The Five Sampradāyas

The Nimbārka tradition is the oldest of the four classical Vaiṣṇava sampradāyas to place Rādhā by name on Krishna's left side. In ten Sanskrit verses called the Daśaślokī, Nimbārka summarized the entire Yugala-siddhānta: the supreme reality is the divine couple, never one without the other, and the worship is of both at once.

Where Śaṅkara saw only non-difference and Madhva saw only difference, Nimbārka saw both at once, by the inherent nature of the categories. The soul is real, distinct in each body, atomic, dependent on Hari, knowing. The world is real, with Brahman as its self. The Lord is the supreme Yugala, eternally wedded, eternally inseparable. Worship of Krishna alone or Rādhā alone is incomplete.

The Nimbārka tradition holds that Rādhā is svakīyā, eternal wedded consort, never paramour. The kunja-līlā is the play of an eternal husband and eternal wife who happen to be the supreme reality. The mantra of the lineage centers on the Yugala. The Brajbhāṣā poets of the tradition, especially Śrībhaṭṭa with his Yugala-śataka and Harivyāsadeva with his Mahāvāṇī, gave the theology its vernacular voice.

Vallabhācārya was a Telugu Brahmin who consolidated his teaching in Vraja and Gujarat in the early sixteenth century. His son Viṭṭhalanātha institutionalized the seva tradition and gathered eight poet-disciples called the Aṣṭachāp, of whom Sūrdās is the most famous. Pushtimārga means the path of nourishment, of grace, called puṣṭi as distinct from maryādā, the path of rules and effort.

The Pushtimārga teaches śuddhādvaita, pure non-dualism. The world is real, Krishna's own self-manifestation. Liberation is participation in his līlā, not mere absorption. The path is grace, given without prior merit, and the relationship of soul to Lord is one of utter dependence on his pleasure.

The daily darshana in Pushtimārga centers not on the adolescent kunja-Krishna of Vraja-rasika tradition but on Bāl-Krishna, the child, especially in the form of Śrīnāthajī, the seven-year-old who lifted Govardhan. Rādhā is honored as Svāminī, the supreme mistress, the eternal beloved. But the temple's day is structured by the eight-fold seva of the boy-Krishna, from morning awakening to evening rest. The Pushtimārga rasa is closer to vatsalya, the parental mood, alongside mādhurya. It is a distinct and complete vision.

Hit Harivaṃśa was a contemporary of the Goswāmīs in Vrindavan. Where the Gauḍīyas climb to Rādhā through Krishna, Hit Harivaṃśa received Krishna only as Rādhā's gift. The Rādhāvallabha sampradāya is the most thoroughly Rādhā-centric of all Vaiṣṇava traditions. Its mantra centers on her name. Its temples place her at the center of the worship.

The eighty-four padas of the Hit Caurāsī are the daily breath of the lineage. Each pada is a kunja, and each kunja is Rādhā. The theology is that the eternal nikuñja-līlā in Vrindavan is the only place that finally is. Worldly and otherworldly distinctions collapse. There is only the grove, the lovers, and the seva of imagining oneself there.

Krishna in this tradition is rasika-priya, the lover-beloved, but his entire significance is given by his being Rādhā's. He is her devotee. The conventional theological hierarchy is reversed: bhakta on one side, Lord on the other; Krishna here is the bhakta, and Rādhā is the Lord. Rūpert Snell's 1991 edition of the Hit Caurāsī is the scholarly benchmark. The lineage is small, intense, and cherished by every Vraja-rasika who has spent time in Vrindavan.

Swāmī Haridās lived as a renunciant in Nidhivan in Vrindavan. He discovered the Bāṅke Bihārī deity. Tradition says Tansen, the great court-musician of Akbar, was his disciple, though this is hagiography rather than documented fact. The temple of Bāṅke Bihārī is run by his descendants to this day.

The Haridāsī teaching is distinctive: every sādhaka, regardless of biological gender, cultivates an inner female form, a sakhī, as the fitness for entering the kunja. Only sakhīs are admitted to the lovers' privacy. Male sādhakas in this tradition do not transition or cross-dress externally; they cultivate the sakhī internally, in meditation. Haridās himself is venerated as the eternal Lalitā Sakhī.

The lineage is intensely musical. The samāj-gāyan tradition of dhrupad-style devotional singing was born here, and survives. The temple day is structured by the aṣṭa-yāma, the eight watches, with appropriate kīrtana for each. The Haridāsī tradition stands somewhat apart from the larger sampradāyas: smaller, more enclosed, more committed to music as the primary path. To hear samāj-gāyan at Bāṅke Bihārī is to hear a lineage that has not changed.