Page:Chaitanya's Life and Teachings.djvu/21

Rh At last in June-July, 1533, his physical frame broke down under such prolonged mental convulsion and self-inflicted torments, and he passed away under circumstances over which the piety of his biographers has drawn the veil of mystery.

In his lifetime his disciples had organized a mission. In Bengal the new creed was preached and spread far and wide by Nityananda, who afterwards came to be regarded as a god, co-ordinate with Chaitanya. Modern Brindaban, with its temples, Sanskrit seminaries and haunts for recluses, is the creation of the Bengali Vaishnavs, and it has eclipsed the older city of Mathura. Here the brothers Rup and Sanátan,—descended from a Prince of Karnat who had settled in Bengal and whose descendants had become completely Bengalized, joined Chaitanya's Church. These two and their nephew Jiv Goswámi were great Sanskrit scholars and their devotional works, commentaries, &c. encouraged a revival of Sanskrit studies in general in that Muslim age. These three, with Gopal Bhatta, nephew of the celebrated Vedantist Prakáshánanda who was latterly converted to bhakti by Chaitanya and changed his name into Prabodhánanda, and Raghunáth Bhatta, son of an up-country Brahman bhakta, and the last Raghunath-das, a Káyastha saint of the Saptagrám zamindar family of the Hugli district and the guru of our author, formed the six Fathers of Chaitanya's Church. Except Rup and Sanátan, most of the other disciples of Chaitanya adopted the Bengali tongue as their medium, and greatly enriched it with their songs, biographies, poems, travels, and translations of the bhakti literature from Sanskrit. The Vaishnav Goswámis, both at Brindaban and Navadwip, have kept up the study of Sanskrit to our own day. A classified