Page:Chaitanya and His Age.djvu/82

46 form of religion in which emotion was given a higher place than rituals of worship. This band of religionists immediately before the advent of Chaitanya was headed by Adwaitacharya, who born in 1356 A. D. at Laur in Sylhet had Migrated to Santipur and settled there in his youth. His doctrine originally was the same as of other savants of the age in India, viz., nondualism. I have already started that pantheism or more properly adwaitavada was favoured by all Indian scholars of the age, but Adwaita gradually felt the need of a personal God,—with his grace and love. He found that nondualism had made people little better than sceptics; it had increased pride in them and made them fond of logical arguments and a display of scholarship, while the fountain of spirituality and love had gradually dried up. At this stage, he began to preach the Bhakti-cult and some of his disciples, one of whom was a Mahratta Brahmin, were so disgusted with his emotional propaganda, that they refused to accept his doctrines and deserted him. Though led away to pantheism when he became a scholar in his youth, he had in his childhood shown a liking for Vaishnavism and emphatically refused to believe in caste and rituals of worships. As a child he is said to have declared to his mother:—

"মাতঃ শ্রীকৃষ্ণপূজায়াং পাত্রভেদো ন বিদ্যতে, দীক্ষাদিনিয়মোঽপি ন বিদ্যতে।" (Mother, in the worship of