Locklin2016 Article ParadigmsAndStylesOfAdvaitaMis

Paradigms and Styles of Advaita Mission:
An Experiment in Interpretation
Reid B. Locklin
In an article published in this journal a decade ago, Jacqueline Suthren

Hirst offered the eighth-century Advaita teacher Çakara’s “method of
negation” as a useful way to approach contemporary reconstructions and
reimaginings of the great teacher.1 “For example,” she writes with refer-
ence to Çakara’s exegetical practice, his oft-cited analogies of
the clay-pot, rope-snake, and magician-magic…are all used to illumi-

nate the relation of Brahman to the world. Individually, each is mislead-
ing; together they purify one another. The first might suggest that
Brahman is a nonconscious material cause that really changes into the
world, its effect. The rope-snake excludes real change or materiality
from the process. However, as an example of error through superim-
position, it might locate avidyå, which gives rise to the superimposed
world, solely in the individual. Though this was a view taken by later
Advaita, Çaμkara refuses such an easy solution. The magician-magic
example forces the pupil’s attention back to Brahman, as sole cause.
And so on (Suthren Hirst 2004: 158).
Similarly, surveying a number of modern and contemporary approaches

to the study of Çakara—“philosophical,” “traditional textual,” “socio-
political,” and “experiential”—Suthren Hirst suggests that each, taken on
its own, inevitably distorts our view; whereas when taken together, they
may be mutually purifying. The eighth-century teacher eludes being
International Journal of Hindu Studies 20, 1: 1–49

© 2015
2016 Springer
DOI 10.1007/s11407-015-9183-0
DOI
2 / Reid B. Locklin
captured in his totality by any of these approaches or even by all of them

taken together. Nevertheless, the most fruitful approximations will be
those that carefully attend to the ways that Çakara’s work is “not unphi-
losophical,” “not untextual,” “not socially and politically ungrounded,”
and “not ungrounded in religious experience” (Suthren Hirst 2004: 173).
Most importantly for my present purpose, Suthren Hirst (2004: 159)
introduces each of these four idealized “types” of scholarly study with
reference to four very particular, personal, and concrete embodiments of
Çakara’s legacy from the early to mid-twentieth century: Sarvepalli
Radhakrishnan (1888–1975), Svåm Saccidånandendra Sarasvat (1880–
1975), His Holiness Çr Çakaråcårya Candraçekharendra Sarasvat
(1894–1994), and Rama~a Mahår‚i (1879–1950). This, in my estimation,
is not merely an effective rhetorical device. It also reflects a deep instinct,
pervasive in the literature of Advaita and other traditions in its Sanskrit
milieu, to symbolize institutions and broader social and intellectual cur-
rents personally, by evoking the images of great figures and their disciples
in the teaching tradition (for example, Cenkner 1983). Thus, when Suthren
Hirst (2004: 166–68) introduces the image of Saccidånandendra, she
deploys his individual, personal model of engagement to characterize a
wider interpretive paraμparå that includes Paul Hacker, Francis X.
Clooney, and, not least, Suthren Hirst herself.
In this essay I attempt to follow the same deep instinct and to deploy a
similar interpretative strategy to address a different question entirely:
namely, the disputed question of whether, and how, Hinduism might be
characterized as a so-called “missionary religion” (see Böspflug 2006).
Not a few modern and contemporary Hindu apologists have insisted that
Hindu tradition is essentially nonmissionary and, thus, inherently non-
violent and tolerant of religious diversity (for example, Dayånanda 1999;
Swarup 2009; and the survey in A. Sharma 2011: 31–62). Others concede,
particularly when looking at modern, transnational movements like
ISKCON and the Ramakrishna Mission, a missionary dimension to the
tradition. At some risk of oversimplifying, these latter interpreters may
be divided into two broad schools. One, perhaps more numerous, group
views the emergence of missionary forms of Hindu traditions as an
entirely modern development, taking shape either as a direct imitation of
Western missionaries in India (Biernacki 2004: 190–91; De Michelis
2004: 30–31, 83) or as a response to broader patterns of globalization and
Paradigms and Styles of Advaita Mission / 3
the transformed conditions of modernity (Thomas 1930; Hummel 1980;

Brekke 1999; Kuruvachira 2006, 2007; Aravamudan 2006; Waghorne
2009). For interpreters like C.V. Mathew, on the other hand, the emer-
gence of movements like the Ramakrishna Mission and the reconversion
work of the Viçva Hind¨ Pari‚ad and other Hindu nationalist organiza-
tions can be traced to older patterns of Sanskritization embodied in the
Vedic dictum k®~vanto viçvamåryam, “Let the whole world become
Åryan” (1999: especially 6, 36–40, 121, 192–94, 196–97, 203, 284–85).
Arvind Sharma takes this line of interpretation a step further, proclaiming
that, “Hinduism has always possessed a missionary character” (2011:
129). He locates his most compelling evidence in the Vedic and Classical
periods, adducing not only the ¸gveda passage noted by Mathew but
other Vedic texts, the Manusm®ti, and the epic literature to suggest that
foreigners could be and not infrequently were reconstrued as “lapsed
Hindus,” rendering them eligible for incorporation into Hindu tradition
and into the twice-born var~as in particular (A. Sharma 2011: 65–83, see
also 1992).
Presented with these two lines of interpretation, with Suthren Hirst in
mind, we might hypothesize that the truth lies somewhere in the middle
and that their mutual differences might function to purify each approach
of possible distortions. Perhaps, in other words, it may be possible to
conclude that contemporary, ostensibly missionary forms of Hinduism
are “not ungrounded in ancient traditions,” but that they are also “not
without exigencies distinctive to the modern period.” Ultimately, I hope
to illustrate precisely such a conclusion. But I do this in reference, not to
“Hinduism” as such, but only to the Advaita Vedånta tradition of Çakara
and his many, diverse successors in the medieval, modern, and contem-
porary periods. Such a choice may appear problematic, insofar as it may
be read to presume an Orientalist preoccupation with Vedånta as the
“essence” of Hinduism (for example, King 1999: especially 118–42).
There are nevertheless intrinsic reasons for focusing on Advaita. Not
least, these include the prominence of Svåm Vivekånanda (1863–1902)
and the Ramakrishna Mission in any discussion of Hindu missionary
movements in the modern period.2 I also judge that it makes good practical
and methodological sense to seek clarity on a broad point of interpreta-
tion by attending first to a single, delimited case study. As the philosopher
Bernard J.F. Lonergan once put the matter, “It seems a mistaken method
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to seek generalization before one has tried to understand the particular”

(1985: 125). Far from enshrining Advaita Vedånta as the true core of
Hinduism or even “religion” itself, such a particularist approach will
hopefully bring out the historical contingency of the tradition and its
complex, contested relations with other traditions in the broader Hindu
stream.
My argument proceeds in three layers, which move from the more par-
ticular to the more general and from the concrete to the speculative. In a
first, preliminary discussion, I briefly survey recent developments in
Christian missiology that have significantly complicated our understanding
of “mission” as an interpretive category, suggesting that history reveals
no singular understanding of Christian “mission,” but diverse—even
incommensurable—missionary paradigms, models, or types. In the second
section, I attempt to apply this insight to the historical development of
Advaita Vedånta by highlighting what I judge to be three major “para-
digms” of Advaita mission: (1) the compassionate teacher depicted in
Ådi Çakaråcårya’s eighth-century, independent treatise Upadeçasåhasr;
(2) the image of Çakara himself as a conquering avatåra of Çiva in the
late medieval hagiographical tradition (digvijaya); and (3) the image
of the Buddha as the first “Hindu missionary” in the speeches of Svåm
Vivekånanda. Without claiming to be comprehensive, I argue that these
three idealized paradigms reveal both significant historical continuity and
substantive diversity—even incommensurability—in advancing Advaita
as a missionary movement. Finally, in a more speculative vein, I suggest
that the distinctive profiles of the four disciples depicted in the most
prominent hagiography, Mådhava’s Çakaradigvijaya, might serve to
rationalize different forms or styles that Advaita mission has taken, and
can take, in the modern and contemporary periods. Throughout, my
interest in the essay is both historical and constructive. That is, I hope
to add clarity to what it might mean to refer to Advaita as a distinctive
missionary movement in the history of South Asia, as well as to bring to
light fruitful interpretive tools for more fully understanding the diverse
missionary activities of Advaita traditions in the present day.
Paradigms, Models, and Types of Christian Mission
The English term “mission” is derived from the Latin missio, itself a
translation of the Greek verb apostellô, referring to the act of sending

or being sent. A standard dictionary of ecclesiastical Latin offers the
following definition:
missio: mission; the task entrusted to the Church by Jesus to proclaim

the gospel to the world and make disciples of all people; the word
mission is often used to indicate a parish that has no resident priest but
is regularly served by a priest from a neighboring parish; in the plural
the word missions often refers to the activity involved in spreading the
faith in foreign and/or non-Christian areas (Stelton 1995: 314).
It seems evident that most interpreters are, consciously or unconsciously,

presuming a definition very much like this one when they argue for or
against an understanding of Hinduism as a “missionary religion.” That is,
granting that some Hindu institutions have indeed begun to be called
“missions” in the modern and contemporary periods, does this mean that
Hindu tradition as such is now or has in the past been oriented toward
spreading a message, making disciples, and sending representatives to do
this work in “foreign” locales? Thus, A. Sharma states that a religion can
be called “missionary” in a broad sense if it “accepts converts”; it becomes
a “proselytizing religion” insofar as it “not merely accepts but also seeks
converts” (2005: 425). In his monograph, he adds to the general notion
of “bringing others into one’s fold” an element of intention: “To be a
missionary religion, one must have a conscious sense of that mission”
(2011: 133; emphasis in original). Though Sharma significantly—and
necessarily—abstracts from common Christian ecclesiastical definitions
to make his case for the missionary character of Hindu tradition, the
basic structure remains more or less intact.
But is this definition of “mission” truly as stable as it initially appears,
even in Christian tradition? In the academic subdiscipline of Christian
missiology, a kind of revolution on this question was introduced by the
1991 publication of Transforming Mission: Paradigm Shifts in Theology
of Mission by the Dutch Reformed theologian David J. Bosch. The first
page of Bosch’s study features a definition of mission similar to that
quoted above, which he reduces to “(a) propagation of the faith, (b) expan-
sion of the reign of God, (c) conversion of the heathen, and (d) the found-
ing of new churches.” Having introduced this normative definition, he
6 / Reid B. Locklin
immediately calls it into question:
Still, all these connotations attached to the word “mission,” familiar as

they may be, are of recent origin. Until the sixteenth century the term
was used exclusively with reference to the doctrine of the Trinity, that
is, of the sending of the Son by the Father and of the Holy Spirit by the
Father and the Son. The Jesuits were the first to use it in terms of the
spread of the Christian faith among people (including Protestants) who
were not members of the Catholic Church (Bosch 1991: 1).
The key phrase here is “of recent origin”: according to Bosch, the norma-
tive definition of mission with which he begins his study is also a thor-
oughly modern one and—as he contends quite strongly (1991: 226–
30)—as much a product as a pretext of European colonial regimes.
Bosch is fully aware, of course, that the history of missions in Christian
history cannot be reduced to the use of a particular Latin term. The Chris-
tian movement did spread fairly rapidly throughout the Mediterranean
world and beyond from an early date, beginning almost from its inception
in Western Asia. Hence, the bulk of Bosch’s volume traces the various
distinctive patterns and frameworks by which Christians have construed
their “sending” and “being sent” from the time of the New Testament to
the twentieth century. Following the historian of science Thomas S. Kuhn
(via the Catholic theologian Hans Küng), he classifies these patterns as
mutually incommensurable, comprehensive “paradigms” of mission
particular to different eras of Christian history (Bosch 1991: 181–89).
The first section of the book traces three distinct perspectives within the
“apocalyptic-eschatological pattern of primitive Christianity” as articu-
lated in the New Testament gospels of Matthew and Luke and the letters
of Paul the Apostle (Bosch 1991: 190); the second takes up the four
“historical paradigms” of Eastern Christianity, medieval Roman Catholi-
cism, the Protestant Reformation, and the post-Enlightenment; and the
third draws out no fewer than thirteen elements of an “Emerging Ecu-
menical Missionary Paradigm” for the late twentieth century (Bosch 1991:
368–510). The details of these different paradigms need not delay us
here, and Bosch’s various reconstructions can and have been criticized
on historical grounds (for example, Kreider 2005; Bevans and Schroeder
2005: 69–70). What is most significant is that Bosch insisted on talking
about mission in a plural rather than a singular idiom, attentive to both

continuity and discontinuity in the messy processes of historical transfor-
mation. To cite just one example relevant to the present topic, Bosch
notes that the modern prominence of one classic Christian mission text—
the “Great Commission” of Matthew 28:18-20—can be traced to a single
tract by the Baptist missionary William Carey. The text in question is, of
course, Carey’s famous (or notorious) An Enquiry into the Obligations of
Christians to use Means for the Conversion of the Heathens, published
just a year before his departure for Calcutta in 1793 (Bosch 1991: 340–
41).3 It becomes possible to imagine that the emergence of what would
become a consensus understanding of “mission” in Christian modernity
and the advent of Hindu “missionaries” like Svåm Vivekånanda may be
mutually imbricated, separated as they were by only a little more than a
century and a little less than twenty kilometers.4
Be this as it may, Bosch’s influence on the discipline of Christian mis-
siology, at least in the English-speaking world, would be difficult to over-
estimate. Stephen B. Bevans and Roger P. Schroeder note a widespread
opinion that, “after the twentieth century, any missiology can be done
only as a footnote to the work of David Bosch” (2005: 69). Subsequent
work, however, has further complicated the picture by unhinging domi-
nant paradigms or models from a too-firm connection with one or another
era of Christian history. Thus, M. Thomas Thangaraj identifies eight
“models” of mission that trace a rough historical development without
being strictly chronological: mission as “Kerygmatic Presence,” “Martyr-
dom,” “Expansion,” “Monastic Service,” “Conversion of Heathens,”
“Mission Societies,” “Education,” and “Joint Action for Justice and Peace”
(1999: 101–19). Bevans and Schroeder themselves instead classify three
“types” of missionary theology that continually interact in distinctive
ways to shape diverse movements at each and every moment of Christian
history: “Mission as Saving Souls and Extending the Church”; “Mission
as Discovery of Truth”; and “Mission as Commitment to Liberation and
Transformation” (2004: 32–72). From their surveys, both Thangaraj and
Bevans and Schroeder also offer constructive proposals for new, synthetic
missionary models for the present day—“missio humanitatis” in the case
of the former (Thangaraj 1999: 47–60), “prophetic dialogue” in the case
of the latter (Bevans and Schroeder 2004: 348–95; Schroeder 2013)—but
there seems little reason to believe that these models, too, will not even-
8 / Reid B. Locklin
tually be superseded. Adaptation to new historical contexts, then, does

not merely apply to the practice of individual missionaries or missionary
organizations; it cuts to the fundamental understanding of “mission” itself,
as a category of thought and practice.
It is worth noting that, even in this scholarship, the meaning of mission
is never totally relativized. If Bosch’s key insight was to draw attention
to discontinuity in this history, it remains the case that the same history
also reveals points of continuity. Christians of every era judged that they
were “sent” to communicate the gospel and to work for the building of
God’s reign in some respect; but the imagined recipients of this commu-
nication, the intended results, and the means to be employed varied widely,
from one social and historical context to the next. So, also, if we turn to
Advaita tradition to investigate its possible missionary character, we might
reasonably expect to encounter multiple paradigms or models, bound
together by a broad family resemblance but distinct in their particulars.
As in A. Sharma’s study, and indeed in any investigation of “mission” in
Hindu traditions for the foreseeable future, we will necessarily build analo-
gies to the Christian traditions from which the distinctively modern usage
of this term emerged. But, disciplined by this recent work in Christian
missiology, we can do so in a self-consciously plural idiom. We will
attempt to build an analogy, in other words, not to any particular usage or
historical practice of mission in Christian tradition (though that might
well be possible), but to a complex process of historical development and
transformation. The key element of this interpretive transposition will be
the notion—articulated by Bosch and developed further by Thangaraj
and Bevans and Schroeder—of missionary “paradigms” or “models,” those
distinctive patterns of thought and practice that may be read to punctuate
this historical process and to render it susceptible to systematic inquiry.
Three Historical Paradigms of Advaita Mission
In this essay, given limits of space and of my own expertise, I will not
attempt to offer a comprehensive history of Advaita mission comparable
to Bosch’s Transforming Mission or Bevans and Schroeder’s Constants
in Context. Instead, in this section, I will briefly sketch three paradigms
from what I take to be decisive moments in the ongoing construction of
Advaita: the eighth-century teaching of Ådi Çakara; the late medieval
hagiographical tradition exemplified in the Çakaradigvijaya attributed

to Mådhava; and the speeches of Svåm Vivekånanda at the turn of the
twentieth century. No doubt, there are other eras and alternative paradigms
worthy of note. Should the proposal in this essay prove convincing, the
ground will be laid for a subsequent, richer historical narrative.
Even confining the inquiry to these periods and figures, however, we
must face the question: what would define a model or paradigm of mission
in Advaita tradition? As a Christian theologian, Bosch chooses emblematic
verses from the New Testament to capture the fundamental impulse of
each era. Thus, according to his analysis, “for God so loved the world”
(John 3:16) well captures the self-giving, communal, and cosmic para-
digm of the Eastern churches, whereas the more menacing “compel them
to come in” (Luke 14:23) defines the approach of medieval Catholicism
(Bosch 1991: 208–9, 236–37). In the case of Advaita, following the model
provided by Suthren Hirst, we might prefer a more embodied, personal
representation. That is, given the centrality of the authorized teacher in
the tradition, I propose to seek out its paradigmatic expressions in the
idealized images of such teachers constructed by leading exponents of
the tradition. Note that these are treated as idealized images, not as his-
torical portraits. Though some historical context will be necessary, our
interest will be focused on the fictive image of a model åcårya constructed
by Çakara in the eighth century, rather than on Çakara himself, and so
on. Such idealized constructions do not quite attain the level of systematic
rationality characteristic of Hindu “theology,” as Francis X. Clooney
(2003) or Jonathan Edelmann (2013) might require. They can neverthe-
less be treated as “pretheological” works, each of which provides an
intelligible, coherent vision of the tradition, amenable to further inquiry
and analysis.
The Compassionate Åcårya of the Upadeçasåhasr

In one of the most significant studies of Hindu missionary movements
to date, Reinhart Hummel (1980: 119–21) has observed that missionary
movements in modern Hinduism have an organic relationship with the
“internal” competition that existed (and exists) among rival saμpradåyas
from ancient times well into the modern period (cf. Finger 1987: 19–25).
This competition among Çaivas, Vai‚~avas, and other diverse traditions
could be fierce. It not infrequently included an explicit rhetoric of con-
10 / Reid B. Locklin
version, and it was supported, from time to time, by programs of relig-

iously authorized coercion (Raman 2007; Jha 2009: 27–47). Late medieval
thinkers would produce doxographies that sharply distinguish nåstika from
åstika by their relation to Vedic authority and position the åstika traditions
as ever-greater approximations of the home tradition. Yet, earlier Vedånta,
Buddhist, and Jain traditions reveal little such irenicism or strategies
of inclusion (A. Nicholson 2010: 3–6, 166–84). “In pre-twelfth-century
India,” writes Andrew J. Nicholson, “many thinkers today labeled ‘Hindu’
went to great efforts to disprove one another’s teachings, including use of
ad hominem attacks, straw man arguments, and other questionable means.
There was no understanding then that all of these thinkers were part of a
shared orthodoxy” (2010: 3).
Among those A. Nicholson paints with a sectarian brush is the eighth-
century Advaita teacher, Ådi Çakaråcårya. Writing in the twentieth
century, Svåm Cinmayånanda (1916–93) and his followers would offer
a portrait of Çakara as a great reconciler and his nondual teaching as a
force of “universal brotherhood and mutual understanding…no matter
what paths were followed” (Çakara the Missionary 1998: 45). In making
such a claim, Cinmayånanda reflects what has become a defining trope
of modern Vedånta. Nicholson, by contrast, notes that in his certainly
authentic writings Çakara “issued scathing attacks on åstika and nåstika
alike, hardly distinguishing between the two” (2010: 5; cf. King 1999:
128–29). As is well known, a major section of Çakara’s commentary on
the Brahmas¨tras is dedicated to dismantling other systems of thought
(Brahmas¨trabhå‚ya 2.2; see Clooney 1993: 102–13), and in his com-
mentaries on the Upani‚ads he will periodically pause to make a sweeping
condemnation of major opponents. Recent scholarship has drawn atten-
tion to apologetic and even polemic features of the great teacher’s writ-
ings, as he defines clear boundaries against Såμkhyas (H. Nicholson
2007), Buddhists (Kaplan 2013), and rival, theistic traditions of Vedånta
(Suthren Hirst 2011). Bhedåbheda Vedåntins such as Çakara’s rough
contemporary Bhåskara readily returned the favor (Ingalls 1952: 8–10;
A. Nicholson 2010: 31–33). In many places, it seems safe to presume
that Çakara’s adversaries are fictive or remote and that the debates are
scripted for strictly pedagogical purposes. However, Suthren Hirst sees
in the harsh rhetoric of his commentary on B®hadåra~yaka Upani‚ad
2.1.20 the implied presence of actual rivals, “plausibly a Vai‚~ava
Vedåntin group, whom Çaμkara seeks to manoeuvre out of competition”

(2011: 68, see also 1993, 2005: 26–28).
Positioning Çakara as a sectarian teacher in a competitive religious
milieu runs counter to the received image of him in modern Advaita, but
it also opens the possibility of reading his certainly authentic works with
an eye toward an implied missiology—albeit one distinctive to Çakara’s
eighth-century context. As a possible starting point for such a reading,
we can turn to his independent treatise, the Upadeçasåhasr (Mayeda
1973).5 In the sixteenth verse chapter of this work, for example, Çakara
engages in a broad refutation, first of the Buddhist traditions he will later
categorize as “the way of self-negation” (niråtmavåda; Upadeçasåhasr,
Padyabandha 16.68) in verses 23–44, and then of those Såμkhyas and
Vaiçe‚ikas he lumps together as “dualist” (dvayavåda) in verses 45–63.
He does not rank these traditions according to their approximation to the
truth,6 as we will encounter in late medieval doxographies, but simply
calls for their thorough renunciation:
Therefore, assumptions concerning bondage, final release, etc., (which

are) other than this are indeed confused ideas. The assumptions of the
Såμkhyas, of the followers of Ka~åda, and of the Buddhists are lacking
in profound consideration. As (their assumptions) contradict the scrip-
tures and reasoning, they should never be respected. Their faults can
be pointed out hundreds and thousands of times.…Therefore, having
abandoned the teaching of other scriptures, a wise person should make
firm his understanding of the true meaning of the Vedånta…and also of
Vyåsa’s thought, with faith and devotion and without any crookedness
(Upadeçasåhasr, Padyabandha 16.64–67; Mayeda 2006: 155–56).7
The result of the refutation and renunciation of alternative traditions is, in

this text, virtually identified with establishment in the higher view. “Seekers
after final release,” Çakara concludes, “being free from doubts which
arise from the views of others, become firm in the path of knowledge”
(Upadeçasåhasr, Padyabandha 16.68; Mayeda 2006: 86).8 This is, from
a strictly rhetorical point of view, strong language of competition, exclu-
sion, and identity formation.
The primary agent for freeing prospective disciples from the doubts
that arise from other teachings and establishing them on this path is the
authorized åcårya. In the concluding section of the seventeenth verse

chapter, the role of this teacher is summarized as follows:
Concentrating upon Åtman the love which is (now set) on external

things—for they end in suffering, are inconstant and exist for Åtman—
a seeker after truth should resort to a teacher who is tranquil, wise,
released, actionless, and established in Brahman, since the Çruti says,
“One who has a teacher knows…” […] and the Sm®ti also says, “Learn
to know this […]” […]. If a student is disciplined and properly qualified,
the teacher should immediately transport him over his great interior
ocean of darkness in the boat of the knowledge of Brahman (17.50–52;
Mayeda 2006: 165).9
If Upadeçasåhasr, Padyabandha 16 emphasizes the incoherence and

threat posed by rival teaching traditions in Çakara’s pluralistic milieu,
this passage privileges the home tradition as the sole true alternative to
these other views, aptly symbolized by the boat of knowledge. The
teacher, characterized here as peaceful, wise, and established in Brahman
(brahma~i sthita), functions as the pilot of this boat (see also Upadeça-
såhasr, Gadyabandha 1.3) and is thus a suitable object of refuge.
Çakara describes this authorized teacher twice in the prose portion
of Upadeçasåhasr, at the beginning of each of the first and the second
chapters (Gadyabandha 1.6, 2.45). The two descriptions differ somewhat
in their particulars, but the image that emerges is nevertheless coherent.10
The longer description occurs in Upadeçasåhasr, Gadyabandha 1.6:
And the teacher is able to consider the pros and cons (of an argument),
is endowed with understanding, memory, tranquility, self-control,
compassion, favor and the like; he is versed in the traditional doctrine;
not attached to any enjoyments, visible or invisible; he has abandoned
all the rituals and their requisites; a knower of Brahman, he is estab-
lished in Brahman; he leads a blameless life, free from faults such as
deceit, pride, trickery, wickedness, fraud, jealousy, falsehood, egotism,
self-interest, and so forth; with the only purpose of helping others he
wishes to make use of knowledge (Mayeda 2006: 212).11
In this passage, Çakara places exterior, observable virtues of intellectual

acuity, facility with the scriptural traditions, personal detachment, and

compassion alongside fundamental affirmations of the teacher’s interior,
unobservable self-knowledge. In the Upadeçasåhasr’s second prose
chapter, he focuses more narrowly on these interior qualities: the teacher
is described as “a knower of Brahman” (bråhma~a), “established in
Brahman” (brahmani‚†ha), and “sitting at ease” (sukhamåsna; Upadeça-
såhasr, Gadyabandha 2.45).
Reading these two passages together with the brief description provided
in Upadeçasåhasr, Padyabandha 17, above, we can say that one quali-
fication emerges most consistently: the teacher is a knower of Brahman,
firmly established in Brahman, one who is—to adopt a later formulation
—liberated in life (jvanmukta). This is no great surprise. On the one
hand, the affirmation of the teacher’s mukti functions to authorize both
this individual teacher and the entire teaching lineage (Nelson 1996: 24–
25). On the other hand, such an affirmation also introduces a paradox,
insofar as this mukta, described as actionless and sitting at leisure, with
nothing left to accomplish, nevertheless takes up the intentional, goal-
oriented activity of examining prospective disciples, determining who is
worthy, and offering instruction (for example, Upadeçasåhasr, Gadya-
bandha 1.2–5; see also Todd 2013: 163–76). Part of the paradox is
resolved by appeal to prårabdha karma: until the fall of the body, the
inertia of past actions that have begun to bear fruit, including virtues like
compassion, continue to operate (Todd 2013: 139–40). But a deeper
answer is given by Çakara himself in Upadeçasåhasr, Gadyabandha
1.6, when he writes that the åcårya acts solely for the purpose of doing
good for others (kevalaparånugrahaprayojanaª); that is, this teacher’s
activity and perhaps even his continued embodiment stem entirely from
the world’s great need rather than his own desire (cf. Nelson 1996: 39–
44; Todd 2013: 171–72).
Insofar as the åcårya in the Upadeçasåhasr may be read as exemplify-
ing a particular model or paradigm of Advaita mission, this model emerges
only in part from these few passages of explicit description. A more elabo-
rate portrait arises from the åcårya’s actual teaching activity, as depicted
in the first two prose chapters and implied throughout the verse chapters.
From such a fuller reading, at least three points merit special attention.
First, although there are places in the prose chapters where one can discern
the implied presence of Buddhist or theist Vai‚~ava competitors,12 the
focus remains on the scriptural and reasoned dialogue between a single

teacher and a single disciple. Second, Çakara’s vision is explicitly elitist:
the qualified recipient is normed in the Upadeçasåhasr as a high-caste,
Bråhma~a male, a renunciant or celibate student possessed of superlative
intellectual and moral virtues who has approached the teacher in search
of final release (Upadeçasåhasr, Gadyabandha 1.2–3, 2.45; see also
Nelson 1993; Todd 2013: 172–76, 179–86).13 Finally, despite this very
narrow field of prospective disciples, Çakara is by no means indifferent
to the need to identify them and bring them to liberating knowledge. At
Upadeçasåhasr, Gadyabandha 1.3 he identifies the final goal of the
åcårya’s teaching activity by setting two terms in parallel: çreyas, pre-
sumably the preferable or superior state of liberation, and vidyå-santati,
the diffusion, continuity, or sustained practice of knowledge. The teaching
of Advaita may proceed with one disciple at a time, but its vision of
liberation demands such continual dissemination (see Locklin 2011:
117–18).
It is tempting to read the prose descriptions of the Upadeçasåhasr as a
kind of autobiography, describing Çakara’s actual self-understanding
and teaching practice. But this would overreach the evidence. Do we
know that Çakara never sought out disciples, but only received them
when approached? We cannot know this with any certainty; indeed, we
can only guess at the intended audience of the Upadeçasåhasr. In the
person of the åcårya, however, we can speak more securely about
Çakara’s idealized, theological vision of the tradition. He envisions an
exclusivist path of self-knowledge, which entails complete rejection of
alternative Vedic and Buddhist ways of life for authentic seekers on this
path. In principle, his vision is universalist, insofar as he teaches libera-
tion by knowledge of the innermost self of each and every conscious
being; in practice, at least in the Upadeçasåhasr, he restricts access to a
small set of high-caste renunciants, and idealized teachers communicate
the message of liberation by means of intimate, one-on-one dialogue. It
is, in this regard, a mission focused more on securing the firm identity of
insiders than on world conquest. Though it seems likely that Çakara
propagated his teaching in fierce competition with actual rivals in his
South Indian religious milieu, the primary goal of such competition appears
to be the maintenance of the paraμparå and continuance of the teaching
practice. The size of the community, in Çakara’s idealized vision, may
matter less than its perdurance as a living, liberating option for those few
Bråhma~a elites from one generation to the next who possess the adhikåra
to receive its teaching aright.
The Servant-Conqueror of the Çakara Hagiographies

The eighth-century missionary paradigm of Ådi Çakaråcårya, if we may
call it that, stands out for its social elitism, uncompromising exclusion of
all rival teaching traditions, and insider discourse. We encounter a strik-
ingly different vision in the vijayas, that body of hagiographical literature
dating from about the fourteenth century onwards. The primary motif of
this literature, including not only the Çakara hagiographies but also
those dedicated to other leading renunciant teachers, is the digvijaya, or
“conquest of the quarters,” a triumphant tour of the Indian subcontinent
modeled on the conquests and ritual enthronements of legendary kings
(Granoff 1984; Sax 2000). “The digvijaya,” writes Jonathan Bader in his
survey of the leading Çakara hagiographies, “is, strictly speaking, appro-
priate only for a king. But the hagiographers transpose this ritual method
of legitimising authority from the sphere of politics to the realm of meta-
physics” (2000: 139). Çakara emerges in these narratives as a true con-
queror of the subcontinent, albeit one who conquers with no goal except
release for those caught in saμsåra and no weapon except the liberating
words of his Advaita teaching.14
The hagiographies have attracted attention with regard to their reliability,
or unreliability, as sources for learning about the life of Çakara (Lorenzen
1976; Potter 1982; Pande 1994). Yet, at least arguably, they are far more
significant as sources for understanding theological developments in the
Advaita tradition during the late medieval and early modern periods
(Sawai 1992: 83–105; Sax 2000). The most prominent of these works,
the Çakaradigvijaya attributed to Mådhava, represents a compilation
and synthesis of prior narratives, which seems to have been brought into
its final form sometime between 1650 and 1740.15 Whereas Çakara
described his idealized teacher rather simply as a self-knower, established
in Brahman and equipped with the intellectual and moral virtues of a
sage, the idealized Çakara of the Çakaradigvijaya draws authority from
his more exalted status as an avatåra of Çiva, who has come to earth to
restore the Vedic tradition and destroy ignorance (Sawai 1987; Bader
2000: 100–104). After a prologue that establishes this cosmological
context (Çakaradigvijaya 1.27–59) and the precedent set by Skanda in

the form of Kumårila Bha††a (1.60–98), the Çakaradigvijaya follows
Çakara from his miraculous birth through his initiation into renunciant
life and the tradition of Advaita Vedånta in its first half (2.1–7.58), and
then, in the second half, traces a pilgrimage and victory tour to every
corner of India, in which the great teacher engages in a series of verbal
contests with rival Mmåμsåkas, Vai‚~avas, Çaivas, Buddhists, and Jains
(7.59–15.174). It concludes in the mountains of Kashmir, where Çakara
defeats an army of such opponents and ascends to a “throne of omnis-
cience” (sarvajñap†ha) as his reward (Çakaradigvijaya 16.54–93).
William S. Sax identifies the “digvijaya ideal” reflected in this and other
hagiographical texts as explicitly missiological, insofar as their vision
self-consciously mirrors the “proselytizing tours” of significant Vai‚~avas
in the medieval period and establishes the “lordship” of the teaching
tradition by “encompassing (‘converting’) their opponents rather than
destroying them” (2000: 51). In the Upadeçasåhasr, rival teachings are
renounced; in the Çakaradigvijaya, they are rendered subject to the
authority of Advaita.
If we were to treat terms like “mission” and “proselytism” as univocal
terms and wanted to find an origin for such motifs in Advaita tradition, it
would be tempting to follow Sax in tracing such a missionary impulse to
the vijaya literature, rather than to an earlier source like the Upadeça-
såhasr: whereas the latter engages in respectful, reasoned dialogue (våda)
between teacher and student, only the former depicts the Advaita teacher
engaging in a kind of argumentation that aims for defeat and conversion
of the opponent (cf. H. Nicholson 2010). But, as suggested in my brief
review of Bosch above, univocal definitions may not be adequate to the
complexity of this (or any) historical development. On the one hand, the
scripted dialogues of the Upadeçasåhasr seem clearly to presume a
competitive, polemic religious milieu. In places—such as Upadeça-
såhasr, Padyabandha 16, quoted above—this comes explicitly to the
surface. On the other, the South Indian social and political context of the
vijayas included elements of both mutual accommodation and fierce
competition, as rival Smårta, Vai‚~ava, and other traditions vied for royal
patronage in a shared, pluralistic network of rulers, temples, ma†has, and
leading åcåryas (Appadurai 1977; Stoker 2011). The present inquiry,
then, will not aim to discover which of these traditions is more robustly
or authentically missionary, according to some stable norm. It will aim to

discern instead how the distinctive missionary paradigm of the vijayas
transforms the similarly distinctive paradigm of a text like the Upadeça-
såhasr in ways particular to these late medieval and early modern con-
texts. As far as possible, mirroring the work of Bosch and his successors,
we will allow the scope and character of Advaita mission to emerge from
these texts and traditions, rather than asking whether they fit into some
preexisting frame.
We can begin a comparison of these two paradigms with their respective
attitudes toward rival teaching traditions. In both cases, there are debates
that establish the superiority of the Advaita position. In the Upadeça-
såhasr, the positions of such adversaries are embedded in the real and
implied dialogues among either those who are already established as
Advaita teachers or those who have come as seekers, with the intended
result that such seekers can securely leave behind rival views and become
inoculated against their errors. In the Çakaradigvijaya and other hagiog-
raphies, by contrast, the debates take place in public, identify Çakara’s
opponents by name, frequently receive arbitration by some supernatural
authority, and typically conclude with the conversion or destruction of
the actual adversary (Granoff 1985; Bader 2000: 183–229). Consider, for
example, the most extended such contest in the Çakaradigvijaya: the
debate with Çakara’s elder contemporary, the Mmåμsåka, householder,
and rival Advaitin, Ma~ana Miçra. After an initial dispute in the presence
of Vyåsa and Jaimini (Çakaradigvijaya 8.14–31), Çakara stipulates
unambiguous terms for the true contest, namely, that the loser agrees to
become a disciple of the victor (anyonyaçi‚yatvapa~å), effectively con-
verting to the victor’s teaching tradition (8.36). Sarasvat, in the form of
Ma~ana’s wife, Ubhayabhårat, moderates the discussion and bestows
garlands on both disputants; upon his defeat by Çakara, Ma~ana’s
garland withers and fades (Çakaradigvijaya 8.132), and he abandons his
teaching to become Çakara’s disciple, Sureçvara. Though there is no
arbitrator for Çakara’s debate with Bhåskara, the defeat of this important
rival has a similarly dramatic effect, resulting in the destruction of his
bhedåbheda teaching and the spread of Advaita (Çakaradigvijaya 15.140).
So, too, Çakara’s ascent to the throne of omniscience is tested—and
witnessed—in public, by a host of Vaiçe‚ika, Nyåya, Såμkhya, Buddhist,
Jain, and P¨rva Mmåμså scholars, and this result is again validated by
the intervention of the goddess Sarasvat (Çakaradigvijaya 16.62–92).

Somewhat in tension with this public, confrontational image of the
idealized teacher, the Çakara of the Çakaradigvijaya also adopts a more
irenic and inclusivist view toward at least some forms of religious diversity
than we witness in the Upadeçasåhasr. In the narrative, Çakara frequents
and even establishes temples dedicated to Vi‚~u, Çiva, and the Goddess,
and it is only in the vijaya literature that he seems to have gained credit
for establishing the six devotional traditions of Smårta orthodoxy (Bader
2000: 253–72, 312–13). In the practice of the Daçanåm monastic federa-
tion, this served to sanction the extension of the Advaita tradition from
the near-exclusive preserve of saμnyåsins to include an active, supporting
role for lay devotees (Sawai 1987, 1992: 61–82). Such an inclusive vision
also extends, in a limited way, to social diversity. In one of the most
famous episodes of the Çakaradigvijaya, Çakara and his disciples
attempt to avoid contact with a hunter from an outcaste tribe (çvapaca).
The hunter immediately reminds them that the authentic teaching of
Advaita does not admit any supposition of difference between Bråhma~a
and çvapaca (bråhma~açvapacabhedavicåra; Çakaradigvijaya 6.29).
Çakara promptly recognizes the hunter as a knower of the self (åtmavid;
Çakaradigvijaya 6.34), worthy of reverence as a guru (6.38). This does
not lead to social revolution: the çvapaca is later revealed as Çiva in
disguise (Çakaradigvijaya 6.40–43), and the Çakaradigvijaya proclaims
Çakara’s central mission as the “uplifting of the twice-born” (1.48;
Sawai 1987: 464). It nevertheless signals a deepened reflection on the
universal presence of the åtman in all conscious beings, regardless of
class or caste (see A. Sharma 2000: 113–17).
A. Nicholson has highlighted the contemporary, fundamentally inclusive
vision of late medieval doxographies. Among these, he draws special
attention to the very influential Sarvadarçanasaμgraha produced by
Mådhava, the fourteenth-century Advaitin teacher and advisor to Vijaya-
nagara kings also traditionally identified as the author of the Çakara-
digvijaya.16 In his doxography, Mådhava clearly differentiates åstika
from nåstika traditions on the basis of their attitudes to Vedic authority
and positions them in hierarchical sequence, with each teaching tradition
correcting an error in the preceding one until they culminate in the highest
truth of Advaita Vedånta (A. Nicholson 2010: 158–62, 182–83). While
the attribution of Çakaradigvijaya to Mådhava may be difficult to sustain,
it seems clear that the Çakaradigvijaya and the other vijayas draw upon
a similar, integrative interpretive paradigm, one which has little basis in
the certainly authentic works of Çakara but strong affinities with the
doxographies of both Advaitins and their rivals in the late medieval period.
The Upadeçasåhasr offers a vision of a marginal, contrast community,
which engages other traditions only for the purpose of defining boundaries
and establishing identities for disciples on the path. Such engagement—
alternately antagonistic and accommodating—moves to the center of the
vijayas’ missionary paradigm, even as the Advaita tradition itself moves
to the center of their authors’ vision of religious, political, and social life.
Why the shift? If one accepts an early date for the vijaya traditions and
an origin in the Vijayanagara Empire, then, as already briefly noted, com-
petition for royal patronage may be the decisive factor. Both A. Nicholson
(2010: 190–96) and Sax (2000: 46–47) also adduce the influence of a
monolithic military and religious “other” in the form of Islam. Though
some Islamic influence is certainly possible, the notion of Islam as a mono-
lithic “other” seems to reflect the concerns and stereotypes of a later
period. For Mådhava and other Advaitins who produced vijayas with
Çakara as the conquering hero, a more proximate and likely far more
threatening model was provided by the rapid spread of various Vai‚~ava
bhakti traditions throughout late medieval India (Sax 2000: 47–51). This
threat was far from remote: though the Advaitin teacher Vidyåra~ya and
the Ç®ger ma†ha enjoyed a special relationship with early Vijayanagara
kings, later dynasties favored Dvaita and Çr Vai‚~ava temples and tradi-
tions (Stoker 2011). Daniel P. Sheridan (2007) has gone so far as to argue
that the narrative of the Çakaradigvijaya may actually be based directly
upon the traditional biography of Madhva, the Dvaita Vedåntin, Vai‚~ava,
and great critic of Çakara, as a kind of rear-guard, defensive maneuver
in the face of a superior enemy.
Whatever the motive and original sources of the vijaya literature, it is
clear that the image of Çakara one finds therein offers a missionary
paradigm distinct from that embodied by the authorized åcårya of the
Upadeçasåhasr. It is more public and confrontational, it positions
Advaita at the foundation of what is emerging as a unified åstika or
Vedic social and religious orthodoxy, and it deploys the teaching of
nondualism not merely to distinguish Advaita from rivals but also to
subject them and incorporate them under the aegis of its higher view. In
so doing, it provides an important link between the eighth-century

writings of Ådi Çakaråcårya and the distinctively modern missionary
paradigm of Svåmi Vivekånanda and other Vedåntins in the twentieth
and twenty-first centuries.
The Missionary Buddha in the Speeches of Svåm Vivekånanda

We have already had occasion to note the frequent designation of Svåm
Vivekånanda as the “first Hindu missionary” from India to North America
and Europe (Brekke 2002: 46). “Vivekånanda,” writes Torkel Brekke,
“was a missionary of Hinduism. His motivation for going to America
was straightforward. On the one hand he wished to bring money and
technology to India….On the other he wished to flood the West with
Hinduism” (1999: 204). The great teacher was, adds David Miller, “her-
alded by many of his followers as a Second Çakara, who through the
synthesis of the old and the new created a New Hinduism” (1999: 124).
Having examined the missionary paradigms of the idealized åcårya of
the eighth-century treatise Upadeçasåhasr and the idealized image of
Çakara in the vijaya literature, the label “Second Çakara” naturally
suggests an appropriation of one or the other ideal. And this is what we
do find some five decades after Svåm Vivekånanda, in the rhetoric of
Svåm Cinmayånanda and the programmatic work of his Chinmaya
Mission, Çakara the Missionary (1998). In the case of Vivekånanda,
however, the picture is considerably more complex.17 We do find traces
of the vijaya narrative here and there, such as when Vivekånanda notes
that “Shankara was regarded by many as an incarnation of Shiva” (CWSV
7: 40) and compares his own plans to visit his ailing mother to a similar
episode in the Çakaradigvijaya (CWSV 8: 490; see Çakaradigvijaya
14.29–50). Vivekånanda also freely described his own work, particularly
in India, as a reforming mission analogous to Çakara’s vijaya (CWSV 2:
139, 3: 216–17, 535–36, 4: 326, 462–63, 5: 217). In a speech from 1897,
he declared that from the time of Çakara to his own campaign, “the
whole work in India is a reconquest of this Buddhistic degradation by the
Vedanta” (CWSV 3: 265).
Aside from such passing allusions, however, Svåm Vivekånanda por-
trays Çakara less as the conquering hero of the hagiographies and more
as a “great Advaitic philosopher” and “the greatest teacher of the Vedanta
philosophy” (CWSV 3: 229, 8: 6). He recognizes Çakara as the foremost
exponent of Advaita teaching and his work as a sublime, rational synthesis

of the Vedånta (CWSV 1: 363, 2: 139, 3: 325–26, 341, 7: 59, 8: 6). But
he also accuses the great sage of imposing his own, narrow interpretation
on the scriptural texts (CWSV 3: 348, 439, 7: 40–41, 155–56). Taking
the integrative strategy of the late medieval doxographies to yet another
level, Vivekånanda positions Çakara as one in a series of spiritual masters
that includes not only Vivekånanda’s own teacher, Råmak®‚~a, but also
the Buddha and many of Advaita’s fiercest critics, such as Råmånuja,
Madhva, and Caitanya (CWSV 3: 219, 4: 332, 369, 462, 5: 217, 7: 261,
330).18 In the same breath, he praises Çakara’s razor-sharp intellect and
faults him for his cold heart and deficit of “liberality” (CWSV 7: 117).
Elsewhere he states, “Ramanuja’s heart was greater” (CWSV 3: 265),
and, with reference to Råmak®‚~a, “the time was ripe for one to be born
who in one body would have the brilliant intellect of Shankara and the
wonderfully expansive, infinite heart of Chaintanya” (3: 267). Finally, in
an oft-quoted passage that goes to the heart of Vivekånanda’s missionary
paradigm, he pronounces that “Shankara left this Advaita philosophy in
the hills and forests, while I have come to bring it out of those places and
scatter it broadcast before the workaday world and society” (CWSV 7:
162). Here the exclusivist vision of a work like the Upadeçasåhasr is
clearly recognized, named, and rejected.
Where, then, does Svåm Vivekånanda derive a paradigm to warrant
the movement of Advaita out of the forest and not only into the work-
places and cities of India, but also beyond the shores of the subcontinent?
Not from the image of Çakara the philosophical genius or from the
image of Çakara the world conqueror. For this rhetorical purpose, he
turns instead to a very particular, constructed image of Gautama Buddha.
The image itself owes many of its most distinctive features to the recent
“discovery” of Buddhism in Western, Orientalist scholarship (Almond
1988; King 1999: 143–60); but, as with Orientalist constructions of
Vedånta and “Hinduism” itself (see Hacker 1995a; King 1999: 133–35),
Vivekånanda successfully redeploys these features to his own distinctive,
missionary project.
Gwilym Beckerlegge (2006b: 125–26, 128) has previously drawn atten-
tion to the sharp distinction Svåm Vivekånanda draws between the person
of the Buddha and the tradition that followed in his name. Buddhism,
from at least Çakara’s era to Vivekånanda’s own day, is described as a
corrupting force, in need of correction and conquest (for example, CWSV

1: 21, 2: 507, 3: 527, 5: 217, 8: 103–4). The Buddha himself, on the other
hand, receives praise as “God incarnate” (CWSV 1: 21), “my Ishta—my
God” (6: 227), “the sanest philosopher the world ever saw” (3: 528–29),
and “the greatest soul that ever wore a human form” (4: 326). Most impor-
tantly, the teaching of the Buddha—unlike the materialism and atheism
of his later followers—was none other than the teaching of Advaita
Vedånta (CWSV 7: 59). In a lecture on Advaita philosophy delivered in
London in 1896, Vivekånanda identified the Buddha and Çakara as the
two great figures who deployed this teaching to rescue India from crass
materialism. “Buddha,” he pronounces, “brought the Vedanta to light,
gave it to the people, and saved India” (CWSV 2: 139). In a dialogue
with a disciple two years later at Belur Math, he credits the Buddha with
transforming Advaita from an obscure teaching recorded on “bundles of
palm leaves” to a philosophy applicable to “the everyday life of the people.
In a sense, he was the living embodiment of true Vedanta” (CWSV 7:
118–19; emphasis in the original).
At one level, in incorporating the Buddha into his own religious vision,
Svåm Vivekånanda was simply following a long tradition of Vai‚~ava
and other strategies of appropriation.19 The last quotation cited above,
however, highlights an element of this construction of the Buddha that
served to shift the tradition in the direction of Vivekånanda’s distinctively
modern missionary project: namely, his construction as a popular preacher
and even evangelist of Advaita. In one of his addresses at the World’s
Parliament of Religion, Vivekånanda famously declared that it was the
Buddha’s “glory” that “he had the large-heartedness to bring out the
truths from the hidden Vedas and throw them broadcast all over the
world. He was the first being in the world who brought missionarising
into practice—nay, he was the first to conceive the idea of proselytising”
(CWSV 1: 22). In his London lecture, discussed above, he credits the
Buddha for carrying the message of Vedånta out of “the forests” and
preaching it to “the masses” (CWSV 2: 138)—thus attributing to the
Buddha success in the very same mission that he so dramatically set for
himself. In a number of places, he makes the parallel explicit, declaring
that “I have a message to the West as Buddha had a message to the East”
(CWSV 5: 314) and “Other sects and parties have carried spirituality all
over India, but since the days of Buddha we have been the first to break
bounds and try to flood the world with missionary zeal” (5: 225–26). Or,
as he states in a famous passage from his programmatic 1897 lecture,
“The Work Before Us”:
There have been great conquering races in the world. We also have
been great conquerors. The story of our conquest has been described
by that noble Emperor of India, Asoka, as the conquest of religion and
of spirituality. Once more the world must be conquered by India. This
is the dream of my life, and I wish that each one of you who hear me
today will have the same dream in your minds, and stop not till you
have realised the dream (CWSV 3: 276).
Here the reference is to Açoka, rather than to the Buddha (see also CWSV
1: 390–91, 3: 530–31, 4: 194–95, 308, 312, 376–77, 486–87, 6: 289, 7:
288–89, 347, 9: 368). It seems clear, however, that Açoka is depicted as
faithfully carrying forward an initiative pioneered by the Buddha, and he
thus similarly authorizes the work of Vivekånanda and his fellow disciples.
We could, in principle, conclude our discussion of Svåm Vivekånanda’s
idealized portrait of the Buddha here, with the command to conquer the
world with spirituality. It may be worth noting, however, that Vivekånanda
also uses this portrait to draw out yet another, distinctive element of his
missionary paradigm: namely, an Advaita imperative for compassion,
service, and equality in the broader, social sphere. In the same speech at
the World’s Parliament cited above, for example, Vivekånanda notes that
“the great glory of the Master [Buddha] lay in his wonderful sympathy for
everybody, especially the ignorant and poor” (CWSV 1: 22). The Buddha
is praised repeatedly for his compassion, patience, “large-heartedness,”
and extraordinary selflessness (CWSV 1: 22, see also 1: 438, 2: 140, 352,
496, 5: 240, 6: 227, 7: 59, 118). Vivekånanda goes on to trace the early
success of Buddhism in India to “the marvelous love which, for the first
time in the history of humanity, overflowed a large heart and devoted
itself to the service not only of all men but of all living beings—a love
which did not care for anything except to find a way of release from
suffering for all beings” (CWSV 8: 99–100). Such love translated, in the
case of the Buddha, into a critique of the caste system (CWSV 2: 485, 3:
527, 8: 97) and a preaching that emphasized “this one idea of equality”
(1: 424, cf. 7: 430). “What Buddha did was to break wide open the gates
of that very religion which was confined in the Upanishads to a particular

caste” (CWSV 6: 225). Even though the Buddha long preceded the era of
Çakara, the image of the former is deployed strategically to complement
or correct distortions introduced by the latter. In one speech, Vivekånanda
explains that “we want today that bright sun of [Çakara’s] intellectuality
joined with the heart of Buddha, the wonderful infinite heart of love and
mercy” (CWSV 2: 140). In practical terms, this provides a warrant for
his movement’s commitment both to the teaching of Advaita Vedånta
and to a program of social uplift for all humankind and indeed all living
beings, regardless of class or caste.
It may be worth reminding ourselves, at this point, that in looking at
Svåm Vivekånanda’s construction of the Buddha as a missionary para-
digm, we are largely prescinding from questions about its historical accu-
racy or the correspondence between these high ideals and the actual struc-
ture or practices of Vivekånanda’s Ramakrishna Mission. In addition, we
can note that, precisely as an idealized construction, this missionary para-
digm does not simply replace earlier paradigms. The image Vivekånanda
constructs of the Buddha and especially of Açoka’s missionary conquests,
for example, draws forward a number of themes already developed in the
vijaya literature.20 One might wonder, then, why Vivekånanda so firmly
transposes the subject of these themes from Çakara to the Buddha. No
doubt, this follows in part simply from Vivekånanda’s admiration for the
teaching and example of the Buddha (Long 2005). Another motivating
factor may be a sense of rivalry with prominent Buddhist reformers such
as Vivekånanda’s fellow representative at the World’s Parliament, the Sri
Lankan Anågårika Dharmapåla (Beckerlegge 2000: 59–60, 2006b: 128).
But it also seems clear that the choice served a specific strategic function.
By appealing to an earlier, popular teaching of “Advaita” that reaches
behind those articulated in Çakara’s writings or the vijaya literature, for
example, Vivekånanda claims license to innovate in the tradition. Given
that he spoke of the Buddha most frequently with Western audiences, it
also seems clear that he was deliberately appropriating an Orientalist con-
struction of Buddhism as a “universal religion” comparable to Christianity
(see Masuzawa 2005: 121–46; Almond 1988: especially 69–77). This
gains further support from the several places where Vivekånanda pairs
the Buddha with Christ, and sometimes with K®‚~a, as exemplary figures
(CWSV 6: 134, 7: 27, 76, 8: 28, 180–81, 229).
Whatever Vivekånanda’s primary motive, the results of his interpre-

tative strategy are fairly clear. In the figure of the Buddha, he constructs
an image of Advaita that promotes its application to everyday life, its
active dissemination beyond the shores of India, and its engagement in
questions of compassionate service and social justice.21 Such a paradigm
would be distinctively well suited to the new, transnational religious con-
text in which Svåm Vivekånanda found himself and to which he himself
made a significant contribution (see Beckerlegge 2004; Waghorne 2009).
The universality of the Advaita message of liberation finds, in his teaching,
a new idiom and a new social expression.
Four Styles of Contemporary Advaita Mission
The temptation at this point, informed by previous generations of schol-

arship on the question, might be to declare that only in the teaching of
Svåm Vivekånanda did Advaita Vedånta transcend its distinctively Indian,
ethnic origins and emerge for the first time as an authentically missionary
movement and genuine “world religion” (Hummel 1980: 17–18, 117–22;
cf. Masuzawa 2005: 107–20). The work of Bosch and his successors on
Christian missiology, however, suggests a far more modest conclusion—
if also one richer in interpretive possibility. First, we should note that the
Ramakrishna Mission never transcended ethnicity in any absolute sense;
instead, its distinctive teachings and structure brought it into complex
negotiations with the various cultures it encountered, in India and in the
West (Jackson 1994; Beckerlegge 2004). In this respect, it looks very
much like many forms of Christianity, from the first century to the present
day. Second, to the extent that the movement initiated by Vivekånanda
cast a wider geographical net than envisioned by Çakara or the vijaya
literatures—which would, I think, be difficult to contest—this concep-
tual shift possesses a complex, genetic relationship with prior concep-
tualizations of the tradition, only two of which have been brought out
here. If the advent of modernity and postmodernity may have acceler-
ated these shifts and their accompanying social formations, then this too
corresponds with the historical experience of most Christian traditions,
among many others. All Vedåntas are Neo-Vedåntas, we might say, or
none are.
We could, perhaps, stop at this point, having offered one possible narra-
tive of the historical development of missionary Advaita across these

three paradigms. Given the proliferation of Advaita movements in the
wake of Svåm Vivekånanda’s historic speeches at the World’s Parliament
of Religion, however, I propose to take the analysis one step further.
That is, I wish to explore, much more briefly, the possibility of further
differentiating distinctive elements of Advaita mission in the modern and
contemporary periods by appealing to the image of the four disciples of
the Çakaradigvijaya. In the previous section, my intent was primarily
descriptive and genealogical; here, it is more speculative and systematic.
To the best of my knowledge, my interpretation here does not correspond
directly to the teachings of any Advaita tradition, ancient or modern.
This does not mean that the correlation has no roots at all in such teach-
ings. In particular, I take my starting point from a work already briefly
mentioned above: Çakara the Missionary. In this book, first published
in 1978 and republished in a slimmer, revised edition in 1998, Svåm
Cinmayånanda and his followers offer a creative retelling of the Çakara-
digvijaya as a missional narrative for the international Chinmaya Mission
(Locklin and Lauwers 2009). Most importantly for my present purpose,
the authors of Çakara the Missionary reorganize this narrative in distinc-
tive ways; in particular, they lift the portraits of Çakara’s four primary
disciples out of the retelling of Çakara’s vijaya for separate treatment.
In one chapter, entitled “The Four Ma†ha-s and the Four Disciples,” the
authors connect the narratives of Padmapåda, Sureçvara, Haståmalaka,
and To†aka to the founding of the Daçanåm Order in the traditional
Advaita centers of Pur, Ç®ger, Dvårakå, and Jyotir (Çakara the Mis-
sionary 1998: 80–101). In a second chapter—originally an appendix—
they draw on the noted Ç®ger teacher, Svåm Jñånånanda Bhårat, to
draw correlations between the disciples and the mental faculties of
ahaμkåra, buddhi, citta, and manas, as well as various verses from the
Bhagavad Gtå (Çakara the Missionary 1998: 76–79). Such symbolic
associations, they note, have some basis in the Çakaradigvijaya iteself
(Çakara the Missionary 1998: 76–77; cf. Çakaradigvijaya 12.87; Bader
2000: 98–99). “Thus,” these authors conclude, “we have in these four
great disciples of Çakara an exemplification of the various levels and
various paths…” (Çakara the Missionary 1998: 79). On the one hand,
then, the images of the four disciples simply represent the diversity of
differently qualified students of the teaching; on the other, they also possess
a deeper symbolic valence in the narrative, and one that makes them
suitable for imaginatively representing the diversity of the tradition.
It seems a short step from the interpretation of the disciples offered in
Çakara the Missionary to ask whether they might also serve as an
additional typology for contemporary missionary Advaita. As with the
paradigms discussed above, the models provided by the disciples are
similarly personal and embodied, rather than textual or abstract. The
social expression of the tradition takes the form of an idealized portrait of
a leading åcårya. These models, however, do not seem to function as
paradigms, insofar as they do not define particular movements or histori-
cal periods in their totality. Instead, I have designated them as missionary
styles, that is, distinctive modes of communicating and deploying the
Advaita teaching which may—and generally do—appear in combination
rather than in isolation from one another.22
The Padmapåda Style: Revalorization of Tradition

The authors of Çakara the Missionary associate Çakara’s lead disci-
ple, Padmapåda, with the ahaμkåra, the basis of self-identity, as well as
with a path of fervent devotion and surrender to the master (pra~ipåta;
Bhagavad Gtå 4.34; Çakara the Missionary 1998: 77–79). Of all the
disciples in the Çakaradigvijaya, Padmapåda is the first to appear, and
he approaches the teacher in the most traditional manner, as outlined in
a work like the Upadeçasåhasr: he presents himself for examination,
establishes his social and intellectual adhikåra to receive the teaching,
and professes his detachment from all earthly and heavenly benefits
(Çakaradigvijaya 6.1–15; cf. Upadeçasåhasr, Gadyabandha 1.2–5).
One full chapter of the Çakaradigvijaya is dedicated to Padmapåda’s
pilgrimage across the subcontinent, which precedes and in some ways
anticipates Çakara’s own conquest (Çakaradigvijaya 14). Padmapåda’s
defense of the tradition also includes the limited, sanctioned use of
violence, as he tears apart a hostile Kåpålika Çaiva by taking the form of
N®siμha (Çakaradigvijaya 11.37–44) and employs the power of oμ to
reverse a curse issued by the great sage Abhinavagupta, with deadly results
(16.30–32). Finally, apart from the narrative of the Çakaradigvijaya, the
centrality of Padmapåda to the tradition is attested by the fact that he
alone among the earliest stratum of Çakara’s disciples is widely—if
not unambiguously—credited with composing a subcommentary on the
Brahmas¨trabhå‚ya, the first four verses of which are preserved as the

Pañcapådikå (Potter 1981; cf. Çakaradigvijaya 13.70–71, 14.107–116,
14.166–175).
Gathering these strands together, it may be fair to claim that the distinc-
tive missionary style represented in Padmapåda relates to the preserva-
tion and defense of Advaita tradition qua tradition, and as a firm asser-
tion of that traditioned identity, rendered in both spiritual and social
terms. Svåm Vivekånanda’s impassioned defenses of Hinduism at the
1893 World’s Parliament of Religion could easily be interpreted in this
light, as he positioned himself as a spokesperson not only for Advaita,
but for Hinduism and indeed the whole subcontinent. Just as the Padma-
påda style includes assertion through conquest and even limited use of
force, so also Vivekånanda’s missionary vision came to include the
rhetoric of nationalist revival and even, potentially, a form of political
Hinduism—though the precise scope and character of Vivekånanda’s
religious nationalism remains a topic of significant debate (for example,
Hacker 1995b; Raychaudhuri 1998; Beckerlegge 2006b; Waghorne 2009;
J. Sharma 2013).
A clearer example of this missionary style can, perhaps, be found in
the life and work of Svåm Cinmayånanda. In Çakara the Missionary,
Cinmayånanda praises the hero of the vijaya literature as a kind of
“spiritual general” whose conquest effected a rediscovery and renewal of
“the true cultural basis of our nation” (1998: 2). A quarter-century earlier
than this, in the 1951 address with which he inaugurated his first Upani‚ad-
Jñåna-Yajña, Cinmayånanda laments what he characterizes as the Hindu
tradition’s two-hundred year decline, attributed in no small part to its loss
of “any patronage from the state.” From this, he moves quickly to his
own mandate:
At the present state of moral, ethical, and cultural degradation in our

country, to totally dispose of religion would be making our dash to ruin
even quicker. However decadent our religion may be, it is better than
having none at all. My proposal is that the wise thing for us would be
to try and bring about a renaissance of Hinduism, so that under its
greatness—proven through many centuries—we may come to grow
into the very heights of culture and civilization that was ours in the
historical past (Cinmayånanda 2011: 84).
Cinmayånanda (2011: 84–85) goes on to specify the true essence of

Hinduism as a “science of perfection” founded on the Advaita teaching.
But it is clear that his is a cultural and political project as much as a
gnoseological one. Hence, it would eventually find expression not only
in a life of scriptural teaching, but also renewed connections with the
traditional structures of the Daçanåm monastic federation (see Çakara
the Missionary 1998: 82) and the cofounding of such Hindu nationalist
movements as the Viçva Hind¨ Pari‚ad (van der Veer 1994: 130–37;
McKean 1996: 101–2, 177–79; Mathew 1999: 204–13; Bhatt 2001: 180–
83).
The temptation for some interpreters might be to dismiss such political
initiatives as foreign to the essence of Advaita teaching, on the one hand,
or perhaps to reduce the tradition as a whole to a conservative social or
political agenda, on the other. However, neither perspective adequately
accounts for the complexity of both ancient and modern Advaita move-
ments. Adopting Suthren Hirst’s method of negation, these traditions
should not be reduced to a political agenda, but neither can they be
regarded as “socially and politically ungrounded” (2004: 173, cf. 168–
71). In the image of Padmapåda, moreover, we may find an ideal-typical
representation that begins to capture both sides of this dynamic. Svåm
Cinmayånanda, like Padmapåda, assumes the role of ahaμkåra for the
tradition—that is, a role of self-assertion and personal agency. It only
seems suitable that such a missionary style would draw on all available
resources to advance the Advaita teaching and to reverse those social and
political forces that oppose it, repositioning this teaching as a powerful
agent of cultural identity and transformation.
The Haståmalaka Style: The Power of Presence

To associate a particular discursive style with one of the four disciples
implies, by virtue of that association, that this style does not exhaust the
tradition. Hence, we turn to a second model of missionary discipleship,
and one that may be positioned as something close to the opposite of that
represented by Padmapåda: that is, the model of Haståmalaka. In the
Çakaradigvijaya, as discussed above, Padmapåda approaches Çakara
in the traditional manner to receive instruction. By contrast, Haståmalaka
does not approach the teacher at all and, it seems, receives no explicit
instruction. Instead, Çakara comes across him accidentally, as the mute
and unlearned son of a village pa~ita. Haståmalaka falls prostrate before

Çakara and, when addressed, pronounces a short, verse summary of the
whole Advaita teaching (Çakaradigvijaya 12.38–62). By virtue of his
achievement in past lives, Çakara explains, Haståmalaka was a self-
knower at birth—or at least from a very early age (see Çakaradigvijaya
13.34–38)—and does not require the external mediation of dialogue and
debate. The emblematic silence of this disciple is indirectly attested by
his very modest literary production: the Haståmalakaçlokåª remains the
sole work attributed to him (Harzer 1981). The Çakara of the Çakara-
digvijaya explains this with reference to the disciple’s complete, uninter-
rupted immersion in the contemplation of Brahman, which rendered him
unsuitable for scholarly endeavors (Çakaradigvijaya 13.22–32). Hence,
the authors of Çakara the Missionary conclude, Haståmalaka is aptly
symbolized by K®‚~a’s phrase, “with mind ever concentrated upon Me”
(Bhagavad Gtå 9.34, 18.65; Çakara the Missionary 1998: 77).
Arguably, no modern or contemporary Advaita teacher more closely
corresponds to the model provided by Haståmalaka than Rama~a Mahår‚i.
Born Venkataraman Ayyar in a small village near Madurai, the Mahår‚i
discovered the Advaita teaching without the mediation of an authorized
åcårya, in what A. Sharma has called his “conversion experience” (2006:
10): laying down and stiffening like a corpse, he undertook a rigorous
process of internal self-examination (cf. Forsthoefel 2002: 129–33).
Within the year, he abandoned family and home, journeyed to Mount
Aru~åcala and took up a life of silent contemplation. After twenty years,
he began teaching Advaita, but even then he preferred silence. Sharma
captures this with a verse traditionally attached to the Dak‚inåm¨rti-
stotram: “A young master is sitting with aged disciples under a banyan
tree. The master teaches in silence and the doubts of the students are
dispelled” (2006: 134).23 Here it is the liberated presence of the teacher,
rather than the words of the teaching, that receives pride of place in
communicating the Advaita message.
One might hesitate to refer to the teaching and example of Rama~a
Mahår‚i as a form of missionary Advaita. Yet, whether by design or not,
the Mahår‚i’s distinctive mode of personal presence has exercised a
significant and widespread influence on the articulation of subsequent
Advaita movements, on the work of major philosophers in India, and
even on the teachings of several important Christian theologians (for
example, Forsthoefel 2001, 2002: 126–28; Suthren Hirst 2004: 171–73;

Dupuis 1991: 67–91). It has also taken a variety of institutional forms,
both in India and in the West. Instead of dismissing it as nonmissionary,
then, perhaps it makes better sense to position it as a highly distinctive
style of Advaita mission, roughly consistent with the received image of
the disciple Haståmalaka. As such, it significantly qualifies the idealized
image of Çakara or Padmapåda as vigorous debaters and victorious
conquerors. According to this missionary style, the liberating message of
Advaita finds its most efficacious expression, not in public events such
as Svåm Cinmayånanda’s celebrated jñåna-yajñas, but in the subtle,
inherently attractive witness of a silent sage.
The To†aka Style: Devoted Service

It is possible that no feature of contemporary Advaita movements has
been more widely recognized as distinctive to the modern period than the
thorough integration of social service into their wider missionary agendas
(for example, Fort 1997). This is a major emphasis of the Ramakrishna
movement (Beckerlegge 2000: 79–112, 2006a, 2007), and one which
receives support in Svåm Vivekånanda’s idealized image of the Buddha,
discussed above. But we also encounter the theme elsewhere and defended
in other terms. As one, particularly vivid example, consider the biographi-
cal narrative of Svåm Cinmayånanda’s own teacher, Svåm Çivånanda
(1887–1963), as preserved in the tradition of his Divine Life Society
(Miller 1989: 83–94; Strauss 2002: 220–27). Central to this narrative is
the image of Çivånanda as a medical professional, who traveled to Rishi-
kesh and received saμnyåsa after a prosperous career in Tamil Nadu and
Malaysia. Before the founding of the Divine Life Society, he reports that
he alternated between spiritual practice and providing medical care to the
poor and sick on the banks of the Ganges (Strauss 2002: 226). Eventually,
he would attract many disciples, publish his writings in pamphlets and
books, found hospitals and schools, and contribute significantly to the
contemporary Yoga movement (Miller 1989: 94–99; Strauss 2002: 233–
36, 2005). But the image of the compassionate servant and physician
would remain primary, across all of these different initiatives.
In his work, Practice of Karma Yoga, as just one example, Svåm
Çivånanda called for a “thorough overhauling of the organisation of this
fourth order of life—Sannyasa,” issuing a call for a “drastic form of
service” and citing the image of Çakara as a model “Karma Yogi” (1974:
245). In an appendix to the work, he offers the following words of advice:
Serve poor, sick people. There is no Yajna that is greater than this.
Serve everyone with Bhav, Prem and full Shraddha. Serve the Lord in
all. Serve your country and society. Serve your parents, brothers and
sisters, the Sadhus, Sannyasins, Bhaktas, Mahatmas and your spiritual
teachers with devotion and a full heart. Shampoo the legs of poor
people. Feel that you are touching the body of the Lord (Virat). Feel
that the energy of Hiranyagarbha (cosmic energy) is flowing through
your hands. Tap the very source, the store-house of cosmic energy
(Çivånanda 1974: 319).
The scope of this teaching is breathtaking. Although it incorporates a

wide range of activities, including traditional service to the guru, Svåm
Çivånanda most strongly emphasizes care for the sick and poor. Indeed,
the most vulnerable members of society are recast as a kind of embodi-
ment of the guru. It is not primarily by gathering firewood for the actual
teacher, it would seem, but by shampooing the legs of the destitute that
one connects with the power of a divine master.
It would be very easy to identify in the rhetoric of Svåm Çivånanda
traces of comparable Christian discourses of service and of the poor as a
privileged place of encounter with the Lord. There is nothing in our
discussion of missionary paradigms and styles that would preclude the
creative deployment of themes drawn from other traditions, just as Svåm
Vivekånanda adopted Orientalist conceptions of the Buddha and the
authors of the vijaya literature drew creatively on tropes drawn from
their Vai‚~ava interlocutors and fierce rivals. But it is worth noting that
one can also identify a model closer to hand: that is, the image of the
disciple To†aka in the Çakaradigvijaya. To†aka received this name from
one short work attributed to him, the Çrutisårasamuddhara~am, which
sets an imagined dialogue between teacher and student to verse in the
to†aka meter (Comans 1996). Compared to the decisive contribution of
Padmapåda or the copious output of Sureçvara, this represents a rather
limited intellectual project. The vijaya literature explains this modest
legacy in a way parallel to the account of the silent Haståmalaka. In the
Çakaradigvijaya narrrative, a disciple named Giri is identified not as a
self-knower from birth, but as a slow learner who excels at service.

When, on one occasion, he is late to join the group of disciples for
instruction, Çakara infuses him directly with knowledge of the Çrutisåra-
samuddhara~am, which To†aka then recites flawlessly, to everyone’s
amazement (Çakaradigvijaya 12.70–86). The work, in other words,
emerged in the disciple’s mind not as the result of his own immanent
understanding, but as a reward for his loving service. Hence, the authors
of Çakara the Missionary associate him with the one “who does actions
for me” (matkarmak®t) of Bhagavad Gtå 11.55, with the “service” (sevå)
of Bhagavad Gtå 4.34, and with the manas, “the restless mind, ever
engaged in all kinds of service to the Master” (1998: 77–78).
No doubt, in the work of a teacher like Svåm Çivånanda, the scope of
what might count as service to the master has been considerably widened.
Or, perhaps better, any person in need is symbolically rendered as the
Lord, as the master, as the authorized teacher. With such a transposition
—modest from a theological point of view, but dramatic in its conse-
quences—the received image of To†aka can provide a framework for
situating social service in relation to other aspects of Advaita mission. As
such, it emerges as a distinctive missionary style, of central importance
to the fundamentally therapeutic vision of the Divine Life Society, but
also operative in some respect in a much wider range of modern and
contemporary Advaita movements.
The Sureçvara Style: Polemics and Innovation

Sureçvara has been reserved to the final place in this survey of the four
disciples, in part because his distinctive model or style of mission is most
difficult to categorize. On the one hand, he was by far the most prolific
of Çakara’s immediate disciples, authoring a massive subcommentary
(vårttika) on the B®hadåra~yakopani‚adbhå‚ya, another vårttika on the
Taittiryopani‚adbhå‚ya, and the independent treatise, Nai‚karmya-
siddhi. A commentary on the Dak‚inam¨rtistotram and a number of
other works are also attributed to him. On the other hand, all of these
works are in some sense marginal to the Brahmas¨trabhå‚ya as the core
Advaita text and central focus of the commentarial tradition (see especially
Clooney 1993: 14–30). The narrative of the Çakaradigvijaya ascribes
this state of affairs to the interference of Padmapåda, who did not trust
Sureçvara to write such a subcommentary on the Brahmas¨trabhå‚ya
due to his previous career as Ma~ana Miçra (Çakaradigvijaya 13.1–

21). Sureçvara is thus positioned in the Çakaradigvijaya as both an
insider and an outsider, resolute in his commitment to the tradition, while
at the same time embodying a persistent risk of disruption. It is this
ambivalent status that renders Sureçvara’s style distinct from the more
straightforward valorization of tradition typical of Padmapåda.
This distinctive style can also claim some modest basis in Sureçvara’s
writings themselves. In a work like Nai‚karmyasiddhi, for example,
Sureçvara strongly advances core teachings of Çakara against such adver-
saries as Ma~ana Miçra and supports his own arguments with extensive
quotations from his teacher’s Upadeçasåhasr, thus inscribing himself
firmly in the tradition (Locklin 2011: 25–27, 150–51); yet, in his vårttika
on the B®hadåra~yakopani‚adbhå‚ya, he freely and self-consciously
sets his interpretations against those of his teacher on such significant
topics as eligibility for saμnyåsa (Marcaurelle 2000: 172–73). Finally,
the symbolic associations with Sureçvara in Çakara the Missionary
reveal a similar, dynamic ambivalence. He is commended for his fervent
devotion to the teaching as one who “worships me” (madyåjin; Bhagavad
Gtå 9.34, 18.65) and “looks upon me as the Supreme” (matparama;
11.55); but he is also characterized as “questioning” (paripraçna) and
as a symbol of the buddhi, because he “would not yield until he was
convinced” (Çakara the Missionary 1998: 77–78). He is depicted, it
seems, both as a fervent advocate of the Advaita teaching and as its loyal
opposition.
If we previously associated Padmapåda with the preservation, defense,
and revalorization of tradition, it may be possible to perceive in the image
of Sureçvara a parallel, more polemic and more inward strategy of retra-
ditioning and innovation. Svåm Cinmayånanda’s teaching, for example,
can be characterized as a form of cultural nationalism, as discussed above,
but Cinmayånanda himself also polemicized harshly against Bråhma~a
priests even as he developed new institutional forms to bring the teaching
of the Upani‚ads to the Indian middle-class (see Patchen 1989: 158–62;
van der Veer 1994: 137). One of Cinmayånanda’s disciples, Svåm Dayå-
nanda Sarasvat (1930–2015), would eventually go on to break with the
Chinmaya Mission and polemicize against the teachings of “modern
teachers of Vedanta,” including such modern lights as Svåm Vivekånanda,
Rama~a Mahår‚i, Svåm Çivånanda, and Svåm Cinmayånanda himself
(for example, Dayånanda 1993). One of Dayånanda’s lay disciples, the

Advaita scholar Anantanand Rambachan, has in turn brought his teacher’s
critique forward in two major works (1991, 1994) that seek to reclaim
Çakara’s teachings from these modern teachers. From this ostensibly
traditionalist foundation, however, in recent years Rambachan (2003,
2006: 2–3, 27–29, 2007) has also launched strong criticisms of caste
discrimination, homophobia, gender bias, and other oppressive structures
in Hindu traditions and even in the teaching of Çakara himself (see also
Locklin 2014). In his most recent work, he sets out to articulate a distinc-
tively Advaita theology of liberation (Rambachan 2015). At each step in
this paraμparå, then, we witness successive moments of affirmation and
critique, traditionalization and transformation.
In his studies of the Divine Life Society and the Ramakrishna Mission
several years ago, Miller noted that contemporary interpreters of Hindu
traditions err if we attempt to draw too sharp a contrast between the
“traditional” and the “modern.” In these movements, the affirmation of
tradition can become a source of innovation, and modern values take root
in the teaching lineage by means of a complex, contested process of
retraditioning (Miller 1989: 106–10, 1999). Arguably, this observation
rings true to some extent for all the figures I have surveyed in this essay,
from a renunciant teacher like Çakara in the eighth century to an
academic theologian like Rambachan today. But when this dialectic of
affirmation and critique, polemic and innovation moves to the forefront
and takes conscious expression, I suggest, it becomes something like a
distinct missionary style. Compared with the other three styles surveyed
thus far, this one is perhaps least likely to be mistaken for a comprehen-
sive, coherent paradigm. One could, in theory if not in practice, imagine
a missionary vision based wholly on silent witness, service, or cultural
nationalism, but the dynamic practice of retraditionalization works at the
boundaries of existing traditions, defending these traditions, subjecting
them to searching inquiry and critique, and developing new formulations
for them. It is an Advaita missionary style that exists in necessary relation
with others. It stands as both a permanent challenge to these other styles
and, perhaps, as a key to their ongoing vitality and renewal. As such, it
might gain clarity and imaginative depth by appeal to Sureçvara, a promi-
nent Advaitin disciple who claimed the center of the tradition from a
position closer to its margins.
Conclusion
In his recent article, “Hindu Theology as Churning the Latent,” Jonathan

Edelmann draws on the work of the eighteenth-century Gauya Vai‚~ava
scholar, Viçvanåtha Cakravartin, to define such constructive work as a
“churning of the ocean,” distilling the “latent meanings” of a scriptural
text by means of such hermeneutical tools as “ordering,” “internal over-
coding,” “exegesis,” and “signification” (2013: 442–43). The articulation
of Hindu theology employs hermeneutical tools, he further suggests, but
it is not reducible to them; it also depends upon the theologian’s personal
formation in a particular Hindu tradition, including both intellectual
discipline and ethical conduct (Edelmann 2013: 450–56).
In this essay I have attempted to bring out some of the latent, theological
significance of the Upadeçasåhasr, the Çakaradigvijyaya, and the
speeches of Svåm Vivekånanda, as these latent meanings might give
shape and significance to the construction of a contemporary theology of
Advaita mission. As already noted, this proposal falls short of Edelmann’s
notion of “Hindu theology” in several ways. I have, first, drawn latent
meanings not from the Upani‚ads or another Advaita scriptural text, but
from the rhetorical constructions of selected Advaita teachers. Perhaps
more importantly, the location of the present author would certainly fall
short of the spiritual and ethical disposition that might qualify me as an
Advaita theologian. It is possible that my position more closely resembles
that of the antigods than that of the gods in the famous Bhågavata Purå~a
episode that gives Edelmann’s essay its title (2013: 440–42). If I am
hopeful that I can help churn this particular ocean of milk, one might say,
it is less clear that I do so with any expectation of the same immortal
reward.
Then why all the churning? First of all, in identifying key paradigms of
Advaita mission across history, we have the opportunity to move beyond
false dichotomies and facile application of the label “mission” to one or
another Hindu movement. It matters little to my analysis whether these
missionary paradigms are entirely unique to Advaita: we have in several
places noted points of continuity with the missionary visions of implied
or named adversaries, and it seems a sound historical principle that most
phenomena will reveal more similarities than differences with other,
comparable phenomena from the same social and cultural milieu. So,
too, the analysis conducted here may be read to imply that almost any
tradition that aspires to survive for longer than a single generation can be
characterized as missionary in some respect. The interesting question,
then, is not what classifies a particular tradition as “missionary” or “non-
missionary” as binary categories, but how any tradition may articulate
and understand its missionary dimensions in diverse, particular times and
places. The santati of Çakara’s Upadeçasåhasr, the vijaya of the Çakara
hagiographies, the “large-heartedness” of Svåm Vivekånanda’s Buddha
—each of these is susceptible to a missiological reading, but they are not
susceptible to being read univocally, separately, or together, as expressions
of one and the same Advaita missionary paradigm. Vivekånanda explicitly
and self-consciously rejects key elements of Çakara’s construction, and
the particular vision of the vijaya literature links the other two while also
standing apart, in its own integrity. As interpretive paradigms, they remain
incommensurable at a fundamental level. And the picture becomes still
more complex when we add the similarly diverse symbolic images of
Padmapåda, Haståmalaka, To†aka, and Sureçvara.
Simply noting this complexity may be sufficient for the purposes of
description. Yet, once such a description has been offered—once the
ocean has undergone its first round of churning—a second question
naturally presents itself: is there sufficient raw material here for a new,
constructive paradigm of Advaita mission for the twenty-first century, as
David J. Bosch, Stephen B. Bevans and Roger P. Schroeder, and M.
Thomas Thangaraj have each suggested in their respective Christian
contexts? Such a question cannot be answered in the present essay, or
indeed by the present author, but Jacqueline Suthren Hirst’s article
“Images of Çakara” may chart an initial way forward. We recall that, in
her reconstruction of Çakara’s Advaita theology, well-worn tropes such
as the rope mistaken for a snake or the magician’s illusion function not
by aggregation but by mutual restriction, as each removes an error implicit
in the others (Suthren Hirst 2004: 157–59, 174–75). The truth is not
found in any of the images, or even in all of them together, but in the
space opened between them by their fruitful juxtaposition.
So also we might suggest that a robust Advaita theology of mission for
the twenty-first century might fruitfully locate itself within the fissures
and tensions that differentiate these paradigms and styles one from the
other, exploring the space between such competing ideals as elitism and
equality, clarity and inclusiveness, renunciation and integration, and

various notions of universality. The chauvinism of the Padmapåda style
will be tempered by To†aka’s spirit of service, and the silent witness of
Haståmalaka will find itself challenged to assert itself socially, culturally,
and even politically, as Padmapåda might require. And all these approaches
may be affirmed, challenged, and transformed by the unrelenting buddhi
of Sureçvara. The am®ta of a contemporary Advaita theology of mission
will, in other words, emerge in the tension among these paradigms and
styles—and possibly many others—rather than by its systematic resolu-
tion. And thus the Advaita mission itself may be emboldened to continue
its complex, dynamic course of theological innovation and development.
Notes
1. I am very grateful to the International Journal of Hindu Studies for

the invitation to submit this article, as well as to the generous feedback
provided by three anonymous reviewers. The work is considerably
stronger as a result of their suggestions.
2. A. Sharma articulates what should probably be taken as a consensus
view: “Even though Vivekananda may have disowned the description,
he was in a sense a missionary, perhaps the first major missionary of
Hinduism in the West where ‘he made several devoted English converts,
and laid the foundations of Neo-Vedantism in America…’ ” (2011: 119,
citing Zaehner 1962: 223).
3. Prior to this, according to Bosch, most of the Protestant Reformers
judged that “the ‘Great Commission’ had been fulfilled by the apostles
and was no longer binding on the church” (1991: 249, referring to the
sixteenth-century Lutheran theologian Philip Nicolai; for the broader
discussion, see pages 243–48).
4. This is the approximate distance from Serampore College, cofounded
by Carey in 1800, and Belur Math, founded by Vivekånanda in 1897 as
the worldwide headquarters of the Ramakrishna Mission.
5. For this essay, I have also followed Mayeda’s (2006) English
translation.
6. Consistent with Çakara’s other works (see Clooney 1993: 23–30),
P¨rva Mmåμså represents an exception to this rule. Positions drawn from
P¨rva Mmåμså are given a privileged place apart from other rival tradi-
tions, as in the introductory exposition of Upadeçasåhasr, Padyabandha 1.

7. tasmådbhråntirato ‘nyå hi bandhamok‚ådikalpanåª| såμkhyakå~åda-
bauddhånåμ mmåμsåhatakalpanåª\ çåstrayuktivirodhåttå nådartavyåª
kadåcana| çakyante çaraço vaktuμ do‚åståsåμ sahasraçaª\ api nindo-
papatteçca yånyato ‘nyåni cetyataª| tyaktvåto hyanyaçåstroktrmatiμ
kuryådd®håμ budhaª\ çraddhåbhakt purask®tya hitvå sarvamanår-
javam| vedåntasyaiva tattvårthe vyåsasyåpi matau tathå. I have omitted
the first half of verse 66 from the translation; as Mayeda (2006: 159n40)
notes, the source of the stanza that Çakara seems to be quoting here is
obscure.
8. The full verse reads: iti pra~unnå dvayavådakalpanå niråtmavå-
dåçca tathå hi yuktitaª| vyapetaçakåª paravådataª sthirå mumuk‚avo
jñånapathe syurityuta.
9. tåpåntatvådanityatvådåtmårthatvåcca yå bahiª| saμh®tyåtmani tåμ
prtiμ satyårth gurumåçrayet\ çåntaμ pråjñaμ tathå muktaμ ni‚kriyaμ
brahma~i sthitam| çruteråcåryavånveda tadviddhti sm®testathå\ sa
gurus tårayedyuktaμ çi‚yaμ çi‚yagu~ånvitam| brahmavidyåplavenåçu
svåntadhvåntamahodadhim.
10. Vetter (1979: 75–78) argues that the differences in the descriptions
of the teacher and student in Upadeçasåhasr, Gadyabandha 2 imply a
different, and earlier, point of composition than Upadeçasåhasr, Gadya-
bandha 1. Even granting that the two texts may not have been written in
series, I do not think that the changes in vocabulary require that they be
treated as separate works.
11. åcåryaçcohåpohagraha~adhåra~açamadamadayånugrahådisam-
panno labdhågamo d®‚†åd®‚†abhoge‚vanåsaktastyaktasarvakarmasådhano
brahmavid brahma~i sthito ‘bhinnav®tto dambhadarpakuhakaçå†hyamå-
yåmåtsaryån®tåhaμkåramamatvådido‚avarjitaª kevalaparånugrahapra-
yojano vidyopayogårth p¨rvamupadiçet.
12. For examples, see the discussions of Upadeçasåhasr, Gadyabandha
1.25–26 in Suthren Hirst (2011: 64–65) and of Upadeçasåhasr, Gadya-
bandha 2.74–79 in Kaplan (2013: 17–19).
13. It should be noted that Çakara’s teaching is not univocal on this
point; though the Upadeçasåhasr presumes Bråhma~a renunciant males
as the normal, if not exclusive, recipients of the teaching, other passages
suggest wider availability of the discipline of self-knowledge by study of
sm®ti and other means. Marcaurelle (2000: 29–40) surveys the evidence
on both sides.
14. Although Sax references a Himalayan tradition that Çakara “fought
his Buddhist rivals ‘with both çastra and çåstra,’ that is, with both weapons
and arguments, destroying many of them with the aid of Råjå Sudhavan’s
army” (2000: 47).
15. The dating of the text is by no means certain. Following the textual
critical analysis of W. D. Antarkar, Bader (2000: 17–70) assigns this late
date due to Çakaradigvijaya’s apparent literary dependence upon three
other hagiographies. See also Sawai (1985) and Clark (2006: 149–51).
Sundaresan (2000) has, in turn, challenged these textual criteria. If
accepted, Sundaresan’s arguments could push the work’s date back as far
as the fourteenth century, though this still postdates Çakara by at least
six centuries. Except where otherwise noted, I draw here on the free
translation of the Çakaradigvijaya available in Tapasyånanda (1978), in
consultation with the Sanskrit Text and English translation in Padmanaban
(1985–86).
16. The further attribution of the text to Vidyåra~ya, one of the most
important jagadgurus or Çakaråcåryas of the Ç®ger Ma†ha in present-
day Karnataka, follows from the belief that Mådhava was Vidyåra~ya’s
name prior to taking saμnyåsa (Sawai 1985: 457–58).
17. My exposition for the remainder of this section depends heavily
on research completed by my research assistant Ren Ito in 2009–2010,
supported by funding provided by the President’s Research Fund of the
University of St. Michael’s College.
18. Here Vivekånanda stands in sharp contrast to the inclusivist strate-
gies of the doxographers. As A. Nicholson (2010: 158–65) notes, despite
their relatively irenic attitude toward rival teachings generally, Mådhava
and Madhus¨dana Sarasvat nevertheless work to suppress and margin-
alize rival forms of Vedånta in their doxographies.
19. In places, Vivekånanda shows a direct reliance on these earlier
traditions, such as when he describes the Buddha, in an early Bengali
lecture, as “the demon Gayasura” who “tried to destroy the world by
showing the paths of Moksha to all” (CWSV 5: 447).
20. It is worth noting that Vivekånanda may not be transposing the
vijaya narrative from Çakara to Açoka: Açoka well fits the model of a
conquering ruler, and Buddhist hagiographies similarly present their renun-
ciant heroes as defeating rivals in debate. See Bader (2000: 65–67).
21. This is not to claim that the image of the Buddha was the sole
foundation of these themes. Brekke (1999), for example, also points out
the objectification and universalization of the concept of dharma by such
predecessors as Ba~kim Candra Ca††opådhyåy (1838–94).
22. Here I am following the theologian of culture Kathryn Tanner, who
defines “style” rather generally as “the specific way a practice is performed
when there are other possible options” (1997: 144).
23. citraμ va†atarorm¨le v®ddhå çi‚yå gururyavå| gurostu maunaμ
vyåkhyånaμ çi‚yåt¨cchinnasaμçayåª.
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REID B. LOCKLIN is Associate Professor of Christianity and the

Intellectual Tradition at the University of Toronto, Canada.
[email protected]

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Paradigms and Styles of Advaita Mission:

In an article published in this journal a decade ago, Jacqueline Suthren

the clay-pot, rope-snake, and magician-magic…are all used to illumi-

Similarly, surveying a number of modern and contemporary approaches

International Journal of Hindu Studies 20, 1: 1–49

captured in his totality by any of these approaches or even by all of them

the transformed conditions of modernity (Thomas 1930; Hummel 1980;

to seek generalization before one has tried to understand the particular”

Paradigms, Models, and Types of Christian Mission

translation of the Greek verb apostellô, referring to the act of sending

missio: mission; the task entrusted to the Church by Jesus to proclaim

It seems evident that most interpreters are, consciously or unconsciously,

immediately calls it into question:

Still, all these connotations attached to the word “mission,” familiar as

about mission in a plural rather than a singular idiom, attentive to both

tually be superseded. Adaptation to new historical contexts, then, does

Three Historical Paradigms of Advaita Mission

hagiographical tradition exemplified in the Çakaradigvijaya attributed

The Compassionate Åcårya of the Upadeçasåhasr

version, and it was supported, from time to time, by programs of relig-

Vedåntin group, whom Çaμkara seeks to manoeuvre out of competition”

Therefore, assumptions concerning bondage, final release, etc., (which

The result of the refutation and renunciation of alternative traditions is, in

authorized åcårya. In the concluding section of the seventeenth verse

Concentrating upon Åtman the love which is (now set) on external

If Upadeçasåhasr, Padyabandha 16 emphasizes the incoherence and

In this passage, Çakara places exterior, observable virtues of intellectual

acuity, facility with the scriptural traditions, personal detachment, and

focus remains on the scriptural and reasoned dialogue between a single

The Servant-Conqueror of the Çakara Hagiographies

context (Çakaradigvijaya 1.27–59) and the precedent set by Skanda in

or authentically missionary, according to some stable norm. It will aim to

the intervention of the goddess Sarasvat (Çakaradigvijaya 16.62–92).

so doing, it provides an important link between the eighth-century

The Missionary Buddha in the Speeches of Svåm Vivekånanda

exponent of Advaita teaching and his work as a sublime, rational synthesis

corrupting force, in need of correction and conquest (for example, CWSV

of that very religion which was confined in the Upanishads to a particular

Whatever Vivekånanda’s primary motive, the results of his interpre-

Four Styles of Contemporary Advaita Mission

The temptation at this point, informed by previous generations of schol-

tive of the historical development of missionary Advaita across these

The Padmapåda Style: Revalorization of Tradition

Brahmas¨trabhå‚ya, the first four verses of which are preserved as the

At the present state of moral, ethical, and cultural degradation in our

Cinmayånanda (2011: 84–85) goes on to specify the true essence of

The Haståmalaka Style: The Power of Presence

and unlearned son of a village pa~ita. Haståmalaka falls prostrate before

example, Forsthoefel 2001, 2002: 126–28; Suthren Hirst 2004: 171–73;

The To†aka Style: Devoted Service

The scope of this teaching is breathtaking. Although it incorporates a

self-knower from birth, but as a slow learner who excels at service.

The Sureçvara Style: Polemics and Innovation

due to his previous career as Ma~ana Miçra (Çakaradigvijaya 13.1–

(for example, Dayånanda 1993). One of Dayånanda’s lay disciples, the

In his recent article, “Hindu Theology as Churning the Latent,” Jonathan

equality, clarity and inclusiveness, renunciation and integration, and

1. I am very grateful to the International Journal of Hindu Studies for

tions, as in the introductory exposition of Upadeçasåhasr, Padyabandha 1.