Early History of the Vaishnava Faith and Movement in Bengal, from Sanskrit and Bengali Sources c7.s5.86

c7.s5.86

Although the range and versatility of their literary works are remarkable, the six Gosvāmins appear to have divided among themselves the work entrusted to them according to their individual taste, inclination and capacity. Sanātana, more devout than scholarly, concerned himself chiefly with theology and interpretation of theological texts; the more practically minded Gopāla Bhaṭṭa elaborately codified its ritualism and devotional practices; while Raghunātha-dāsa, more poetically and emotionally disposed, gave fanciful expression in prose and verse to the erotic mysticism with which the faith associated Kṛṣṇa's sports. Rūpa Gosvāmin, a passionate devotee, but possessing a trained scholastic mind took up especially the emotional analysis of Bhakti as a Rasa and wrote authoritatively on its peculiar psychology and pathology, systematising a rhetorical Bhakti-rasa-śāstra, as well as composing illustrative dramas and poems and compiling an anthology of its varied literary expression. He also supplemented in a more scholastic spirit the theological labours of Sanātana by his *Laghu-* or *Samkṣepa-Bhāgavatāmṛta* which, purporting by its name to be only a summary of Sanātana's work of the same name, is really an independent treatise. He might have also indicated a system of romantic Rādhā-Kṛṣṇa associations, which later formed the basis of an elaborate hagiology of the cult. Trained by them and deeply read in their authoritative works, Jiva possessed a more versatile mind and wrote on almost all the branches of the Vaiṣṇava Śāstra; but his natural predilection, as well as his early philosophical training at Benares, fitted him for the task of giving an elaborate exposition of its mystical-metaphysical dogmatics. Raghunātha Bhaṭṭa alone wrote nothing. In this way the Vṛndāvana Gosvāmins practically covered the whole range of Vaiṣṇava Śāstra; and, with the exception of the much later works of Viśvanātha Cakravartin and Baladeva Vidyābhūṣaṇa (18th century), they practically created the entire philosophical and religious literature of Bengal Vaiṣṇavism.