Early History of the Vaishnava Faith and Movement in Bengal, from Sanskrit and Bengali Sources c5.s2.41

c5.s2.41

The apostle with whose name this early movement in Bengal is usually associated in the period immediately before Caitanya, is the emotional Saṃkarite ascetic, Mādhavendra Purī, of whom we have spoken above. Among his disciples is counted not only Īśvara Purī, but also Advaita who was Caitanya's precursor at Navadvīpa.¹ The Vaiṣṇava-toṣaṇī of Sanātana states that the Kalpataru of Kṛṣṇa-Bhakti was germinated by Mādhavendra in three worlds (lokeṣvaṅkurito yena kṛṣṇa-bhakti-rasāṅghripaḥ) : the Caitanya bhāgavata tells us that Mādhavendra was the ādi-sūtradhāra of Bhakti-rasa in Bengal ; the Caitanya-caritāmṛta of Kṛṣṇadāsa pays a similar compliment by speaking of him as the first sprout (aṅkura) of the Kalpataru of Bhakti ; and Kavikarṇapūra in his Gaura-gaṇoddeśa-dīpikā distinctly says that Vaiṣṇavism in Bengal, with its associations of Prīta, Preyas, Vatsala and Ujjvala Rasas, owes its origin to Mādhavendra (yad dharmo’-yam pravartitaḥ, p. 15). We have already spoken above of the tradition that Advaita before Caitanya was initiated into Bhakti by Mādhavendra. We are also told that Nityānanda met him in Southern India, that Puṇḍarīka Vidyānidhi was his disciple, and that Īśvara Purī, one of Caitanya's Gurus, was an ascetic initiated by Mādhavendra. Caitanya himself never appears to have met Mādhavendra,¹ who must have died when he was in his childhood, but he always cherished a great reverence for Mādhavendra, as well as for his many disciples whom Caitanya is said to have met during his pilgrimage. At Puri, we are told, Caitanya used to recite with great emotion Mādhavendra's verse *ayi dīna-dayārdra nātha he*, cited in the *Padyāvalī* 330. But the mystic emotionalism which Mādhavendra made current in Bengal could not have been Madhvaism. Unlike a Mādhva ascetic, Mādhavendra appears to have been a devotee of great emotional capacity, who must have, before Caitanya, imparted a new spirit to the sombre and forbidding aspects of asceticism, and who probably cared more for actual devotional fervour than for the teaching of dry doctrines. It is noteworthy that in the references to Mādhavendra mentioned above, stress is laid upon his teaching of Bhakti as a religious emotion or Rasa; and we also read, in the various accounts given of him in these works, about his ecstatic emotions and visions as striking features of his religious experience. He would go into mystic trances, we are told, even at the sight of dark-blue clouds which became to him a symbol of Śrī-Kṛṣṇa². In all this he anticipated Caitanya himself and prepared the way for his advent. But he is said to have done more than this. Fifty years before the Bengal Gosvāmins, he turned the thoughts of Bengal Vaiṣṇavas towards the sacred sites of Vṛndāvana, where he is said to have recovered an image of Gopāla-Kṛṣṇa and established a temple with two Bengali priests as custodians¹. D. C. Sen,² chiefly on these grounds, conjectures him to have been a Bengali, but the evidence is slender and inconclusive.