The Swaminarayan sampradaya

What the Swaminarayan sampradaya is

Sahajanand Swami’s followers call him “Swaminarayan”, and the same name is his mantra, whose chanting is a central part of the sampradaya’s practice. According to Raymond Williams (A New Face of Hinduism, 1984), Sahajanand taught a Bhagavata dharma built on dharma, jnana, vairagya and bhakti, set strict rules for ascetics, and worked for moral and social reform in Gujarat; British officials also supported these reforms.

Followers hold more than one view of the relation between Swaminarayan and Krishna. Williams lists three: some hold that Sahajanand taught Krishna to be the supreme object of worship; some regard him as an avatar of Krishna; and according to Williams most followers regard Swaminarayan as the complete manifestation of Purushottam, the Supreme Person. According to Williams the Krishna mantra that Sahajanand kept for initiation (“Shri Krishna, you are my refuge”) is still used in the rituals of Ahmedabad and Vadtal.

History in brief

Sahajanand was born on Chaitra Shukla Navami, Samvat 1837, that is 3 April 1781, at Chhapaiya near Ayodhya, into a Sarvariya Brahmin family; his parents were Premvati and Hariprasad Pande, whom the sampradaya calls Bhaktimata and Dharmadev. His childhood name was Ghanshyam. After his parents died when he was eleven, he left home and, as Nilkanth, spent about seven years on pilgrimage from the Himalayas to South India.

At Loj near Junagadh in Saurashtra he met Muktanand Swami, a disciple of Ramanand Swami. Ramanand Swami taught Ramanuja’s philosophy in Gujarat; according to Williams, tradition holds that Ramanuja initiated him in a dream at Srirangam, and the Satsangijivan and Vachanamrut link him with Uddhava, Krishna’s friend, which is why his followers are also called the Uddhava sampradaya. In 1800 Ramanand Swami initiated Nilkanth as a Vaishnava ascetic with the name “Sahajanand Swami”, and about two years later named him his successor in a public ceremony at Jetpur.

In the last ten years of his life Sahajanand had six large temples built: Ahmedabad (the first, of Nar-Narayan Dev), Bhuj, Vadtal (of Lakshmi-Narayan Dev), Junagadh, Dholera and Gadhada. In 1826 he adopted a son of each of his two brothers and made them acharyas, Ayodhyaprasad of Ahmedabad and Raghuvir of Vadtal, and ruled that the office should pass by descent. In a document called the “Lekh” he divided the territory of the two dioceses: the land north of a line drawn from Calcutta to Dwarka under Ahmedabad, and the land south of it under Vadtal. He died at Gadhada in 1830.

Beliefs and practice

Philosophy: according to the Encyclopedia of Religion the foundation of the sampradaya’s theology is Ramanuja’s Vishishtadvaita; Williams too writes that it holds a philosophy like Ramanuja’s, though its acharyas are not Sri Vaishnavas. According to Williams, where Ramanuja accepts three eternal entities (jiva, ishvara, maya), Sahajanand named five: jiva, ishvara, maya, Akshar (the abode of God) and Purushottam; of these only Akshar and Purushottam are beyond maya. God is held to be not formless but always possessed of a divine form.

Conduct: the Shikshapatri gives rules for both householders and ascetics. By it, followers rise before sunrise and, after bathing, offer mental worship to Krishna; followers initiated into devotion to Krishna wear a double kanthi of tulsi beads at the neck and put an upright tilak of gopichandan or sandal paste on the forehead, chest and arms, with a round chandlo of kumkum in its middle; married women wear only the kumkum chandlo. The same text asks that the Shikshapatri be read, or heard, every day. Fasting on the Ekadashi of each fortnight is required of ascetics, and householders fast as well.

Festivals: according to Williams the festival calendars of Ahmedabad-Vadtal and of BAPS differ somewhat, but most festivals are kept by both. The year begins with Swaminarayan Jayanti on Chaitra Shukla Navami, which is also Ram Navami; then come Janmashtami, Hindola (the swing festival), Diwali, and Annakut on New Year’s day. Vasant Panchami is kept as the day the Shikshapatri was completed.

Branches

Ahmedabad (the Nar-Narayan Dev Gadi) and Vadtal (the Lakshmi-Narayan Dev Gadi) are the two original dioceses set up by Sahajanand, whose acharyas still come by descent from his family; according to Williams the boundaries in the “Lekh” were also accepted by the Bombay High Court in a case early in the twentieth century. Williams calls these the “old school”.

The Bochasanwasi Akshar Purushottam Swaminarayan Sanstha (BAPS) was founded by Shastriji Maharaj (Swami Yagnapurushdas, 1865–1951), who left Vadtal and built his first temple at Bochasan, where images of Swaminarayan and Gunatitanand Swami were installed in 1907. According to BAPS, Sahajanand made Gunatitanand Swami (1785–1867) his spiritual successor, the manifest form of “Akshar”, and Swaminarayan (Purushottam) remains always manifest on earth through his foremost devotee, the guru; BAPS calls this “Akshar-Purushottam upasana”. The BAPS line of gurus: Gunatitanand Swami, Bhagatji Maharaj (Pragji Bhakta), Shastriji Maharaj, Yogiji Maharaj, Pramukh Swami Maharaj, and after him Mahant Swami Maharaj. Ahmedabad and Vadtal do not accept this doctrine; Williams describes the difference as the sampradaya’s largest split in both doctrine and institutions.

There are other branches too. According to Williams the Ahmedabad ascetic Muktajivandas founded the “Swaminarayan Gadi” at Maninagar in the 1940s, which holds that Sahajanand named Gopalanand Swami as his successor. Several independent trusts and institutions also work within the Swaminarayan tradition.

Main centres

The Nar-Narayan Dev temple at Ahmedabad and the Lakshmi-Narayan Dev temple at Vadtal are the headquarters of the two dioceses. At Gadhada Sahajanand lived for many years in the house of Dada Khachar, which is now part of the large temple there. The temples of Bhuj, Junagadh and Dholera were also built under Sahajanand, and Chhapaiya near Ayodhya in Uttar Pradesh is his birthplace. Among the main temples of BAPS are Bochasan, Sarangpur, Gondal and Atladara (Vadodara).

Where the sources differ

• Year of succession: the Encyclopedia of Religion (Hanna H. Kim) says Sahajanand became leader in 1801; according to Williams he stayed about two years (1800–1802) in Ramanand’s ashram before being named successor at Jetpur, and he dates his public ministry from 1802 to 1830.
• Year of birth: according to Williams some early English accounts give 1780, an error in converting the Samvat date; Chaitra Shukla 9, Samvat 1837, corresponds to 3 April 1781.
• Number of Vachanamrut discourses: according to Williams the authorised text of the Vadtal diocese, also accepted by BAPS, has 262 discourses; the Ahmedabad recension (edited under Acharya Ayodhyaprasad) has 11 more, 273 in all.
• The start of BAPS: Williams writes that Shastriji Maharaj left Vadtal in 1906; other sources give 1905. The images at Bochasan were installed in 1907 (according to Williams its 75th anniversary was kept on 18 May 1982), and BAPS counts this as its founding.
• The place of Akshar: the introduction to the 1976 BAPS edition of the Shikshapatri (translated by Swami Keshavjivandas) calls Akshar the body of Purushottam and Gunatitanand Swami the manifest form of Akshar, and cites Shikshapatri verses 109–110 as its basis; Ahmedabad and Vadtal do not accept Gunatitanand Swami as the manifest form of Akshar or as the start of a line of gurus (Williams).

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