Prabhvi

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This following is from Mukunda Datta Prabhu, reposted with his permission.

 

 

"May there be good fortune throughout the universe, and may all

envious persons be pacified. May all living entities become calm by

practicing bhakti-yoga, for by accepting devotional service they will think

of each other's welfare. Therefore let us all engage in the service of the

supreme transcendence, Lord Sri Krsna, and always remain absorbed in thought

of Him."

 

-- Prahlada Maharaja, Srimad-Bhagavatam, 5.18.9

 

 

On Wed, 19 Nov 2003, Dante & Sridhari Vrishni wrote:

 

> Srila Prabhupada NEVER said PRABHVI the female word for prabhu.

 

Saying "the female word for prabhu" implies that anyone already accepts it

as some sort of recognized usage, as we would have it--which is doubtful.

Just because somebody decided to derive a feminization of the word "prabhu,"

that alone cannot establish it as a lexical norm--much less the preferred

usage of our acaryas, or anyone else's.

 

Where does this current fashion actually come from?

 

It seems more responsible to demontrate some substantial attestation for

such novel use for "prabhvi," by which I mean some clear attestation in

Vaisnava-parampara; I don't think Monier-Williams fits this description,

since lexicographers themselves merely depend on the kind of attestation I'm

suggesting. Without doing so, our current notion of "prabhvi" remains more

or less a neologism, and looks very much like a mere tool in the hands of

the fairly passionate agenda-mongers of the day.

 

My own admittedly limited experience with the Sanskrit and vernacular bhakti

literatures of the last thousand or so years (including verses Srila

Prabhupada quoted himself), leads me to the impression that the word

"mataji" is used to fulfil the sense for which some now prefer "prabhvi"

instead. Such a novel usage of “prabhvi” thus seems fairly skewed to me, as

if external (and nonspiritual) influences were actually operating far more

than its advocates would care to recognize.

 

However, this is primarily a linguistic approach. Given what Srimad

Bhagavatam suggests about epistemology (cf. "aitithya," in 11.19.17), it

might be more realistic to look for historical precedents involving the use

of gendered terms of address among any bonafide Vaisnavas.

 

Mukunda Datta dasa