A Careful Presentation

During the 1890's reports came to India of an intensified European and American interest in Indian culture, and a particular interest in Sanskrit. In 1896 Bhaktivinoda penned Sri Gaurahga-smarana-mahgala-stotra, 104 Sanskrit verses concerning Lord Caitanya's life and precepts. He sent copies to literary and scholastic luminaries all over the world. Today, Bhaktivinoda's only surviving son still preserves a letter from Ralph Waldo Emerson, the famous American transcendentalist, gratefully acknowledging receipt of Bhaktivinoda's book but requesting books in English. As a result of such requests, Bhaktivinoda then wrote Lord Caitanya-His Life and Precepts.

As a preacher, Bhaktivinoda Thakura wanted to make the teachings of Lord Caitanya understandable to people in general and popular among them. This missionary spirit followed the express desire of Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu. Although Lord Caitanya Himself wrote only eight short verses on His teachings, He ordered His chief disciples to write volumes of books explaining, codifying and substantiating these teachings with Vedic authority. It is quite evident from Bhaktivinoda's books that he took great pains to make these topmost transcendental teachings readily appreciable. For instance, in his speech on Srimad-Bhagavatam, we see the Thakura making an old, massive Sanskrit tome really interesting because he writes about it in such an honest and charming way. He writes: "The Bhagavata has suffered from shallow critics both Indian and foreign. That book has been accursed and denounced by a great number of our young countrymen who have scarcely read its contents and pondered the philosophy on which it is founded. It is owing mostly to their having imbibed an unfounded prejudice against it when they were in school. The Bhagavata, as a matter of course, has been held in derision by those teachers who are generally of an inferior mind and intellect. This prejudice is not easily shaken off when the student grows up unless he candidly studies the book and meditates on the doctrines of Vaisnavism. We are ourselves witnesses to the fact. When we were in college, reading the philosophical works of the West and exchanging thoughts with the thinkers of the day, we contracted a hatred of the Bhagavata. That great work seemed like a repository of ideas scarcely adapted to the Nineteenth Century, and we hated to hear any argument in its favour. To us then a volume of Channing, Parker, Emerson or Newman had more weight than whole lots of Vaisnava works. Greedily we pored over the various commentations upon the Holy Bible and the labours of the Tattva-bodhini Sabha, containing extracts from the Upanisads and the Vedanta, but no work of the Vaisnavas had any favour with us. But when we advanced in age and our religious sentiment received development, we turned Unitarian in our belief and prayed as Jesus prayed in the Garden. Accidentally, we fell upon a work about the Great Caitanya, and on reading it with some attention in order to settle the historical position of that Mighty Genius of Nadia, we had the opportunity to gather His explanations of the Bhagavata, given to the wrangling Vedantists of the Benares school. This accidental study created in us a love for all the works which we could find about our Eastern Saviour. We gathered with difficulties the famous Kūrcas written in Sanskrit by the disciples of Caitanya. The explanations we got of the Bhagavata from these sources were of such a charming character that we procured a copy of the Bhagavata complete and studied its texts (difficult, of course, to those who are not trained in philosophical thoughts) with the assistance of the famous commentaries of Sridhara Svami. From such study it is that we have at last gathered the real doctrines of the Vaisnavas. Oh! What trouble it is to get rid of prejudices gathered in unripe years!" It is rare to find such honesty in the field of religion, where blind faith often demands dishonesty in order to keep itself intact.

Next, we see the Thakura writing like a real religious freethinker: "Subjects of philosophy and theology are like the peaks of towering and inaccessible mountains standing in the midst of our planet, inviting attention and investigation. Thinkers and men of deep speculation take their observations through the instruments of reason and consciousness. But they take their stand on different points when they carry on their work. These points are positions chalked out by the circumstances of their social and philosophical life, different as they are in the different parts of the world. Plato looked at the peak of the spiritual question from the West, and Vyasa made the observation from the East; so Confucius did it from further East, and Schlegel, Spinoza, Kant and Goethe from further West. These observations were made at different times and by different means, but the conclusion is all the same inasmuch as the object of observation was one and the same. They all searched after the Great Spirit, the unconditioned Soul of the Universe. They could not but get an insight into it. Their words and expressions are different, but their import is the same. They tried to find the absolute religion, and their labours were crowned with success, for God gives all that He has to His children if they want to have it. It requires a candid, generous, pious and holy heart to feel the beauties of their conclusions. Party spirit-that great enemy of truth-will always baffle the attempt of the enquirer who tries to gather truth from religious works of his own nation, and will make him believe that absolute truth is nowhere except in his old religious book. What better example could be adduced than the fact that the great philosopher of Benares will find no truth in the universal brotherhood of man and the common fatherhood of God? The philosopher, thinking in his own way of thought, can never see the beauty of the Christian father. The way in which Christ thought of His own father was love absolute, and so long as the philosopher will not adopt that way of thinking, he will ever remain deprived of the absolute faith preached by the western Saviour. In a similar manner, the Christian needs adopt the way of thought which the Vedantist pursued, before he can love the conclusions of the philosopher. The critic, therefore, should have a comprehensive, good, generous, candid, impartial and sympathetic soul."

And finally, we see his humor: " 'What sort of a thing is the Bhagavata?' asks the European gentleman newly arrived in India. His companion tells him with a serene look that the Bhagavata is a book which his Oriya bearer daily reads in the evening to a number of hearers. It contains a jargon of unintelligible and savage literature for those men who paint their noses with some sort of earth or sandal and wear beads all over their bodies in order to procure salvation for themselves. Another of his companions, who has travelled a little in the interior, would immediately contradict him and say that the Bhagavata is a Sanskrit work claimed by a sect of men, the Gosvamis, who give mantras, like the Popes of Italy, to the common people of Bengal, and pardon their sins on payment of gold enough to defray their social expenses. A third gentleman will repeat a third explanation. A young Bengali chained in English thoughts and ideas, and wholly ignorant of the pre-Mohammadan history of his own country, will add one more explanation by saying that the Bhagavata is a book containing an account of the life of Krsna, who was an ambitious and an immoral man! This is all that he could gather from his grandmother while yet he did not go to school. Thus the Great Bhagavata ever remains unknown to the foreigners, like the elephant of the six blind men who caught hold of the several parts of the body of the beast. But Truth is eternal and is never injured, but for a while, by ignorance."