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Books > Humanities > Religion & beliefs > Non-Christian religions > Religions of Indic & Oriental origin > Hinduism
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The Final Word - The Caitanya Caritamrita and the Grammar of Religious Tradition (Hardcover)
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The Final Word - The Caitanya Caritamrita and the Grammar of Religious Tradition (Hardcover)
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In the early sixteenth century, a charismatic Bengali Brahmin,
Visvambhara Misra, inspired communities of worshipers in Bengal,
Orissa, and Vraja with his teachings. Misra took the ascetic name
Krsna Caitanya, and his devotees quickly came to believe he was
divine. The spiritual descendents of these initial followers today
comprise the Gaudiya Vaisnava movement, one of the most vibrant
religious groups in all of South Asia.
In The Final Word, Tony Stewart investigates how, with no central
leadership, no institutional authority, and no geographic center, a
religious community nevertheless came to define itself, fix its
textual canon, and flourish. The answer, he argues, can be found in
a brilliant Sanskrit and Bengali hagiographical exercise: the
Caitanya Caritamrta of Krsnadasasa Kaviraja. Written some
seventy-five years after Caitanya's passing, Krsnadasa's text
gathered and synthesized the divergent theological perspectives and
ritual practices that had proliferated during and after Caitanya's
life. It has since become the devotional standard of the Gaudiya
Vaisnava movement.
The text's power, Stewart argues, derives from its sophisticated
use of rhetoric. The Caitanya Caritamrta persuades its readers
covertly, appearing to defer its arrogated authority to Caitanya
himself. Though the text started out as a hagiography like so many
others-an index of appropriate beliefs and ritual practices that
points the way to salvation-its influence has grown far beyond
that. Over the centuries it has become an icon, a metonym of the
tradition itself. On occasion today it can even be seen worshiped
alongside images of Krsna and Caitanya on altars in Bengal.
In tracing the origins, literary techniques, and dissemination of
the Caitanya Caritamrta, Stewart has unlocked the history of the
Gaudiya Vaisnavas, explaining the improbable unity of a dynamic
religious group.
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