Page:Chaitanya's Life and Teachings.djvu/14

vi this book dealt with the saint's last years in too meagre and concise a fashion to satisfy the curiosity of his followers. They, therefore, led by Haridas Pandit, the chief servitor of the Govindaji temple, pressed Krishna-das to write a new and fuller life of the Master. The poet was old and infirm, but he regarded the request as a solemn charge which he was not free to decline. That very evening he prayed to the image of Madanmohan, and the god's approbation was shown by a sign,—a garland of flowers slipping down from his neck at the end of the prayer! On the bank of the Rádhá-kunda tank, the aged Krishna-das completed his Chaitanya-charit-ámrita in 1582 after nine years of unremitting toil. It is divided into three Books, the Adi Lilá, the Madhya Lilá, and the Antya Lilá, dealing respectively with the three stages of Chaitanya's life, viz., (i) the 24 years from his birth to the time of his entering the monastic order, (ii) the six years of his pilgrimage, and (iii) the last eighteen years of his life, which were spent in residence at Puri. In spite of its epic length, prolixity, and repetitions, the Chaitanya-charit-ámrita is a masterpiece of early Bengali literature, and has the further merit of making the subtle doctrines of the Vaishnav faith intelligible to ordinary people. Indeed, the older school of Vaishnav Fathers, as represented by Jiv Goswami, had at first objected to its publication, lest the merits and completeness of this vernacular work should cause the learned Sanskrit treatises on bhakti exegetics to be neglected by the public! The author's manuscript is still preserved in the Radha-Damodar temple of Brindaban, and worshipped as a holy relic.

The Second Book (Madhya Lilá), which is the longest