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This paper argues that a concept of rebuking God (bhagavanninda) existed as a prohibited act in premodern Sanskrit Brahmanical texts, with the earliest examples in medieval Vaişnava narratives (in the Bhāgavata Purāņa and Visņu Purāņa) of Vena and Sisupāla. The concept of bhagavannindā problematizes the Bhāgavata Purāņa rereading of the Sisupāla story: how can someone rebuke a god (here Krşna) and be seemingly rewarded (through sayujya [union] with the god)? I argue that to this problem in Vaişnava and epic narratives the Bhāgavata Purāņa offers dveşabhakti / vairānubandha (liberation through enmity or hatred) as a potential solution. Finally, through investigation of two early modern commentaries on the Mahabharata, I argue that reading this concept of divine censure into the epics was not without tensions. The epic commentators sometimes reveal their own ambivalent readings of episodes where Krşna is rebuked. The paper draws attention to the importance of the Bhāgavata Purāņa as a commentary on the Mahabharata, upon which later exegetes relied. It surveys how and why the peculiar concept of dveşabhakti emerges in Vaişnava theology and presents narrative as both the source where this orthodox concept of divine censure emerges and the site where the concept is reinforced in commentary.
The Mahabharata recounts a battle on the fifteenth day of the war between a king, Bhūrisravas, and Sâtyaki, a Pāņdava combatant and relative of Krşna. Fighting an exhausted Sâtyaki, this was Bhūrisravas's battle to lose. The battle nears its climax when Bhūrisravas brandishes his sword and holds a fallen Sâtyaki by his hair, ready to deliver the fatal blow. The death of Sâtyaki would be a major victory for the Kauravas and demoralizing for the Pāņdavas. Instead, Bhūrisravas is blindsided by Arjuna, who severs his arm from behind. Lying on the ground incapacitated, Bhūrisravas fixes his anger not on Arjuna, but on Krşna. "Who would deliver such a low blow to someone inattentive who fights with another? Such a person cannot be anyone else but a friend of Krşna," he concludes, rightly surmising that Krşna ordered Arjuna to intervene.1
Through the character of Bhūrisravas, the passage conveys that the god Krşna is deceitful, and that we should expect similar behavior from his friends. One might perhaps expect a passage like this to be excised...