CHAPTER 8
The Sect as it is today: Its Orders
It is no easy task to describe the Chaitanyas as a sect today. By the very use of the term we have laid ourselves open to misunderstanding. It implies a more or less clear assumption:
the assumption of a distinct body, larger or smaller, united by common practices and beliefs, and marked by similar characteristics wherever found, which set them off sharply from those who belong to different cults.
Much of this does apply to the Chaitanyas today in a general fashion, but there is also evident a lack of definiteness in their demarcation which does not fit the idea of a sect.
They seem to merge with the mass of the population about them, in a way that is highly disconcerting to the desire for sharp differentiation and classification.
There is no clearly defined cult binding on the whole sect, organising its life as a homogeneous unit.
On the contrary, there is a vagueness about it all,
an utter absence of anything approaching sectarian organisation, an ignorance and lack of leadership, an indefiniteness of idea and practice
that almost warrant the conclusion that the use of the term "sect" is altogether a misnomer.
Notwithstanding this, the word has been retained.
However lacking in certain sectarian respects, we are dealing here with a common culture and tradition of wide influence, and sufficiently homogeneous in the life and practice developed by it to warrant it’s being treated as a sect.
Our purpose in the two succeeding chapters is to give as clear an idea as possible of what actually characterises the life of the Chaitanya Vaishnavas at the present time.
Like most of the sects, there are several clearly defined classes into which the adherents of the movement fall. Among the Chaitanyas there are four:
(a) The Gosvāmīs, or Gurus of the sect;
(b) the Gṛihasthas, or householders;
(c) the Vairāgīs, or ascetics;
(d) the Jāt Vairāgīs, or Jāt Baiṣṭams as they are commonly called, who are a house-holding class marked off from the second group by the fact of their having no caste standing.
We shall take these in order, giving a somewhat extended treatment of the first and third groups.