Dutt, Romesh Chunder: The literature of Bengal: being an attempt to trace the progress of the national mind in its various aspects, as reflected in the nation’s literature from the earliest times to the present day ; with copious extracts from the best writers (Calcutta, 1877)

/ CEMTANYA. 67,

J

Nimai, and notwithstanding that the learned men of the
locality gave the child the more pompous name of Vis-
wambhar, Nimai the child was called by all who knew
him. Later in life he was called Gauranga, or the fair-
eomplexionedj Krishna Chaitanya, or the incarnation of
Krishna, and sometimes Gaur Hari, that is, the fair
Krishna,—Chaitanya being of a very fair complexion,
while Krishna, whose incarnation he was supposed to be,
was dark. Chaitanya is said to have been born in the
evening, wJaen there was an eclipse of the moon, a~d his
poetic biographer explains the circumstance by arguing
that there was no need for a spotted moon in the sky,
when an unspotted moon had appeared on earth !

Various are the anecdotes recounted of the infancy
and boyhood of Chaitanya, all tending to shew that he
was an incarnate deity. While yet an infant, "puking-
and mewling in its mother's arm," Cilaitanya seems to
have been very troublesome, and to have never ceased
crying, till the word Hari was shouted by the people
around him,—thus causing the name of Krishna to be
preached, and proclaimed before the infant had yet learnt
to speak. On one occasion the little child was licking an
earthen toy, when Sachi came in, and reproved him for
mistaking earth for food. "And what is food but
earth and dustV argued the lisping boy, "and what is
our body but dust ?" A restless and mischievous boy as
he was, he teased the girls of the neighbourhood and
quarrelled with other boys. When the girls came to the
river-side with rice and other things to worship idols and
gods, the little truant appropriated the food to his c*n.