Devalok
How a tradition frames it · 1 telling · Northeast India

Sankardev's Krishna without an image

Sankardev's Assamese Vaishnavism worships Krishna alone through the divine name and the Bhagavata, and in its strictest order sets a book, not an image, on the altar.

Who is in it

The story, beat by beat

  1. Sankardev, born in the fifteenth century, founds a way of one refuge: Krishna alone, approached through his name.
  2. Vedic rites and image worship are set aside; the Assamese Bhagavata and the Kirtan Ghosha become the scripture.
  3. He initiates people of every caste and creed, Muslims among them.
  4. His successor Madhavdev, a former Shakta, carries the movement on and it divides into four orders.
  5. In the Nika order image worship is forbidden, and the Bhagavata lies on the altar in the god's place.
  6. Sattras and village prayer halls reshape Assamese society around this practice.

reform name scripture aniconism caste

How it is told, place by place

Base telling · Encyclopedia

Ekasarana Dharma (Kirtan Ghosha, Assamese Bhagavata, Sattras)

Northeast India · Assam Vaishnava

In Assam the form of Vishnu can be a book. Sankardev, the saint-poet who died in 1568, taught a religion of a single refuge in Krishna, reached by chanting his names — Rama, Krishna, Narayana, Hari — rather than by Vedic ritual or the worship of images. He translated the Bhagavata into Assamese, wrote the songs of the Kirtan Ghosha, invented the Borgeet, the Ankia Naat plays and the Sattriya dance, and opened his order to every caste and to Muslims. After Madhavdev the movement split into four branches that disagree exactly on the question of images: the Brahma order admits them with Vedic rites, the Nika order refuses them altogether and enthrones the scripture, the Purush order stresses the name, and the Kala order, the largest, the guru. The Sattra monasteries and the village Namghars built on this teaching became the frame of Assamese social life.

Sankardev — Wikipedia; Ekasarana Dharma — Wikipedia

Sources: Sankardev — Wikipedia; Ekasarana Dharma — Wikipedia

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