Chaitanya and the Vaishnava Poets of Bengal | Page 3

pupil of Chaitanya. The probability is that Adwaita, like the
majority of his countrymen, was more addicted to meditation than to
action. The idea which in his mind gave rise to nothing more than
indefinite longings when transfused into the earnest fiery nature of
Chaitanya, expanded into a faith which moved and led captive the souls
of thousands.
His brother Nityanand was now assumed to be an incarnation of
Balaram, and took his place as second-in-command in consequence.
The practice of meeting for worship and to celebrate "Sankirtans" was
now instituted; the meetings took place in the house of a disciple Sribas,
and were quite private. The new religionists met with some opposition,
and a good deal of mockery. One night on leaving their rendezvous,
they found on the door-step red flowers and goats' blood, emblems of
the worship of Durga, and abominations in the eyes of a Vaish.nava.
These were put there by a Brahman named Gopal. Chaitanya cursed
him for his practical joke, and we are told that he became a leper in
consequence. The opposition was to a great extent, however, provoked
by the Vaish.navas, who seem to have been very eccentric and
extravagant in their conduct. Every thing that K.rish.na had done
Chaitanya must do too, thus we read of his dancing on the shoulders of
Murari Gupta, one of his adherents; and his followers, like himself, had

fits, foamed at the mouth, and went off into convulsions, much after the
fashion of some revivalists of modern times. The young students at the
Sanskrit schools in Nadiya naturally found all this very amusing, and
cracked jokes to their hearts' content on the crazy enthusiasts.
In January 1510, Chaitanya suddenly took it into his head to become a
Sanyasi or ascetic, and received initiation at the hands of Keshab
Bharati of Katwa. Some say he did this to gain respect and credit as a
religious preacher, others say it was done in consequence of a curse laid
on him by a Brahman whom he had offended. Be this as it may, his
craziness seems now to have reached its height. He wandered off from
his home, in the first instance, to Puri to see the shrine of Jagannath.
Thence for six years he roamed all over India preaching Vaish.navism,
and returned at last to Puri, where he passed the remaining eighteen
years of his life and where at length he died in the 48th year of his age
in 1534 A.D. His Bengali followers visited him for four months in
every year and some of them always kept watch over him, for he was
now quite mad. He had starved and preached and sung and raved
himself quite out of his senses. On one occasion he imagined that a post
in his veranda was Radha, and embraced it so hard as nearly to smash
his nose, and to cover himself with blood from scraping all the skin off
his forehead; on another he walked into the sea in a fit of abstraction,
and was fished up half dead in a net by a fisherman. His friends took it
in turns to watch by his side all night lest he should do himself some
injury.
The leading principle that underlies the whole of Chaitanya's system is
Bhakti or devotion; and the principle is exemplified and
illustrated by
the mutual loves of Radha and K.rish.na. In adopting this illustration of
his principle, Chaitanya followed the example of the Bhagavad Gita
and the Bhagavat Pura.na, and he was probably also influenced in the
sensual tone he gave to the whole by the poems of Jayadeva. The
Bhakta or devotee passes through five successive stages, Santa or
resigned contemplation of the deity is the first, and from it he passes
into Dasya or the practice of worship and service, whence to Sakhya or
friendship, which warms into Batsalya_, filial affection, and lastly rises
to _Madhurya or earnest, all-engrossing love.

Vaish.navism is singularly like Sufiism, the resemblance has often been
noticed, and need here only be briefly traced. [Footnote: Conf. Capt. J.
W. Graham's paper 'On Sufiism,' Bombay Literary Soc. Trans. Vol. I.
pp. 89 et seqq.; Rajendralala Mittra's valuable introduction to the
Chaitanya Chandrodaya (Biblioth. Ind.), pp. ii-iv and xv; also Jones'
'Mystical Poetry of the Persians and Hindus,' _Asiat. Res._ Vol. III. pp.
165-207; and Leyden, 'On the Rosheniah Sect, &c.,' As. Res. Vol. XI.
pp. 363-428.--ED.] With the latter the first degree is nasut or 'humanity'
in which man is subject to the law shara_, the second _tarikat, 'the
way' of
spiritualism, the third 'aruf or 'knowledge,' and the fourth
hakikat or 'the truth.' Some writers give a longer series of grades,
thus--talab,_ 'seeking after god;' _'ishk, 'love;' m'arifat_, 'insight;'
_istighnah, 'satisfaction;'
tauhid_, 'unity;' _hairat, 'ecstacy;' and lastly

fana, 'absorption.' Dealing as it does with