SOAS Research Online

Abstract

The aim of the present thesis has been to reconstruct as far as possible the life and times of the historical Caitanya (Sri Krsna-Caitanya), a Bengali Saint who lived from 1486 to 1533 and founded an important Vaisnava movement in Bengal, popularly known as Neo Vaisnavism.;We have devoted eight chapters to the reconstruction of Caitanya's life. In the main the following method has been adopted. In each chapter summaries of various versions of the particular incident or episode to be discussed in that chapter have been presented in the manner of evidence in a court of enquiry. We have then examined the various accounts put forward by our various witnesses and other biographers and tried to determine the main outline or framework of events in each case. Where a witness/biographer has appeared to distort unduly this basic outline, which is found in the majority of the versions, we have attempted to ascertain the reason for this particular distortion of his evidence. Thus to some extent, the thesis not only examines the life of the historical Caitanya, but also the myth-making process, as revealed in his various biographies.;Throughout these eight chapters our method has been to be as far as possible objective, i.e., we have attempted to view Caitanya with modern, twentieth-century eyes. In the final chapter we have tried to see him with the eyes of sixteenth-century man in the context of his times. Thus in this final chapter we have been forced to bring to bear our imaginative insight, to penetrate into the mind of Caitanya and his companions in order to gain a more complete perspective of the man and his times.