive, factions over time. Added to this, the presence of an international movement such as ISKCON (International Society for Krishna Consciousness), with links to the Chaitanyaite sect and a large modern temple in Brindaban (Brooks, this volume), makes the Chaitanyaites considerably more heterogeneous than the Vallabhites.

The town of Radhakund clusters on the banks of two holy ponds (kunda^[*]) believed to have hosted an aquatic tryst by Krishna and his principal consort, Radha, whose love relationship is the focus of worship in the sect. Pilgrims come to Radhakund for extended periods of time to chant, to listen to textual accounts of Radha and Krishna's love play, and to meditate with the large number of monks and widows who live there. Icon worship and large temples are not noticeable features in the style of worship practiced in this Chaitanyaite center.

Popular, that is nonsectarian, worship of Krishna is carried on by local Brahman priests (panda^[*]) and pilgrims in Govardhan town, at the hill's midpoint. This, the largest of the hill's three main towns, with a population of twelve thousand, is conveniently located on the major bus route running from Mathura to Dig. The popular tradition cuts across the sectarian traditions in many respects; thus, neither pilgrims nor local priests formally belong to any sect. According to local tradition, ritual worship of the hill is the exclusive domain of resident Brahmans, and pilgrims who belong to sects, much like other pilgrims, have their own priests in the town for this purpose. The only exception to this are Vallabhites; they prefer to worship the hill down the road at Jatipura where local Brahmans are initiates of their sect.

Food as Metaphor and Metonym for Emotion

On a linguistic analogy, A. K. Ramanujan (1981) describes bhakti as a series of religious shifts that ultimately dominated, crossed, and transformed older linguistic and cultural forms. There were shifts from noniconic to iconic worship; from rituals, in which a plot of ground was cordoned off and made into sacred space by Vedic experts in a consecration rite, to worship in temples localized, named, and open to almost the entire range of Hindu society; from belief in a nonpersonal absolute to the gods of mythology with faces, complexions, families, and feelings; and from passive modes like hearing and watching to active modes like speaking, dancing, touching, singing, and eating. Prema, "other serving love," the final goal of which is rasa, a bliss-filled union with the divine, replaced the earlier maryada, concerned with int llectual knowledge and ritual propriety. In Vaishnava thought and practice, Krishna became the integrative center of an aesthetic world view that called

for devotees' emotional involvement in Krishna's eternal pastimes (lila) recounted in sacred texts. As the focus of worship, Krishna is a personal, absolute being who manifests himself in mythic exploits with other players—his foster parents, friends (gopa), and female consorts (gopi)—in temple images (murti), in the many pilgrimage places that dot the Braj landscape, and in the human heart.

The Vaishnavite theory of emotional religious experience is based on an ingenious adaptation by Rupa Goswami and others (De 1961), of the rasa theory of Sanskrit poetics (Raghavan 1976). Rasa theory, as put forth by Bharata and Abhinavagupta, is a poesis aimed at "emotion recollected": according to this notion, the poetic word has a suggestive power capable of transforming bhava, basic human moods or sentiments, into rasa, emotions evoked in a listener or spectator that are aesthetically distanced and more pristine and rarefied than any feeling derived from direct sensual perception or experience (Masson and Pathwardhan 1969). In Krishna bhakti, bhava, and rasa are reinterpreted, shorn of their aesthetic distance; emphasis is placed, instead, on emotional experience of Krishna and its spontaneous expression (raganugabhakti) in the devotee's life. Bhava then becomes the devotee's worshipful attitude; rasa is the joyful experience of the love relationship between a human being and Krishna. Krishna is conceived of as the fount of rasa: he is the object that is relished (rasa), the subject who relishes, (rasika), the embodiment of all moods, and the giver of the experience of moods to others (Redington 1983:11).

The nine emotions of classical aesthetic theory (Raghavan 1970, 1976) are collapsed into five: where the devotee views Krishna with awe and humility in santa bhava, he is the supreme being; in dasya bhava, a lord and master to be served; in sakhya bhava, cowherder friend and equal; in vatsalya bhava, a child to be adored and cared for by its mother; and, in madhurya bhava (also referred to as srngara^[*] bhava, the sweet emotion), a female cowmaiden enraptured by Krishna's seductive beauty. The devotee chooses, in accordance with his emotional capacities and the help of a guru (Haberman 1985), to emulate the emotions of one or another of the characters who participate in Krishna's mythic play. Most worshipers at Govardhan identify with the maternal and erotic sentiments; sentiments of reverential awe and slavish love are more characteristic of Shrivaishnavas and Ramanandis, relatively small sects in Braj. It is difficult to convey through simple and misleading English terms the complex meanings assigned to both the identities of mother, female lover, slave, and so on in this culture and the manner in which each form of person-hood is conceived, constituted, and experienced emotionally. Moreover, a systematic play of differences (or différance, to borrow Derrida's phrase) works in the various interpretations folk and sectarian traditions give to the same set of emotions. To cite but one example of this, in the case of the erotic emotion, the Radhavallabha sect, based primarily in Brindaban, believes

that Radha is Krishna's own wife (svakiya); whereas, for Chaitanyaites, a fundamental aspect of Radha's love stems from the fact that she is married to someone else (parakiya) but is irresistably drawn, against all social conventions, into an amorous liaison with Krishna.

Metaphors and metonyms that allude to food and the sense of taste play an important role in conceptualizing emotion and emotional experience.^[2] Many key terms in classical aesthetic theory and medieval devotional theory patterned after it are derived from gastronomy. Lakoff and Johnson's (1980) experientialist theory of metaphor takes the position that many abstract concepts such as time or emotion are grasped by other concepts understood in clearer, more palpable terms, by means of spatial orientations, objects, or, in this case, food.^[3] Metaphors, these authors conclude, enable speakers of a linguistic culture to understand one domain in terms of another. Although most of the authors' illustrations are drawn from English and other Western languages, their explanation may nevertheless help us to understand better the use of culinary metaphors and ritual food practices in bhakti to generate emotional experience.^[4]

Let me review briefly some culinary metaphors implicit in Krishna ideology and the entailments that follow from them. First, the term rasa itself means juice, sap, or liquid. In the broad semantic sense, rasa refers to the flavor, taste, or essence of something that can be extracted and experienced in various ways. Devotees consistently make statements of the sort, "I hunger after the sweet nectar of devotion." Here a simile likens devotional experience to a fruit filled with nectar (rasa) that is drunk by those connoisseurs (rasika) who have acquired a taste for the beautiful (bhavuka); Krishna himself is often said to be raso vai saha, the consummate experiencer of his own essence, which is rasa. Here, as in gastronomy, whence the terms rasa, ruci (taste or liking, used in this context to refer to a person's spiritual inclination) and rasika (meaning both gourmet and a sensitive person, a connoisseur) derive, experience is in the experiencer.

Vaishnavas also believe that just as hunger is a necessary condition for the enjoyment of delicious food, so is the desire for rasa a necessary condition for its enjoyment. Krishna's ever-growing desire for relishing new forms of rasa—which is believed to set the devotional drama in motion—is not symptomatic of imperfection but flows spontaneously from his full, generous nature. The notion that love is of necessity spontaneous—and cannot be achieved solely through the traditional paths of knowledge or ritual discipline—is expressed through culinary metaphors and images in a number of places in Krishna mythology and folklore. In stories of famous saints, for example, Krishna usually makes initial contact by appearing to the saint in a dream, sharing food, and leaving behind an image or icon. Saints are usually simple people (more often than not of the lower castes), but Krishna prefers their victuals—given in a sincere, straightforward manner—to the offerings

of sanctimonious Brahman priests serving in his temples. Strains of this same antiritualism come through in episodes of Hariray's (1905) Vallabhite chronicle Sri Govardhannathji ke Prakatya^[*] ki Varta, where Krishna runs away from the majestic splendor of his temple/palace to eat with cowherders and saints living alone in the wilds of Braj.^[5] In stories surrounding the miraculous appearance of Krishna's icons, the whereabouts of images are often signaled to locals by the strange behavior of cows who shed streams of milk on the ground beneath which the images lay hiding.^[6] Finally, in Krishna myths and legends the spontaneous outpouring of love between Krishna and his devotees is frequently symbolized by milk, a signifier for rase. However angry Yashoda might be with her foster son, Krishna, she cannot stop her breasts from overflowing with milk at the sight of him; this poignant image is found in much Braj poetry.

The entailments of these and similar metaphors are too numerous to explore here, but I will mention a few salient examples. For example, theologians explain the manner in which Krishna's divine energy is refracted in different basic human emotions, by comparing it to the different tastes rainwater produces when mixed with different substances: "rainwater mixed with milk tastes sweet, with amalaki (a fruit of the tree Emblic Myrobolam) sour, in some vegetables salty, in pepper pungent, with other substances bitter and astringent, and so on" (Kapoor 1977:45). Another more common metaphor likens the devotional path to a churning process, wherein the devotee's constant faith is transformed into sattva (defined as essential spiritual purity), in much the same way that butter and curds are churned from milk.^[7] Following along in the same symbolic line, a cluster of metaphors surrounds Krishna in his identity as butter thief (makhancor). This image is a mainstay of popular iconography in Braj, represented in sculpture, painting, music, and poetry. This image makes a metaphor of Krishna stealing butter with his thievery of the human heart in religious devotion. In these terms then, Krishna's pilfering is a metaphoric guise for the unlimited creativity by which he takes back in devotion what is his to begin with: rase, signified in this iconic instance by milk, butter, and curds.^[8] Hawley's (1983) study of the butter thief theme in Braj poetry traces this cluster of metaphors back to a basic correspondence in the mythology itself, a correspondence between the milk-based economy of Braj and the "economy of love" that circulates freely between Krishna and his playmates in the Braj lila.

These culinary metaphors have an interpretive function insofar as they provide worshipers with understandings of some complex notions involved in devotion. Key transformations in food ritual, however, have a metonymic rather than metaphoric structure. The same is true of the Govardhan myth, which recounts in distinctly Braj terms how food first came to be offered to Krishna. Thus, both food ritual and the associated food myth establish a metonymy between love, a girl given to devotees through Krishna's grace,

and food, a concrete means of experiencing and reexperiencing this gift, thereby keeping it in circulation (Hyde 1979).

Food offerings are present in nearly all Vaishnavite worshiping, from the intimacy of the household shrine to the more public setting of the temple. The central transformation in food ritual occurs when food, called bhoga (literally, pleasure or sensual enjoyment, anything that can be enjoyed by the senses), is set before Krishna's image and Krishna himself is believed to consume it, usually through the image's eyes.^[9] In this act of consumption bhoga is metonymously transformed into more love-laden prasada or consecrated food.^[10] Bennett (this volume) draws a homology between this culinary transformation and an equivalent transformation on the emotional level: in his analysis bhoga (food offerings) is to bhava (the devotee's worshipful emotion) as prasada (consecrated food offerings) is to rasa (Krishna's blissful nature). In light of the data presented here, one might go one step further and say that these are metonymic correspondences, not merely homologous ones as Bennett suggests.

In the Govardhan myth Krishna persuades the Braj cowherds to make their annual harvest offering to Govardhan hill instead of to the god, Indra. Once the offerings are mountainously piled in front of the hill, Krishna jumps into the hill, saying, "I am Govardhan; Govardhan is me." He then sucks in the food through a crack in the hill (known locally as mukharavinda, lotus mouth), metonymically linking himself, the hill, and the mountainous pile of food (Annakuta^[*]).^[11] Pictographs of this mythic event, sold throughout Braj, show this metonym clearly. Krishna appears in two places at once in the illustration: standing within a square niche inside the hill, and outside, kneeling to the left of the hill with hands folded in prayer beside his brother, Balarama, and other cowherds. This iconography represents the processual structure of food ritual and the love relationship it signifies: the gift of food-love moves in a circle, from the cowherds to the hill Krishna-Govardhan, and back to Krishna and the cowherds once more. Thus, the food-love metonymy substantiates the circular process underlying devotional experience: Krishna, it is believed, creates devotees through his grace, in order that he might reflexively experience through their loving feelings his own blissful and loving nature (ananda).^[12]

This metonymy is objectively inscribed in ceremonies that mark Govardhan Puja in the Hindu calendar. This festival takes place on the day following Diwali, the "Festival of Lights," associated with the goddess Lakshmi and the start of the new business year for Hindus. On this day, the first day of the second fortnight of Kartika (October-November), at Govardhan and throughout this region of North India, two food rituals take place. The twin rituals arc grounded in contrasting social settings—one public and community oriented, the other private and domestic—and draw on different sorts of experiences in the participants' emotional lives. The first rite, per-

formed in the afternoon in Vaishnavite temples by members of the same sect or, in the cases of the folk tradition, by residents of the Brahman neighborhood, expresses solidarity in these communities; the second, celebrated at twilight in each household courtyard, expresses emotional relationships in the joint or extended family.

In the temple ritual known as Annakuta^[*] (the Mountain of Food), a large mound of rice, sometimes numbering thousands of kilos, is constructed in the temple courtyard, facing the sanctum where the deity resides. Sweets and tarts, made from flour and stuffed with raisins and other condiments, and other vegetable and grain dishes are artistically arranged around this central pile. Pilgrims come specially to Govardhan to view these displays. The proceedings often end on a raucous note. In one temple at Jatipura, a Brahman dressed in a cowherd's costume jumps into the rice pile from a balcony above the courtyard; in other temples, pilgrims are permitted to dismantle the display by rushing in and, like the mischievous butter thief, grabbing as much food as they can take away with them. Informants explain that Annakuta departs from normal temple etiquette in several important respects. First, in daily worship boiled rice is usually handled according to strict pollution rules and shielded from public view when offered to the deity; here it is openly displayed, even played with by pilgrims, in the temple's most public area, the courtyard. When asked what they were feeling at the time of the ritual, those present said that the mountainous food offering was Krishna's loving body, free to be enjoyed by all in the spirit of lila. In their words:

After a time temple ritual gets stale, bogged down in repetition and priestly details. Going through the routine of daily worship we sometimes forget the spirit (bhava) behind the offering. In Annakuta we relive the Govardhan lila. Priestly rules are put to one side, and pilgrims play a key role in the joyous festivities. On this day pilgrims arc just like Krishna's friends, able to fool and play with him without the restraint normally called for in the temple. We offer mountains of food to remind ourselves that Krishna is king of Braj (Braj Raja), that he gives us everything we have, and that his love is as vast and never-ending as a mountain. There is plenty of food to go around in Annakuta, and in sharing this food everybody present gets to share all of this love. We never sell food in our temple on this festival. This loving food is free for all who come here. We try to make certain that there is plenty of food and love to go around.^[13]

The domestic ritual, celebrated later in the day, contrasts with the boisterousness and spectacle of the temple rite. This rite expresses the family's wishes for prosperity in the year to follow and stirs up feelings of dependency and intimacy within the household. One must remember, as Trawick and Vatuk also point out in this volume, that feelings of dependency and intimacy associated with family relationships, especially those between parents and children, have different meanings in the Indian family, and, thus, make the

emotions categorized by these words quite different in the Indian context. This background cultural meaning itself partly constitutes what participants experience emotionally in the rite. Therefore, sensations or feelings of dependency and intimacy do not dictate these experiences, but rather the culturally constructed emotional categories themselves do (Solomon 1984).

At the time of the ritual a small anthropomorphic figure of Krishna-Govardhan, made of cowdung, is built in each house. The figure, with a concave naval at its midriff, is enclosed in rectangular walls, said to represent mountains. Within these walls are placed cowdung figurines of cattle, ploughs, and butter churners. Assisted by women and older children in the family, small youngsters place sweets, sugarcane, and other harvest goodies into the naval of the figure. All circle the figure, joining hands and singing folksongs in praise of Krishna in his form as the holy hill. Folksongs recall the ancient myth and beseech Govardhan, as "King of Hills" (Giriraja Maharaja), to bring good fortune in the year to come. Children delight in the ritual and listen with rapt attention to instructions on correctly sculpting the image and making the offering. After the ritual is completed, the family enjoys a meal of harvest grains. Older family members then entertain the children with local legends of Govardhan's might. Stories tell of treasures and good fortune that befall staunch devotees of Krishna-Govardhan. Even adult males, who usually frequent the bazaars at night, stay at home this evening to enjoy the quiet intimacy of the occasion and the tender bonds it celebrates. According to local tradition, crops harvested in this season cannot be eaten until this ritual is first perfomed. The rite, then, is an act of thanksgiving to Krishna for providing the ecological conditions, symbolized here in the harvest bounty, on which family life depends.

Emotion Objectified in Food Ritual

I turn now to consider sources of variation between traditions. Sects have a different view of emotion than does the popular tradition. In sectarian traditions the five basic emotions of bhakti are sorted out and codified, and one emotion is generally chosen above others for worship in the sect; in the popular view, emotions are fickle and change, depending on where one is in Braj and what the festive occasion might be. Food rituals in each tradition provide a setting that must be culturally comprehended or appraised; that is, comprehension is the experience that constitutes the emotion in question. As I will show in greater detail below, emotion is constructed in food ritual through certain performance codes, which vary from tradition to tradition. Examples of performance codes include foods themselves (their variety and amounts), whether these foods are visually displayed in the temple, the nature of the culinary art in the sect, and the degree of culinary change and elaboration across the festive cycle. Additional factors to be considered are the

identity of cooks (Brahmans or ascetics), the attention given to purity rules in cooking, the presence or absence of food categories based on a scale of purity, and the importance given to food vis-à-vis other forms of sensory expression in the sect.

The Vallabhite Sect and Maternal Emotion

The maternal love (vatsalya bhava) of Krishna's foster mother, Yashoda, is the favored emotion for Vallabhites.^[14] Worship centers on icons of two- or four-armed Krishna or of Krishna as a crawling toddler with one arm upraised, butterball in hand. Icons are housed in temples (haveli) whose interiors and ritual artifacts theatrically recreate the Braj of Krishna's childhood down to the most minute detail (see Bennett, this volume). Considerable attention is lavished on cuisine in the sect, and Vallabhites are the undisputed gourmets of Hinduism (Toomey 1986). Sumptuous offerings play oil against other sensory media in worship (e.g., painting, flower arrangement, music, and poetry). This array of ritual and ceremonial forms is thought to manifest outwardly an inner emotion, namely maternal love, and offer an incentive (bhavana) to developing this inner emotion in all who practice devotion.

Conceptions of motherhood and the experience of motherly love in the sect arc modeled on cultural definitions of motherhood in the Indian kinship system. In their analysis of the latter, Vatuk (1982) and Das (1976) explain that biological ties between a mother and her child are backstaged, that is, not given public expression, in the conduct of Indian family life. So as not to seem too possessive of her child, and hence perceived as self-centered by other members of her husband's family, a woman is expected to deindividualize her relationship with her child to the extent that any member of the family can be entrusted with its care.^[15] Thus, everyday behavior in Indian families self-consciously recognizes the fact that the process of mothering, unlike the process of childbearing, can involve any number of surrogates in addition to, or instead of, the real mother. In Vatuk's words (1982:95), "In family life the tasks of mothering should be shared, as food and space and intimacy are shared, among all of its members according to their needs and inclinations."

What it means to be a mother in India and to experience motherly love arc clearly constituted by a quite different set of cultural criteria than they arc in the West. What is more, Vallabhites transpose this familial model, in a number of interesting ways, to social and affective relations in the sect. For example, the sect refers to itself as Vallabha's family, Vallabha-kula. Caste and lineage ties are strongly emphasized in the sect's leadership; cooks, for example, must belong to specified Gujarati Brahman castes (jati). Devotees' identification with Yashoda (who is, after all, Krishna's adoptive mother rather than his natural one) metaphorically extends the notion, put forth in

the kinship system, that maternal love is something anyone, male or female, in the family-sect can experience. Lastly, ritual, so central to the sect's ideology, is conceived in terms of a culinary metonym: pusti^[*], or nourishing grace (Bennett 1983); another name of the sect is Pusti^[*] Marga, the Way of Grace. Pusti refers to a grace that nourishes, supports, and strengthens the souls of devotees. As the transactional focus of Vallabhite ritual practice, food is perhaps the chief means by which emotion is experienced in the sect. In devotees' minds the devotional process consists in nourishing the infant icon in the temple (or in one's personal possession, as the case may be) and being nourished by him in return. Thus, icons, it is believed, return the maternal affection stored up in food offerings, by showering these same offerings with pusti and keeping the ritual process in motion.

Similar attitudes are reflected in the sect's food practices. Food offerings are prepared in vast amounts and with such attention to ritual detail that they are said to reflect a mother's watchful eye for her child. "Attention means care," priests remarked, "a mother's care." And the purity rules observed by cooks and priests in this sect are far stricter than those in the other two traditions at Govardhan. Temple cuisine—an amalgam of Gujarati, Rajasthani, South Indian, and Braj cuisines—is sweet or bland, for the most part; salt and spices are kept to a minimum because these are believed injurious to Krishna's sensitive child's palate. Krishna is fed eight times daily in the temple, from the time he is awakened in the morning until he is serenaded to sleep at night. Large food festivals are another specialty in the sect. Best known of these is Ghappan Bhoga (the "Fifty-Six Delicacies"), one showpiece of the festive year at Jatipura (Mital 1975; Sivaji 1936). Fifty-six recipes, prepared five or six ways from items such as chick-pea gram, flour, milk, dry fruits, and other grains, are called for in this offering. Fifty-six baskets of each dish are, in turn, offered, bringing the potential number of offerings to 21,952 (7 × 56 × 56). The sizable offering is displayed in a temporary enclosure at the side of the hill. A theatrical backdrop is set up on the hill, and one Govardhan stone, decorated with enamel eyes and made up to resemble Krishna's face, peers out from a hole in the painted scenery. Symbolism of the number fifty-six directly relates to maternal love, for devotees say that, like Yashoda, they show their untiring love by providing Krishna with round-the-clock nourishment: eight times a day, seven days a week.^[16]

In the Vallabhite system, Krishna's experience of his own rasa crystallizes in temple ritual. In this highly metaphoric system material acts of worship are metonyms for the love-filled emotions they express. The central metonym, pusti, makes nourishment a critical quality of the love or grace that flows between devotees and Krishna. In this way, maternal affection is conceived and experienced as a grace-filled emotion that nourishes devotees' hearts in much the same way that food nourishes their bodies. In this sect food offerings objectify the closely welded domains of heart and body, spirit

and matter. To conclude, many features of the Vallabhite system—its ethos of maternal love and the metonymically related realms of the physical-material and the spiritual-emotional, distinctive to the sect's ritual practices—are nicely summarized in the following remarks by a member of this sect. (To savor some implications made in this section, I suggest that the reader go over the statement several times, substituting at appropriate places the word love for the words "wealth," "money," or "food" in the original statement.)

Whenever we visit a place of lila in Braj, we offer Krishna what his cowherd friends (gopa) and cowmaiden consorts (gopi) offered him. In our sampradaya we are admonished not to hoard wealth. Money needs to be in constant circulation, to be shared with as many others as possible. Unfortunately, we can hold on to money, but food cannot be hoarded. It will spoil if it is not shared. A single person can only cat so much food, the rest needs to be shared or it will spoil. Food, then, is the most shareable form of wealth. Food is the best thing that we can offer to god. Whatever we think is best, we offer to Krishna as bhoga. Money is not a form of bhoga. Krishna is a child. If you give him sweets, milk, or other such things, he will be pleased. Bhoga is defined as those things that give pleasure to the lord. Our sect's wealth is concentrated in food. In the Shastras it states that whatever god gives us, we must give back in return, as an offering. Food should never be prepared for its own sake; to do so is a sin. Why? Because everything we see belongs to god—it cannot be enjoyed by us unless it is first offered to him. Prasada or food is the grace by which Krishna helps us to live our lives. Next to air and water, food is the most essential thing in life. All our necessities, luxuries, everything in short, must first be offered to Krishna, as they rightfully belong to him. We use Krishna's things through his grace.^[17]

The Chaitanyaite Sect and the Amorous Emotion

If Vallabhites frame the human/divine relationship in familial terms, then Chaitanyaite ascetics at Radhakund can be said to frame devotees' experience of this same relationship in terms of an emotion that violates domestic order: madhurya bhava, the illicit love between Krishna and his consort Radha (Kakar 1986). Icons of Krishna as a comely adolescent flute player, symbolically if not visually linked in some way to Radha, replace icons of the mischievous child in this sect.^[18] Radha and Krishna's passionate love disrupts the ordered relations normally expected of men and women in Hindu society. Madhurya bhava is characterized by eroticism and ambiguity, both of which are delineated for devotees in ways specific to this cultural group. Equally critical to our understanding of the love experience in this sect is the notion of viraha (love-in-separation). For devotees the purest form of love is incomplete or frustrated love—the same love experienced in myths by suffering and forlorn gopis who have been separated from Krishna after partnering him in one of his many amorous exploits. Thus, for Chaitanyaites, the frustration of the emotions' desire for immediate union with Krishna (a condition theoreti-

cally impossible in this philosophical system) becomes the closest possible encounter with the divine.

This complex emotion is open to a wide range of interpretations in different sects and/or regions of India where it appears (see Marglin, this volume, for a discussion of this emotion in the context of Puri), even, in this case, between householder Brahman priests and ascetics in the same sect.^[19] Chaitanyaite worship practices at Radhakund reflect a decidedly ascetic view of the erotic emotion (cf. Lynch, this volume). Each asrama (monastic dwelling) in the town has an image of Radha-Krishna in its shrineroom; beside the images are placed bits of Govardhan stone (whose natural coloration is said to represent the divine pair) and votive pictures of Chaitanya and his disciples, Nityanand and the Six Goswamis of Brindaban. But ascetics emphatically state that the amount of attention given to icon worship— relative to chanting and other more aural forms of worship such as listening to readings of sacred texts—is a matter of personal choice. In other words, icon worship is not as central a focus in the worship style followed by ascetics as it is in the householder branch of this sect. Something of this ambivalence toward icons comes across in the following anecdote, told by a sadhu at Radhakund:

If a family is involved in worship, it becomes more elaborate, takes more pleasure in display and other worldly things. As a rule, we sadhus are not interested in the outward show of worship, such as one might find in temples at Brindaban, Mathura, and other places in Braj. A classic case of this involves Sanatana Goswami, himself a renouncer (virakta) and one of the six acarya of our sect, who founded the temple of Madan Mohan in Brindaban. One of his disciples, an elderly lady from Mathura, asked him to take on the worship of her family deity, a splendid image of Madan Mohan, after her death. Sanatana Goswami agreed hesitantly, saying: "I am a sadhu and do not have time to look after this little tyke's every wish. Whatever I beg in the way of food, I will share with Madan Mohan. If he is pleased with this meager amount, then I will take him into my charge." Hearing this, the deity agreed, but after several weeks of dry, stale bread, Madan Mohan called to Sanatana: "You bring roti without so much as salt. Please bring back some salt from your begging rounds, or maybe even a few sweets which I also crave." Sanatana went to his disciples and complained—"This naughty fellow is trying to kill by bhajana. Today he asks for salt and sweets. Next time he will ask for chattisa vyanjana^[*] (a large feast calling for thirty-six different dishes, elaborately prepared and offered before the deity)." When Sanatana left Brindaban and retired to Govardhan later in his life, he handed over Madan Mohan to one of his lay followers, in whose family it remains to this day.^[20]

According to ascetics, icon worship is a personal, private act conducive to an idiom of purity stressing intimacy and closeness with the deity. These same ascetics define purity as an inner state where intention precedes the

manipulation of physical substances in a controlled ritual environment. Absent entirely are large food displays and the separation of foods into ranked categories during cooking and offering, both characteristic of Brahmanical temple cuisine.^[21] Offerings are fairly simple, consisting mostly of rice, spiced pulses and other grains, and stewed vegetables. Sweets, the mainstay of other traditions around the hill, are seldom offered. Lastly, food offerings are not parceled out to devotees, common practice with most temple prasada; rather, they are shared by devotees as a feast or common meal (vaisnava^[*] seva, after participating in long hours of group chanting and other strenuous devotional activities. In short, more sensual and visual forms of ritual expression (i.e., changing the image's clothing or food offerings on a seasonal basis) are left unstressed in this tradition, and the food offering itself takes on aspects of a feast, rather than a sweet or other culinary souvenir to be taken away from the temple by pilgrims.

Attitudes toward food offerings at Radhakund are similar in several respects to those described by Audrey Hayley (1980) for Vaishnavas in Assam. First, rice (called anna, life's breath, that on which life depends), which is given high moral evaluation in the eastern states of India, is the food offering par excellence in both religious communities. Second, they share the view that the collective religious experience itself is the living body of Krishna, superior not only to his iconic representation but even to the god himself. This collective experience is embodied in food offerings which have been transformed by sound into the four constituent parts of worship: god, name, guru, and devotee. In this view, the food offering reconstitutes the central importance of the devotional act itself and the devotees who perform it. Food offerings therefore make substantial the spiritual intentions behind devotional acts; concomitantly, consumption of these offerings is believed to sustain devotees in further acts of community worship.

Emotion in the Folk Tradition at Mount Govardhan

In the Braj folk tradition I find not one or two emotions, emphasized over the others, but an amalgam, a medley of emotions playing harmoniously off against one another as one moves across the sacred landscape. Moodiness and sentimentality permeate Braj culture, giving the region an ambience of sweetness and solitude in some places, of boisterousness and prankish good humor in others. Entire towns are said to be saturated with one emotion or another, depending on the emotional tones of the lila that took place there. Residents of certain towns are accorded masculine or feminine qualities by virtue of their association with gopas or gopis who lived there before them. As a key or dominant symbol in Braj cosmology, Mount Govardhan is thought to preside over and enfold within itself the many teeming emotions of Brai lila.^[22]

Govardhan hill means many things to many people. To members of the

Vallabhite sect, the hill is especially sacred because their principal icon, Sri Nathji, sprang from one of its cracks at Jatipura; to Chaitanyaites, the hill still resounds with the echo of Krishna's flute and the memories of his afternoon love play with Radha and the other cowmaidens. In the folk conception, shared by sectarian groups as well, the hill connects a wide array of referents: it is alternately Krishna's natural body, a mountain of food (Annakuta), a bestower of boons, and the source of the region's agricultural growth and renewal. The hill is semantically open, capable of exegesis at various levels, from that of sectarian literati to the views of simple peasants who come on pilgrimage here every full moon (purnamasi^[*]) to pledge their devotion to the mountain in return for good fortune and prosperity. Devotees of all persuasions agree that Krishna-Govardhan condenses into one ritual object both Krishna's many visual images, referred to by hundreds of thousands of melodious-sounding names or epithets, and the welter of emotions stored up in these images. Depending upon one's perspective, Krishna is seen in the stones in different ways. In just one example, peasants who come to Govardhan regularly see the hill as a folk deity: the "king of hills," the protector of cows, and the provider of boons and Bounty (daniraya).

Food ritual in the folk tradition is relatively fluid and unsystematic when compared to sectarian practices. In Govardhan's main temple—the place where locals say the hill's mouth (mukharavinda) is located—the temple image is comprised of two Govardhan stones, treated half like a temple icon and half not.^[23] For most of the day the stones are left unadorned so that pilgrims can enter the temple and feed them directly with their own hands. Local Brahmans act as guides in this process, in contrast to the way officiants might be expected to act in temples that house consecrated icons. Foods offered are simple sweets and milk—not the products of a sophisticated temple cuisine, but foods bought in the marketplace and associated with feelings of pleasure, well-being, and auspiciousness (subha), in the festive and ceremonial cycle of North India (Madan 1987:48-71).^[24] Folksongs and pilgrimage ditties, like the Govardhan Calisa (a forty-line prayer sung by pilgrims), mention foods by name and express the idea that Krishna is a simple peasant who shares pilgrims' food in a spirit of joyous, easy reciprocity.

This same flexibility is demonstrated in numerous other local food practices. Priests and pilgrims generally admit to a relaxed view of ritual: "Ritual implies a distance of some sort between man and god. This distance has no place at Govardhan, where both man and god are part of nature. Images in this temple are svayam^[*] prakat^[*], that is, spontaneously manifested in nature, without need of priestly intervention to establish them in the temple or to maintain their sanctity in the future."^[25] Practices in the local temple attenuate the daily format followed in iconic worship. Unlike icons, which are dressed first thing in the morning and served eight or so daily meals, the mukharavinda temple's stones are dressed only after four o'clock, when the

heaviest hours of pilgrimage traffic are over. Only then do the stones appear as anthropomorphic likenesses, with enamel eyes and artificial limbs attached, wearing brightly colored clothes, crowns, and silver jewelry. Similarly, the eight meals of standard temple worship are abbreviated to three: sweets in the morning, a noontime meal of grains and pulses, and warm milk and more sweets at night. The temple does not have kitchen facilities per se; meals are purchased from vendors in the market and offered by pandas without any provisions to shield the images from public view.

Pilgrims are allowed considerable latitude in how they choose to worship in the temple. Those, who can afford it, bring clothes and jewelry for the temple images and worship them with large amounts of rich and varied foods, pails full of milk, incense, fresh flowers, and so on. Others, with less means at their disposal, offer small clay thimbles of milk and popcorn-sized bits of pulled sugar with cardamom seed centers. Finally, as I mentioned earlier in connection with the Annakuta celebration, the aesthetic environment in local temples is particularly charged on festival days. For commercial reasons, temples are draped in strings of colored bulbs on these occasions. With their varied and extravagent food displays and the many songs and performances all around, these festivals create, through a pleasant blend of music, food, and pageantry, a savory experience of Lord Krishna for pilgrims.

Conclusion

My approach in this essay accepts the constructionist view that affects correspond with the societies within which actors live and that they can best be explained with reference to cultural scenarios and associations. The foregoing analysis described the overlapping cultural meaning systems through which emotions are constituted in three devotional groups at Mount Govardhan. Such an approach differs, in several important respects, from standard assumptions about emotion in Western academic psychology—that it is possible to identify the essence of emotion, that emotions are universal and hence easily translatable across cultures, and that they are separable from their personal and social contexts (Lutz 1986; Lynch, introduction to this volume). In contrast, here one faces a complex system of symbols, values, and definitions, which are culturally specific, and in terms of which emotions are conceptualized and interpreted by Krishna worshipers. My point is that the culturally appropriate categorization of emotion within a whole context of implicit meaning allows members of each tradition to know what their experience of emotion is and even how to feel it and to know what they ought to experience in it. The task has been to examine what devotees say and do in everyday life to express, enact, and interpret emotions. Findings indicate that emotions such as maternal and erotic love are clearly constituted within a

different framework of social relationships and cultural knowledge than emotions referred to by the same name would be in contemporary American society.

If one accepts, then, that there is no single universal mode of appraisal for such cultural features as emotion, one might want to conclude by making some general remarks about the system of appraisal described in this chapter and how this system differs from certain preconceived Western notions. First, in bhakti, emotion is constituted through interactions and transactions of various sorts: between man and god, between members of the same sect, and so on. At times human/divine relationships are conceived in idioms borrowed from family and social life; at other times, they are conceived in opposition to these same idioms, as in the case of the illicit love of Radha-Krishna. Second, this interactive focus also presupposes an enduring cultural concern with reciprocity as a process that animates life. Love, in these terms, has nothing static about it, nor is it based on fixed bonds; rather, it is effective in the experiential sense only when constantly circulating.

Perhaps the most notable aspect of this cultural system is the way these properties of emotion are objectified or substantialized for devotees through food symbols and practices (Geertz 1983:94-120). In the Western cultural formulation emotion is conceived as an inherently irrational aspect of life and talked about in metaphors that center on ideas of chaos. In contrast, Hindu metaphors for emotion center on food and semantic similarities between emotion as an experience and the bodily experiences of eating and nurturing. Actors' understandings of emotion in Braj are not shaped, as they are in the West, by dichotomies between the head and the heart, between conscious and unconscious mind, or between the psychology of individuals and the shared psychological experience of social groups.

And lastly, can one identify the essence of an emotion: Is there, for example, some identifiable aspect of biological motherhood that can be said to inform the experience of motherly love in all cultures? The data presented here indicates that cultural definitions of emotion are highly variable, even within the confines of a single location or homogeneous religious setting like Govardhan. What makes comparison of these three traditions so exciting—but difficult, alas, to describe with complete coherence—is the quality of distance that underlies the system as a whole. First, the traditions have contrasting social contexts (attitudes toward caste, asceticism, and so on), historical backgrounds, and ties to different regions of India. Second, their views on many finer points of emotional theory, even in regard to emotions bearing the same name, are not parallel in many instances. And finally, though one discerns the same set of culinary metaphors and metonyms (themes derived from rasa theory, for example, and the Govardhan myth) weaving through all three traditions, each tradition is nevertheless equally distinguishable by the model of emotional experience it favors and the stories and rituals it employs

to shape this experience for devotees. In my opinion, anthropologists will better understand the complex phenomenon of emotion, not by searching for universal features as many earlier studies do, but by documenting the diverse means by which emotion is culturally constructed and symbolically mediated to actors in specific social and cultural contexts.

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Seven
In Nanda Baba's House
The Devotional Experience in Pushti Marg Temples

Peter Bennett

Introduction

Western scholars have long been perplexed by the apparent contrasts in Indian religiosity, not least between those Hindus who attempt to subjugate feelings and emotions through the rigors of asceticism and those who follow paths to salvation that encourage exuberant emotional and sensuous experiences. Pushti Marg is one such path that has preserved an elaborate tradition of worship as a vehicle for expressing and exciting the overwhelming passions felt by intimate companions of the cowherd god, Krishna. How this is achieved—how devotion as an emotional-cum-aesthetic orientation to divinity is experienced, rendered, and evoked in the ritual life of the temple—is my primary concern in this chapter.

Pushti Marg, the path (marga) of Grace (pusti^[*]), otherwise known as Vallabhacarya Sampradaya, or the tradition (sampradaya) that gave lasting expression to the teachings of the medieval preceptor Vallabha (A.D. 1479-1531), is a species of Bhakti Marg that continues to attract an enthusiastic following in western India, especially among urban business communities in parts of Uttar Pradesh, Gujarat, Rajasthan, Malwa, and Bombay. The worship performed in sect-affiliated temples is distinctive in several respects; most noticeable is its tendency to express palpably the bhakti ideal of selfless loving devotion, not by urging the renunciation of worldly goods and pleasures, but by utilizing all the things of this world considered precious or pleasing to the senses in the service of the deity. Accordingly, the worship tends to be conspicuously lavish. The sect is widely known for the choice variety of its food offerings; for the perseverance, skill, and sensitivity shown by devotees in caring for their deities; and for the highly decorative scenes that embellish the temple sanctuaries. It is unfortunate, though hardly surprising, that such

flamboyant displays have in the past incurred the disapproval of Western scholars. Mackichan (1908-1921) typified the general attitude when he translated Pushti Marg as the "way of eating, drinking, and enjoyment" and dubbed its followers the "Epicureans of India."

Also distinctive is that, unlike those Krishnaites who prefer to approach their god as a mistress approaches her lover, among them the followers of Chaitanya, devotees of Pushti Marg have placed an equal if not greater emphasis on the worship of Krishna as an adorable, mischievous, and ostensibly helpless infant. In other words, devotees strive to emulate the feelings of Mother Yashoda as she tenderly cares for her beloved foster-child or suffers anxiety and even sorrow during brief periods of separation. The day-to-day treatment of the image reveals touching instances of motherly concern: toy rattles and spinning tops are provided for the god's amusement; in winter he is swathed in warm blankets to ensure he does not catch a cold; and his meals are left to cool prior to serving lest in a fit of childish impatience he should snatch a handful, burning his mouth and fingers in the process. By cultivating a highly distinctive, elaborate, and formalized attitude of devotion, devotees are supposed to share in the emotions of divine love (prema) and joy (ananda) felt by those accomplished souls able to perceive the temple image as the living Krishna and the temple as his celestial abode in the Braj home of Father Nanda.^[1]

This chapter, which explores the nature of this variant of the bhakti experience, reflects wider theoretical interests in the social construction of emotion, the cultural specificity and variability of emotional experience, and the role of emotion in ritual performance (see Geertz 1973, 1980; Kapferer 1979; Lutz 1986; Rosaldo 1980; Scheff 1977; Solomon 1984; Turner 1974, 1982). I aim to elucidate the nature of devotional experiences as construed by temple goers and as actualized in temple rituals. My essay is based on information acquired during fieldwork among Pushti Marg temple goers in and near Ujjain city, central India, and to a lesser extent in the main centers of sectarian pilgrimage at Braj in Uttar Pradesh and Nathdwara in Rajasthan.

I should clarify briefly the social constructionist approach informing my essay. In the physicalist theoretical tradition, as well as for that matter in Western commonsense understanding, emotions arc feelings originating in physiological states of being; they are experienced passively, subjectively, and universally. Accordingly one could argue that the maternal affections Krishnaites articulate with reference to the infant god are readily comprehensible to Westerners for whom loving tenderness tinged with feelings of anxiety arc considered normal maternal responses. Indeed, the notion of maternal instinct as an innate and spontaneous tendency for a mother to protect and care for her young, despite its preferred scientific application to the lower animals, remains influential in shaping Western assumptions about human behavior; "instinctive" maternal emotions are firmly located in

the physiological realm. Alternatively, a social constructionist perspective starts from different premises about the nature of emotional experience by identifying emotions as cultural things, systems of "concepts, beliefs, attitudes, and desires, virtually all of which are context-bound, historically developed, and culture-specific" (Solomon 1984:249). Located, as emotions are, in a public context, emotions are social-cultural phenomena. Their origins, meanings, and functions are not hidden away in the physique or the psyche but are visible and accessible, hence amenable to anthropological study.

Returning to the maternal theme in Pushti Marg, the emotional states identified and translated into English as loving tenderness, anxiety, and sorrow may seem immediately recognizable, tempting us to asume that they can be understood as direct equivalents of experiences in our own lives. But there is a danger: reliance on empathy leads to imputing to others our own concepts of emotions, thereby short-circuiting the questioning of emotional life itself (Lynch, this volume). Rather emotional experiences exist and are bound up in culturally specific contexts of meanings, beliefs, values, judgments, and relationships. To extricate an emotion from its distinctive context, to label it, and to seek to explain it as a variant of Western experience—these are fraught with all the pitfalls of ethnocentrism. This is not to deny the efficacy of a comparative approach; rather, it is to say that cultural systems are the proper units for comparison, not displaced cultural constructs where one is forced to equate with the putative universal status of the Other.

Motherly love for Krishna is bound up in a complex of beliefs, attitudes, relationships, and aesthetics, as well as in a conceptual sequence of increasing emotional intensity. This emotional state is defined in terms of its peculiar domain, as are all the emotions elucidated in this essay. It is cultivated, expressed, and stimulated with reference to an icon identified as the living god, itself a respository and objectification of sentiment (rasa). As a manifestation of divine love, motherly love is embodied in the articles of worship, particularly the sacred food leavings, the distribution of which provides a dynamic context for its communication, articulation, and sharing. Moreover, the emotions cultivated in devotion are defined in relation to the distinctive personality of a beautiful, prankish, and beguiling child. Yashoda's anxiety during separation is intelligible in the light of the child's helplessness, tendency to make mischief, and susceptibility to the eye of envy, and her sorrow recreates a dominant mood of Krishna's sport of manifestation and concealment whereby love for the god is intensified through experiencing the alternating states of sorrow in separation (viraha) and joy in union (samyoga^[*]). I shall explain how sorrow and joy are to be understood not as discrete emotional states but as complementary; only by anticipating one can the devotee relish fully the experience of the other. Sorrow in separation is not a negative

emotion: for true devotees it is a sublime experience saturated with divine love and joy.

Thus, to suggest that this is a representative sample from a gamut of universal emotions, elaborated and stimulated by a distinctive set of beliefs, is to miss the point that the affective states themselves are meaningful inasmuch as they constitute, rather than underlie or complement, the structure of beliefs, values, and relationships of Pushti Marg; as such they are of the same order as cultural phenomena. Emotions conveniently labeled in English are nevertheless foreign to American experiences and require contextual elucidation, if Americans hope to grasp what such experiences mean to devotees.

My further concern is to show how emotions associated with the devotional experience are articulated, actualized, and enhanced in the ritual context. Following Tambiah (1973:199, 1979:10), I understand ritual to be a culturally constructed system of symbolic communication comprising a structured sequence of words and acts directed toward a "telic" or "performative" outcome. Ritual has the capacity to shape and intensify experience by means of patterning, sequencing, repetition, and the controlled arrangement of multiple sensory media. Pushti Marg temple worship, with its elaborate combination of aesthetic forms enabling the creation of myth episodes from the life of Krishna, provides a rich field for investigating the underlying grammar and telic propensities of ritual. Yet concern for a structure whose constitutive features combine to alter experience should not lead one either to presume the passivity of performers or to ignore the relevance of their construals of an event in explaining its force and significance; they create the rite anew at each performance, indicate that they are absorbed, impressed, excited, overcome, or in some way moved by it, and thereby appreciate its distinctive aesthetic style. Understanding this dimension of ritual performance does not depend on achieving a perfect empathy with one's informants, if such a thing is possible. It relies on identifying and elucidating what Geertz (1984:126) refers to as "modes of expression" or "symbolic forms" in terms of which persons represent themselves to themselves and to one another, through "experience-near" as distinct from "experience-distant" concepts. This calls for interpreting concepts and symbols articulated by devotees with reference to their ritual activities; for them, the activities capture the essence of their most intimate mystical experiences, besides describing and lending purpose to their lives qua devotees. It is one thing to suggest that ritual induces intensified experience but quite another to determine the nature of the experience and its relevance to the ritual performed. In Pushti Marg, feelings and emotions are elaborately coded in the words, gestures, and ornaments of worship; they are crucial to understanding the semantic, communicative, and performative aspects of temple ritual.

An understanding of indigenous concepts should help to shed light on the devotional experience and its contextualization in ritual performance. The focus is not on the objective form of ritual but on ritual interpreted through the medium of the experiencing subject. The shift in focus is analytically useful, first, because it allows me to examine the nature of the experiential transformation facilitated by participation in ritual, and second, because it helps to show that the meanings informing ritual acts are not necessarily to be understood in simple instrumentalist terms. Southwold makes a similar point in a study of Sinhalese village Buddhism when he objects to the universal application of instrumentalist analysis and posits an alternative system of thought and action.

It is not taken for granted that states of experience are determined by states of outer objective reality, and can be bettered only by changing them. On the contrary, it is posited that states of experience are shaped, and their quality as gratifying attributed, by the experiencing subject, the self.... Hence in this system the strategy for ameliorating experience is by changing the self, rather than by changing the states of outer objective reality. In Buddhism it is fundamental, and quite explicit, that one's fate is detemined by one's state of mind. (Southwold 1985:36)

Similarly, in Pushti Marg great value is placed on cultivating an appropriate mental state as a precondition for, and intensification as a result of, participation in devotional worship. By caring for the deity and treating it as if it had all the sensibilities of a living child, the worshiper insists that the fruits of devotion lie firmly in the means. Devotion is undertaken for its own sake, as a means of expressing and nurturing feelings of selfless and overwhelming love for Krishna, and ultimately as a means of tasting the divine bliss normally unrealized within the soul. The symbolic acts, ornaments, and procedures of devotion arc meaningful and efficacious as vehicles for expressing, and thereby shaping, enhancing, and transforming inner experience. The goal of devotional striving is a state of consciousness construed as an emotional absorption in Krishna. The devotee attempts neither to change the world nor to enter an ethereal other world but begins to realize the world as it really is: a world to be enjoyed as a manifestation of bliss rather than to be endured miserably as a figment of ignorance.

Of particular interest is the manner in which dramatic-aesthetic terms and techniques are utilized to intensify this exceptional experience of the world by creating an impression of the changing scenes and moods of Krishna's divine play (lila). This process of "actualization by representation," to borrow Huizinga's phrase (1955:14), or the imitative and symbolic means by which the celestial realm of Krishna's play is made present in the temple, is meticulously elaborate in practice. The temple is the stage for enacting an eternal drama, while the sumptuous decorations and measured gestures of

worship are surface expressions enabling the performance of a deep play in which enlightened selves become absorbed in a round of emotional interaction and exchange. Although invisible to the spiritually ignorant, this subtle play on lila and the feelings it stirs infuses each and every act with purpose and meaning. Thus the adornment of the image, the singing of devotional songs, and above all the preparation and distribution of food offerings provide the sensory (tangible, edible, etc.) media through which devotees convey, share, and savor the rarefied sentiments of lila. In this setting material abundance, sedulousness, and artistic elegance are physical expressions of devotional intensity.

Unfortunately, I am unable to do full justice to this rich and picturesque form of worship without sacrificing interpretation entirely to ethnography.^[2] I have selected principal elements of worship and examined them in accordance with the approach outlined above. They include (a) the act of observing the deity (darsana) in the inner sanctum as the culmination of the devotional experience, (b) the food offering (bhoga) as a means of establishing emotional contact with Krishna, and (c) the temple image (svarupa) as the object of devotion and repository of devotional sentiment. I begin appropriately by outlining the structure of the sect and its tradition of worship as joint preservers of a unique devotional experience.

The Vallabha Tradition: Sampradaya

The category sampradaya is conveniently rendered "sect" so long as one is mindful of the negative connotations of the occidental sect as a secessionist grouping and the positive connotations of the oriental sampradaya as a vehicle for transmitting and perpetuating a sacred tradition via a continuous succession of preceptors.^[3] The life-blood of the sampradaya is the sacred formula (mantra) whispered in the disciple's ear by the guru at initiation; it can be traced back through an arterial lineage of gurus to a founder identified in some way with a particular divinity. Yet unlike those principal Vaishnava sects organized around a succession of ascetics, Pushti Marg has no renouncers; rather the preceptors, known as maharajas (maharaja) or gosvamis, invailably marry and raise families, while the succession is hereditary such that they owe their spiritual status entirely to their patrilineal descent from Vallabhacarya and as such partake of the divinity of one revered as an incarnation (avatara) of Lord Krishna.^[4]

When questioned about current devotional practices, devotees usually referred me to the early years of the sect. In doing so they were neither merely relating a history of how things came to be as they are, nor were they simply justifying present devotional customs. There is no abrupt divide between the sect past and present. Worship now is an actualization, not a replication, of worship performed by Vallabha, his son Vitthalnatha, and their disciples,

which is in turn an actualization of the Braj lila vividly evoked in the Bhagavata Purana^[*], sharing directly in the thrill and sanctity of the original.^[5] Krishna continues to manifest his lila in the tradition perpetuated by the sampradaya. Thus of profound significance for latter-day disciples is Vallabhacarya's inauguration of the system of devotional worship (seva) in 1494 following his identification of an icon of Krishna as the Lord of Govardhan, Sri Govardhannathji (usually abbreviated to Sri Nathji), that had miraculously emerged from the summit of Mount Govardhan in Braj. The image, which depicts a standing figure of black stone with the left arm raised above the head, is well known to Vaishnavas as that of the child Krishna holding aloft the mountain in order to shelter the people of Braj from a violent rainstorm sent by the god Indra as a punishment for their neglect of his worship. By withholding Indra's tribute and seeking Krishna's refuge the cowherds and cowherdesses of Braj received Krishna's full protection, while the mighty Indra was subdued.

At first Vallabha had a small shelter erected over the spot where Sri Nathji had appeared and instituted a simple procedure for bathing, adorning, and feeding the deity. By 1520 a more substantial structure had been erected. Vallabha's second son, Vitthalnatha, who assumed leadership of the sect in 1550, is chiefly responsible for the seva as it exists today. He devised a more beautiful and elaborate system of services by increasing the amount and variety of the food offerings and enhancing the magnificence of the deity's adornment. Following the accession of the Mughal emperor Aurangzeb a century later, and fearful of his iconoclasm, devotees transported the image to Rajasthan and settled in a remote village in the mountains near Udaipur, since known as Nathdwara. The temple at Nathdwara is today the richest and most popular center of sectarian pilgrimage, whereas the original temple on Mount Govardhan has long since fallen into ruins.^[6]

Vitthalnatha also made arrangements that were to shape the future organization of the sect by handing full spiritual and secular authority to his seven sons. Each son received the exclusive right to initiate disciples, and each received a special icon of Krishna; the prestigious image of Sri Nathji went to the eldest, and other sons established their respective deities in temples in different areas of nothern India. The seven sons founded seven houses or seats (sat ghar, gaddi); the leadership of each house and the rights to the worship of its original image were inherited by a principle of primogeniture.^[7] Over the centuries numerous temples have been dedicated to the dynastic houses and hence are under the jurisdiction of Maharajas who appoint priests and managers to maintain them in their absence. In Ujjain, for example, four temples are affiliated to sublineages of the first and second houses, while a fifth is privately managed by descendants of one of Vallabhacarya's closest disciples.

Entry into the sampradaya and access to its esoteric tradition is acquired by a rite of initiation in the presence of a member of the Vallabha Dynasty

(Vallabha-kula). Initiation is conceived as the commencement of a relationship of communion with Krishna effected when Krishna, through the intermediary of the guru, bestows grace on his devotee by means of the Brahma-sambandha mantra, meaning a state of union (sambandha) with the Supreme Lord, Brahman. In terms of Vallabha's pure nondualistic philosophy (suddhadvaita), the soul (jiva), having been infused with divine grace (anugrabs, pusti^[*]), begins thereafter to realize the true nature of its identity as a fragment (amsa) of Brahman and hence of its innate capacity to experience divine bliss (ananda), an essential prerequisite for participation in lila. The experience is conceived as a kind of spiritual awakening. Lord Krishna removes ignorance (avidya) by manifesting his own bliss which formerly lay dormant within the soul. The enlightened soul subsequently burns with an intense love for Krishna and fervently performs his seva.^[8]

The essence of the initiation mantra is complete self-sacrifice (atmanivedana). By uttering its Sanskrit syllables the initiate dedicates himself or herself utterly and irrevocably to Lord Krishna and promises to dedicate all future actions and acquisitions before using them for self. In this way, wrote Vallabhacarya in his Siddhantarahasyam, everything dedicated to Krishna becomes divine in nature just as the pure and impure waters that enter the River Ganges share in its divine essence (see Barz 1976:18). Particularly significant, the mantra embraces all those qualities considered to make up the "self" (atma), that is, everything the devotee can call "mine," including body (deha) and physical actions, life-soul-mind (pran^[*]) and faculty of thought, organs of sense (indriya), together with house, material possessions, wife and children, or as abbreviated in a familiar threefold classification—body, mind, and wealth (tan, man, dhan). The devotee acknowledges that he or she has no independent identity apart from Brahman. But this does not lead to a negation of the idea of self: the devotee dedicates and thereafter retains the faculties of self, consecrated through the act of dedication, and uses them in devotional service. There is no merging or permanent union between the soul and Krishna; such a state is put off indefinitely so that the Supreme Lord and the soul can experience the indescribable joy of desiring union.

Devotional Worship: Seva

Having received initiation the devotee is considered fit to participate in the customary forms of devotional worship prescribed by the sect, all of which are regarded as expressions of self-dedication. Devotees stress that seva is disinterested service, while the person who offers disinterested service is a sevaka. He does seva not as a means to an end but as both a means (sadhana) and an end, or "fruit" (phala), in itself. Hence, seva is both an expression of selfless love for Krishna and the delightful experience of loving Krishna. Its real efficacy, however, lies not in performance but in the mental attitude of

the performer. All acts of seva should reflect the sevaka's innermost feelings of selfless loving concern for Krishna; as such, they are distinguished from other forms of Hindu worship (puja) allegedly bound by formal rules inhibiting spontaneity and performed primarily for selfish ends. One Maharaja explained:

In puja method [vidhi] and self-happiness [svasukha] are considered to be the most important, but in seva love [Sneha] and Bhagavan's happiness come first. Bhagavan's happiness is our happiness and this is divine [alaukika].

Moreover, seva should be accomplished entirely through one's own efforts:

We should dedicate our entire lives to doing seva. The more seva we accomplish by our own efforts, the greater our happiness. We should never allow others to do seva in our place.

But the devotee who follows the prescribed procedures of worship while harboring selfish intentions of acquiring rewards or a virtuous reputation for those efforts, or who is not wholly engrossed in Krishna, is not a true sevaka; those efforts are no more than sham. Sevakas should not seek to draw attention to themselves by extravagant displays of piety, particularly those prosperous members of the business community who make cash donations for temple services. One shopkeeper explained:

A real Vaishnava is a man who does seva without showing others that he is doing so. He is a real Vaishnava because he has feelings of love [premabhava] for Thakurji. If something is needed in the temple, he gives quietly and expects nothing in return.^[9]

The mental states accompanying seva are further elaborated. The sevaka can choose to cultivate a particular emotional orientation (bhava) to Krishna. The bhava are culturally specified feeling-states lodged in certain intimate relationships believed to epitomize the true spirit of love and affection felt by the devotee for Krishna. Thus, in the early stages of devotional awakening the devotee might cultivate dasya bhava by assuming an attitude of loyalty, humility, and respect toward Krishna like that of a servant (dasa) toward a master. But sooner or later other more intimate devotional attitudes begin to take precedence. In sakhya bhava the devotee considers himself or herself to be a close cowherd companion (samba) and playmate of Krishna and imagines accompanying him to the pastures. In madhurya bhava or gopi bhava the devotee emulates the feelings of the cowherdesses (gopi) who cavorted with the handsome flutist of Brindaban. And in vatsalya bhava or Yasoda bhava the devotee experiences the tender loving concern felt by Krishna's foster-parents, particularly Yashoda. For most Pushti Marg temple goers all four bhava are invoked to a greater or lesser degree in worship. Yet many regard Yashoda's feelings as the most poignant. Vatsalya bhava would appear to represent the

quintessence of disinterested loving devotion. The Supreme Lord of the Universe, Sri Krsna^[*] Parabrahman, who inspires awe and fear in people's hearts, is thereby concealed in the form of a helpless child who inspires the tenderest care and affection.

Bhava is a state of mind, an emotional orientation, a mode of feeling and perceiving divinity that is articulated and intensified in conventional acts of devotion. By cultivating one or another form of emotional attachment to Krishna the devotee is able to participate as a lover, parent, or playmate of the god in a materialization of lila and to witness first-hand the pervasive and very real presence of the object of devotion. Thus, through bhava the temple becomes the setting for a real-life drama that only those souls favored by Lord Krishna have the capacity to enjoy.

In the Presence of Lord Krishna: Darsana

Many devotees worship small metal images or framed pictures of Lord Krishna in their homes. But they also value regular attendance at sect-affiliated temples in their belief that the lovesick soul cannot bear the heartache of prolonged separation from the deity. Nor for that matter does the deity readily endure being parted from his beloved admirers. Conceived in this way, temple attendance is caught up in a vital undercurrent of lila, for just as the soul, in its longing for Krishna, experiences the contrasting states of parting and reconciliation, so also the temple goer in coming and going is drawn into the cosmic process, succumbing to the alternating moods of sorrow in separation (viraha) and joy in union (samyoga^[*]). At this level of divine consciousness sorrow and joy are not discrete emotional states; rather each complements, anticipates, and arises as a consequence of the other.

The temple is the realm of divine play. Devotees are keen to point out that strictly speaking the word mandir, normally used in northern India to denote a temple, is inappropriate when applied to their own places of worship. Instead the word haveli is preferred, meaning a large house or mansion. More specifically, the temple is Nandalaya, the abode of Nanda, foster-father to Krishna and chief of the cowherds of Braj. Temple rooms, kitchens, and courtyards are identified with Nanda's home. At the same time the temple is believed to contain within its precincts the celestial Braj (Braj-bhumi, Brajmandala^[*]) such that various rooms correspond to its sacred landmarks. In one temple in Ujjain, though most conform to a similar pattern, devotees observe the deity from an enclosed courtyard known as Kamala Cauka in the center of which is an inlaid design representing a twenty-four petaled lotus (kamala) symbolizing Braj and its twenty-four sacred groves (vana). The courtyard also symbolizes the sacred Jamuna River. Every year during the festival of Nava Lila it is completely flooded and decorated with lotus blossoms and overhanging branches; a priest, wading knee-deep in water, pushes a model

boat containing an image of Krishna. Kamala Cauka is surrounded by triple-arched galleries (tivari), at one side of which is Dol^[*] Tivari, so-called because here the deity is pushed in a swing (dol^[*]) on the day following the Holi festival. Beyond is the inner sanctum (nijmandir) identified with Brindaban, the scene of Krishna's carefree childhood, and adjoining it is a private sleeping compartment (Saiya Ghar) identified with Nikunja, the sacred grove in Brindaban where Krishna sported with his favorite gopi (Svaminiji). Another open courtyard is known as Govardhan Cauka, after the mountain where Sri Nathji was first discovered; and nearby a room contains a small shrine dedicated to Giriraja, King among Mountains, an essential form of Lord Krishna.^[10] Even the temple well is said to contain the holy waters of the Jamuna.

The temple marks a threshold between two contrasting worlds or two ways of perceiving the same world. The contrast is succinctly expressed in the opposition between the laukika and the alaukika, terms that have no precise equivalents in English (see Barz 1976:10ff.) but that are frequently used in conversation as well as in sectarian literature. They refer essentially to two contrasting states of mind, indicating the transformation experienced by the soul as it passes from a condition of ignorance, misery, and defilement (the laukika state) to one of knowledge, grace, bliss, and acceptance by Krishna in his eternal lila (the alaukika state). Thus, the consecrated food, the image, the devotional literature, the worship, the sect, the temple, and bhava itself arc described as being alaukika. For enlightened souls capable of seeing through alaukika eyes, these things are sacred, supramundane, celestial, the furnishings of lila, as opposed to the profane, worldly, and mundane. In a laukika sense one enters the temple, observes a statue of the god, and eats a portion of the consecrated food. But in an alaukika sense one enters the heavenly Braj, meets Lord Krishna face-to-face, and tastes of his infinite bliss.

Devotees visit the temple to have "sight of" (darsana) Lord Krishna. At intervals during the morning and late afternoon an audience gathers in Kamala Cauka from which vantage point the darsana is eagerly awaited. Meanwhile, one, two, or even three devotional singers (kirtaniya) sit just outside the doors of the sanctum singing stanzas (pada) whose melodies and lyrics are specially selected to convey the mood of the scene to come. The darsana begins when the chief priest (mukhiya) or one of his assistants opens the doors from within to reveal the enthroned deity. The occasion is greeted with much excitement as individuals jostle for position in their efforts to gain a clear view into the chamber. Initial agitation soon gives way to an atmosphere of relatively calm contemplation. Devotees, seemingly enthralled by the scene within, simply stand with their attention fixed on the sanctum.

Merely to observe the image does not amount to real darsana. Devotees stress that ideally the observer must feel that he or she is "in the deity's immediate presence" (saksat-darsana^[*]). This feeling was typically described as a sudden and brief change of consciousness: at some stage of the darsana the

devotee momentarily forgets mundane surroundings, the mind becoming completely engrossed in Krishna. Darsana as such is a subjective experience implying a heightened sense of awareness.^[11] For devotees blessed with the faculty of subtle sight the image is a sentient being, but for those with the limited faculty of gross sight it remains a lifeless statue.

The darsanas follow a chronological sequence corresponding to episodes in the daily and festival life of the god. In this way they afford occasional views of a continuous drama in which temple priests are constantly occupied behind the scenes in ministering to the substantial needs of the deity.^[12] The daily routine is normally organized around eight darsanas, beginning early in the morning at Mangala^[*] when the priest assumes the identity of Yashoda, gently wakes the child and offers him a light snack consisting of milk, curds, butter, and dried fruits. At Srngara^[*] the child is bathed, applied with sweet smelling perfumes, dressed, and given another snack before being presented to his admirers.^[13]Gvala follows one or two hours later when Krishna as the cowherd Gopala is represented as taking the cows to the pastures with his cowherd companions (gvala). Between 10:00 and 11:00 A.M., at Rajbhoga, he is offered a royal feast of pulses, curry, wheat-cakes, pickles, boiled rice, sweets, and fresh fruits, after which he takes a midday siesta. Between 3:30 and 4:30 P.M., at Utthapana, the deity is gently roused from sleep and offered light refreshments, followed about one hour later at Bhoga by another snack as the cows begin to gather in their readiness to leave the pastures. At Sandhya-arati the deity has returned home, and a lighted lamp is waved before him (arati). Finally, at Sayana, the second full meal of the day having been served, the deity is undressed and put to bed.

In order to understand more fully the significance of this ritual cycle one must be aware of the principles of traditional Indian dramaturgy and aesthetics with which it has affinities and which in Pushti Marg, as in other North Indian bhakti cults, have provided a particularly congenial mode for expressing the relationship between the deity and Krishna (Kinsley 1979:153). The subtleties of Sanskrit aesthetics need not delay one unduly; suffice it to mention that according to classical theory a work of art, let me say a dance drama, should serve to arouse in each actor and member of the audience a certain "dominant emotion" (sthayi bhava), of which there arc normally eight, and to raise it to the level of a corresponding sentiment (rasa, literally flavor, relish). Hence the bhava of love is complemented by the erotic rasa, mirth by the comic, sorrow by the pathetic, anger by the furious, and so on. The chief purpose of the drama is to excite a basic feeling in the minds of the actors and members of the audience and to refine it so that it becomes fully attuned to the universal sentiment conveyed by the performance. An enraptured state of self-forgetfulness results in which actors and audience relish the thrill of pure aesthetic appreciation. They taste rasa.

This trancelike state has been likened to a spiritual experience, a compari-

son not unduly strained in the Indian context given the "imperceptible shading off from the spiritual to the aesthetic, and vice versa" (Raghavan 1967: 258). Rasa is described as resembling the thrill of ananda and even ultimate release (De 1963:69). Followers of Pushti Mars have deliberately conceived the relationship with Krishna in aesthetic terms. Bhava and rasa are not part of an obscure vocabulary of aesthetic elitism; many temple goers use them freely when describing mystical experiences. As the very form of divine bliss (anandarupa) the Krishna image also embodies rasa (rasarupa). Rasa, the concept of aesthetic appreciation, is transformed into the spiritual bhaktirasa, and the dominant emotions are replaced by the principal devotional attitudes experienced by Krishna's parents, friends, and lovers.

In Bengal Vaishnavism madhurya bhava or gopi-love is the dominant emotion with the devotional song (kirtan) its chief form of expression. But in Pushti Mars the kirtan is just one of a wide range of media utilized for enhancing bhaktibhava. Devotees are encouraged to employ everything pleasing to the mind and senses in the worship of the deity. Consistent with aesthetic theory the decorative, culinary, and musical techniques of worship are stimuli blended in ways conducive to exciting bhava, eventually elevating it to the experiential level of bhaktirasa. Hence, the ornaments, acts, and procedures of seva are arranged so as to be in perfect harmony with each other, with the time of day, the season, and the mood of the lila being enacted. Devotional lyrics are sung in melodies (ragas, "emotions") which match the moods visually portrayed in the sanctum. During their performance the kirtaniya and his audience are supposed to share in the rapturous emotions felt by the Eight Poet Disciples of Vallabha and Vitthalnatha, who sat and performed by the doors of Sri Nathji's temple and who were themselves privileged participants in the Braj lilas.^[14]

If the devotee is to experience the love felt by Yashoda or a gopi, then his or her involvement must be total and heartfelt. The element of realism that accompanies the service of the deity makes the drama more literal and the feelings more poignant. Experiences related by one temple priest give some idea of the scrupulous care taken for the deity's comfort and happiness. During the first darsana of the morning he is careful to clap his hands softly as he approaches the sleeping child because, if he suddenly touched him, the child would be startled. In winter he always lights a stove and warms the deity's clothes before wrapping them round the body of the image. During the afternoon siesta he leaves some sweets and a board game nearby in case Krishna should wake and desire some refreshment or amusement. At Utthapana he always serves a snack in leaf cups because metal containers are not available in the jungle. He also makes sure that there is no delay in serving the snack because "when a baby rises after sleeping he is bound to feel very hungry." At Sandhya he does arati as soon as Krishna returns from the jungle because "Yashoda has been waiting since early in the morning and longs to embrace

her little boy."^[15] At Sayana he does arati one last time while ringing a hand-bell very softly so as not to disturb the drowsy child.

Similarly, during the summer months every effort is made to see that the god does not suffer from the intense heat. A water fountain is placed just outside the doors of the nijmandir, screens are sprayed with water and fitted over the windows, and a large fan is hung above the throne. The image is clothed in light-colored, loose-fitting garments. Because they give rise to heat in the body, diamond and gold ornaments are unsuitable. Cooling pearls and silver are worn instead. Various kinds of cooling foods (sitala bhoga) are prepared: Lord Krishna is very fond of the sweetened juice of ripe mangos (pana). Occasionally, special darsanas are arranged with the intention of alleviating any discomfort caused by the oppressive heat. At Candan Coli sandalwood paste, valued for its cooling properties, is deftly applied to the stone image in such a way that it appears to be wearing knee-length breeches (janghiya^[*], pardhani) or a loincloth (pichaura) matched with a short-sleeved bodice (coli).^[16] At Phulmandali^[*] the adornment consists of clothes, ornaments, and jewels exquisitely wrought from the buds of pale-colored summer flowers, while the image is seated in a bower of equally attractive floral construction. Devotees spend many hours threading flower buds onto strings according to precise patterns of size, shape, and color. One cannot but admire the consummate skill and patience displayed by the priests and lay devotees who practice such a transient art.

Also consistent with aesthetic theory is the belief that nothing should disturb the blissful harmony of the scene lest it affect adversely the onlooker's mood. Hence anything likely either to strike discord in the performance or to induce an inappropriate emotional response is to be avoided. For example, in some temples it is customary to celebrate the birthdays of living Maharajas by dressing the image in a kind of head garland (sehara) and cap (tipara^[*]); but in one Ujjain temple the practice had been discontinued after a well-loved Maharaja had passed away on his birthday. I was told that if the tradition had continued, this particular form of headdress might have incited bad feelings in the minds of worshipers, thereby tainting their normal devotional response of sheer joy on celebrating the birth of an incarnation of Lord Krishna. Moreover, if during worship a priest or devotee allows the mind to wander from the task in hand, or becomes angry (krodha), or is bothered by mundane concerns (laukika klesa), then his or her efforts will be in vain, causing unnecessary distress (kasta^[*]) to a god who shares in the feelings of his worshipers. The priest or devotee should leave his devotions immediately, taking another ritual bath before returning; on entering the inner rooms of the temple the mind should be free of all worldly thoughts and feelings. The priest should only touch the image while experiencing feelings of pure alaukika bhava. Because the image embodies rasa, only on the highest spiritual plane can communion between the priest and the image be realized.^[17]

Every article of adornment is consecrated as a result of its use in divine service; each article is also regarded as the embodiment of a particular emotion (bhavana), contributing in part to the overall mood conjured up by the darsana. Hence the ornaments of worship can in themselves stimulate one or another dominant emotion. Examples abound; some are conventional, and others are the inventions of fertile imaginations. The deity's throne (simhasana^[*]) might remind the devotee of Yashoda's lap. The buds in the flower garland worn by the image at Rajbhoga are the hearts of the gopis; the betel chewed after meals is the lip-nectar (adharamrta^[*]) of Yashoda or of Krishna's favorite gopi, Svaminiji; the spout of the water pot (jhari) is Yashoda's nipple, and the red cloth covering it is her sari; his perfume (sugandha) is the sweet aroma of Svaminiji; his winter blanket is her warm embrace; his pyjamas (suthana) are her long-sleeved blouse (coli); and his shawl (uparna^[*]) is also her sari. One elaborate costume consisting of a bejeweled crown (mukuta^[*]) and flared skirt (kachani) is reminiscent of the full moon and its beams, putting devotees in mind of the Rasa Lila dance when Lord Krishna made himself many and partnered each gopi in the great round dance beneath the autumnal moon.^[18]

The Food Offering: Bhoga

Perhaps the most effective way of establishing emotional contact with Krishna is through food lovingly prepared and subsequently relished as consecrated leavings (prasada). Anthropologists have not fully grasped the affective and spiritual significance of the food offering in Hinduism. Harper (1964) argued that relations among gods and between gods and people extend hierarchical relations between castes based on an idiom of relative impurity. Babb (1970, 1975) has elaborated on this theory by suggesting that the food offering expresses the superiority of gods over humans. By taking prasada, worshipers consume the leftovers (jutha^[*]) of the gods and thereby demonstrate their inferior hierarchical status while muting status differences among themselves. The offering itself is described as a form of payment to the gods for past or future favors acknowledged by the return of prasada, the counter-prestation.

The approach has not gone unquestioned (Fuller 1979; Hayley 1980; Cantlie 1984). With reference to devotional practice among Assamese Vaishnavas, Hayley explains how the offering is conceived as the embodiment of an emotional attitude—devotion—offered to Krishna and later consumed by the devotee who reexperiences the self transformed through the act of giving. Nor does the present material lend itself to interpretation within a rigid hierarchical-instrumental frame. An understanding of the nature of the offering in Pushti Marg lies in its cultural meaning as an expression of pure emotion (suddha bhava).

I am not suggesting here that the pure-impure idiom as it is normally understood in relation to food preparation and commensality is unimportant. Devotees and priests involved in processing offerings have a reputation for scrupulousness in their efforts to preserve purity. Only Brahman priests, having first assumed an enhanced state of ritual purity known as aparasa, may cross the boundary leading to the inner rooms of the temple.^[19] Every temple has at least three separate kitchens for the preparation of foodstuffs differentiated according to their relative susceptibility to pollution. Movement between kitchens is subject to restrictions which, if overlooked, might lead to the irreparable defilement of meals.^[20] I argue that an exclusive emphasis on the pure-impure idiom as it relates to social hierarchy or to physical-organic processes would lead to seriously misrepresenting the significance of the offering. I have already shown that in Pushti Marg, as in many other bhakti cults, hierarchical distance becomes irrelevant when one considers the warmth and intimacy characteristic of the man-divine relationship. Even though unequal status occasionally finds expression in dasya bhava, the cultivation of this servile feeling-state is primarily conceived in subjective, moral, and affective terms, that is, as a means of removing selfishness, overcoming pride, and demonstrating one's dependence on Krishna, rather than affirming the latter's hierarchical superiority. Although the menial approach is suitable in the early stages of the devotional career, it is much too inhibitory for most devotees who prefer to love Krishna as an adorable child or handsome cowherd.^[21] Moreover, a pragmatic interpretation of the offering as a "payment" for past or future favors fails to account for the disinterested spirit of worship. The offering is ideally conceived as expressing pure love made entirely for its own sake and with no thought of reward.

The problem of the meaning of the offering arises out of a limited understanding of the wider affective-spiritual implications of the pure-impure opposition. Because the preparation of food opens it in varying degrees to impurity, the offering must be insulated against polluting agents in order to preserve its purity. Should a devotee who is not in aparasa touch, see, or smell the offering, then it would be "touched" (chu gaya) and hence rendered unsuitable for the deity.^[22] But more important, in a devotional context the offering is marginal because it is intended for Krishna but yet to be enjoyed by him. Should a devotee whose mind is not completely engrossed in Krishna touch, see, smell, or enjoy the offering-to-be, then he or she would savor its qualities prematurely and hence in contravention of the fundamental precept that everything should be offered to Krishna before enjoying it oneself. Krishna does not accept food that has already been partly enjoyed by his devotees. To consume unoffered or rejected food is to partake of sin (pap): the eater digests his own selfish intentions. Purity in this sense refers to the offering prepared lovingly, selflessly, and solely for Krishna's enjoyment.^[23]

Clearly, there is a need for a more comprehensive understanding of the

ritual connotations of purity and impurity. The notions do not relate exclusively to objective properties of the external world but are used in a much wider sense to describe subjective states of mind. Thus the virtuous Vaishnava must endeavor by all means to keep his conduct (acar) and thoughts (vicar) pure (suddha). Mental purity, expressed in pure thoughts and feelings, and physical purity, expressed in pure actions, are regarded as complementary merits. Both are required for the sincere performance of worship. On the one hand, purity of the body is conducive to purity of mind: thoughts become pure by following strict rules of conduct. On the other hand, devotees also insist that if a man is not pure in thought he will not be pure in body and hence unworthy of seva. We have already noted that the enhanced condition of purity assumed by priests not only purifies the physical body but also leads to a pure state of mind, devoid of all worldly concerns. A Maharaja explained: "Whenever we approach Bhagavan it is not good for us to have contact with outside things. During seva we must remove all laukika thoughts from our minds so that we become completely absorbed in Bhagavan."

Right actions help to induce the right mental state. Alternatively, the mental attitude of the priest is crucial. Just as it is believed that certain kinds of food affect the moral and emotional disposition of the eater, so food can be imbued with the moral and emotional qualities of those devotees involved in its preparation.^[24] By preparing offerings the priest invests them with his own feelings. Indeed, purity of mind is essential if the offerings are to be acceptable to Krishna. As one informant said:

In seva we must have feelings of love [premabhava]. Without them seva cannot be performed. Bhoga is a thing of pure emotion [suddha bhava]. Bhagavan does not eat anything in a laukika form. In order to control the senses Vallabhacarya Sampradaya teaches that the purest eatables should be prepared and offered to God and only then may we take them. In this way physical and mental impurities are removed. We must not take food without first offering it to God. Purity of mind is the objective of Vallabha Sampradaya.

Purity of mind is fundamental. It is quite conceivable for Krishna to accept an offering that would normally be regarded as highly polluting but that remains pure inasmuch as it embodies the pure intentions of the giver. This point was explained to me with reference to several scriptural examples of which one is particularly explicit. It tells of a prostitute who had such profound love for her personal deity (thakurji^[*]) that she could not endure a moment's separation from him. She even performed seva during the four days of her menses. Vitthalnatha fully understood her spiritual needs and allowed her to continue, warning other Vaishnava women not to do likewise.^[25] She cherished such intense feelings of love for her thakurji that mundane concerns for conventions of purity would have impeded her devotions. Moreover, although it is considered necessary for the devotee to take appropriate pre-

cautions while preparing offerings, the devotee should not allow the mind to become obsessed with the finicking observance of ritual minutiae, for this would stall the effortless flow of love-filled devotion to Krishna. Another well-known story describes one of Vallabha's disciples who was preoccupied with the idea that the deity's clothing might pollute the offerings by coming into contact with the plate. Because he entertained such profane thoughts, the deity showed his displeasure by kicking the plate to the floor and refusing the meal.^[26]

In seva, then, there is an idea that the offering is impregnated with the devotional feelings of those involved in its preparation, while the feeling that Krishna enjoys the offering is acknowledged in the consecrated leavings. One devotee obligingly explained in English: "There is bhava, that is feeling, that we offer food to God and we make it sacred. What is important is the feeling that God accepts our offering. The fact is that he graces and acknowledges our feelings." Bhoga, meaning literally "the experience of pleasure," is enjoyed by Krishna, and the remains are converted into prasada, a word which devotees variously equate with pleasure (prasannala), grace, and bliss. Bhoga, prepared with the utmost dedication and given in generous amounts is the medium by which the devotee conveys overflowing love to Krishna.^[27]Prasada, a token of Krishna's pleasure and happiness on receiving the love of his devotee, is also an edible manifestation of his grace and bliss which the devotee tastes, digests, and inwardly experiences. The process of consecration would appear to parallel that of aesthetic appreciation: bhoga as an expression of bhava is complemented by prasada as an embodiment of rasa. The giving and receiving of food provides a medium for enhancing and transforming experience. Initially, the pleasure is in the giving. But this pleasure is fully realized when the devotee retrieves the sacred leftovers. Exceptional mystical powers are attributed to prasada. By taking prasada the devotee is nourished by Krishna's grace and made aware of his innate capacity to experience the ecstasy of lila.

The implications of this spiritual chemistry can best be explained by refering briefly to the principal sectarian festival of Annakuta^[*], the Mountain (kuta^[*]) of Food (anna), held on the second day of Divali in the month of Kartika (October/November). The festival celebrates the supposed historic episode when the people of Braj ceased making sacrifices to Indra and began worshiping Mount Govardhan instead. Offerings of food were duly piled one on top of another until they reached as high as the mountain's summit. Lord Krishna, delighted by this generous display of devotion assumed the form of the mountain and consumed all the offerings.^[28] The festival celebrated in sect-affiliated temples begins in the morning when an image of Govardhan is made from cowdung and worshiped with libations of milk. Later in the day a large crowd gathers again for darsana of a magnificent feast set before the temple deity consisting of baskets and buckets piled high with many varieties

of sweetmeats and savories. One's gaze is inevitably drawn to the center foreground where a large mound of boiled rice dominates the entire spread, an outstanding representation of the mountain of food offered to Krishna.

Annakuta is a festival of abundance, lavish giving, and inordinate consumption. It is essentially a community-based festival celebrated by and on behalf of the Vaishnava collectivity. Ideally, and to a large extent in practice, all temple goers contribute toward the feast in cash, goods, or services, and all are entitled to shares in its sacred remains. The entire feast, having been financed, organized, and prepared by numerous volunteers, becomes an accumulation of their combined loving devotion. When devotees assemble to take darsana of the splendid feast, they contemplate their combined bhava made lavishly and materially manifest. The large mound piled high with choice foods forms a vigorous impression of love in abundance. The bathing of the mountain and its cowdung effigies in liberal quantities of milk likewise expresses overflowing love. The mountainous feast betokens mountainous devotion. The mountain itself, an essential form (svarupa) of Lord Krishna, gives emphatic testimony to the god's benevolence in dispensing grace.

By receiving shares of the feast devotees share in the joy of one another's devotion augmented by grace and made sacred with reference to Krishna, the focus and fount of love. To love Krishna is to love one's fellow worshipers. One informant explained that Krishna is partial to those offerings prepared with the intention that other Vaishnavas will enjoy the consecrated remains. Thus, on a spiritual level, Annakuta involves the pooling and intensification of bhava and the subsequent dissemination of ananda. The deity is both receiver and redistributor, the repository of an overflowing store of devotion and the source of boundless grace. In this sense the festival is wholly consistent with the meaning of pusti as divine grace and spiritual nourishment.^[29] On the one hand, the mountain of food bears witness to the lofty devotion of those who nurture and care for the divine child. On the other hand, Mount Govardhan bears imposing witness to the role of Lord Krishna as the nourisher and protector of souls.

Krishna's Own Form: Svarupa

It remains finally for me to make some observations on the nature of the divine image as the object of devotion. I mentioned earlier that darsana is a state of mind in which the worshiper feels himself or herself in the immediate presence of Krishna. For those able to experience darsana, the image is perceived as an actual manifestation of the god: Krishna's own (sva) form (rupa). The relationship between devotee and image is personalized and concretized to the extent that if there is a delay in preparing the offerings, Krishna goes hungry, or, if the food is too hot, he might burn his mouth. The exquisite care and tenderness displayed in worship are meaningful inasmuch as the image

is regarded as a sentient being with whom devotees can establish a warm loving relationship. I will now explore this element of personality attributed to the image.

Western notions concerning the conceptual status of God, gods, and holy objects have confused the understanding of image worship in India. Sacred images have been conceived as symbolic intermediaries providing a conceptual bridge between gods and humans and enabling communication between them, in which case they are "affected by the aura of sanctity which initially belongs to the metaphysical concept in the mind" (Leach 1976:38). Or, as Tillich puts it, "The symbol participates in the reality of that for which it stands" (1968:265). The ambiguity of images often makes them a focus for speculation and disputation, as evidenced by the controversies surrounding the worship of idols and the interpretation of the eucharist in the Christian traditions, controversies that for Tillich reflect an "inescapable inner tension" in the idea of gods and holy objects "from primitive prayer to the most elaborate theological system" with the result that holy objects are transformed into idols—"holiness provokes idolatry" (1968: 234, 240).

One should be extremely wary about transferring the principles of this debate to the Indian context. First, the problem of idolatry reflects a fundamental preoccupation of the Occidental religions, one that has encouraged the facile polarization of different elements in Hindu thought and practice: "higher Hinduism" with its abstract philosophical speculation and its so-called "monotheistic" character, and "popular Hinduism" with its "grotesque veneration" of images, stones, mountains, trees, and snakes. Second, the conceptualization of a fundamental duality comprising the human and the divine as two separate and mutually exclusive categories is inappropriate in the Indian context, particularly in Pushti Marg where an apparent dualism is ultimately reducible to a pure monism in which the soul, the material world, and inanimate entities living therein are all conceived as manifestations of Brahman and hence of the subtle essence of Brahman. Finally, I would argue that the svarupa, be it Mount Govardhan or a temple or domestic image, is intrinsically sacred; as such, it is a symbol that stands entirely for itself.

The installation of an image in a Hindu temple is erected by a ritual whereby life (pran^[*]) is invoked into the image by a Brahman priest through reciting Sanskrit mantras and performing a complicated procedure of invocation, bathing, dressing, offering flowers and so on. Thereafter, the image becomes an object of veneration. In Pushti Marg an image is transformed into a svarupa by a Maharaja, who bathes it in the five sacred substances (pancamrta^[*]) and offers it consecrated food from an established image. In this way the Maharaja vitalizes the image by "making it pusti^[*]." The consecration of the image and the initiation of a disciple are conceptually similar. In the same way that the Maharaja as an incarnation of Krishna bestows grace on

the individual soul at the time of initiation, so he also transfers grace to the image such that, in the words of Purusottama (seventh in descent from Vallabha), it is infused with grace as fire penetrates an iron ball (Shah 1969:184). The divine identities of the soul and the image are both realized by a process of invigoration through grace. Once the image has been consecrated it becomes a living being and therefore requires constant care and attention. Worship should never lapse even if the image is broken by accident. But, as devotees are quick to point out, if a nonsectarian image suffers the same fate it becomes useless for worship; the deity departs from the image. For this reason those intending to install a personal image in their own homes should consider the move very seriously. The deity becomes a new member of the family and should be nursed continuously as a young child; otherwise he should be returned to the guru who will ensure that another disciple takes care of him.

Of all the sectarian images, the nine that Vitthalnatha passed on to his seven sons are accorded a preeminent status in the sampradaya. Their distinctive characteristics are apparent in the terms used to describe them. First, they are self-manifested (svayambhu); second, they are generally known as the sevya-svarupa of Vallabha and Vitthalnatha, meaning they were personally worshiped by them; and third, they are known as nidhi-svarupa, a term that has interesting implications. Monier-Williams (1899) translates nidhi as "a place for deposits or storing up, a receptacle;...a store, hoard, treasure."

Although these terms are used to indicate the exceptional status of the nine svarupa, they are also frequently applied to other temple deities. Indeed, the prestige of many images is often enhanced in the estimation of worshipers if their biographies reveal that they were at some time in the past worshiped by the great preceptors or their eminent disciples, or if they appeared in miraculous circumstances, or if they are subsidiary manifestations of one of the original nine. It is often said that deities, having been discovered on river banks, in wells or while excavating foundations, are self-manifested rather than man-made. One version of the discovery of Sri Nathji in Ujjain, a duplicate of the more famous Nathdwara image, satisfies several of these criteria. A devotee explained:

A Brahman and his wife had so much bhava for Sri Nathji that they used to travel regularly from Ujjain to Nathdwara for darsana. One night the Brahman had a dream in which Sri Nathji said to him, "you have traveled all this way to visit me many times, so now I will come to live with you in Ujjain." A few days later the Brahman was digging a well when he discovered a svarupa. He and his wife were overjoyed and installed it in a temple. In this way they received Sri Nathji's grace.

Another svarupa in Ujjain, Sri Madan Mohanji, was originally worshiped by the daughter of one of Akbar's chief ministers. One devotee recalled the story:

Thakurji loved her very much and used to grant her the darsana of his physical presence. They often used to play chess together. When she had grown older they used to dance Rasa Lila. Later her father, Alikhan, also became a disciple of Vitthalnathji. Soon the time came for his daughter to be married. But she didn't want to be married because she only had time for her Thakurji. Eventually she was married to a Muslim boy in Ujjain. She brought her Thakurji with her, and her husband built this temple for them. Sri Madan Mohanji was her Thakurji. It is a nidhi svarupa because Vitthalnathji gave it to her.

Both accounts reveal something of the intimate and personal nature of the relationship believed to exist between the accomplished devotee and the image. When Alikhan's daughter was a child, the deity was her playmate; later she became his paramour. The Brahman couple loved and treated Sri Nathji as their own son.

The svarupa is perceived through the emotions. Svarupa seva is a means of cultivating bhava, of exulting in the experience of loving and caring for Krishna. For the devotee to question the svarupa's apparent frailties—such as, How can Thakurji catch a cold?—is contrary to pure devotional feeling, for, although it is understood that Lord Krishna is above worldly discomforts, it is also important that the worshiper experiences concern for his well-being, a concern intensified by regarding Krishna as a helpless child in need of constant loving care. Even if many temple goers are less than erudite in expounding theories on the abstract nature of Brahman, bhava as a simple emotional experience renders all such abstract contemplation superfluous.

The capacity to feel perfect bhava and to experience rasa is seldom acquired suddenly. Most devotees say that it gradually increases in intensity. And as it grows, the image, being the object of bhava, also gradually assumes an independent personality in the eyes of the devotee until it eventually appears as a complete manifestation of Krishna. The devotee can talk and play games with it. In this way the image is consecrated through the combined efforts of guru and devotee, for although the guru is required to initiate the process, the full identity of the image is only revealed through the efforts of the devotee. Hence the devotee is also instrumental in vitalizing the image by nourishing and sustaining it with loving care and thereby investing it with loving devotion: "Shri Vallabhacarya says, 'Those very sentiments and feelings which arc present in the devotee himself are established in the Deity in worship'" (Bhatt 1979:90). Devotion is externalized in acts of worship and established in the image as the object of worship. The image responds to this nourishment by developing a lively personality. It is believed that in time a profound empathy evolves between the devotee and the personal deity. One kirtaniya remarked that every time he took darsana of the Sri Nathji image in Ujjain the deity seemed to reflect his own mood. When he felt happy Thakurji would smile back at him; when he felt sad Thakurji would appear very downhearted.

But why are some images described as preeminent (mukhya)? What of the nine nidhis? I mentioned above that the word nidhi means a depository, store, hoard, or treasure. The nidhis are valued inasmuch as, like Mount Govardhan, they are rich repositories of devotion, replete with Krishna's grace and bliss. Generally, it would appear that svarupa are attributed with more or less spiritual eminence according to the spiritual accomplishments of their former worshipers. The nine nidhis were the personal deities of Vallabhacarya and Vitthalnatha and have since been worshiped continuously by their descendants. It is as if devotees who approach them with pure bhava are able to reexperience the divine passions stirred up by their eminent predecessors. In this sense the svarupa are depositories for preserving the precious devotional experiences of the sampradaya from generation to generation.

Conclusion

Similarly the sampradaya by preserving a distinctive tradition of worship also perpetuates a unique religious experience. And yet one all too readily assumes that the survival of a longstanding tradition indicates an inevitable slide into ritualism. The influential notions of institutionalization and the routinization of charisma generally reinforce this view. Rituals that originate as genuine expressions of emotion gradually degenerate into sheer formalism; thus, participation loses much of its pristine spontaneity and sincerity. The dutiful observance of rules becomes divorced from the real attitudes and feelings of participants.

Conceived in this way, little that is positive about the relevance of emotion to ritual performance remains to discuss. But, having considered the devotional experience among Pushti Marg temple goers, the reverse would appear to hold true. By dutifully following the rules and customs laid down by tradition, the devotee gradually begins to identify with the personalities of Krishna's eternal play, experiencing what he believes to be the spontaneous and universal emotions of love and bliss. Participation in temple ritual is not simply a matter of learning lines and following directions, for there is supposed to come a point when the divine drama is not rehearsed but lived, when emotions are not imitated but attuned to the sublime, when identities are not assumed but real.

Devotional experience in Pushti Marg is based on cultivating particular emotional relationships between the devotee and Krishna. At the outset I explained that the emotions identified by devotees are not to be seen as representative of an innate and finite range of physiological states existing in all societies, albeit variously expressed, elaborated, stimulated, or constrained, but as culturally defined phenomena; hence, they are intelligible within the specific cultural contexts of meaning that define them and of which they are constitutive. I have attempted to interpret the constructs that define

emotional experience in Pushti Marg in order to ascertain what devotion means to participants in temple ritual. I have shown how devotional experience is actualized in worship and how participation provides a means for shaping and enhancing experience. I have also explained how emotional experiences are made concrete in the articles of ritual, the food offering, and the icon, which are considered actual embodiments of divine love and bliss. Finally, I have tried to convey something of the flavor of this experience though many devotees would suggest that a full appreciation of its nature remains an exclusive privilege of pusti souls.

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1985 The Concept of Nirvana in Village Buddhism. In Indian Religion. Richard Burghart and Audrey Cantlie, eds. Pp. 15-50. London: Curzon Press.

Tambiah, Stanley J.

1973 The Form and Meaning of Magical Acts. In Modes of Thought. R. Horton and R. Finnegan, eds. Pp. 199-229. London: Faber and Faber.

1979 A Performative Approach to Ritual. In Proceedings of the British Academy 65: 113-169. Oxford: Oxford University Press.

Tillich, Paul

1968 Systematic Theology. London: James Nisbet and Co.

Toothi, N. A.

1935 Vaishnavas of Gujarat. Calcutta: Longmans.

Turner, Victor

1974 Dramas, Fields, and Metaphors. Ithaca: Cornell University Press.

1982 The Human Seriousness of Play. New York: Performing Arts Journal Publication.

Vaudeville, Charlotte

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1948 The Sociology of Religion. Chicago: University of Chicago Press.

Works in Brai Bhasa^[*]

Harirayji, Sri Mahanubhava

1968 Sri Nathji ki Prakatya^[*] Varta. Nathdvara: Vidyavibhag.

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Prabhu, Sri Gokulesh

1968 Rahasya Bhavana—Nikunja Bhavana. Niranjandeva Sarma, ed. Mathura: Sri Govardhan Granthmala Karyalaya.

Eight
Refining the Body
Transformative Emotion in Ritual Dance

Frédérique Apffel Marglin

Introduction

Ritual dance performed by women has virtually disappeared from Hindu temples; it now flourishes in a very different context, the urban stage. Dancers on urban stages are divorced from the ritual world of the temple and are trained in secular settings. The dance is no longer a ritual but an art form.^[1] The difference between the staged event and the temple ritual resides in three elements: the radically different cultural content of the two events, the relationship between performer and audience, and the nature of the performer herself. These elements produce events having different experiential value for audience or participants.^[2]

This chapter will not be concerned with the dance as performed on the stage today. Rather, I propose to reconstruct the emotional-cognitive-spiritual transformations wrought on the participants by the dance performed as part of the daily ritual in a great Hindu temple.

The experience of the spectator-devotees is spoken of as tasting srngara^[*] rasa; the English gloss "erotic emotion" simply begs the question of defining this emotion in this context. The words "erotic emotion" imply Western understandings of an emotion. The Indian experience corresponds to neither Western physicslist nor cognitivist understanding of emotion. The experience' of tasting srngara rasa is an "embodied thought" to use Rosaldo's (1984:138) felicitous expression. This essay is devoted to understanding the radically culturally constituted nature of srngara rasa. Because the experience of this emotion is induced by a ritual dance, the essay also examines the transformative power of this ritual. When successfully carried out, the ritual enables the participants-devotees (the spectators as well as the performers) to experience the "tasting of srngara rasa," an experience at once physical, emotional, and cognitive.

I am also theoretically inspired by Tambiah's (1981) performative approach to ritual. Rituals accomplish or perform something, a symbolic communication that, because of its manner of delivery, brings about a transformation in its participants. This transformation is the performative outcome of ritual. According to Tambiah (1981:119).

Ritual is a culturally constructed system of symbolic communication. It is constituted of patterned and ordered sequences of words and acts, often expressed in multiple media, whose context and arrangements are characterized in varying degree by formality (conventionality), stereotypy (rigidity), condensation (fusion), and redundancy (repetition). Ritual action in its constitutive features is performative in these three senses: in the Austinian sense of performative wherein saying something is also doing something as a conventional act; in the quite different sense of a staged performance that uses multiple media by which the participants experience the event intensively; and in the third sense of indexical values—I derive this concept from Peirce—being attached to and inferred by actors during the performance.

In this essay I ignore the third sense of indexical values and concentrate on the first sense of saying as doing; some remarks imply the second sense of participatory experience.^[3]

The performative part of Tambiah's definition addresses the issue of a ritual's performative efficacy. The first or descriptive part of his definition tells what items comprise a ritual; he points to ritual as a culturally constructed system of symbolic communication whose "cultural content is grounded in particular cosmological or ideological constructs" (1981:119), having certain formal characteristics such as formality, stereotypy, condensation, and redundancy. Using specific examples, Tambiah shows that the cultural considerations are integrally implicated in a ritual's form. He also shows that the performative outcome of a ritual, its transformativc efficacy, is precisely the result of this integration of form and content.

My analysis of two rituals illustrates the enormous power of approaching ritual in this way. These rituals take place in the temple of Lord Jagannatha (Lord of the World) in Puri, Orissa, a major pilgrimage center on the eastern seacoast of India. The description of these rituals is a reconstruction on two counts. First, there are two daily dance rituals in this temple, one during the midday meal offering and one at the end of the ritual day, just before the temple is closed. The midday dance ritual has not been performed since the late 1950s or early 1960s. When I first came to Puri in 1975, only nine temple dancers who had performed this ritual in their younger days remained. One of them taught me the dance in her house, and another one performed it for me in my house. The reconstruction of this dance ritual is based on my knowledge of the dance, on the description of it by the dancers and other temple officials who had witnessed it, and on reminiscences of a few persons who had seen it in their younger years. The reconstruction of the emotional

transformations wrought by the dance on the participants is based on public actions that all my informants said had taken place, as well as on exegeses of the ritual by ritual specialists; it is not based on witnesses' statements about their subjective emotional state. The reconstruction is, therefore, semiotic not psychological. Second, the description of the dance is a reconstruction because it concerns the evening ritual, still performed by one temple dancer in her sixties in 1989. Because I am not Hindu, Buddhist, or Jain, I had no access to Jagannatha temple. The reconstruction of the evening ritual, based on data similar to that of the midday ritual, is augmented by detailed eyewitness reports from my collaborator in Purl, Sri Puma Chandra Mishra, who carefully observed the details.

A few words concerning Jagannatha temple are necessary to situate the female temple dancers (devadasi) and the dance rituals in their broadest context. Lord Jagannatha, considered by many a form of Vishnu, is enshrined in his temple along with his elder brother, Balabhadra, and his sister, Subhadra. Jagannatha is and was the real sovereign of the Kingdom of Orissa, which at its height extended from the Hooghly River in the north to the Kaveri in the south. This kingdom was vanquished by Muslim forces in 1568 and after various vicissitudes by the British in 1803. A Hindu king was the head of the temple until the early 1960s when the state government of Orissa took over its management. The king of Purl is in the 1980s a member of the committee that administers the temple, and he participates annually in the ritual of the chariots (Ratha Jatra); the sovereignty of Lord Jagannatha has no earthly political equivalent at this time, except in the minds of most Oriyans.

To capture the concepts and values underlying the ritual dances, I must sketch an ideal-typical picture of the core ritual activities in the temple which center around the preparation of food offered to the deities. Three main meals and two minor meals are prepared and offered in the temple. After being offered to the deities, some of the food is distributed to temple servants and other persons regularly associated with the temple; the remaining food is sold to pilgrims and other inhabitants of the town. The deities are also cared for in other ways appropriate to their exalted status, including bathing, dressing, decorating, and entertaining. Food, however, remains the core of ritual activity.

Food offerings require a vast social, political, and economic organization, which, according to Orissan inscriptions, requires in turn a king who conquers and takes possession of the territory. There he builds a temple and reservoirs to drain and irrigate the land. He then proceeds to donate these territories to the temple deity and to Brahmans (Rösel 1980:99). Food, the root of all living beings and the fount of all human activities (Zimmermann 1982:221, 224), must be first offered to deities who consume it through its fragrance. The deities in turn shower blessings on humans who partake of the deities' leftover food, called mahaprasada. The kingdom maintains itself through a sacred food chain; through repeated refining and transforming

processes food reaches the deities. From the cooking in the earth by the sun and by water, to the cooking in the temple kitchen fires, the fragrance of the food finally reaches the deities in the heavens. From the earth comes the sap rising in plants, which are harvested, processed, and refined by humans who offer them to the gods. At this endpoint of a continuously ascending and progressively refining (samskara^[*]) process from the earth to the heavens, the food begins a downward path as the leftovers of the gods. These leftovers are eaten by humans whose bodies drain themselves of the impure leftovers (feces, urine, sweat, menstrual blood) which return to the earth (Egnor 1978:50; Daniel 1984:85).

The king gives lands to the temple to grow food for the gods. He also gives land to Brahmans who sustain themselves from its produce. These high sasana Brahmans know the powerful words that enable them to install (pratistha^[*]) the deities in the temple. They do not serve the deities; lower temple Brahmans do this, and leftovers of the food offered to the gods in the temple sustain them.

Today about seventy-five hundred temple servants of all castes carry out some 108 different ritual duties in the temple (Rösel 1980:4-7, 71). In the 1955 census of temple servants conducted by the state of Orissa, thirty women temple singers and dancers are mentioned. Inscriptions show that at certain periods of history the number of women temple servants, always singers and dancers, was in the hundreds. In the 1980s, only a few women remain, and none of their daughters continues the tradition.

The temple dancers and singers, locally known as mahari but as devadasi among themselves, are female temple servants (sevika) dedicated to temple service in the same way as male temple servants (sevaka). The ceremony of dedication for all temple servants, both male and female, is called "the tying of the sari" (sari^[*] bandhana).^[4] After dedication to temple service devadasis consider themselves, and are considered by others, married to the deity Jagannatha. They should never marry a mortal man and raise a family, as other women do. They are likened to Vaishnavite renouncers (vaisnava^[*]) because they too renounce the worldly attachments of husbands, in-laws, and children, instead devoting their whole lives to the service of the deities.

The devadasis are also known as courtesans or prostitutes (vesyas, ganikas^[*]), reflecting the fact that the devadasis are not chaste. They can and do enter into sexual relationships with men although they remain unattached to them. Like male temple servants, they were supported by land grants to the temple and lived in their own homes along with their mothers, sisters, brothers, brothers' wives, and children, and their own adopted daughters. In the past the temple supported them, and they did not need the help of the men with whom they had liaisons. They were supposed to have sexual relations with the king, if he so wished, because he is a partial incarnation of Jagannatha, their divine husband. They also were customarily expected to have sexual relations with male temple servants but not with pilgrims or men unattached

to temple service. They also were not supposed to have children (effective indigenous methods of contraception were used), and they adopted their brothers' daughters, as well as girls from any clean caste whose parents wished to dedicate them to temple service.^[5]

The ceremony of tying the sari entitled a person to a share in the service of the deities; it also meant that this person thereafter possessed a share of divine sovereignty. The king is called the "first servant" (adya sebaka). He simply had a bigger share of sovereignty than most. Only the deities possess absolute sovereignty; they own the temple lands and are the ultimate source of authority (Appadurai 1981).

The devadasis embodying the female aspect of divine sovereignty are considered in most contexts to be living embodiments of the goddess Laksmi^[*], the consort of Lord Jagannatha. As such, the devadasis can have sexual relations with all the men who share in the sovereignty of their divine husband, the ultimate sovereign. In these relations, the devadasis transfer to men the auspiciousness of Laksmi. Auspiciousness is not synonymous with purity; it bespeaks of well-being, abundance, pleasure, and fertility (Marglin 1985). The active sexuality of the devadasis enables the male temple servants to share in this female aspect of sovereignty and to receive the benefits of its auspiciousness, even though the act of sexual intercourse renders them temporarily impure. The active sexuality of the devadasis ensures the fertility of the land through timely and sufficient rain; therefore, it ensures the prosperity of the kingdom. The king's function of bringing good rains and good harvests depends on a specifically female life force concretely materialized in female sexual fluid. This life force can be conceptualized as the female aspect of sovereignty, and the devadasis represent it in this world. Among normal married women, this life force is carefully channeled toward the continuity of their husband's lineage as well as to the welfare and well-being of the entire family including the ancestors; thus, married women arc enjoined to be faithful to their husbands. By renouncing family ties, the devadasis make their life force available for the welfare and well-being of the whole kingdom.

The sharing of sovereignty among those who have a share in the ritual service of the deities crosscuts caste ranking (Appadurai 1981; Marglin 1985). Devadasis can be recruited from all (clean) castes as can other temple servants. Auspiciousness, unlike purity, does not speak of status ranking, but of a nonhierarchical state of general well-being.

The Midday Ritual

The Cultural Content of the Spatiotemporal Context

The midday dance ritual is not accompanied by sung poetry. The dancer performs a long, uninterrupted pure dance, accompanied by a drummer re-

lated m her as brother. The midday ritual is an integral part of a Tantric (Sakta) offering.^[6] The midday dance ritual is not addressed to the deities in the inner sanctum, nor does it consist of entertainment for the deifies. The devadasi does not face west toward the deities but south where no deities are enshrined. She addresses her dance to the assembled pilgrims and visitors surrounding her.^[7]

In the temple, there are three main cooked meal offerings and two light, cold refreshments. Both the midday dance, which takes place during the main midday meal, and that meal are called "royal offering" (rajopacara). The food offering for the deities takes place behind closed doors in the inner sanctum where three Brahman temple priests (puja panda^[*]) sit on the dais facing north in front of each deity. After the food offering is completed, the food is distributed to the king and queen, the king's preceptor and overseer of temple rituals (rajaguru) and the officiating priests. While this offering is going on in the inner sanctum, the devadasi dances in the dance hall, in front of the Garuda pillar (the bird carrier of Vishnu) facing south. Standing by her is the rajaguru (King's guru or teacher). He holds a golden cane, symbol of royal authority (Marglin 1985:173). The participants-devotees crowd around the dancer, and at the end of her performance many of them roll in the dust on the ground where she has danced. Immediately following the food offering in the inner sanctum, a food offering for the public at large begins in the "hall of food" to the east of the dance hall. That food is later sold to pilgrims and other devotees in the market situated in the outer compound of the temple. The devadasi's dance takes place spatially between the two food offerings to the deity and to the public and temporally coincides with the food offering in the inner sanctum.

One of the king's main functions is bringing good rains, hence general fertility and well-being (Marglin 1981). The king is a partial embodiment of Jagannatha, the divine sovereign of Orissa; he is mobile Vishnu (calanti visnu^[*]) rather than stationary Vishnu in the temple image. In the temple the divine sovereign feeds his earthly representative as well as the masses of his devotees. But the only time food is given to the public at large is right after the dance of the devadasi; this may be one reason why it is called a "royal offering." The devadasi during her ritual is referred to as the mobile goddess (calanti devi), an appellation parallel to that of mobile Vishnu (calanti visnu) for the king. The devadasi is a metonymic embodiment of the royal sovereign power of fertility and abundance, a female power (Marglin 1981).

The midday meal is distinguished from the other two by including the tantric five m food offerings. The first three m's—namely meat (mamsa^[*]), fish (maca), and wine (madya)—are replaced by vegetarian and nonalcoholic preparations; the fourth m, black grain cakes (mudra), is the same in both the secret, esoteric version and in the midday meal offering. In the esoteric version the fifth m is both female sexual fluid obtained through sexual union

(maithuna) and menstrual blood; in the exoteric temple version, the fifth m is the dance of the devadasi.

The dance of the devadasi makes a sharp metonymic relation with food, dust, srngara rasa, and sovereignty. Because the devadasi dances only during the main midday royal food offering, the only one with food for the public at large, the dance, as transforming food into its own essence, srngara rasa, is identified with the sovereign's feeding his subjects.

The public at large first witnesses the dance; then they pick up the dust of the dancer's feet on their bodies and go outside to wait for the food offered in the hall of food to arrive in the temple bazaar. The dust from the devadasi's feet becomes her leavings, usually polluting substances, but in this context the dust contains positive, "sacralizing" powers. In rajaguru's exegesis of the ritual he refers to the dance as the leavings of sakti (sakti ucchista^[*]). Rajaguru told me that to really understand the meaning or truth (tattva) of the dance of the devadasi I had to know the esoteric ritual; he gave me a ritual text detailing it. In the secret version, drops of female sexual fluid and of menstrual blood are placed with water and other ingredients in a conch shell. The contents of the conch shell are sprinkled on the other four m food offerings which the participants then consume. The woman from whom the sexual fluid is obtained is called Sakti and, thus, in the esoteric ritual the leavings of Sakti are literally consumed. Rajaguru insisted that the sole purpose of the dance is the production by the dancer's movements of female sexual fluid (raja) which fails on the ground. According to his interpretation when the devotees roll themselves on the dancing floor they pick up dust and raja. Another meaning of the word raja is dust (or dirt), and this reinforces the link between the dust of the dancer's feet and her sexual fluid.^[8]

This esoteric interpretation constitutes a cultural account of the dance, directly linking the sexuality of the devadasi with the nourishing power of the food and the power of sovereignty. Such a sectarian account presupposes specialized and even secret knowledge. Therefore, one could argue that these meanings are absent for the public, which is mostly not Sakta and, in any case, lacks esoteric knowledge.

I argue, however, that certain characteristics of the ritual encode these very same meanings, and that they are present even for the uninitiated, nonsectarian spectator. The devadasi's active sexuality, her status as a "courtesan," was presumably known to everyone and taken for granted. Her appearance, her costume, signifies active sexuality. She is a decorated or dressed woman (vesya from vesa—dress, ornament; also courtesan or prostitute). She is dressed like a bride with lac (lakh, red resinous substance, shellac) on her feet and hands, red powder on her forehead and in the part of her hair, heavily bejeweled, wearing a three-stranded silver belt (the benga^[*] patia), well known by art historians as the jeweled multistranded fertility hip belt worn by female figures, yaksi^[*]. Frogs (benga^[*]), as aquatic animals, evoke the rainy

season and its fertilizing power; her brow is adorned with a creeper design made of sandalwood. She wears a silk sari as a skirt and a tight fitting blouse. Her silk shawl, used to veil her head when walking from her house to the temple dance hall, is bound tightly around her hips just before the dance. Male dancers who perform outside the temple dressed as women (gotipua) wear a sari passed between their legs in the manner of a dhoti. It is significant that the style of wearing the sari differs between the devadasis and the gotipuas. It is essential for the devadasi to wear the sari as a skirt in order for the leavings of Sakti, that is, female sexual fluid, to fall on the ground. Everything in her costume bespeaks the bride, when dressed for her ritual she is considered the embodiment or incarnation of the bridal Laksmi (Vishnu's consort).

The dominant mood of the dance is erotic, srngara^[*]. The word srngara, like the word vesya, can also mcan decoration in the sense of clothes, jewels, hairdo, and so on. The class of priests in charge of decorating the deities are called srngari^[*], and the elaborate dressing and ornamentation given to the deities toward the end of the day is called bara^[*] srngara^[*] vesa (great decorative or erotic dress). The association between costume and sexuality is further elaborated in the form of the dance itself. Odissi dance is well known for its sensuous, erotic flavor. One basic position is the tribhangi^[*], or three-bended posture, in which the hip is deflected, the torso and thus the breasts are deflected in the opposite direction, and the natural curves of the female body are emphasized and highlighted. The tight-fitting blouse molds and emphasizes the breasts; the tight-fitting shawl around the hips similarly molds them. The ideal body image of the dance corresponds to that of the full breasted beauties on Hindu temples, a far cry from the anorexic litheness of the ballet dancer whose flight from the ground and gravity—from pointed toe to lifted limbs—starkly contrasts to the Indian dancer's firm, earthy, foot-stomping, and bent-kneed implantation on the ground.

Everything in the dancer's appearance and movement bespeaks eroticism; rajaguru's exegesis is redundant in a sense and simply states in the specialized discourse of a particular sectarian tradition what is there for all to see, namely, that the devadasi's sexuality in the dance is metonymically linked to a royal food offering for the deities, the temple servants, and the people at large.

In sum, the inclusion of the five Tantric offerings differentiates the midday meal offering from the two cooked food meal offerings during the ritual day. Because this is the only food offering called a "royal offering," as well as the only one including food for the people at large, one can deduce that sovereignty, the feeding of the people at large, and the five m's, including the dancer's sexual fluid dropped in the dust, are all related. The dance is the only Tantric offering taking place outside the inner sanctum and directed at not the deities but the participants. The dancer is the goddess and her leavings—the result of her dancing—are said to make the food nourishing (a likely gloss for bara^[*] purna^[*]). The rajaguru in an interview told me: "It is through

the dance that the sacramental food is given fullness (bara purna). That is why the dance is essential."^[9]

Because the people who have watched her dance are those who take her leavings on their bodies and consume them in the food, clearly the trans-formative power of the dance is directed at them. In other words, the traditional royal function of feeding the people was achieved through the sexual power or life force of women.

A Formal Analysis of the Dance Ritual

The foregoing account, based on the cultural meanings given to the dance, states that a transformation visibly signaled by people rolling in the dust on the dance floor has taken place in the audience. That explains something about the transformation and implies that witnessing the dance caused it; it does not tell us anything about exactly how the dance brought about this tranformation. To answer that question one must look closely at the form of the dance performance itself.

The dance refines everyday communicative and expressive behavior. For the dancer to be an effective vehicle of refined body-emotions-thoughts, she must radically distance herself from her own subjective states. This radical distancing also enables her to arouse in the spectators traces left by real life physical-emotional-cognitive experiences and thereby enables them to experience in themselves the end-product or essence of this refining process. This last experience is transformative, for it has transported the spectators into a state not discontinuous with their everyday physical-emotional-cognitive experiences but sufficiently qualitatively different to merit the label "spiritual."

Let me develop each of these points in turn. First, the dance refines everyday communicative and expressive behavior in its rhythmic pattern. The dancer uses her feet percussively in dialogue with the drum and accompanies herself while dancing with the recitation of rhythmic nonsensical syllables; these can be called the speech of the drum and of the dancer's feet. The rhythmic pattern is based on Sanskrit prosody which, like ancient Greek, is based not on accentuation but on the time value of the sounds, basically long and short syllables.^[10] The rhythmic pattern played by the drummer and by the dancer's feet, which is accentuated by wearing ankle bells, is echoed by the speech of the rhythm, namely the drum language. This effectively reinforces the impression that rhythm in Indian dance and music is based on the natural rhythm of speech.

Second, the dance refines everyday communicative and expressive behavior in its extensive use of hand gestures, head gestures, and facial expressions. In a natural speech act, Indian speakers extensively use their hands. Furthermore, Indians use head gestures unique to them, in particular a certain manner of tilting the head from side to side making it rotate on a neck

vertebra in a manner unknown to Europeans. This gesture is used extensively to signify approval, appreciation, interest, or simply general, diffuse receptivity to spoken communication. This particular gesture is capable of many expressive variations along the lines of speed, intensity, and direction.

Along with the expressivity of the hands and head goes a lively and varied facial expressivity. Facial expressions use the eyes, eyelids, eyebrows, the brow, the nostrils, and the mouth. The dance vocabulary is clearly based on the raw material of these spontaneously occurring expressive gestures.

I have called the dance vocabulary a refining of the body-emotions-thoughts. My use of the term "refining" requires clarification as does my use of the cumbersome compound "body-emotions-thoughts." Let me start with the latter. In a natural speech situation a totality is formed of the body postures, hand and head gestures, and facial expressions accompanying utterances and modulating, as well as heightening, their cognitive and emotional content. This total communicative-cure-expressive behavior cannot be neatly divided into physical, emotional, and cognitive aspects; hence, I use the cumbersome compound to convey this totality.

The dance vocabulary refines this raw material: body posture, hand postures, head gestures, and facial expressions are stylizations, stereotypifications, and variations on the basic raw material of spontaneous communicative and expressive behavior. This is similar to the manner in which the various rhythmic patterns are variations, and stereotypifications of natural speech rhythms in a manner akin to the elaboration and stylization of speech rhythms in poetry. Furthermore, Indian dance has evolved, over the two millennia of its existence,^[11] into a carefully codified and named repertory of body postures, single- and double-handed gestures, head gestures, positions of the eyes, and other facial expressions.^[12] These postures form the basic vocabulary of the dance that is mastered during the period of the dancer's training. In a dance performance, this vocabulary is used in varied combinations and certain sequences of particular combinations; eyes typically follow the movements of the hands. Even though in "pure dance" there is no sung poetry, the facial expressions and hand gestures are as central and as elaborated—although in nonsemantic manner—as in interpretative dance with sung poetry.

A central term used to refer to dance sequences and combinations is bhava. It comes from the causative form (bhavayati) of the root bhu- (to be) and can be glossed as "what manifests" (Rénaud 1884:317). The dancer manifests or causes to exist a particular physical-emotional-cognitive configuration in a communicative and expressive sense. By this I mean that the dance is rooted in a conception of a self engaged in a communicative act with both emotional and cognitive content.^[13]

The dialogical nature of the Indian dance vocabulary is reinforced by the lack of spatial separation between dancer and audience, and of stage and

chairs in the temple dance hall. The participants stand in front and around the dancer within speaking distance, spatially related to the dancer as a group of conversing persons would be.

In a more restricted sense, the world bhava is used technically in the dance repertory to refer to the total postural and gestural gestalt that accompanies a particular emotional-cum-mental state. These states have been codified into nine major ones (sthayi bhava) and thirty-three transitory ones (sancari bhava). The major states are usually glossed as emotions or moods such as anger, valor, (erotic) love, laughter, disgust, fear, wonder, sadness (or pathos), and peace (or repose). One must keep in mind, however, that the form of the dance vocabulary itself necessarily portrays these "emotions" in a communicative genre, embedded in some narrative either explicit as in a song or implicit as in pure dance; thus, emotions are never separated from thought. The codification of emotions into a set number goes with a codification of the gestural gestalt appropriate to each emotion, particularly of the facial expressions. This produces an elaboration, stylization, and stereo-typification of the raw material of spontaneous expressions and gestures accompanying emotional and mental states in a communicative manner. It creates a basic dance vocabulary that allows both patterning of emotions in a manner similar to the patterning of sound, rhythm, mood, and thought in poetry and refining of the emotional-cum-mental states in the same manner discussed earlier in the context of postures, gestures, and facial expressions. In sum, I characterize Indian dance as a refining of the feeling-thinking body engaged in a communicative-expressive act. This refining of the thinking-feeling body is enacted by the dancer, and it transforms her into an effective vehicle for female divine sovereignty.

The dancer's own transformation necessitates the muting or even erasing of her own subjective feelings, thoughts, and accompanying gestures. Her own thoughts and emotions interfere with executing the refined bhavas in the dance, destroying their perfect, precise, and stylized rendering. She must be nonattached to her own subjectivity during the dance. Moreover, this non-attachment is both a subjective and an objective state. With the ceremony of dedication to temple service, the devadasi has renounced the normal attachments of married women to husband, children, and in-laws. Haripriya, one of the most senior devadasis, told me: "A devadasi should have no attachment. A young woman will fulfill her desire for sex, but she should have no attachment." This quite clearly shows that, even in their liaisons, the devadasis should not become attached. They always lived in their own houses and under normal conditions did not move to their lovers' houses; the devadasi is thus made into the effective vehicle of female divine sovereignty by her lifelong unmarried status as well as by her training in the dance. The dedication ceremony creates for her an objective social condition of nonworldly attachment, and her dance training and ability creates a subjective condition of

detachment from her own emotional and mental states; both are necessary. When a well-known stage performer of Odissi came to the devadasis a few years ago and requested them to allow her to dance in the temple and to resume the discontinued midday dance ritual, they refused her request because she was both married and lacked a dedication ceremony to qualify her.

The emotional-mental distancing required by the dancer is necessary because the dance movements (including bhavas) are based on neither her own notions of how to refine her spontaneous communicative gestures nor the notions of a dance master-choreographer. Her own ideas would produce a more realistic style of gesture. What I have called the refining of the feeling-thinking body is a vocabulary of highly stereotyped and formarlied gestures evolved over some two millennia. They are not directly related to the dancer's own spontaneous communicative gestures; instead, they are related to the collective and spontaneous style of South Asian gestures and nonverbal expressions for thoughts and emotions. This amounts to saying that what is specific to the individual dancer, her own "personality" or subjectivity, if used consciously, would simply intrude and disturb the hieratic clarity of the formalized gestures. I have chosen the term "refining" to bring out the continuity between the everyday, gross, or vernacular style of communicative gesturing and the dance style of gesturing. This continuity should not be taken to mean that it is consciously created by a dancer, a choreographer, or even a particular school of dance.

Such continuty through refinement is found in other contexts in Indic (Hindu, Buddhist, and Jain) India. For example, as a preparation before offering food to the deities in the inner sanctum, Brahman priests transform their bodies into divine bodies through meditation, breathing, recitation of powerful words, and practice of body postures and hand gestures. These practices are refinements (samskara^[*]) that allow humans to contact divinity by divinizing themselves.

Similarly, the devadasi's training and social position as temple servant as well as the more immediate preparations she undertakes before dancing in the temple—purifying herself (see Marglin 1985:89-90), dressing and decorating herself in a particular way—all amount to processes of refinement that transform her into "the mobile goddess" (calanti devi). Such a process of refinement transforms, but it does so without a discontinuity between humanity and divinity or, to put it differently, between nature and supernature. Refining the Brahman priest's body or the body of the devadasi is an important link in the chain of life that begins in the transformations and refinements that start in the earth where the sun and water germinate a seed and end in the heavens where the fragrance of the offerings reaches the divinities. But, this transformation by refining is only the end point of an ascending process. The chain of life is a cycle. At its zenith the refined offerings begin a downward return journey as the leftovers of the deities who bless

and sustain humans. Finally, the human's own leftovers return to the earth, the receiver of all impurities as well as the crucible where transformations begin anew.

Performative Efficacy: The Transformation in the Audience

The divinizing of the devadasi's body, her transformation, is the starting point for transformations in the spectators. The spectators picking up on their bodies the dust-sexual fluid of the dancer, namely the leftovers of Sakti, index the downward return path. The act of picking up the leftovers of Sakti is the spectators' partaking in the goddess's srgnara rasa; a physical-emotional-cognitive experience. The transformation, spoken of in Hindu India as an experience of tasting (rasana, asvada, bhoga) an essence or a juice (rasa), is rooted in the physical experience of food and eating. The language for this transformative experience is ancient in India, first written down in Bharata's treatise on dance, music, and drama (the Natyasastra, the second century B.C. to the second century A.D.). The concept of rasa has for centuries been extensively commented upon in texts (Sanskrit, vernacular, and English) as well as in oral transmission of the teaching of the dance. My own interpretation is based on a few texts^[14] as well as on oral teachings and comments by my dance master in Delhi, Surendra Nath Jena, and by the devadasis.^[15]

The source of tasting of an emotional essence is the divinized dancer. The bhava of erotic love (srngara) dominated the midday dance ritual, which is erotic love in action; it is a way of relating and communicating with another person, an activity at once physical, emotional, and cognitive. The mobile goddess is married to the god, and in their cosmic intercourse they produce a sexual leftover that fertilizes the land and produces well-being in the people. The dance is a divine sexual intercourse (the fifth m, maithuna, in the Sakta exegesis). The bhava of the dancer arouses in the spectators traces of their own erotic sensations that are constituted emotionally as srngara rasa. Should a spectator directly lust for the dancer, the performative efficacy of the ritual would have failed, and the erotic sensation would not be experienced as srngara rasa but simply as lust.

A highly hieratic and nonpersonalized representation of erotic love arouses and transforms the audience's erotic sensations into a refined mind-body experience of srngara rasa. The audience should not lust for the dancer but rather should participate in the divine erotic play.^[16] This participation is a refined emotional experience described as the tasting of an essence, of srngara rasa.

The word rasa also points toward the fact that this experience is refined, in the same way that the juice of a fruit is the extracted essence of that fruit. Rasa is the extract of the dance ritual. This concrete language of juices and tastes describes the refined, spiritual experience in the spectators as the result

of a series of refining processes that start concretely in earth, sun, and water. The language suggests to everyone this primal concrete connection at the same time that it speaks of an experience often described as spiritual in nature. There is here no dualism between spirit and matter or between concrete and abstract; the two poles are continuous, not mutually exclusive. This characteristic of Indic Indian art has often been remarked upon by Western observers but, given their own biases against relating these two poles in a mutually inclusive manner, it has more often than not generated misunderstanding (at best) or condemnation (at worst).^[17] Western dualism makes the affirmation and sacralization of female physicality and female eroticism that take place during the dance ritual, in both performer and audience, problematic if not impossible.

In the tasting of rasa the audience shares in female divine sovereignty. This inner experience is indexed by the spectators rolling in the dust-sexual fluid at the dancer's feet. It is important to remark that the receiving of the leftovers of the divinity in the form of raja, as a concrete form of smgara rasa, is achieved without Brahman priests as intermediaries. Caste ranking in terms of pure and impure castes plays no central role in this exchange because the devadasis are casteless. Hierarchy between divinized dancer and devotee is almost totally muted. All castes, except untouchables, can enter the temple and join the audience. The exchange between the divinized devadasi and devotees is direct and unmediated by caste considerations. This is to be expected in a Tantric context because Saktaism rejects the hierarchy of caste in principle and in ritual practice (and probably in many other contexts).

The Evening Ritual

The Cultural Content of the Spatiotemporal Context

The evening ritual, the last of the day, consists of the devadasi singing while facing the deities during the ceremony of putting the deities to sleep. The devadasi comes to the threshold of the inner sanctum and faces the small portable image of the deity taken out of the storeroom and placed on a wooden cot in front of the image. This image is called "sleeping lord" (sayana thakura^[*]).^[18] The devadasi is spatially separated from the spectators by a wooden pole placed horizontally at the gate of the dance hall to prevent visitors from nearing the inner sanctum. The songs sung by the devadasi are part of a Vaishnava bhakti tradition;^[19] all describe episodes in the life of Krishna, and they are gesturally brought to life by the devadasi. The theme of the songs is the love between Krishna and Radha, one milkmaid of the village of Brindaban. The songs are those from either the twelfth-century Sanskrit poem Gita Govinda by Jayadeva or the post-fifteenth-century Oriya poets who followed

the model of the Gita Govinda but wrote in the vernacular.^[20] The deity wears the erotic and/or ornamented dress (srngara vesa).

While the devadasi is singing, two Brahmans carry the image of the sleeping lord to the gate leading into the dance hall where the wooden pole separates the ritual specialists from the devotees. The devadasi walks along with the image and continues singing until the Brahmans place the image on a stand facing the visitors and offer flowers and wave lamps in front of it. During the whole ritual the lights in the temple are gradually extinguished. At the end of the waving of the lamps the devadasi ends her song, and at the end of the ritual the priests distribute the deity's leftovers to the visitors. They give out flowers from the flower offering and pass the still lighted lamp among the visitors who place both palms over the heat and smoke of the flame and then place their palms to their eyelids. The image is then taken back to the storeroom; everyone leaves the temple, and its doors are sealed for the night.

One devadasi explained this ritual to me: "Just as the cowgirls (gopi) give pleasure to Krishna in Brindaban by singing and dancing, we here in the temple give pleasure to Lord Jagannatha by singing and dancing." In the Vaishnavite bhakti (devotional) tradition, Jagannatha is considered a form of Krishna.

Another devadasi told me a story that sheds further light on aspects of this ritual and on gopi bhava, the emotional and mental state relating the devadasi embodying the cowgirl to the deity.

The sage Narada not only did not understand this parakiya bhaba [pertaining m a woman not one's own] but he hated it as well. So Krishna decided to enlighten the sage. He caused himself to have a very high fever. Narada at the sight of Krishna's illness was exceedingly grieved and immediately wanted to call all the doctors. Krishna told him that that would be useless and the only cure for his fever would be for Narada to bring him back the dust from the feet of some women. Narada immediately embarked on a search for such a cure. He first went to the inner apartment of the eight wives of Krishna and said: "Oh eight queens, my Lord and your husband is suffering from a high fever and the only cure for this ailment is the dust from your feet." The queens answered: "How can we possibly do such a thing? He is the master (pati), if we do this we will surely go to hell (naraka); it would be a sin (papa)." And so they refused. Narada then left and sought out many women, but none would agree to giving the dust from their feet. They all argued as follows: "Krishna is Brahman; he is the highest; it would be a sin m give dust from our feet." So Narada in sorrow returned empty handed. Krishna asked him if he had gone everywhere. Narada said he had gone everywhere except to Brundaban. Krishna sent him there. When the gopis saw Narada approaching they recognized him and realized he must be bringing news from Krishna. They playfully ran towards him asking him for news of Krishna. Narada said that Krishna was very sick and that he needed the dust from the feet of women. All the gopis immediately took the dust

from their feet and put it in a cloth for Narada. Narada queried: "Oh gopis, you know that Krishna is the highest; don't you feel it is a sin (papa) to do this?" The gopis answered: "Oh Narada, whatever he is we do not know; what we know is that he is one of our village, our playmate. If he is suffering, whatever is 'needed we will do. If it is a sin we will go to hell (naraka), we are ready for that. He is everything to us." On his way back to Dwarika where Krishna was, Narada understood. (Marglin 1985:199)

The dust of the gopis' feet had revitalizing and health-giving powers that restored Krishna to well-being. The introduction of the story is crucial to the full understanding of gopi bhava, that is, what it means to be a devadasi in the context of the evening ritual.

The bhava of the unmarried gopi is the parakiya bhava, which is contrasted to the svakiya bhava of the married woman. The devadasi is not married and therefore lacks a married woman's feeling of possession toward a husband. As Haripriya, a devadasi, said to me, "A wife says 'I have a husband,'" a statement that bespeaks ego feelings (ahankara). When Haripriya spoke to me of her own life, she told me about an important liaison she had had in which there was no feeling of attachment. She said, "A devadasi should have no attachment. . .. Take the example of the apsaras [heavenly courtesan] Menaka who loved Vishvamitra and gave birth to Shakuntala. But Menaka left Shakuntala in the jungle and went away. There was no attachment." On a different occasion, Sasi, another devadasi, told me: "We don't marry. We don't have children; we don't have a household; devotion is the one important thing for us." The gopi bhava in Haripriya's story consists not only in the gopis' utter selfless love for Krishna and their disregard for the rules of hierarchy but also in their nonmarried relationship to Krishna; they are parakiya. In fact, the two are very much connected. Precisely because they have no socially recognized attachment to Krishna and therefore lack possessive feelings and ego, they can act so selflessly.

This selfless and nonattached devotion of the nonmarried gopi-devadasi should not be taken to mean that the love for Krishna is chaste. The Gita Govinda's poetic description of the passionate erotic love between the gopi, Radha, and Krishna leaves no room for doubt on this point. Haripriya herself explained to me at great length the nature of the erotic and passionate love of the gopi-devadasi for Krishna while all the time contrasting it to the attached eroticism of the married woman. Conjugal eroticism is never separated from procreative considerations, whereas the erotic love between the gopis and Krishna is completely separated from procreation.^[21] As in the midday dance ritual, the mood of erotic love dominates evening songs.

The story told by Haripriya also clarifies the nature of the deity toward whom selfless erotic love is addressed. Krishna, a responsive god, is powerfully attracted by gopis and by Radha in particular as the Gita Govinda poem so exquisitely illustrates. In Haripriya's story, his illness puts him in a posi-

tion where he actively needs and seeks the dust from the gopis' feet. Given the role of dust and the discussion of the double meaning of raja in the context of the midday ritual, there are clear but implicit sexual references in the story. The implicit message is that the sexual love of the gopis revitalizes and vivifies Krishna. It is significant that in Purl one believes that during sexual intercourse the female sexual fluid, thought to be ejaculated in a manner similar to a man's, enters the man's sexual organ, positively affecting the man's health and vigor. This female sexual fluid (the word is the same as that for menstrual blood, but contextual use clearly differentiates the two) is the essence of female life force (sakti), the life-giving power that vivifies and nurtures the active cosmos. Krishna needs the gopis' dust-sexuality; he responds to their love by equally passionate love.

A Formal Analysis of the Evening Song

The devadasi's singing is accompanied by facial expressions and band gestures. Drumming and full-fledged dancing no longer take place, although in both inscriptions and reminiscences of the devadasis the interpretative full-fledged type of dance took place. Kokila, the devadasi who still sings during the evening ritual, was in her mid-fifties when I first came to Puri in 1975; because of a bad knee, she could no longer dance.

The poems are treated in song in a special way. The Gita Govinda is a very long poem of twelve cantos, and twenty-four songs. For the ritual, a particular song is chosen, and the singer may either sing the song in its entirety or omit certain stanzas. The devadasi repeats a given verse any number of times, each time offering a slightly different musical interpretation. Each musical interpretation is matched by a separate gestural interpretation. The number of repetitions of a line is not fixed in advance and depends on inspiration, the mood of the moment, and the skill of the devadasi. The musical mode (raga) chosen corresponds to the mood of the poem. The Gita Govinda has at the beginning of each song the name of the rags and tala in which it is to be sung.^[22]Rags, as is well known, are associated with particular moods and emotions, as well as particular times of day or night.

The words of the song are "mimed" in hand gesture, facial expressions, and body movements. I place the word "mime" in quotation marks because it calls for some elaboration. This redundancy between word and gesture brings to the Western mind the notion of programmatic music and dance with their pejorative connotation of trite homology and loss of meaning. Mime poorly suggests the nature of the redundancy between word and gesture in Odissi (and other Indian regional styles of dance as well). A very large vocabulary of hand gestures, about sixty in Odissi, can be varied almost infinitely according to the relationship of the hands to other parts of the body and to facial expressions. Above all, the repertoire of hand gestures and the way they are used is not realistic in the manner of Western mime.

The gestures are highly stylized or stereotyped; this very feature elevates the Indian mime above a literal representation of reality, onto a symbolically rich and subtle poetic level. Freedom from the literal allows the dancer to explore the evocative penumbra (dhvani) of the words.

The Gita Govinda, and other poems modeled on it, often make their protagonists speak directly. Songs can be like mini-plays. In the ritual, as in stage performances, the devadasi gesturally brings to life different characters in the song. There is no match of performer or costume to character. Furthermore, ifs line says, for example, "make the noble slayer of Keshin make love to me passionately," the devadasi, following the Sanskrit word order, will first take on the angry expression and make the gesture that identifies the demon Keshin, then she will adopt the expression of valor and gesture the slaying to go with "noble slayer," and finally she will show the erotic expression and one of the many hand gestures representing lovemaking for the words "make love to me passionately." In the span of a few seconds the dancer is a demon, a heroic warrior, and a passionate woman. Even though the main emotion of the dance-poem from which this line is taken is erotic love, there is absolutely no attempt at a realistic portrait of a woman in love. It is not theater; it is not mime (à la Marcel Marceau) that relies for its effects on the illusion of realism; and it is not dance in the style of ballet where the dancer portrays a particular character such as a princess, a fairy, a prince charming, or whatever. There is in this form no possibility of studying a character by entering into the role and identifying with the character to be portrayed. The effectiveness of the performer in Odissi dance depends entirely on the mastery of the conventionalized gestures and on their clear and precise rendition. Because the face and the eyes in particular are absolutely central in this repertoire of gestures, and because shifts in the expression of the eyes and the face are instantaneous, requiring totally unspontaneous as well as unrealistic transitions in the span of a few seconds, the performance requires the dancer's total control over her own subjectivity.

Performative Efficacy: The Transformation in the Audience

From both the exegesis and the form it is clear that in the evening ritual the devadasi is not the mobile goddess but a gopi. Gopis, including Radha (at least in the Oriya tradition), are not divinities.^[23] Rather, they represent the ideal form of devotion (bhakti) for which all devotees of Krishna strive, namely single-minded, passionate, and selfless love. The devadasi's song is addressed to the deity and expresses srngara rasa or gopi bhava. This emotion is the poetic, refined, and stylized form of the devotion felt by the audience. The dtvadasi, given her nonattachment and expertise in this refined expression, is initially closer to the deity than to the audience, but, as her song proceeds, the deity is moved closer to the audience. Even though no exegesis was given to me for the specific placements and movements taking place during this

ritual, they are nevertheless significant. The deity is moved after the devadasi has begun her song. While being moved and then stationed closer to the audience and worshiped by two priests, the devadasi continues singing. I interpret this particular sequence of movements as the deity's response to the devadasi's singing. The deity comes dose to his devotees; in other words, he responds to their devotion as expressed by the devadasi, the ideal devotee. Through her dance and song as well as her nonattached social status she is able to extract the essence of devotion, total absorption in Krishna and single-minded centering of emotion, thought, and physical love for him. The essence of her devotion is srngara rasa which is aroused in her audience who, unlike that of the midday ritual, is the deity, not the visitors. The deity in this temple is conceived to be a real person with authority, ownership of lands, needs, and desires. It should not be surprising to see that by listening to the devadasi's song he is moved in both senses of the term. His movement from the inner sanctum to where the visitors are watching at the gate of the dance hall outwardly manifests an inner transformation.

As for the audience of visitors to the temple, the outward mainfestation of an inward transformation is their taking the leftovers of the deity: flower and flame. If, as for the midday ritual, one takes these as tangible signs of an inward emotional-mental transformation, one must conclude that the source of this transformation is the divinity, not the devadasi. The devadasi as the embodiment of refined and single-minded devotion is instrumental in bringing the deity closer to the devotees by arousing a response in him; she enables the deity to respond to his devotees. By coming close to them the deity arouses in his devotees renewed and intensified love and devotion,. enabling them to respond to his responsiveness; this emotional response is made concrete and visible by their partaking of his leftover flowers and flames.

Conclusion

The ritual dances I have discussed in this chapter transform the participants; the participants taste srngara rasa, a culturally constituted emotion that is embodied thought. I have argued that the transformative power of the ritual resides in its marriage of form and content. The form of the ritual is its body, its sensuous dynamic presence; the contents of the ritual are the values and beliefs, or, in other words, the thought part. By joining form and content, body and thought, the dance has the power to create a culturally specific experience in the participants, an emotion that also unites body and thought, that is, an embodied thought. Bodily experiences are here unified with thought; they are not relegated to a separate realm, of physiology, sensation, or nature.

The marriage of form and content can be summarized in the word "re-

fining," and this word in turn points toward the nature of the participants' transformation. The word is, of course, an important meaning of the Sanskrit word samskara, often used to refer to life-cycle rites. Rites, such as initiation and marriage, transform the persons undergoing the rite by a process thought to be refining. This process at its most encompassing level characterizes the whole chain of life in which the cosmos with its flora and fauna, humans and deities, are all interrelated. The ritual day in a major temple, such as that of Jagannatha in Purl, exemplifies this great chain of life particularly in the food offerings. The two rituals examined in this essay share in this general cosmology but give it specific sectarian inflections.

The devadasi is a crucial link in this chain of life. Through the life-cycle ritual of temple dedication that transforms the devadasi into the wife of the god and a nonattached but sexually active mortal, the first leg of a series of transformations is achieved. This is the devadasi's first life-cycle rite (samskara) before her puberty ritual, a cycle that ends with her funeral. With her training she has acquired the specialized knowledge enabling her to refine her own body so that she can—in the context of the midday ritual—be a female divinity who shares srnsara rasa, an emotion, as well as its forms of female sexual fluid transformed into dust and food. In the context of the evening ritual she is a model of the refined, or concentrated, devotion felt by the devotees toward Krishna.

The approach followed in this essay enabled me to unravel how the audience was transformed and what that transformation was about, the experience of srngara rasa. That approach used Tambiah's exhaustive definition of ritual and reflected its tripartite structure. Ritual as a symbolic system of communication is rooted in a particular cosmology. I have highlighted the great chain of life as central to this cosmology and the processes of refining as those that give it life. Ritual characterized by certain formal features such as stereotypy, conventionality, and redundancy has been the subject of the formal analysis of these rituals. There again I argued that this form could first be thought of as refining everyday communicative and expressive gesturing. The performative outcome of these rituals was the experience by the devotees of a refined physical-emotional-mental state, the extracted essence of the ritual.

These processes shed light on the way emotions are viewed and experienced in Indic India. The process of refining implies that one starts with a concrete or physical or gross level and by successive processes of refinement extracts from these concrete emotions their essence. The basic processes of refining are cooking (see Toomey, this volume), and the most basic cooking is that which takes place in the earth when a seed germinates under the heat of the sun and the moisture of water. The grain or fruit that is eventually produced out of this cooking is the refined product. When the body is refined, out of its physicality several refined products emerge: emotions-thought and

finally, the most refined product of all, corresponding to the fragrance of the food offered to the deities, spiritual experience. Emotions, therefore, are not discontinuous: physical experiences on one side and cognitive and spiritual experience on the other. The basic or gross level is not despised or repressed in order for the most refined level to emerge. On the contrary, in the case of the emotion of love, for example, it is refined out of the concrete physical experience of sexual love.

Emotions and cognitions are both experienced and discussed as unified activity. This most obvious meaning of the word bhava refers at once to emotional and mental states. Thus the refining process has essentially three main phases: the physical, the emotional-mental, and the spiritual; the physical body corresponds to the earth, the emotions-cognitions to the fruits of the earth, and the spiritual to the fruits' taste and/or smell.

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