Towards an Intellectual History of Greater Vaiṣṇava Vedānta: Difference and Non-difference in the Gauḍīya School

Abstract In this article I hope to contribute to scholarship on Greater Vaiṣṇava Vedānta by focusing on the principle of ‘inconceivable difference and non-difference’ (acintyabhedābheda), one of the key concepts in Gauḍīya Vedānta. To do so, I first provide the criteria for the concept of Greater Vaiṣṇava Vedānta, to clearly demarcate the concept. Then, in the second section of the article, I discuss how the concept of acintyabhedābheda was coined by Jīva Gosvāmī, paying attention both to its theological and its historical contexts. In so doing, I point out that Jīva developed the principle primarily within the framework of causality and ontology, to provide a theological foundation for his newly developing tradition. In the final section of the paper, I discuss how this principle of inconceivable difference and non-difference was promoted and creatively applied by Kedarnath Datta Bhaktivinod in modern Bengal. By the time we reach the 19th century, the Gauḍīya tradition found itself in a very different intellectual environment and faced a series of fresh challenges. In this new context Bhaktivinod promoted Jīva's principle as being central to Gauḍīya theology, and thereby granted it more prominence. Moreover, he applied the principle to the topics of ethics and aesthetics in a way that Jīva did not. I conclude the article by arguing that adopting the concept of ‘Greater Vaiṣṇava Vedānta’ would fruitfully allow us to explore aspects of Vedānta that have been neglected so far, such as its engagement with the Purāṇic and the Pañcarātric texts, vernacular writings, aesthetic discourse, and the ethical status of divine activities.