Gosains
Gosains (गोसाईं), who are also known as Gossain, Gosine, Gossai, Gosavi, and as Goswamis, are Hindu ascetics and religious functionaries of India. The term can be translated as master of passion.[1] They are sometimes referred to more generally as Sannyasis.[2]
The members of Dashnami Sect, believed to be the first brahmanical order of ascetics founded by Adi Shankaracharya,[3] use the surname Gosain or Gosavi which means a man who has attained complete control over sense organs. Many of the married Gosains officiate as priests and religious teachers.[4] By the end of eighteenth century, the Gosains of this particular sect became a politically powerful group in northern India and also held and enjoyed Jagirs, pensions and titles.[5][6]
In the sect of Vallabhacharya, the Pushtimarg, Brahmin religious leaders and spritual heads of the tradition use Goswami or Gosvami and sometimes Gosain as surname and are addressed with the same as an honorific.[7][8]
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The Gosains were powerful nomadic and mercenary trading groups who undertook pilgrimages across significant areas of land. While early British colonists in Bengal Presidency considered them to be marauding robbers, however they were important to urban economies and the development of wider trade networks.[9] These itinerant religious groups could be very large in number, with figures in excess of 50,000 being probable for those headed by figures such as Umrao Giri and Himmat Bahadur Anup Giri Gosain[10] in the late 1700s.[11] Their numerical strength enabled them to be self-protecting and also to protect the trade routes that they used, regardless of who might have titular power in any given place.[2] One out of atleast three seperate events that are grouped as Sanyasi Rebellion involved Gosains[12] along with other instances of their frequent clashes with Company's army in northern frontiers of Bengal.[13] Their movements were often dictated by religious festivals, both of a localised village nature and of a more widely celebrated type, such as Holi. As these festivals were also occasions for seasonal markets, so the Gosains were able to move and trade goods between areas.[14]
The Nawabs of Awadh, who ruled Oudh State in the 18th and 19th centuries and were Muslim successors to the Mughal empire, recruited from Gosain martial brotherhoods as a way to assimilate influential Hindu elements of society and buttress their own sources of power. This attempt at creating a plural society was in sharp contrast to the zealotry that had characterised their predecessors.[15]
References
[edit]Citations
- ^ Bayly (1988), p. 477
- ^ a b Bayly (1988), p. 142
- ^ Giri, Madhu (2019-12-22). "Cultural Crisis of Caste Renouncer: A Study of Dasnami Sanyasi Identity in Nepal". Molung Educational Frontier. 9: 94–95. doi:10.3126/mef.v9i0.33588. ISSN 2542-2596.
- ^ Gawde, Shakuntala (2020), "Daśanāmī Order", Encyclopedia of Indian Religions, Dordrecht: Springer Netherlands, pp. 1–5, ISBN 978-94-024-1036-5, retrieved 2024-09-27
- ^ Giri, Madhu (2019-12-22). "Cultural Crisis of Caste Renouncer: A Study of Dasnami Sanyasi Identity in Nepal". Molung Educational Frontier. 9: 97. doi:10.3126/mef.v9i0.33588. ISSN 2542-2596.
- ^ Bhattacharya, Ananda (2012). "Dasanami Sannyasis as Ascetics, Baniyas and Soldiers". Annals of the Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute. 93: 231–260. ISSN 0378-1143.
- ^ Pushtimarg. Pushtimarg. pp. v.
- ^ Saha, Shandip (2004-01-01). "Creating a Community of Grace: A History of the Pusti Marga in Northern and Western India (1493-1905)". Bulletin of the School of Oriental and African Studies: 328.
- ^ Bayly (1988), p. 29
- ^ Pinch, William R. (September 1998). "Who was Himmat Bahadur? Gosains, Rajputs and the British in Bundelkhand, ca. 1800". The Indian Economic & Social History Review. 35 (3): 293–335. doi:10.1177/001946469803500304. ISSN 0019-4646.
- ^ Bayly (1988), p. 126
- ^ Lorenzen, David N. (January 1978). "Warrior Ascetics in Indian History". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 98 (1): 61–75. doi:10.2307/600151. JSTOR 600151.
- ^ Banerjee-Dube, Ishita (2014-10-27). A History of Modern India. Cambridge University Press. p. 52. doi:10.1017/cbo9781107588387. ISBN 978-1-107-06547-5.
- ^ Bayly (1988), p. 128
- ^ Bayly (1988), pp. 26, 142
Bibliography
- Bayly, C. A. (1988), Rulers, Townsmen and Bazaars: North Indian Society in the Age of British Expansion, 1770-1870, Cambridge University Press, ISBN 978-0-52131-054-3
Further reading
[edit]- Lorenzen, David N. (1978). "Warrior Ascetics in Indian History". Journal of the American Oriental Society. 98 (1): 61–75. doi:10.2307/600151. JSTOR 600151.