We now present some well known facts on Bhaktivinod Thakur's Caitanya-caritamrta. The reason why this tome is ascribed to Bhaktivinod and not Krishna Das Kaviraja, will become apparent. But first, there is need for some minor clarification. Bhaktivinod Thakur, or Kedarnath Datta, was not a magistrate. He was a deputy magistrate. A significant difference in rank. For A. C Bhaktivedanta Swami (ACBS), a man promoted as pure/faultless, to make such an oversight has not slipped past those who see the attempt at securing foreign credence for an author whose work had no more right to historical fact than Vikram Seth, Lewis Carroll, Brothers Grimm, or Aesop.
"A similar rasa-lila was going on. You know that story? Bhaktivinoda Thakura was magistrate, and one person in Orissa, he declared himself that "I am Visnu,"....(ACBS).
In defense of Bhaktivinod, scribes have recognized the strong need to influence colonizers among the Bengali intelligentsia. This spirit touched Kedarnath Datta, who sent an English biography of Chaitanya's he had authored in 1896 to numerous Western Universities. So the Gaudiya idea of cracking the Western market with spiritual concepts was not new. But why was literature, its authenticity challenged in India, being pedaled as genuine in the West? Could it be that Westerners would finally succumb to the product if it was shaped and reshaped until everything was perfectly yogic, smelt of incense, and sounded like exotic truth? From reading Gaudiya literature it becomes apparent that they believed so; even claiming divine prediction. So when finally, near exhaustion, bankruptcy, and on their last legs, the Gaudiyas hit paydirt with A.C.Bhaktivedanta Swami, who renamed and retailored the Gaudiya product that was never sellable in India, it was an opportunity to validate their vagaries and flood the world with Gaudiya stories... for a donation.
Okay. Did you know- 6):
In an article entitled "Chaitanya-caritAmrita-mahA-kAvya," which appeared in the Bengali periodical Caturanga of May 1985, the late Dr. Tarapada Mukherjee raised a number of questions about the authenticity of CCMK, casting doubt on both the date of its composition and the name of its author. Basing the greater part of his argument on a study of the colophons of a number of old manuscripts, Mukherjee concluded that the work is a forgery dating probably from the seventh or eighth decades of the seventeenth century.
That he felt there was a problem is not altogether surprising. We have already encountered a number of forgeries and doubtful dates in the study of Gaudiya Vaishnava literature. Some of these attempts have been quite sophisticated. The most celebrated, which still has some people mystified, is GovindadAsera KadacA, an account of Chaitanya's travels in South India in 1510-12. The first manuscript of this book was apparently discovered by a descendant of Advaita Acharya, Jay Gopal Goswami of Shantipur. It was then published several times, accepted and promoted by many reputable scholars, including Dinesh Chandra Sen. (13) This book has since been vehemently discredited, primarily on account of anachronisms in language and geographical names. (14)
Some other works, not entirely spurious, are also controversial. The Prema-vilasa, for instance, is attributed to Nityananda Dasa, a disciple of Nityananda's wife, Jahnava. Nityananda Dasa would have been a Contemporary of Krishnadasa Kaviraja, a three-time visitor to Vrindavan in Jahnava's company, as well as an associate of Virabhadra on his mission to East Bengal. (15) As such, one would judge him to be an authoritative chronicler of the early post-Chaitanya period. Nevertheless, much of what he says has raised the eyebrows of modern historians. Some has been proved completely impossible and false, with the result that Prema-vilasa has been almost completely discredited.
Some of the misinformation that Nityananda Dasa puts forth seems to have clear propaganda purposes, but not all has yet been explained. The most famous of the concocted accounts in this book is the supposed suicide of Krishnadasa Kaviraja, said to have jumped into Radha Kunda upon hearing of the loss of the only existing manuscript of CC, which had been sent to Bengal with Gopala Bhatta's disciple, Srinivasa. (16) The story is anachronistic and it is hard to imagine that an author living so close to the actual events would have been able to convince anyone that Krishnadasa had sent the Chaitanya-caritamrita back to Bengal as early as 1575 (the most probable date of Srinivasa Àcarya's important trip with the writings of the Gosvamis) when the book itself was not written until 1612.
(17) Another title, Karnananda, written by Yadunandana, the grand-disciple of the above mentioned Srinivasa, is said by the author to have been written in 1529 Saka, i.e. AD 1607. This is disproved by the great number of quotations from the Chaitanyacharitamrita, the date of which seems to have been established beyond any doubt. (18) The inability to establish definitively the authenticity of books in the Gaudiya tradition extends even to the first complete work written about the life of Chaitanya. All the biographies of Chaitanya refer to Murari Gupta's kadaca or notebook (MGK) as one of the most important sources of information about the great saint's early life. The printed edition of this work goes by the name of Sri- Krishna-chaitanya-charitAmritam. In the introductory verses, this simple poem in quasi-Puranic style purports to be a maha-kavya, not a collection of notes as the word kadacA itself implies. Furthermore, in the first printed editions of this work, a date 1425 Saka (A.D. 1501) is given in the colophon, which would be completely impossible. In later editions this date was changed to 1435 (A.D. 1511). Since Chaitanya's life covers the span from A.D. 1485-1533, this date for a biography which mentions even the death of its subject is not believable even to its editor. (19) Murari apparently received the permission of Chaitanya to write this biography in 1508-9 just prior to Chaitanya's renunciation. It has therefore been suggested that the latter portions dealing with his life outside Nabadwip were added later.
It is clear from a reading of the book that the portions covering Chaitanya's life after his renunciation are less detailed and less informed than those to which Murari would have been an eyewitness. Only two manuscripts of this book have ever been found and no critical reading has been able to clarify these problems. From the standpoint of internal evidence also, certain problems present themselves in the MGK, both to the devotee and the historian. Nevertheless, the existence of other works which give direct credit to MGK for source materials and whose debt to that work are demonstrable tend to support its authenticity. In the course of our discussion we shaîl be obliged to return to some of the problems related to Muran's biography, for CCMK is both the closest to MGK in date and in content.
Last, but not least in the litany of problematic texts in the Gaudiya line, are the numerous spurious Sahajiya works ascribed to Krishnadasa Kaviraja, Narottam Dasa, Rupa and Sanatan and other reputable authors of the sampradaya. (20) These are easily identifiable by their espousal of doctrines that are clearly heterodox.
4.
Dr. Mukherjee spent many years researching the Gaudiya manuscripts found in the Vrindavan Research Institute, most of which came from the Radha Damodar temple library. He prepared the catalogue of Bengali manuscripts held by the VRI, a critical edition of Chaitanya Charitamrita based on its holdings, as well as taking up extended research into legal documents related to the Gaudiya sampradaya. In this case, he based his arguments on certain unusual features of the manuscript evidence found in the Vrindavan Research Institute.
Since Dr. Mukherjee's article appeared in Bengali in a periodical that may not be easily available to the reader, and as his evidence is quite interesting in its own right, I will summarize the main points of his argument here.
(i) Mukherjee's suspicions were first raised by the claim that Rupa Gosvami had copied the text of CCMK by his own hand. Krishnadasa Kaviraja writes about the beauty of Rupa Gosvami's hand writing. (21) At this date, such a great interest in an author's handwriting is unusual and consequently very little of the personal handwriting of any medieval Bengali writer has survived. Nevertheless, the Vrindavan Research Institute has received certain manuscripts from the Radha Damodar temple, some of which are ostensibly in Rupa's own handwriting. These manuscripts can be divided into three categories:
(a) Those which are attested by the scribe, e.g. have something like vyAlekhi rUpeNa, e.g., Vaisakha-mahatmyam (dated 1457 Saka), no. 7688. This work contains Padmapurana Patalakhanda, chs. 84-95. The colophon states: samAptam idam vaizAkhamAhAtmyam. zri-madhusUdanAya namaH. svarazara-zakre sAke mAse tapasye tathAngi tapanasya | mAdhava-mAhAtmyam idaM sundara-rUpaM vyAlekhi rUpeNa || zrIgovardhanAya namaH zrI-gopAla-caraNAya namaH. zrI-harAya namaH.
(b) Those, which have someone else's attestation: e.g. zrImad-rUpa-sva-hasta-likhitanRsiMha- paricaryA; zrImad-rUpa-gosvAmi-likhita-jagannAtha-vallabha-nATakam , etc.
(c) Those with handwriting which resembles the above two, such as Karnamritastotra, KramadïpikA (Gopaladhyana), MukundamAlA, etc.
Rupa stayed at Radha Damodar in his last days and his samadhi is on the temple grounds. One would naturally expect that he should give his collection of manuscripts to his successor, Jiva. From several dalils (testimonials) of the period, it is clear that the official library (pustak thaur) of the school was there. Furthermore, the use of quotations from most of the above texts in various works by Rupa lends credence to these ascriptions. Nevertheless, there are several reasons for doubting the claims of the colophons. First, the date written in VaisAkha-mAhAtmya raises a doubt. Rupa did not write the date of completion of all the books that he himself authored, so why should we believe that he would do so after simply copying a manuscript? Perhaps it was another, later Rupa (Kaviraja) who could have copied it.
(ii) A manuscript of CCMK belonging to category (b) above is the Vrindavan Research Institute's MS No. 7686. It is written in Bengali letters on 45 folios of which two are missing. At the end of the text is found the verse which has already been quoted above, and another date written in numbers, 1467 = 1545. This is presumably the date of the copying, but the scribe has not given his name or any other information. However, at the head of the manuscript, CaitanyAmrita 2 is written in Nagari script and to its side, zrI-rUpa-gosvAmi-hasta-likhitaM zrI-caitanyAmRta-kAvyam
in Bengali letters. Mukherjee supposes that the Nagari dates to the attested 1665 indexing of the contents of the Radha Damodar library (the writing matches) and that the Bengali postdates it. He poses the question: who at this late date, long after the deaths of Jiva and Kaviraja, would be able to identify Rupa's handwriting? The writer of this anonymous attestation unfortunately did not give his sources.
In this MS the date in numbers is supplemented by the tithi: day one of the dark fortnight of Asharh, 1545, and this closely resembles the date of composition written in the verse (see section ii above). In view of the similarity one may assume that we are merely looking at versions of the same date (given the latitude which is commonly experienced when civil dates are being rendered into tithis), and that the weekday, had there been room for it, would again have been Monday. Mukherjee's suggestion seems to be that the date written in numerals is perhaps only a mistaken reading of the date given in the colophon verse.
(iii) In order for the CCMK to have been copied by Rupa in the short space of three years, the following would have had to have taken place. Karnapura is said to have written his maha-kavya in 1542. Before being sent from Karnapura in Bengal to Rupa Gosvami in Vrindavan, it must presumably have to have been copied by someone else. The journey itself would have taken six to eight weeks on foot. Upon receiving the MS Rupa would have had to drop everything, in particular his important work of composing the Ujivalanilamani which one assumes was absorbing his attention at this time, in order to copy it.
(22)
Of course Rupa would have been interested in Chaitanya's life, but would he not rather have had someone else do the copying? Although it would not have been a physical impossibility for the above events to have taken place, it does seem an uncommonly quick succession of events for those slow moving times. (23) (iv) These then are the preliminary doubts which are raised by Mukherjee. He concludes that the authenticity of the claim that Rupa had written this manuscript ought to be rejected unless an impartial external witness were to be found. Unfortunately, though such a witness has indeed been forthcoming, Mukherjee finds that his evidence has simply magnified his suspicions.The evidence referred to above is found at the end of at least three manuscripts, the first of which comes from Dhaka University and is mentioned in S. K. De's edition of Padyavali
http://www.gaudiya.com/pdf/The_Authenticity_of_the_Caitanya-Caritamrita-Maha-Kavya.pdf
To our readers who have persevered through this article- kudos. For BIF team contacts in Bengal, Gaudiyaism came as a big surprise. They had no idea the group even existed until running into the Gaudiya Mutt's last stand- ISKCON. What will follow soon (hopefully) is a declaration of fallacies and abuses contained in ISKCON literature after meticulous investigation and research being completed by Bharat Ratna Scholars. We will post their finding here, if and when permitted.
In service to TRUTH
BIF