Caitanya, also known as Caitanya Mahaprabhu and as Krishna Caitanya
(Chaitanya)
(c.1486-1533)
Mystic and saint who lived in Bengal in eastern India, and is the founder
of the Vaisnava tradition of devotion to Krishna and Radha, specifically
Gaudiya Vaishnavism which has formed the basis in the later twentieth century
for ISKCON (the Hare Krishna movement)
and other Krishna-centred devotional groups.
Caitanya left only one piece of writing, the eight Sanskrit verses known
as the Siksastakam which is preserved
in the Caitanyacaritamrita, a
near-contemporary Bengali hagiography composed by Krishnadasa Kaviraja in the
late 16th century.
Caitanya instructed six of his followers, who later came to be known as
the six goswamis of Vrindaban, to present in their writings the theology and
practice of the Krishna-centred ecstatic bhakti that he had taught and
practiced.
Caitanya is an important link in the Sahaja tradition in Bengal that
begins with the earlier Buddhist and siddhi traditions and extends through the
Vaisnava Sahajiya tradition to the Bauls and others in contemporary Bengal.
Bibliography
M.M.Bose, The post-Caitanya Sahajia
cult of Bengal (Delhi, reprinted 1986)
Bhaskar Chatterjee, ‘Social perspective of Caitanyaism’ in: Medieval
bhakti movements in India, edited by N.N. Bhattacharyya (New Delhi:
Munshiram Manoharlal, 1989):315-324
S.Das Gupta, Obscure religious cults (Calcutta:
Firma K.L.Mukhopadhyay, rev ed.1969)
Glenn A.Hayes, ‘Sahajiyas’ in Brill’s Encyclopedia of Hinduism, vol.3 , edited by Knut A.Jacobsen (Leiden: Brill, 2011):507-513
Glenn A.Hayes, ‘The Vaisnava Sahajiya traditions
of medieval Bengal’ in Religions of India
in practice, edited by D.S.Lopez (Princeton: Princeton University Press,
1995):333-351
A.K.Majumdar, Caitanya: his life and
doctrine. A study in Vaisnavism (Bombay: Bharatiya Vidya Bhavan, 1969)
Radha Govinda Nath, ‘A survey of the
Caitanya movement’ in The Cultural
Heritage of India: volume 4: The Religions, edited by Haridas Bhattacharyya
(Calcutta: Ramakrishna Mission, 2nd edition, 1956):186-200
Susmita Pande, ‘Caitanya’ in her Medieval
Bhakti movement (its history and philosophy) (Meerut, India: Kusumanjali
Prakashan, 1989):72-83
Asoke Chatterjee Sastri, Caitanya (New
Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 1988)
Sukumar Sen, History of Bengali literature (New Delhi: Sahitya Akademi, 3rd
ed., 1979), chapters 7-9
Tony K.Stewart, The Final Word:
the Caitanya Caritamrta and the grammar of religious tradition (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2010)
Kenneth Valpey, ‘Gaudiya Vaisnavism’ in Brill’s Encyclopedia of Hinduism, vol.3 , edited by Knut A.Jacobsen (Leiden: Brill, 2011):312-328
[from John Noyce, Saints, Sufis and Yogis. 3rd ed. Vol.1. A-H (2015)]
