Page:History of Bengali Language and Literature.djvu/539

 V.] BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. 503 hardships of the journey were great, as he went barefooted, living on fruit and on the _ scanty food that chance brought him and resigning himself absolutely to the will of the Lord. Chaitanya saw in the face of the young Sannyasi that his renunciation was complete and embraced him in an ecstasy of joy. The hardships undergone by Raghunath while practising life-long asceticism have scarcely a parallel in history. He used to sleep 4 dandas (or a little more than an hour and a half) by day and night,—took a handful of refuse rice—the maha- prasad that used to be thrown away in the com- pound—only once a day and lived upon it. He wore rags and slept under the sky. His father occasional- ly sent large sums of money to his friends at Puri to minister to his comfort but he did not allow a single cowri to be spent on that account. This ascetic, whose whole life was one of austerities and holy contemplation, was cheerful and gay in spirit, and his piety was so great that though a Kayastha by birth he was rekconed as one of the six Gosvamis, whose words carry authority and precedence in the Vaisnava code compiled for the regulation of that community. The other five Gosvamis were of course Brahmins. He wrote 29 works in Sanskrit and composed many ballads besides—the theme of which was either Gauranga Dev or the love of Radha for Krisna. Next may be mentioned Rupa and Sanatan, the two brothers who were Ministers of the Court of Hosen Saha. They were immensely rich, and pos- sessed of great administrative powers, which were Rupa and Sanatan.