Devalok
How a tradition frames it · 2 tellings · East India

Chaitanya, the golden Krishna

Chaitanya of Nabadwip taught the maha-mantra and congregational chanting; Gaudiya Vaishnavas read Bhagavata 11.5.32 as foretelling him as Krishna in a fair form.

Who is in it

Places: Puri · Texts: Bhagavata Purana

The story, beat by beat

  1. Chaitanya is born at Nabadwip in Bengal in 1486.
  2. He teaches the Hare Krishna mantra and chanting in company as the practice fit for the present age.
  3. His followers hold him to be Krishna himself, or Radha and Krishna in one body.
  4. He spends his last twenty years at Puri before Jagannath.
  5. Jiva Goswami systematises his teaching as inconceivable difference-in-unity.
  6. Gaudiya commentators read a Bhagavata verse about a fair-complexioned Krishna as his prophecy.

chanting incarnation proof text ecstasy

How it is told, place by place

Base telling · Encyclopedia

Hagiography and Gaudiya tradition

East India · Nabadwip and Puri Vaishnava

Chaitanya, born in Nabadwip in 1486 and dead at Puri in 1534, made singing the centre of religion. He spread the Hare Krishna mantra and the practice of chanting together in the streets as the right path for a dark age, left only the eight verses of the Shikshashtakam as his own writing, and passed his last two decades at Puri in ecstatic worship of Jagannath. His followers came to regard him as Krishna come again, and some as Krishna and Radha united in one person; the Goswamis of Vrindavan, Jiva above all, turned his teaching into a system.

Chaitanya Mahaprabhu — Wikipedia

Primary text (translation)

Gaudiya reading of Bhagavata 11.5.32

East India · Bengal Vaishnava

A verse of the Bhagavata's eleventh canto describes the form of God worshipped in the Kali age by intelligent people through sacrifices made mostly of chanting, in a form that is not dark. The Gaudiya commentary takes the fair Krishna of this verse to be Chaitanya, the golden lord, and the verse is their scriptural proof. Devalok records this as the reading of one tradition.

What is different here:

A scriptural identification rather than a life story; the verse itself does not name Chaitanya.

Srimad-Bhagavatam 11.5.32 (Bhaktivedanta Vedabase)

Sources: Chaitanya Mahaprabhu — Wikipedia; Srimad-Bhagavatam 11.5.32 (Bhaktivedanta Vedabase)

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