Early History of the Vaishnava Faith and Movement in Bengal, from Sanskrit and Bengali Sources c7.s1.21

c7.s1.21

its creed. This his Navadvīpa followers had not done; perhaps they had not the training and capacity to do it properly. Caitanya, therefore, chose Sanātana and Rūpa for the highly technical and difficult task for which they appeared fully competent. How much of these teachings is Caitanya's and how much their own will never be definitely known; but it is probable that much of them, written within a few years after his death, was directly inspired by his personal example and teaching. Upon the two brothers Rūpa and Sanātana, Caitanya himself is said to have imposed the special task of expressing its theology and its Rasa-śāstra, in which they were very materially reinforced by the mystical-metaphysical scholarship of their nephew Jīva. They were men of great literary capacity, acute theologians and passionate poets, as well as ascetic devotees. Their authoritative position as the fit and chosen disciples especially instructed and commissioned for the exacting task, their austere and saintly character, their selfless devotion to the cause, and their laborious and life-long scholarship gave them a unique influence as the three authoritative Gosvāmins or teachers of the cult. As such, they had been held in the highest veneration in the later history of the sect. With these was closely associated Gopāla Bhaṭṭa, alleged to have been a South Indian Brahman, whose name and attainments are held with almost equal veneration. His chief task appears to have been the codification, probably in collaboration with Sanātana, of the Vaiṣṇava social and religious practices in a voluminous compilation, which forms the most authoritative ritualistic text of the cult. To these four Gosvāmins were added Raghunātha Bhaṭṭa, who does not appear to have written much, and Raghunātha-dāsa, whose passionate devotional sensibilities produced a Sanskrit poetical work of the Campū type on Kṛṣṇa-līlā and a series of fervent Sanskrit poems and panegyrics, as well as Bengali lyrics on the same erotic-mystic theme.