_ Bhakti in Current Research, 2001-2003 Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on _ Early Devotional Literature in New Indo-Aryan Languages, \ Heidelberg, 23-26 July 2003 | edited by MONIKA HORSTMANN With a DVD by Daniet GoLD MANOHAR 2006 ee || cr EFEO Seeing its own uproar ss poem begs us to nay have served as tion to areavatara) and sically appealing tothe Dadapanthi Anthologies of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries Monika Horstmann The sect of Dado (d. 1603), the Dadapanth, started forming during its founder's lifetime in Rajasthan and has its headquarter c. 70 km to the west of Jaipur, in Naraina. The life of Dadapanthi male and female ascetics, at least for particular branches of them, is to this day governed by three types, of activities: wandering (ramai), conducting communal worship, and preaching, The lay followers, in their tum, organize for them and the local communities impressive feasts. This reciprocity has existed from the formative period of the sect. In this way the link between both groups is strengthened. Before print culture made its definitive impact, writing as a fourth activity ranged prominently among ascetics and this, in fact, established the fame of the Dadiipanth. They scribed manuscripts for themselves or others, or they committed them to professional scribes. The manuscripts were meant for their own use or for veneration as sacred objects in shrines, Especially the months of the rainy season, when ascetics more often than not stayed at the houses of laymen, lent themselves to writing Numerous aspects of the wealth of the Dadipanthi: manuscript tradition have been explored, most importantly by Svami Mafigaldas and by Winand M. Callewaert. Whereas Sv. Maigaldas, in the earlier part of the twentieth century, established an overview of the sectarian authors and literature, Callewaert, starting in the early 1970s, filmed a host of texts and mainly aimed at the constitution of critical texts of Sant and related literature, Impressive and seminal to our understanding of the Dadopantht tradition and its mixing with traditions with which it shares the geographical and religious ground also is the catalogue that Harinirayan Purohit Vidyabhiisan prepared of his own collection, which was given to the Jaipur branch of the Rajasthan Oriental Research Institute, which also published the catalogue.’ Sv, Maigaldas prepared a handlist of the precious loose leaf manuscripts and of select big bound anthologies kept in the main temple of the Dadipanth at Naraina, In 2003, I started preparing a handlist of that 1, Gopalnardyan Bahurl and Laksmindriyan Gosviml Diksit (ed), Vidyabhdsan. grant samgrah-sict, Jodhpur: Rajasthan Pricya Vidya Pratithin, 1961os Monika Horstmann collection and listed about a quarter to a third of the ¢. 150 anthologies that are now accessible and usable? In the meanwhile, in February 2004, Brajendra Kumar Singhal from Jaipur, in collaboration with Gurumukhramji Ramsnehi, completed a catalogue of 637 MSS in the Naraina collection. This catalogue hes to date remained unpublished. My focus is on this collection of anthologies and the communal life that gave rise to them. [am consequently speaking of bound manuscripts that were scribed by monks for their own usage or commissioned by them to scribes. These hand-written books are called gujkas. The owners and scribes, the date of completion of the manuscripts or of particular texts of these are given more often than not, and so are the lineage and place of residence or impermanent sojourn of their owners or scribes. Some of these books are tiny, but many have four to five hundred folios with scores of texts by various authors, The folios of the books were often numbered in the fashion of loose leaf manuscript folios before scribing and binding. This means that when bound, the second half of the book bore no page numbers which makes the cataloguing of those parts a little complicated, especially if the anthology contains a multitude of texts. Anthologies sometimes kept growing over several decades which is also the reason why they may bear more than one colophon. Physically, they ate often divided into an inner block of folios and an outer one, which was actually meant not to be inscribed but to protect the manuscript pages from wear and tear. This outer block tended to be converted into a scrap-book and may contain anything, from short devotional texts to charms and recipes. A great part of these books was written in the cightcenth and nineteenth centuries, According to their most common function, these volumes, aesthetically so delightful with their often exquisite bindings, usually have a format convenient enough to serve travelling ascetics as vademecums. They were passed on from teacher to disciple or among the spiritual kin of a lineage. They represented sacred objects so that, also in case they were passed on to someone outside the lineage, they were supposed not to be sold, but given away for a ceremonial offering (nichévar), In a contract affixed on the last page of one of these anthologies, it was stipulated in the presence of four witnesses that its new owner would never sell it? ‘The writing of manuscripts in the Dadipanth started with Dada himself who appointed his disciple Mohandas Daftari as his amanuensis. He wrote them down as and when he heard them uttered by his master. He did not put them together, however, at random, but gave the collection structure by alotting his master's sayings to appropriate chapters, accordings to topics 2. Tacknowledge with gratitude the generous support extended to me in this by'the abbotin- chief of the Didapanth, Sv. Gopéldis, and I also thank Shri Sharad Chandra Ojha for his ‘cooperation while listing the manuscripts. 3, NarG 65, V.S. 1832, agreement of VS. 1876 for the sa songs). A Jangopal, Dada afte wrote in 1 sige Iw wu Jangopal living test records nm mentionec also. ment devotion,’ ba ai pa nw. ha Ba He aR He ab Hi yy In 4, Jangopal das, 1988, Me wl ‘This transl never call recite’, una