Sri Caitanya-caritamrita

In the early sixteenth century the West was on one course, the East on another. In India, Caitanya Mahaprabhu was directing people inward, towards a scientific understanding of the highest knowledge of man’s spiritual nature.

Sri Caitanya-caritamrita is the main work on the life and teachings of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, considered the incarnation of Krishna, who appeared in India five hundred years ago. Lord Caitanya introduced the chanting of the holy names of God as the prescribed method of God-realization for our time. He began what is today called the Hare Krishna movement, since the movement’s founder, Srila Prabhupada, comes in the Caitanya line of spiritual masters.

Lord Caitanya transformed the face of India in four respects: philosophically, by encountering, defeating, and convincing the greatest philosophers and thinkers of His day; theologically, by organizing the largest, most widespread theistic movement in India’s history; socially, by strongly challenging the religious inequities of the caste system; politically, by organizing a massive civil disobedience movement in Bengal, more than four centuries before Gandhi.

This English translation with commentary, by A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, reveals his consummate Bengali and Sanskrit scholarship, his intimate familiarity with the precepts of Sri Caitanya..