Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/519

 ড.] BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. 483 Chaitanya Charitamrita contains 15050 slokas or ‘‘couplets” and is divided intothree main Ahan- _ das or cantos,—the Adi, the Madhya and the Antya the second 6050, and the third 6500. The poem discusses the views of the Vaisnavas on religion learnedly, with profuse quotations from sanskrit texts. The doctrines of Chaitanya Deva are ex- plained elaborately and one unacquainted with the discourses of the six Schools of Indian Philosophy cannot follow the great Bengali work properly. There are very few Bengalis within our knowledge who can interpret the scholarly expositions of the author aright. With the lay Vaisnavas however the great attraction of the book lies in its delineation of Chaitanya’s last days. The slokas that he recited, his religious ecstasies displaying the highest poetic flights,—which at times made him appear like a madman and at others like a heavenly spirit, and not unoften as a great scholar whose sparkling discourses were listened to with rapt attention by the multitude —all have been graphically described in this masterly work of Krisna Das Kaviraj. The last portion of Chaitanya’s life as told by Krisna Das shows how God-vision became more and more frequent with him till the emaciated body could bear these trances no longer,—how the sight of a flower, a ripple on the sea, a tree, or a cloud would throw him into a rapture, and he would shed tears of joy seeing God in them, and stand unconscious with his hands uplifted towards heaven for hours together,—how the songs of Jayadeva sung by a Vaisnava maiden in the Puri temple, made him run like a madman, his feet pierced by thorns and The excellence of the work, The last days of Chaitanya, his ecsta= 5155,
 * Khanda. The first khanda contains 2500 slokas,