le are images of Nara and Narayana (explained as Krishna
and Arjuna), Krishna and Radha, Ganesa and Hanuman.[632]

3

The sect founded by Caitanya is connected with eastern India as the
Vallabhis are with the west. Bengal is perhaps the native land of the
worship of Krishna as the god of love. It was there that Jayadeva
flourished in the last days of the Sena dynasty and the lyrical poet
Chandidas at the end of the fourteenth century. About the same time
the still greater poet Vidyapati was singing in Durbhanga. For these
writers, as for Caitanya, religion is the bond of love which unites
the soul and God, as typified by the passion[633] that drew together
Radha and Krishna. The idea that God loves and seeks out human souls
is familiar to Christianity and receives very emotional expression in
well-known hymns, but the bold humanity of these Indian lyrics seems
to Europeans unsuitable. I will let a distinguished Indian apologize
for it in his own words:

"The paradox that has to be understood is that Krishna means God.
Yet he is represented as a youth, standing at a gate, trying to waylay
the beloved maiden, attempting to entrap the soul, as it were, into a
clandestine meeting. This, which is so inconceivable to a purely
modern mind, presents no difficulty at all to the Vaishnava devotee.
To him God is the lover himself: the sweet flowers, the fresh grass,
the gay sound heard in the woods are direct messages and tokens of
love to his soul, bringing to his mind at every instant that loving
God whom he pictures as ever anxious to win the human heart."[634]

Caitanya[635] was born at Nadia in 1485 and came under the influence
of the Madhva sect. In youth he was a prodigy of learning,[636] but at
the age of about seventeen while on a pilgrimage to Gaya began to
display that emotional and even hysterical religious feeling which
marked all his teaching. He swooned at the mention of Krishna's name
and passed his time in dancing and singing hymns. At twenty-five he
became a Sannyasi, and at the request of his mother, who did not wish
him to wander too far, settled in Puri near the temple of Jagannath.
Here he spent the rest of his life in preaching, worship and ecstatic
meditation, but found time to make a tour in southern India and
another to Brindaban and Benares. He appears to have left the
management of his sect largely to his disciples, Advaita, Nityananda
and Haridas, and to have written nothing himself. But he evi