Chaitanya-charitamrita is organized into three sections, or lilas. The Adi-lila's fourteen chapters describe Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's early life. More importantly, they lay the philosophical foundation for everything that follows. Above all, there is the claim that Chaitanya is Krishna and Radha united in a single form, and the book's opening verses state this outright. He appeared in order to relish and distribute the very love of God that Radha alone, of all Krishna's associates, feels for Him. The Madhya-lila's twenty-five chapters cover most of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's public mission after taking sannyasa. This includes his famous conversation with Ramananda Raya on the nature of transcendental rasa, or devotional relationship with Krishna. The Antya-lila's twenty chapters narrate the final eighteen years at Puri. This is the very period that Vrindavana Dasa Thakura's Chaitanya-bhagavata had left largely untold. The Antya-lila closes with Krishnadasa's own long reflection on the Shikshashtaka, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's eight verses of instruction.
Weaving Together Four Earlier Records #
Krishnadasa did not invent this material. He brought it together from earlier records, and he did so openly and gratefully. For Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's early years, his main source was Vrindavana Dasa Thakura's Chaitanya-bhagavata itself. Krishnadasa states this debt plainly. He praises Vrindavana Dasa as "equal to Srila Vyasadeva" and explains that he meant only to fill in episodes Vrindavana Dasa had left out, not to repeat him or go beyond him. For the order of events, he drew on Murari Gupta's Kadaca, also called Sri-krishna-chaitanya-charanamrita. This was a diary kept by a schoolmate and physician of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. Because it was an eyewitness record, every later biographer built on it. From Kavi-karnapura he took material found in the Chaitanya-chandrodaya-nataka and the Krishna-chaitanya-charanamrita Mahakavya. And for the all-important last eighteen years, he depended on Svarupa Damodara Gosvami's notebook of short Sanskrit verses summing up events, which is now lost. Its contents reached him by word of mouth through his own guru, Raghunatha Dasa Goswami.
An Explicit Theology, Not Just a Biography #
Chaitanya-charitamrita is not just a record of events. It argues its theology very directly. Chaitanya-bhagavata had already treated Chaitanya Mahaprabhu as an incarnation of Krishna. But Krishnadasa states the fuller doctrine clearly and many times. He teaches that Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is Radha and Krishna combined in a single form, taking on Radha's mood and complexion while remaining Krishna Himself. The book's opening Sanskrit verse puts it directly: the loving affairs of Radha and Krishna are transcendental manifestations of the Lord's own pleasure-giving potency, and though the two are one in identity, they have "again united, in the form of Sri Krishna Chaitanya." Around this single claim, Krishnadasa builds a systematic account of rasa-tattva, the science of devotional relationships with Krishna. Later Gaudiya Vaishnava theologians treated this account as the tradition's most authoritative statement on the subject.
A Poem in a Changed Tongue #
By the time he wrote, Krishnadasa had lived away from Bengal for so many decades. For this reason, the Bengali of Chaitanya-charitamrita is known for using a great many Sanskrit words. In places it is unusually difficult even for readers fluent in the language. Centuries later, Srila Prabhupada translated the work into English. He chose to keep the original Bengali text printed alongside his translation, instead of replacing it. He said he did this on purpose, to follow the example of his own guru, Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura. Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura had predicted that devotees the world over would one day want to learn Bengali just to read Chaitanya-charitamrita as Krishnadasa had written it. In 1974, while still working on the translation, Prabhupada estimated that his English edition of this single work would run to about ten volumes. The work itself had first been composed by one sick old man at Vrindavana.
More Than Chaitanya-charitamrita Alone #
Chaitanya-charitamrita was not Krishnadasa's only book. Vaishnava tradition also credits him with Govinda-lilamrita, a detailed account of Krishna's eternal daily pastimes through the eight watches of the day (ashta-kaliya-lila). It also credits him with a commentary on Bilvamangala Thakura's Krishna-karnamrita. Tradition holds that Krishnadasa received the title kaviraja, "king of poets," specifically for Govinda-lilamrita. It is the very title by which he is known today. Narottama Dasa Thakura, Krishnadasa's own direct disciple, named both books together in his Prema-bhakti-chandrika: "Krishnadasa Kaviraja stands among the rasika devotees, for he composed Chaitanya-charitamrita. He described both Gaura's and Govinda's pastimes, hearing which even a stone would melt. Yet even so," Narottama adds, speaking of himself with the same humility Krishnadasa himself had shown, "my mind has not been drawn to these works."
Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura, in one of the strongest statements ever made about the book, told his disciples: "If it were to happen that all the books in the world were destroyed, leaving only Srimad-Bhagavatam and Chaitanya-charitamrita, the people of this world would still be able to achieve the ultimate goal of life. Even if Srimad-Bhagavatam were lost, leaving only Chaitanya-charitamrita, there would be no loss to humanity, for whatever has not been revealed in the Bhagavatam is found in Chaitanya-charitamrita." Chaitanya-charitamrita itself is traditionally said to have been completed in 1615, only a handful of years before Krishnadasa's own disappearance.
A Book Its Own Author Doubted He Could Finish #
None of this systematic argument came easily. Through much of the writing, Krishnadasa was already old, and by his own repeated admission he was nearly blind and deaf. This physical struggle is described in Life of Austerity at Radha-Damodara. In Srila Prabhupada's later judgement, the scope of the work made it "the postgraduate study of Krishna consciousness", beyond even the Bhagavad-gita and Srimad-Bhagavatam in what it demands of the reader. Yet Krishnadasa completed such a work. This is part of why Gaudiya Vaishnavas have always seen the writing of Chaitanya-charitamrita as something that cannot be separated from its author's own devotion.
