Chapter Five: Avatāra Doctrine and Rama Worship
—and what then need be said of one whose relationship with Bhagavan has truly been established? When the gross, subtle, and causal bodies have been dissolved, one becomes qualified to receive that relationship from the guru’s lips. First one discovers one’s true divine mother and father and recognizes one’s teacher; then service is received. According to one’s eligibility for one among the five rasas, a divine name and divine form are bestowed. This is the “fivefold meaning.”
One should regard the guru as Ishvara and serve without duplicity and with faithful attendance. Depending upon Bhagavan’s grace, the practitioner offers everything at his feet, exhausts the karma already bearing fruit, pierces the solar sphere, and bathes in the Viraja.
The radiant devotional rasa
There the practitioner abandons both remaining bodies together with their latent tendencies and becomes stainless. Crossing the Viraja with tremendous speed, one enters Saketa and, by its royal road, proceeds into Rama’s divine palace, formed of many jewels and surrounded by seven enclosures. According to one’s devotional conception, one attains Rama, receives every bliss, and becomes filled with supreme bliss.
The final chapter of the Hanumat Saṃhitā presents rasa together with all its constituent parts. In its account of the radiant devotional rasa, the enchanting adolescent Ramachandra, ocean of sweetness, is the object-support; the beloved women are the subject-support. His gracious character, sweetness, captivating adolescence, lovely speech, and ornaments, together with spring, the cuckoo’s song, gardens, and similar surroundings, are stimulants. Sidelong glances, smiles, movements of the brows, and the like are expressive consequences. Horripilation, change of colour, perspiration, and the other involuntary states are the eight sāttvika emotions. Languor, despondency, and the rest are transitory emotions, while loving dearness is the stable emotion.
We have briefly discussed the Śiva Saṃhitā, Lomaśa Saṃhitā, and Hanumat Saṃhitā to show that amorous worship in Rama-bhakti is not a recent innovation. It began much earlier. Dating these saṃhitās is an exceedingly complex problem, but they are not as modern as is often supposed.
The Uttara-kāṇḍa of the Vālmīki Rāmāyaṇa itself describes Rama and Sita’s play in the Ashoka grove.1 Portrayals of their love before marriage had begun by the eighth century CE.2 The Mahāvīra-carita, Jānakī-haraṇa, Prasanna-rāghava, and Hanumannāṭaka contain broad and detailed portrayals of Rama and Sita’s amorous play—carried, in the judgement of some, to the edge of obscenity.
Besides these saṃhitās and dramatic works, ancient authoritative texts such as the Satyopākhyāna and Bṛhat-kauśala-khaṇḍa offer magnificent descriptions of the many—