Early History of the Vaishnava Faith and Movement in Bengal, from Sanskrit and Bengali Sources c5.s3.16

c5.s3.16

¹ His father Kubera Tarka-pañcānana is said to have been a *dvāra-paṇḍita* of Divya-simha, Rājā of Lāuḍ in Sylhet, who himself later on became a devout Vaiṣṇava under the name of Lāuḍiya Kṛṣṇadāsa and wrote an account of the early life of Advaita. The story of Advaita's life is told in Bengali by Advaita's follower and disciple, Īśāna Nāgara, in his *Advaita-prakāśa* (ed. Amrita Bazar Patrika Office, Calcutta, no date), which is said to have been composed in Saka 1490=1568 A.D., when its author was an old man of over seventy. Īśāna tells us that Lāuḍiya Kṛṣṇadāsa wrote an account of Advaita's early life in a Sanskrit work, entitled *Bālya-līlā-sūtra* (published by Acyuta Charan Chaudhuri, with a Bengali metrical translation, B. S. 1322=1916 A.D.) on which Īśāna's own work professes to draw considerably. One must confess to serious doubts regarding the genuineness of the printed texts of these two works, manuscripts of which are not forthcoming anywhere. By a critical examination of their contents, Bimanbihari Majumdar (*Sri-Caitanya-cariter Upādān*, Calcutta University 1939, pp. 433-465 and 473-480) makes out a good case that the works are modern fabrications.