Volume 7 - Prabhupada

SRI CAITANYA-CARITAM6TAIt would not be inaccurate to say that SriCaitanya-caritamrta is one of the most importantworks of historical and philosophicalliterature ever written, in any language. It isthe principal work on the life and teachingsof SrT Krr;a Caitanya, a divine incarnation ofthe Supreme Personality of Godhead. SriCaitanya is the pioneer of a great social andreligious movement which began in India alittle less than five hundred years ago andwhich has directly and indirectly influencedthe subsequent course of religious andphilosophical thinking not only in India butin the recent West as well.At a time when, in the West, man wasdirecting his explorative spirit towardcircumnavigating the world in search of newoceans and continents and toward studyingthe structure of the physical universe, SriKrr;a Caitanya, in the East, was inauguratingand masterminding a revolution directed inward,toward a scientific understanding ofthe highest knowledge of man's spiritualnature.Within his lifetime, Sri Caitanyatransformed the face of India in fourrespects: philosophically, by encountering,defeating and converting the greatest philosophersand thinkers of his day; religiously,by organizing the largest, most widespreadtheistic movement in India's history;socially, by his strong challenges against thereligious inequities of the caste system;politically, by his organization of a massivecivil disobedience movement in Bengal, 450years before Gandhi.The text is divided into three sectionscalled "IT/as." Adi-IT/a (the early period)traces his life from birth through his acceptanceof the renounced order, sannyasa, atthe age of twenty-four. This part includes hischildhood miracles, schooling, marriage andearly philosophical confrontations, as well ashis organization of the widespreadsankirtana movement and his civil disobedienceagainst the repression of theMohammedan government.(continued on back flap)