The origins of the text known as Brahma-samhita are lost in cosmic antiquity. According to Vedic tradition, these “Hymns of Brahma” were recited or sung countless millennia ago by the first created being in the universe, just prior to the act of creation. The text surfaced and entered calculable history early in the sixteenth century when it was discovered by a pilgrim exploring the manuscript library of an ancient temple in what is now Kerala state in South India. Prior to the introduction of the printing press, texts like Brahma-samhita existed only in manuscript form, painstakingly handwritten by scribes and kept under brahminical custodianship in temples, where often they were worshiped as sastra-Deity, or God incarnate in holy scripture.
The pilgrim who rescued Brahma-samhita from obscurity was no ordinary pilgrim, and His pilgrimage was not meant, as is the custom, for self-purification but for world-purification. He was Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu–saint, mystic, religious reformer, and full incarnation of the Supreme Lord, Sri Krishna, descending into the present epoch for the salvation of all souls. At the time of His discovery of the text, Sri Chaitanya was touring South India, preaching His message of love of Krishna and promulgating the practice of Sankirtana, congregational singing of the holy names of God . Sri Chaitanya commenced this tour shortly after becoming a monk (sannyasi), at age twenty four, and the tour lasted approximately two years. After a southward journey from Puri (in Orissa State) that carried Him to holy places such as Sri Ranga-ksetra, Setubandha Ramesvara, and finally Kanyakumari (Cape Comorin), he turned northward and, traveling along the bank of the Payasvini River in Travancore state, reaches the temple of Adi-kesava, in Trivandrum district.
Sri Chaitanya’s principal biographer, Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami, writes in Chaitanya-caritamrta (Madhya-lila, Ch. 9) that upon beholding the holy image of Adi-kesava (Krishna) in the temple, Chaitanya was overwhelmed with spiritual ecstasy, offered fervent prayers, and chanted and danced in rapture, a wondrous sight that was received with astonished appreciation by the devotees there. After discussing esoteric spiritual matters among some highly advanced devotees present, Sri Chaitanya found “one chapter of the Brahma-samhita” (what we now have as Brahma-samhita is, according to tradition, only one of a hundred chapters composing an epic work lost to humanity). Upon discovering the manuscript, Sri Chaitanya felt great ecstasy and fell into an intense mystic rapture that overflowed onto the physical realm, producing a profusion of tears, trembling and perspiration. (We would search the literature of the world in vain to find a case in which the discovery of a lost book inspired such unearthly exhilaration!) Intuiting the Brahma-samhita to be a “most valuable jewel,” He employed a scribe in hand-copying the manuscript and departed with the copy for His return journey to the north.
Upon His return to Puri (Madhya-lila, Ch. 11), Sri Chaitanya presented Brahma-samhita to appreciative followers like Ramananda Raya and Vasudeva Datta, for whom Chaitanya arranged copies to be made. As word of the discovery of the text spread within the Vaishnava community, “each and every Vaisnava” copied it. Gradually, Brahma-samhita was “broadcast everywhere” and became one of the major texts of the Gaudiya-Vaisnava canon. “There is no scripture equal to the Brahma-samhita as far as the final spiritual conclusion is concerned,” exults Krishnadasa Kaviraja. “Indeed, that scripture is the supreme revelation of the glories of Lord Govinda, for it reveals the topmost knowledge about Him. Since all conclusions are briefly presented in Brahma-samhita, it is essential among all the Vaishnava literatures.” (Madhya-lila 9.239-240)
Now, what of the text itself? What are its contents? A synopsis of the Brahma-samhita is provided by Srila Prabhupada, founder-acharya of the Krishna consciousness movement, in his commentary to the Chaitanya-caritamrta. It is quoted here in full:
In [Brahma-samhita], the philosophical conclusion of acintya-bhedabheda-tattva (simultaneous oneness and difference) is presented. [It] also presents methods of devotional service, the eighteen-syllable Vedic hymn, discourses on the soul, the Supersoul and fruitive activity, an explanation of kama-gayatri, kama-bija and the original Maha-Vishnu, and a specific description of the spiritual world, specifically Goloka Vrndavana. Brahma-samhita also explains the demigod Ganesa, the Garbhodakasayi Vishnu, the origin of the Gayatri mantra, the form of Govinda and His transcendental position and abode, the living entities, the highest goal, the goddess Durga, the meaning of austerity, the five gross elements, love at Godhead, impersonal Brahman, the initiation of Lord Brahma, and the vision of transcendental love enabling one to see the Lord. The steps of devotional service are also explained. The mind, yoga-nidra, the goddess of fortune, devotional service in spontaneous ecstasy, incarnations beginning with Lord Ramachandra. Deities, the conditioned soul and its duties, the truth about Lord Vishnu, prayers, Vedic hymns, Lord Siva, Vedic literature. personalism and impersonalism, good behavior and many other subjects are also discussed. There is also a description of the sun and the universal forms of the Lord. All these subjects are conclusively explained in a nutshell in this Brahma-samhita. (Madhya-lila, Vol. 4, p. 37)
In spite of the seeming topical complexity of the text, the essential core of the Brahma-samhita consists of a brief description of the enlightenment of Lord Brahma by Lord Sri Krishna, followed by Brahma’s extraordinarily beautiful prayers elucidating the content of his revelation: an earthly,beatific vision of the Supreme Personality of Godhead, Lord Sri Krishna, and His eternal, transcendental abode, Goloka Vrndavana, beyond the material cosmos. This core of the text stretches through verse twenty-nine to fifty-six, and a brief, subsequent exposition by Lord Krishna on the path of krsna-bhakti, love of God, brings the text to a close.
The Brahma-samhita’s account of Brahma’s enlightenment is quite interesting and can be summarized here. When Lord Vishnu (Garbhodakasayi Vishnu) desires to recreate the universe, a divine golden lotus flower grows from His navel, and Brahma is born from this lotus. As he is not born from parents, Brahma is known as “Svayambhu” (“self-existent” or “unoriginated”). Upon his emergence from the lotus, Brahma begins– in preparation for his role as secondary creator–to contemplate the act of cosmic creation but, seeing only darkness about, is bewildered in the performance of his duty. Saraswati, the goddess of learning, appears before him and instructs him to meditate upon the kama-bija mantru (Klim krsnaya govindaya gopijana-vallabhaya svaha), promising that this mantra “will assuredly fulfill your heart’s desire.” Lord Brahma thus meditates upon Lord Krishna in His spiritual realm and hears the divine sound of Krishna`s flute. The kama-gayatri mantra (Klim kamadevaya vidmahe puspa-banaya dhimahi tan no nangah pracodayat), the “mother of the Vedas,” is made manifest from the sound of Krishna’s flute, and Brahma, thus initiated by the supreme primal preceptor Himself, begins to chant the Gayatri. (As Srila Prabhupada puts it, “When the sound vibration of Krishna’s flute is expressed through the mouth of Brahma, it becomes gayatri” [teachings of Lord Caytanya, p. 322]). Enlightened by meditation upon the sacred Gayatri, Brahma “became acquainted with the expanse of the ocean of truth.” Inspired by his profound and sublime realizations, his heart overflowing with devotion and transcendental insight, Lord Brahma spontaneously begins to offer a series of poem-prayers to the source of his enlightenment and the object of his devotion, Lord Sri Krishna. These exquisite verses form the heart of the Brahma-samhita.
There is nothing vague about Brahms’s description of the Lord and His abode. No dim, nihilistic nothingness, no blinding bright lights, no wispy, dreamy visions of harps and clouds; rather, a vibrant, luminescent world in transcendental color, form, and sound–a sublimely variegated spiritual landscape populated by innumerable blissful, eternally liberated souls reveling in spiritual cognition, sensation, and emotion, all in relationship with the all-blissful, all-attractive Personality of Godhead. Here is a sample:
I worship Govinda [Krishna, the primeval Lord, the first progenitor who is tending the cows, yielding all desire, in abodes built with spiritual gems. surrounded by millions or purpose trees, always served with great reverence and affection by hundreds of thousands of Laksmis or gopis. I worship Govinda, the primeval Lord, who is adept in playing on His flute, with blooming eyes like lotus petals, with head decked with peacock’s feather, with the figure of beauty tinged with the hue of blue clouds, and His unique loveliness charming millions of Cupid.
… I worship [Goloka Vrndavana] … where every tree is a transcendental purpose tree; where the soil is the purpose gem, all water is nectar, every word is a song, every gait is a dance, the flute is the favorite atten- dant…. where numberless milk cows always emit transcendental oceans of milk.
… I worship [Goloka Vrndavana] … where every tree is a transcendental purpose tree; where the soil is the purpose gem, all water is nectar, every word is a song, every gait is a dance, the flute is the favorite atten- dant…. where numberless milk cows always emit transcendental oceans of milk.
The commentator reminds us (p. 104) that in the transcendental region of Goloka are found the same elements as are found in the mundane worlds, but in their highest purity and beauty: “… trees and creepers, mountains, rivers and forests, water, speech, movement, music of the flute, the sun and the moon, tasted and taste …” Krishna’s divine abode, Goloka Vrndavana, is a world in the fullest and realist sense.
There are those who will have difficulty with Brahma’s highly graphic and personalistic depiction of the spiritual world and of the liberated state. Some, for instance, whose conception of transcendence is determined by a certain logical fallacy based on the arbitrary assumption that spirit is the literal opposite of matter (and thus that because matter has form and variety spirit must necessarily be formless and unvariegated), conceive of ultimate reality as some sort of divine emptiness. However, any conception of transcendence that projects or analogizes from our limited sensory and cognitive experience within the material world is, by its very nature, limited and speculative and thus unreliable. No accumulated quantity of sense data within this world can bring us to knowledge of what lies beyond it. Residents of the material world cannot get even a clue of transcendence, argues our Brahma-samhita commentator, “by moving heaven and earth through their organic senses” (p. xix).
The Brahma-samhita teaches what transcendence, truth, ultimate reality can be apprehended only by the mercy of the supreme transcendent entity the Absolute Truth Himself, and that perception of ultimate reality is a function not of speculative reason but of direct spiritual cognition through divine revelation. This revelation is evolved through bhakti, pure, selfless love of God. Only by such spiritual devotion can Krishna be seen: “I worship Govinda, the primeval Lord … whom the pure devotees see in their heart of hearts with the eye of devotion tinged with the salve of love” (verse 38). Further, as our commentator explains, “the form of Krishna is visible (to the eye of the pure spiritual self] in proportion to its purification by the practice of devotion” (p. 75). Bhakti as a state of consciousness, then, is attained through bhakti as a practice, a discipline. For this reason, Lord Krishna in His response to Brahma at the end of the text, summarizes the path or bhakti in five aphorisms. This devotional discipline goes far beyond conventional piety. It necessitates “constant endeavor for self-realization” (verse 59) involving both a turning from worldly, sense-gratificatory activities as well as sincere absorption in spiritual practices and behavior, under the guidance of authorized scripture. Through such practice, then, the materialist is purified of his tendency toward philosophical negation and comes to understand the nature of positive transcendence.
Others will find Lord Brahma’s vision of the spiritual realm problematic for a related, but perhaps more subjective, emotional reason that goes to the heart of the human condition. There is a kind of ontological anxiety, a conscious or subconscious apprehension about beingness or existence itself, that goes along with embodied life-in-the-world–that accompanies the soul’s descent into the temporal, endlessly changing world of matter. Material bodies and minds are subjected to a huge variety of objective and subjective discomfitures, unpleasantries, and abject sufferings within the material world. Viewed philosophically, embodied person hood, false-self (ahnkara), is, to a greater or lesser degree, innately a condition of suffering. Because personal existence has been experienced by materialists as essentially painful, writes Prabhupada in his Bhagavad-gita commentary, “the conception of retaining the personality after liberation from matter frightens them. When they are informed that spiritual life is also individual and personal, they become afraid of becoming persons again, and so they naturally prefer a kind of merging into the impersonal void” (4.10, purport). Entering the path of bhakti, however, such persons can gradually begin to experience their real, spiritual selves and a release from egoistic anxiety. In that purified state, they become able to relish Brahma’s vision of blissful, personal spiritual existence in Goloka.
Still others. however, might criticize Brahma-samhita on the grounds that the text, being quite specific and concrete in its depiction, merely offers another limited, sectarian view of God and His abode–a view in conflict with other, similarly limited views. Such persons prefer a kind of genericized Deity who doesn’t offend variant theological views with definable, personal attributes. Brahma-samhita, however, is not a polemic against “competing” conceptions of the Deity (except those, of courses, which would deny His transcendental person hood). Vaishnava tradition does not dismiss images of the Divine derived from authoritative scripture from beyond its own cultural and conceptual borders. It respects any sincere effort at serving the Supreme Person, although naturally it holds its own texts as most comprehensive and authoritative. It promotes neither an arrogant sectarianism that would constrain transcendence to exclusive cultural, ideational, or linguistic forms (and burn a few heretics), nor a syncretistic ecumenism that would try to pacify all claimants on the truth by departicularizing it into bland vagary. Let the syncretists and the sectarians come together to appreciate, at least, the aesthetic magnificence of Brahma’s theistic epiphany.
What we are experiencing through Lord Brahma in his samhita is not mystic hallucination nor quaint mythologizing nor an exercise in pious wishful thinking. We are getting a glimpse, however dimmed by our own insensitivities, into the spiritual world as seen by one whose eyes are “tinged with the salve of love.” We are seeing, through Brahma, an eternal, transcendental world of which the present world is a mere reflection. Goloka is infinitely more real than the shadowy world we perceive daily through our narrow senses. Brahma’s vision of the spiritual realm is not his alone. It is shared by all those who give themselves fully unto the loving service of Lord Krishna– though Brahma admits that Goloka is known “only to a very few self-realized souls in this world” (verse 56). We are not asked to accept Brahma’s account of transcendence uncritically and dogmatically but to avail ourselves of the spiritual disci- pline, bhakti-yoga, that will gradually lead us to our own experiential understanding of this highest truth. The publishers of this small volume hope that a careful perusal of the text will inspire bhakti in the heart of the reader. It should be noted that Brahma-samhita is an advanced spiritual text and is more easily understood once one already has some familiarity with texts such as Bhagavad-gita, Srimad-Bhagavatam, Chaitanya-cariramrta, and Bhakti-rasamrta-sindhu.
This volume is a new and expanded edition of an English language Brahma-samhita edition published in India in 1932 by the Gaudiya Math (a Chaitanya-Vaisnava religious institution), with subsequent reprints in 1958 and 1973. These editions featured the English translation and commentary of Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Goswami (1874-1937), a great Vaishnava saint and scholar of wide repute and the founder of the Gaudiya Math. It was Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati who inspired the founder and spiritual master of the Hare Krishna movement, his dearmost disciple Srila A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, to journey to and teach Krishna consciousness in the West, beginning in 1965.
As per Srila Prabhupada’s instructions regarding the publication of this volume, Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati’s somewhat technical and sometimes difficult prose has been left intact and virtually untouched. Fearing that any editorial (grammatical and stylistic) tampering with Bhaktisiddhanta’s text might result in inadvertent changes in meaning, Prahhupada asked that it be left as is, and the editors of this volume have complied with his wishes. Only typographical errors have been corrected, capitalization has been standardized, Sanskrit terms in devanagari script appearing within the English text have been transliterated, and already transliterated terms have been adjusted to international standards.
In this edition, the original devanagari text is shown for each verse of the Brahma-samhita-, followed by roman transliteration, then by a word-for-word translation into English. (The original Indian edition lacked the latter two features.) These, in turn, are followed by Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati’s full English translation and commentary. His commentary closely follows that of his father, Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura ( 1838-1914), the great Vaishnava saint, reformer, and prolific scholar who initiated a revival of pure Chaitanya-Vaisnavism during the latter part of the nineteenth century.
The Indian edition of Brahma-samhita included the complete text, in Sanskrit, of the commentary of Jiva Goswami, the great Caitanyite philosopher, but that has been excluded from this edition because, in light of the relative few in the West who would benefit from its inclusion, it was decided that the neces- sary doubling of the volume’s size and price would be disadvantageous.
In his commentary to the twenty-eighth verse of the text, Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati writes that Lord Chaitanya “taught this hymn to His favorite disciples in as much as it fully contains all the transcendental truths regarding Vaishnava philosophy,” and he asks his readers to “study and try to enter into the spirit of his hymn with great care and attention, as a regular daily function.” His disciple Srila Prabhupada was very fond of Brahma’s prayers to Lord Krishna (… govindam adi-purusam tam aham bhajami), and there are several recordings of Prabhupada singing these prayers with obvious, intense devotion. The publishers join with the commentator in inviting readers to dive deeply into the sweet, transcendental ocean of Brahma’s hymns as a daily meditation.
Subhananda Dasa
Preface
The materialistic demeanor cannot possibly stretch to the transcendental autocrat who is ever inviting the fallen conditioned souls to associate with Him through devotion or eternal serving mood. The phenomenal attractions are often found to tempt sentient beings to enjoy the variegated position which is opposed to undifferenced monism. People are so much apt to indulge in transitory speculations even when they are to educate themselves on a situation beyond their empiric area or experiencing jurisdiction. The esoteric aspect often knocks them to trace out immanence in their outward inspection of transitory and transformable things. This impulse moves them to fix the position of the immanent to an indeterminate impersonal entity, no clue of which could be discerned by moving earth and heaven through their organic senses.
The lines of this booklet will surely help such puzzled souls in their march towards the personality of the immanent lying beyond their sensuous gaze of inspection. The very first stanza of this publication will revolutionize their reserved ideas when the nomenclature of the Absolute is put before them as “Krishna.” The speculative mind would show a tendency of offering some other attributive name to designate the unknown object. They will prefer to brand Him by their experience as the “creator of this universe,” “the entity beyond phenomena”–far off the reference of any object of nature and void of all transformation. So they will urge that the very fountainhead should have no conceivable designation except to show a direction of the invisible, and inaudible untouchable, non fragrant and unperceivable object. But they will now desist from contemplating on the object with their poor fund of experience. The interested enquire will be found to hanker after the records left by erudite savants to incompatible hallucinative views of savage demonstration. In comparing the different names offered by different thoughts of mankind, a particular judge would decide in favor of some nomenclature which will suit best his limited and specific whims. The slave mentality of an individual will no doubt offer invective assertions to the rest who will be appealing to him for a revelation of his decision. To remedy this evil, the hymns of the accepted progenitor of the phenomena would do great help in taking up the question of nomenclature which is possessed of adequate power to dispel all imaginations drawn out of their experiencing the phenomena by their tentative exploitations.
The first hymn will establish the supremacy of the Absolute Truth, if His substratum is not shot by the bullets of limited time, ignorance and uncomfortable feeling, as well as by recognizing the same as an effect instead of accepting Him as the prime cause. He will be satisfied to mark that the object of their determination is the par-excellent Supreme Lord, Sri Krishna who has eternally embodied Himself in His ever-presence, all blissful, all-pervasive perfected knowledge as the very fountainhead of all prime causes of unending non beginning time, the supplying fostered of all entities, viz., mundane and transcendental.
The subsequent lines will go to determine the different aspects of the Absolute, who are but emanations of the supreme fountainhead Krishna, the attractive entity of all entities. Moreover, the derivative proclamation of the nomenclature will indicate the plane of uninterrupted, unending, transcendental felicity and the nomenclature Himself is the source of the two components which go by the names of efficient and material causes. The very transcendental name “Krishna” is known as the embodiment of all the transcendental eternal rasps as well as the origin of all eclipsed conceptions of interrupted rasps found in the mentality of animated beings which are successfully depicted by litterateurs and rhetoricians for our mundane speculation.
The verses of Brahma-samhita are a full elucidation of the origination of phenomenal and noumenic conceptions. The hymns of the incarnated prime potency has dealt fully with the henotheistic speculations of different schools which are busy to give an outer cover of an esoteric concoction without any reference to the true eternal aspect of transcendental non transformable and imperishably manifestation of the immanent. The hymns have also dealt with different partial aspects of the personality of the Absolute who is quite isolated from the conception of the enjoyers of this phenomenal world.
A very close attention and a comparative study of all prevailing thoughts and conceptions will relieve and enlighten all–be he a materialist, a downright atheist, an agnostic, a skeptic, a naturalist, a pantheist or a panantheist–busy with their knowledge of three dimensions only by their speculative exertions.
This booklet is only the fifth chapter of the Hymns of Brahma which were recorded in a hundred chapters. The Supreme Lord Sri Chaitanya picked up this chapter from the temple of Adi-kesava at Tiruvattar, a village lying under the government of Travancore, for the assurance of all God-loving, and especially Krishna-loving, people in this conditioned jurisdiction. This booklet can easily be compared with another book which passes by the name of Srimad-Bhagavatam.
Though it has got a reference in the pantheon of Puranas, the Bhagavatam corroborates the same idea of this Pancaratra. The devotees should consider that these two books tend to the identical Krishna who is the fountainhead of all transcendental and mundane entities and has a manifestive exhibition of the plenary variegatedness.
Aspersions of calumniation are restricted in the limited world, whereas transcendence cannot admit such angularities being an angle of 180 degrees or void of any angular discrepancies.
The publisher is carried away to the realm of gratitude when his stores of publication are scrutinized. Thakura Bhaktivinoda has given an elucidator purport of the conception of the most sublime fountainhead of all entities in Bengali, and one of his devout followers has rendered that into English for propagator purpose. The purports and the translations are traced to the backgrounds of the writings of Srila Jiva Goswami, a contemporary follower of the Supreme Lord Sri Krishna Chaitanya. The emotional aspirations will find fair play in perusing the texts of this brochure by one and all who have any interest in pure theistic achievements. The materialistic inspection often goes on to say that the provincial conception of theism has made the depicting of transcendental unity into diverse face quite opposed to the ethical consideration of the limited region. But we differ from such erroneous considerations when we get a prospective view of the manifested transcendentality eliminating all historicities and allegorical enterprises. All our enjoying mood should have a different direction when we take into account the transcendental entity who has obsessed all frailties and limitations of nature. So we solicit the happier mood of the scrutinizers to pay special attention to the importance of manifestive transcendence in Krishna.
It was found necessary to publish this small book for the use of English-knowing people who are interested in the acme of transcendental truths in their manifestive phases. The theme delineated in the texts of this book is quite different from the ordinary heaps of poetical mundane literature, as they are confined to our limited aspiration of senses. The book was found in the South some four centuries ago and it is again brought into light in the very same country after a long time, just like the worshiping of the Goddess Ganges by the offering of her own water.
SIDDHANTA SARASVATI
Shree Gaudiya Math,
Calcutta, the 1st August, 1932.
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