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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailassagarsuri Gyanmandir
INTRODUCTION.
tion in the Purána, it had had any great effect on the established religion of the country. Hermits and sages, in their monastic seclusion, occasionally indulged in its mystic reveries, but the great body of the Hindus still adhered to the ancient faith. Jayadeva in the 8th century embodied, it in his exquisite pastoral on the loves of Krishna and Rádhá, and sever hundred years after him, Chaitanya first inculcated it as a systerı of practical religion in supercession of all established forms of worship. The success which attended his exertions was great. Within a few short years, thousands hailed him with divine honors, and embraced his doctrine with enthusiasm. · Chaitanya devoted all his time to pilgrimages, preachings and meditations, and never thought of committing his opi. nions to writing; his disciples, however, have made ample amends for this omission on his part. Their writings have invested with a halo the religion of their tutor. The works of Rupa Goswámí, of Jivá Goswámi, of Sanátana and of Kavikarnapura have established a new era in the annals of Sanskrita literature, and their influence have, within three centuries, secured for the religion of Chaitanya upwards of sixteen millions of converts.
Rupa is the author of about a dozen different works, including a drama, several mystic poems of great merit, a collection of hymns, and an abridgment of the Bhagavat. To Jiva is due the credit of investing the simple doctrines of Chaitanya with the metaphysics of the Vedanta. The duties and obligations of the Bhaktas were systematized by Sanátana, while Krislıņadása, Kavikarnapura and others have, with more than Boswellian assiduity, recorded the lives of their teacher and his principal companions.
Kavikarņapura was born in the year A. C. 1524. His father, a Vaidya of Káạchrápárá in the Hooghly district, was a man of great influence, and had early ingratiated himself in the favour of Chaitanya, by his exertions in securing proselytes, and by inviting pilgrims from all parts of Bengal to the car
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