Early History of the Vaishnava Faith and Movement in Bengal, from Sanskrit and Bengali Sources c6.s2.3

c6.s2.3

1935), from which Dinesh Chandra Sen appears to draw, rather uncritically, much of his material about Caitanya's followers. But Bhadra's work suffers from extreme credulity for legend and hearsay, and as such it is hardly a trustworthy guide. The same remark applies, more or less, to the extensive introduction to Satish Chandra Ray's *Pada-kalpataru*, pt. v., cited above. Other Bengali modern accounts of the movement, such as Murari Lal Adhikari's *Vaiṣṇava Digdarśanī* or Madhusudana Vachaspati's *Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava Itihāsa*, record orthodox traditions, but they are hardly critical and reliable works. The alphabetical dictionary of Vaiṣṇava lives (*Bṛhat Vaiṣṇava Caritābhidhāna*, Calcutta 1924, Pt. i) compiled by Amulyadhan Ray Bhatta, is a praiseworthy and painstaking attempt, which deserves mention for its copious references to original sources, but unfortunately it does not discriminate between genuine and spurious works, and is left incomplete. Although based chiefly on Dinesh Chandra Sen's works for its information, Melville T. Kennedy's *Caitanya Movement* (Oxford University Press, 1925), apart from its obvious Christian bias, is perhaps the most sensible and popularly written account available in English. Bimanbihari Majumdar's *Śrī-Caitanya-cariter Upādān*, already mentioned above, does not expressly deal with Caitanya's life, but it examines the materials furnished by the existing records and furnishes a great deal of information on the early aspects of the movement and generally on Caitanya's life: it also gives a brief account of Assamese and Oḍiyā sources.