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this point it would be unwise to try and say much more. The
complexity and importance of the questions that the BR
weighs, together with the stature and sophistication of its
author, warn us against venturing, prior to careful
examination, any facile generalizations about its meaning or
purpose. Such considerations will be more appropriately
dealt with after we have become more familiar with the text,
in the critical remarks reserved for chapter nine.
The teachings of the BR are in fact somewhat
elusive; this is not a work that be approached easily or
directly. The difficulty is that, while richly suggestive,
the text is often frustratingly inexplicit, and sometimes
disappointingly vague. On key points such as the nature of
bhakti, the distinction between bhagavat and Brahman, the
relation of bhakti and moká¹£a, and the final ontological
status of bhakti, it shifts position subtly or, more
frequently, refuses to enter into specific detail or draw
out the full implications of what has been said.
be in part a feature of Madhusuūdana's scholastic style of
discourse, which assumes that the reader is well-versed the
religious and philosophical literature known to the writer
and his circle. It may well be due also to the unorthodox
and hence controversial nature of his conclusions, which he
perhaps felt were better conveyed by intimation than by
explicit statement. At any rate, a large part of this
This may