Page:Chaitanya's Life and Teachings.djvu/13



Krishna-das Kaviraj, the author of the Chaitanya-charit-ámrita, was born in the Vaidya caste, at Jhámatpur, a village of the Kátwá sub-division of the Burdwan district in Bengal, (1496 A.D.) Having lost his parents in early life, he was brought up by his late father's sister. He read Persian at the village school, and then began to study Sanskrit in order to qualify himself for practising Hindu medicine, the profession of his caste. Every part of his great poem bears evidence to his profound mastery of Sanskrit literature, particularly of the Bhágabat Purán. The young orphan, while still unmarried, was converted to Vaishnavism by Nityananda, and begged his way on foot to Brindaban, where he spent the remainder of his long life in religious study, meditation and worship. He was initiated as a Vaishnav monk by Raghunath-das, who along with Swarup Damodar had been body-servants to Chaitanya during that saint's stay at Jagannath. From his guru, Krishna-das learned the particulars of Chaitanya's life and teaching which he has embodied in the present biography.

His first efforts at authorship were in Sanskrit and dealt with the mysteries of bhakti and the service of Krishna. The great work of his life was the composition of his old age, and was undertaken at the request of the faithful. Every evening the Bengali Vaishnavs of Brindaban used to gather together and hear the acts of their Master read out from his poetical biography, the Chaitanya Bhágbat composed by Brindaban-das. But