Songs of Grace: Kirtan in the Vallabha Sampradaya: Journal of Vaishnava Studies

Abstract

I had the extreme pleasure of living with His Holiness Goswami Prathameshji, a direct descendant of Shri Vallabhacharya and the head
of the first seat of the Vallabh Sampradaya, for eighteen years. Although his physical form disappeared from this world in 1990, Prathameshji’s devotional teachings remain with us. He was a pundit of Ayurveda, Vedanta, as well as the Shrimad Bhagavatam, master of Sanskrit, Urdu, Gujarati, and Vrajbhasha languages, and an accomplished classical musician.
Prathameshji played the tabla and pakhavaja drums, harmonium, sitar, flute, and even sarangi with mastery, but most of all, it is the way he sang Dhrupada-Dhamar devotional kirtan songs that still resonates throughout my being. He was a master of “Lila kirtan.” He often sang, in total ecstasy, poems written by great bhaktas who had actually seen and experienced Shri Krishna’s Lila (“spiritual acts”). As he once told me, “To sing of the Lilas of Hari is the fastest flight to God.”