Boyhood and Youth
The boyhood of Chaitanya was evidently that of a very real boy. From the first there was a charm about him which made him a marked child in the neighbourhood:
There is evidence of this in the names, Gaur and Gaurāṅga - he of the fair body - epithets of beauty which, given him in childhood, have continued in use to this day.
The neighbours also called him Nimāi - short-lived - in pitying anticipation, doubtless of the fate which had overtaken his baby-sisters.
About the childhood of this gifted boy there has gathered a cloud of superstitious and miraculous stories, too evidently modelled upon the Purāṇic stories of the child Krishna.
Amidst such a collection of puerile and supernatural exploits as make up the accounts of his early life in the accepted biographies, the real boy is well-nigh lost.
We can only conjecture what basis of fact there may have been beneath the legendary.
However, we cannot be far wrong in surmising that the stories of Krishna-like pranks were not all without foundation. He was evidently a light-hearted child, full of mischief and fun, and possessed of vigour and energy that kept his mother busy.
His schooling was that of the well-born boy in such a famous centre of learning as Navadvīpa:
After a few years in the pāṭhśālā - the primary school - he entered, when only eight years of age, the Sanskrit tol conducted by one Gaṅgādāsa Pandit.
It is said that by the time he was ten years of age he had become proficient in Sanskrit grammar and rhetoric, and before he was fifteen was accounted one of the best scholars of Navadvīpa!
Doubtless, considerable allowance must be made here for the enthusiasm of sectarian loyalty.
But while discounting much of the tradition that makes him out a youthful prodigy in scholarship, we must believe that he was a very intelligent boy and displayed intellectual keenness beyond the average.
He seems to have confined his study largely to grammar, and the logic for which the Navadvīpa tols had become famous.
When he was still of schoolboy age, his father died.
Shortly before this the only other child, an older brother, named Viśvarūpa, had left the home at the age of sixteen and become a sannyāsī. He was never heard from thereafter.
Chaitanya was now the sole hope and comfort of his mother. Soon after his father's death, when the boy was only 14 or 15 years of age, he married and became a householder.
According to the record, he now set up a tol of his own, receiving pupils in his own house:
As this was evidently a common practice among pandits, there is no reason to doubt the statement, although for a lad of his years the picture is rather an incongruous one.
The records are also full of the dialectic exploits that now marked his life:
If we are to place any reliance upon these stories, it would appear that Chaitanya delighted in disputations and established a great reputation as a formidable antagonist, entering the dialectic lists against all comers.
At this time, according to tradition, he made a fairly extensive scholastic tour in East Bengal, holding disputations and teaching from town to town:
He is believed to have gone as far as Dhākkādakshin, in Sylhet, his father's home.
The fact of his having a grandfather and uncles living there makes such a visit entirely probable, but the records of the tour are very scanty.
Some doubt is thrown upon these records by the fact that so little evidence of the tour is found in the history of this section.
None of the points said to have been visited by Chaitanya have become famous or have been held in honour in the sect, as has been true elsewhere.
While he was absent on this tour his wife died. He was soon re-married, this time to Viṣṇupriyā, the daughter of a Navadvīpa pandit, Sanātana Miśra:
This young girl, so soon to become to all intents and purposes a widow, was destined to hold a place of considerable honour in the future sect.
The characteristics of the young pandit at this time were not such as would indicate the future that was in store:
The liveliness of boyhood had developed in the young man into a light-hearted, volatile temperament chiefly concerned with the things of this world.
The spirit of the scholastic circles of Navadvīpa possessed him, and pride of learning seemed his dominant trait.
Such triumphs as Chaitanya is reputed to have scored over veteran scholars would not conduce to humility in one so young, and we infer that the quality which later so signally marked the great ascetic was not particularly in evidence in Chaitanya the pandit.
The charm of the boy, however, had not been lost on reaching manhood:
Chaitanya was a man of fine presence, with unusually fair skin, lustrous eyes and a mass of hair worn long over the shoulders, according to the fashion of the day.
The sacrifice of this adornment, considered so striking an item of masculine beauty, was one of the things that struck the popular imagination with peculiar force at the time of his taking sannyāsa.
His personal charm, his assured social standing as a Brahman, and his distinction as a most promising young scholar in a University city famous for its scholars, made him a marked figure.
No wonder the Vaishnava leaders grieved that so promising a son of a Vaishnava household should show so little interest in his father's faith.
Indeed, there was little evidence, outwardly at least, to show that he had any concern for the things that had claimed his brother at so tender an age for the ascetic life.
This was not due to any lack of religious influence. As the son of pious Vaishnava parents, he had known no other than a religious atmosphere. Direct efforts to influence him, however, were met in a half jesting, half sceptical spirit, that betokened little vital interest.
It is recorded that once when a saintly Vaishnava ascetic, named Īśvara Purī, tried to win him to a devout life, Chaitanya’s only response was to pick flaws in the grammar of the Sanskrit texts quoted by the sannyāsī.
This attitude may, indeed, have been partly a mask to hide an undercurrent of feeling suppressed but stirring.
Advaitācārya, the leader of the Vaishnavas in Bengal, was a friend of the family and well known in the home. Indeed, it was at his door that the mother of Chaitanya laid the blame for the action of both her sons in becoming sannyāsīs.
Evidently Jagannāth Miśra’s home was open to all the wandering Vaishnavas who passed in and out of Navadvīpa, so much so that the boy's childhood and youth must have harboured many memories of venerated guests.
One such ascetic, whom Chaitanya met years afterward in his travels, had a vivid memory of the devout hospitality of that Nadia home.
All these influences must have made their impression on the eager young mind of the growing boy, and helped to form the sub-conscious store of latent feeling and aspiration that was to well up so abundantly when the fitting time and occasion should call it forth.