Men of God

SRI KRISHNA CHAITANYA

“THE one ever ancient who has taken form as Krishna Chaitanya for the purpose of teaching the knowledge and practice of non-attachment, Vairagya Vidya, and his own method of devotion, Bhaktiyoga, his shelter I seek, the ocean of mercy; may my mind like a bee cling closer to his lotus feet, who is born to restore Bhaktiyoga, destroyed by time!”

With these words of the veteran Vedantist, Vasudeva Sarvabhauma, uttered on his conversion to the cult of Bhakti, we shall begin this account of Sri Krishna Chaitanya with a glimpse into the spirit of his age, into the soul of his teachings. For, these works sum up the spiritual principles that found concrete expression in the life of Lord Gouranga, incidentally throwing light on what he was understood and accepted to be when he was just out of his teens, as well as on the mystic influence of Love of which he was possessed and which exacted the homage and devotion of the proud pandit and his royal patron, Raja Pratap Rudra of Orissa.

Sri Chaitanya was born at a time commonly called the dark period in the history of Bengal. The degeneracy of her people, evidenced in the social and religious practices, was their legacy from Buddhism at its worst with its counter-part in Tantric Hinduism designated ’Left-hand worship’ Vamachara. The social organisation peculiar to India that is at once her pride and shame as well as strength and weakness contributed its quota to the political subjection of her people in their airtight compartments yielding to the yoke of the medieval barbarism of the Pathan-alien in outlook, race and religion. When Chaitanya was born, Bengal had gone through well-nigh three centuries of Muhammadan rule. The manner of the first Moslem conquest of Bengal is a fine illustration of the low ebb of life in that province at the close of the twelfth century. For, when Muhammad Khilji, a general of Kutb-ud-din with an advance party of eighteen troopers whom the people mistook for horse dealers, went straight to the palace of the Hindu Raja Lakshman Sen at Nadea and attacked the door-keepers, the king escaped through a back door and retired to the neighbourhood of Dacca, where his descendants ruled as local chiefs for centuries. Upon the success of this audacity, the Moslem general secured the approval of his master at Delhi to establish a purely Muhammadan provincial administration, practically independent. This cheap conquest was also final and Bengal never escaped Muhammadan rule for any considerable period until the treachery at Plassey (1757 A.D.) transferred it to the British.

THE RELIGIOUS SCHOOLS

The chaotic condition of the social order left by the disintegrating influence of Buddhism had, however, been counteracted to some extent by the Sen kings who came from the south and introduced kulinism into Bengal society, seeking to ensure stability by laying the caste foundations solid and strong. The effort reached its climax in the 15th century as is evidenced in Raghunandan’s Smriti or code of rules compiled from ancient law books for governing social usage within caste. The religion of the kulins (i.c., Brahmans, Baidyas, Kayasthas) therefore lay in the observance of socio-religious usages as prescribed in the Smriti according to which no social fact can fall outside the province of religion. But higher Hinduism, the Vedanta, was the professed faith of the scholars and that was the non-dualism the advaita of Shankara which was in Bengal, as elsewhere in India, rather a philosophic intellectualism teeming with academic interest for the learned few, than a religion that could satisfy the yearning of ardent souls for a personal experience of religion, for some kind of contact or communion with the Divine Being in whom the world lives, moves and has its being. Nevertheless, there were some, very few in number who could not rest satisfied with the scholars’ skill in debate or display of learning and love of arguments. They were attracted by the cult of Krishnabhakti with its devotional exercises which though looked upon with indifferent scorn by the learned and their lay following were destined to play a notable part in the history of Bengal Vaishnavism, of which Chaitanya became the soul and his life is a concrete presentation of its exalted ideals.