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RELIGIOUS SECTS
the most numerous of the Vaishnava sects in Bengal, with the exception of those who may be considered the indigenous offspring of that province.
VAISHŃAVAS OF BENGAL. The far greater number of the worshippers of VISHŃU, or more properly of KŘISHŇAin Bengal, forming, it has been estiinated, one-fifth of the population of the province', derive their peculiarities from some Vaishňava Brahmans of Nadiya and Santipur, who flourished about the end of the fifteenth century. The two leading men in the innovation then instituted were ADWAITÁNAND and NITYÁNAND, who, being men of domestic and settled habits, seem to have made use of a third, who had early embraced the ascetic order, and whose simplicity and enthusiasm fitted him for their purpose, and to have set up CHAITANYA as the founder and object of a new form of Vaishnava worship.
The history of CHAITANYA has been repeatedly written, but the work most esteemed by his followers is the Chaitanya Charitra of BŘINDÁVAN Dás, which was compiled from preceding works by Murári GUPTA and DÁMODARA, who were the immediate disciples of CHAITANYA, and who wrote an account, the first of his life as a Grihastha, or the Adi Lilá, and the second of his proceedings as a pilgrim and ascetic, or
1 Ward on the Hindus, 2, 175. In another place he says five-sixteenths, p. 448.
