“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 evidently possessed a gift of religious magnetism and exercised an extraordinary influence on those who heard him preach or sing.  He died or disappeared before the age of fifty but apparently none of the stories about his end merit credence.

Although the teaching of Caitanya is not so objectionable morally as the doctrines of the Vallabhis, it follows the same line of making religion easy and emotional and it is not difficult to understand how his preaching, set forth with the eloquence which he possessed, won converts from the lower classes by thousands.  He laid no stress on asceticism, approved of marriage and rejected all difficult rites and ceremonies.  The form of worship which he specially enjoined was the singing of Kirtans or hymns consisting chiefly in a repetition of the divine names accompanied by music and dancing.  Swaying the body and repetition of the same formula or hymn are features of emotional religion found in the most diverse regions, for instance among the Rufais or Howling Dervishes, at Welsh revival meetings and in negro churches in the Southern States.  It is therefore unnecessary to seek any special explanation in India but perhaps there is some connection between the religious ecstasies of Vaishnavas and Dervishes.  Within Caitanya’s sect, caste was not observed.  He is said to have admitted many Moslims to membership and to have regarded all worshippers of Krishna as equal.  Though caste has grown up again, yet the old regulation is still in force inside the temple of Jagannath at Puri.  Within the sacred enclosure all are treated as of one caste and eat the same sacred food.  In Caitanya’s words “the mercy of God regards neither tribe nor family.”