Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu

Life and work

Chaitanya was born as Vishvambhar (later Nimai) at Mayapur in Nadia in 1486 CE on a Phalguna purnima lunar eclipse evening to a Vaishnava brahmin family. A precocious Sanskrit grammarian and logician in his youth, he was transformed at age twenty-two during a pilgrimage to Gaya, where the Madhva acharya Ishvara Puri initiated him into the Krishna mantra; from that point his life became an unbroken kirtan of the Radha-Krishna divine names. He returned to Nadia and gathered around him the Gauranga kirtan party which made the nightly Nagar Sankirtan the principal devotional practice of medieval Bengal. He took sannyasa at twenty-four and moved to Puri, where for the rest of his life he danced before the Jagannatha chariot every Rathayatra and conducted his samaj kirtan with Ramananda Raya and Svarupa Damodara. He journeyed twice to Vrindavan, rediscovered the lost leela-sites of Krishna together with the Six Goswamis whom he sent to settle there and codify the Gaudiya theology, and made an extended south Indian yatra reaching Rameswaram. He composed only the eight verses of the Shikshashtakam in his own hand; the entire doctrinal corpus of the Gaudiya school was developed under his direction by Rupa, Sanatana, Jiva, and the others. Gaudiya tradition identifies him as the combined incarnation of Krishna and Radha to taste the bhava of Radha for Krishna.