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The social ethos of Alvar religion, as indicated above, was decidedly egalitarian. This trend is continued in the Bhagavata-purana, which, though it accepts the ideal of the four tends to be critical of what it perceives as the

112 narrow-mindedness, exclusivity, and--sometimes--hypocrisy of the religious establishment. While the simple cowherds of Vraja accepted Krsna joyfully and without question, the Brahmins at first turned away from him: Having thus heard the Blessed Lord's request, those [Brahmins] of petty hopes and pompous ritual, fools whose conceit was great, did not listen. Because they saw [Him as a mere] human, those ignorant mortals did not honor the Blessed Lord Adhoksaja, that 57 highest Brahman in person. The status of a bhakta is determined, not by his or her caste standing or sex, but by the moral qualities and devotion he or she displays. This is made clear by the fact that Suta, the narrator of the purana is born of a mixed 58 caste despised by the orthodox elite, and Narada, the great teacher of bhakti, appears as the son of a Sudra servant-maid.59 The gopis, of course, are women as well as being of low caste. Despite this, they are recognized as peerless models of the highest kind of devotion. According to Akrura, a learned minister of the Vrsnis and a close companion of Krsna: These young wives of the cowherds, alone among embodied creatures on earth, have attained the ecstatic love [bhava] for Govinda, the Self of all, which is the supreme [goal] desired by sages who fear the ocean of mundane existence, and by ourselves as well. For one who has acquired a taste for the stories of Hari, what is the use of [even repeated] births as a Brahmin? I shall always worship the dust of the feet of these women of Nanda's Vraja, whose singing of the glories of Hari purifies the three worlds. 60

113 The stereotype of a Hindu religion totally dominated by a male, Brahmin aristocracy disregards the democratic spirit of the medieval bhakti movements, of which the Bhagavata-purana is perhaps the most important expression. The text teaches salvation through loving devotion to Krsna, available not only to "women and Sudras," to use the standard formula, 61 but also to untouchable Svapacas, Pulkasas, and Antevasayins.62 For example: By hearing and praising Your name, by bowing down to You, or merely by thinking of You, even an eater of dogs [i.e., a pariah] immediately becomes fit [like a 63 Brahmin] for participating in the soma-sacrifice. When such attitudes are taken into consideration, it becomes "These obvious that the Bhagavata-purana, unlike the Sankara Vedanta, is not a product of Brahmanical orthodoxy. Hopkins believes that it was written by a group of ascetics who dedicated their scholarship to the cause of promoting devotionalism. ascetics," he writes, "may or may not have been Brahmans; if we consider the Alvars as legitimate examples, we find a variety of class backgrounds which was probably also characteristic of the Bhagavata ascetics."64 Madhusudana Sarasvati was deeply influenced by the religion of the Bhagavata-purana In the Bhakti-rasayana, as we shall see, he tries to explicate its devotional spirituality in terms of his strict philosophical non-dualism. The illusionistic metaphysic of the text of course presents him with relatively little difficulty. It is the purana's elevation of ecstatic bhakti

114 to the status of the highest spiritual goal, along with its egalitarian social teaching, that in the final analysis proves most difficult for him to handle while yet remaining true to the spirit of Advaita as formulated by Sankara.