*/ The Generation Following Chaitanya The generation immediately following Chaitanya's death was in some ways a time of reaction. Chaitanya’s going was a blow that stunned his followers, and left them incapable of the emotional exercises that marked the sect. "The sankirtan parties lost all heart, and their great music, which had taken the country by surprise and flooded it

*/ Seventeenth Century Revival At the beginning of the 17 th century, when all those who had been principals in the movement had long since passed away, the sect entered into a period of great interest. Here, as elsewhere, the history of the period is largely a record of outstanding personalities who became dynamic centres of influence. There were 3

*/ Śyāmānanda and the Winning of Orissa The third figure of the group, Śyāmānanda Dās , brings us to the expansion of the sect in Orissa . Śyāmānanda was a man of low caste belonging to Orissa, but, in spite of that fact, he was accepted by a Chaitanya guru in Bengal as his disciple. Later he studied for some

*/ Vaishnavism in Assam Another section in which the Chaitanya movement made itself felt was in Assam : While the development there was in no sense as direct a propagation of the sect as in Orissa, still it may be said that the growth of Vaishnavism there had more or less connection with the spread of the Chaitanya movement. The

*/ Two Centuries of Decline After the vigorous expansion of the 17 th century, the fortunes of the sect seem to have gone under a cloud that lasted for nearly two hundred years. The historical works produced as a part of the great literary output of the sect were largely confined to the 17 th century. The last of these

*/ The Modern Revival In spite of the eclipse of these centuries, some life remained in the sect: With the 19 th century there must have come a renewal of vigour, although there is little material by which to judge of this. As early as 1851 , an acute observer speaks of the Vaishnavas as being the most active of

*/ Influence of the Sect on Bengal Society Before concluding this survey of the history of the sect, it may be well to attempt a brief estimate of its varied influence on the life and thought of Bengal society. The Bengali language itself owes no small debt to the Chaitanya movement: For by it the vernacular of the people was

*/ CHAPTER VI The Teaching of the Sect Chaitanya was not primarily a thinker. From the record of his life it will have become abundantly clear that his main interests were not intellectual: Not only did his absorption in bhakti leave no time or energy for the life of scholarship, but - what is far more to the point -

*/ Theological 1. The Idea of God In its philosophy the Bengal school lays claim to orthodoxy, because it accepts the Upanishads, the Brahma Sūtras and the Gītā as authoritative scriptures, and the One-without-a-second as the Supreme Reality. It agrees with the Vedanta in describing that Reality as possessing the three familiar attributes, sat , chit , ānanda . It