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Shri Mahavir Jain Aradhana Kendra
www.kobatirth.org
Acharya Shri Kailassagarsuri Gyanmandir
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INTRODUCTION.
ture and course of Bhaktí, and allude to a theatrical exhibi. tion in the house of one A'chárya Ratna in which Chaitanya took a part; the scene then shifts to the house of the Acharya, where they observe the play in which Chaitanya enacts the part of Infant Krishṇa claiming the right of being worshipped as the Lord of the Gopas, by the milk maids of Brindávana.
The fourth Act describes the circumstances which attended his adoption of the life of a hermit, the fifth and the sixth his progress from Nadiá to Jagannath, including a variety of incidents illustrative of the benign influence of his religion. The seventh, eighth and ninth acts record his sayings and doings, during his peregrinations in the Dekkan, Bengal, Benares, Allahabad, and Brindávana, his reception in those places, his preachings and the conversion by him of Rupa and Sanátana, ministers of Hossein Shah, king of Bengal; the tenth Act closes the play by reuniting Chaitanya with his favourite desciples in Jagannatha. In some MSS. an epilogue follows which states the date of the work to be S'aka 1494= 1573 A. C.
The work is scarce in Calcutta. I could obtain the use of only three MSS. in carrying the following pages through the press. Of these one belongs to the Library of the Asiatic Society (No. 29, Sanskrita Catalogue) and the other two to private collections. They are all of very modern late and written in the Bengali character. Their correctness, however, has been acknowledged by several distinguished Sanskrita scholars whom I have had occasion to consult.
Of the principles inculcated in the Chaitanya Char drodaya, which is generally acknowledged to be an excellent specimen of the Bhaktí literature of the Hindus, we need say nothing further. The reader will have been enabled, by the preceding remarks, and still more by our extract, to form a judgment of the mystic doctrine. He will perceive that, although the discordant materials of the Puráņas have been put together with much skill in order to produce a system that should unite in one body, the metaphysical refinement of the Vedánta with the idolatries of
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