V.] BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. = 465 Vrindavan Das’s Chaitanya Bhagavata is one of the standard works on his life and commands great influence amongst the Vaisnavas; it contains about 25000 lines and is written throughout in the চারি metre called the Payar Chhanda. Vrindavan Das represents the views of the orthodox Vaisnavas and takes great pains to establish Chaitanya as an incarnation of Vignu. He resents the opposition to such views by the unbelieving non-Vaisnava communities witha freedom of language that tran- Attacks scends all limits of decency. Outside the orthodox 0” the non- Vaisnavas. Vaisnava society none will appreciate his rude and overbearing remarks about those who would not accept Nityananda, the friend of Chaitanya Deva and a Vaisnava apostle, as an incarnation of Valarama. But Vrindavan Das shows considerable powers Vatuable as a historian. We feel a greater interest in the side-lights. incidental description of the contemporary events that he gives than in his delineation of the subject of his memoir. He describes Chaitanya Deva’s life in the light of the Bhagabata which gives an account of Cri Krisna’s life. Yet the Krisna of Vrindavan, Mathura and Kuruksetra is as different from Chaitanya of Navadvipa as ever were any two characters in history. Vrindavan Das in his zeal to prove the identity of the two personalities _ hopelessly confounds both. Itis, as I have said, | in the incidental description of contemporary events that he shows the hand of a competent | historian, and the biography greatly interests us when we study the minor facts related in it. It is also an invaluable source of information regarding the lives of many of Chaitanya Deva's followers. 59
