Gaudiya Vaishnavism

What Gaudiya Vaishnavism is

The heart of this tradition is the love of Krishna and Radha, grounded in the Bhagavata Purana; according to S. K. De the Bhagavata was its chief scripture. Chaitanya stressed heartfelt devotion and the singing of Hari’s name over ritual. His followers hold him to be Krishna himself; Krishnadasa Kaviraja’s Chaitanya-charitamrita calls him “svayam bhagavan”, God himself, and the tradition regards him as Radha and Krishna in one form.

According to Bhandarkar, Chaitanya did not let caste stand in the way of devotion and accepted all as disciples. Chaitanya himself wrote almost nothing; according to De, only the eight Sanskrit verses of the Shikshashtaka are ascribed to him.

History in brief

Chaitanya was born at Navadvip in Bengal on the full moon of Phalguna, Shaka year 1407; his father was Jagannatha Mishra and his mother Shachi, and his first name was Vishvambhara. For his fair complexion he is also called Gauranga and Gaurachandra. As a young man he taught logic and grammar. On a journey to Gaya he took initiation from Ishvara Puri, and on his return he began kirtan with his companions at Navadvip; Nityananda and Advaitacharya became his chief associates.

At about 24, in 1510, he took sannyasa from Keshava Bharati at Katwa and was called “Krishna Chaitanya”. He then went to Puri, spent some years travelling in South and North India, and passed the last eighteen or so years of his life at Puri, near Jagannatha. He died at Puri in 1533.

Chaitanya sent Rupa and Sanatana to Vrindavan. There these two, their nephew Jiva, Raghunatha Dasa, Gopala Bhatta and Raghunatha Bhatta, known as the six Goswamis, wrote the sampradaya’s theology, its theory of devotional rasa and its rules of worship in Sanskrit, identified the sacred sites of Braj and had great temples built. In Bengal Nityananda organised the community. Early in the 18th century Baladeva Vidyabhushana wrote the Govinda-bhashya on the Brahma Sutra.

ISKCON (the International Society for Krishna Consciousness), founded by A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada in New York in 1966, is an organisation within this tradition. ISKCON traces its line of teachers through Chaitanya, the six Goswamis and later Gaudiya teachers to Prabhupada, and its headquarters is at Mayapur.

Beliefs and practice

Achintya-bhedabheda: according to Jiva Goswami, God’s energies and the souls are both different and not different from God, and this relation cannot be fully grasped by human reasoning, hence “achintya”, inconceivable. According to De, this word “achintya” is what sets the tradition apart from other Vaishnava schools.

Sankirtan: Chaitanya sang songs of Radha and Krishna and the name of Hari with his companions, and led singing, dancing processions through the town (nagar-kirtan). Kirtan with drum and cymbals is still a main part of temple worship. At home the name of Hari is repeated on a rosary of tulsi beads (harinam). In the Gaudiya tradition and in ISKCON, chanting and singing of the “Hare Krishna” mahamantra is central.

Main centres

Navadvip (West Bengal) is Chaitanya’s birthplace; at Gaura Purnima a fair is held there and pilgrims walk round the places linked with his life. Nearby Mayapur holds ISKCON’s headquarters and its Sri Mayapur Chandrodaya Mandir. At Puri (Odisha) Chaitanya spent his last years near the Jagannatha temple. In Braj, Vrindavan became the sampradaya’s intellectual and religious centre through the six Goswamis.

Where the sources differ

• Year of birth: Britannica and Bhandarkar give 1485; the Phalguna full moon of Shaka 1407 falls in February 1486 of the common era, as S. K. De (following B. Majumdar, tentatively 27 February 1486) and Drik Panchang write.
• Year of death: Britannica, Bhandarkar and De give 1533 (De: Ashadha, Shaka 1455, that is June–July 1533); Drik Panchang gives 1534.
• The link with Madhva: the Gaudiya tradition traces its line from Madhva through Madhavendra Puri and Ishvara Puri to Chaitanya. According to S. K. De this first appears in Kavi Karnapura’s Gaura-ganoddesha-dipika (probably after 1576); the authoritative lives of Chaitanya and the works of the six Goswamis do not claim a tie to the Madhva sampradaya, and Jiva Goswami set the Bengal school apart from the views of the other sampradayas.
• The name “Achintya-bhedabheda”: De shows the doctrine in the works of Jiva Goswami; according to Farquhar the name was given early in the 18th century by Baladeva Vidyabhushana in his Govinda-bhashya.
• Tilak: Kennedy describes marks of gopichandana on the forehead and at twelve places on the body but does not give their exact shape; we did not find one reliable description of the shape.

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