Chaitanya and Mira

PREFACE

It all happens in Navadwip, the hallowed town of Bengal, where Sri Chaitanya was born in 1486. At an early age, he felt an irresistible call to give up his hearth and home, his mother and young wife — in short, everything that man holds dear — for the love of Sri Krishna, his one love and dream on earth.

A Vaishnava friend of mine wrote to me pointing out certain, what he calls historical, errors in the play. In one point, however, he was mistaken: he wrote that Sri Chaitanya had never had his mother's permission before he decided to take to the path of renunciation. In Amiya Nimai Charita — the most authentic life of Sri Chaitanya — it is written that he had persuaded both his mother and his wife to let him follow the call of Krishna. But even if it had been written otherwise, I would have put it like that in order to bring out the great character of his mother. In a work like this I do not feel obliged to being a bond slave to history as such, since what I set out to write is not history embellished but to express dramatically my heart's vision of one whom I have regarded as an Avatar of Krishna since my childhood, whose songs I have passionately loved and sung and whose Presence I have felt while singing of his divine humanity. That is why, historically, I have been less loyal to the letter so that I might be more faithful to the spirit that moved Sri Chaitanya, the spirit which has, alas, been often misunderstood even by
many of his followers. To give but one instance. It is written in Chaitanya Charitamrita that he damned furiously a Brahmin, saying: "You made Sribash worship Goddess Bhavani; so I curse you, that you shall writhe in hell for ten million years". I confess I cannot see Sri Chaitanya, an Avatar of Love and Forgiveness, whose mere contact reformed ruffians like Jagai and Madhai into saints, cursing anyone, no matter for what transgression.

One last word of explanation about his names that occur in my play. He became known as Sri Krishna-Chaitanya or, more popularly, Chaitanya, meaning Divine Consciousness — after his great renunciation before which he used to be called by three names:

NIMAI PUNDIT, because of his deep scholarship;

GOURANGA (nicknamed Gora — which means fair) because of his peerless beauty and rose-white complexion;

BISHWAMBHAR which means one who bears the burden of the world.

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This last name reminds me of a noble utterance of Sri Aurobindo in Savitri with which I close my brief Preface. How well do these lines apply to the Avatarhood of Sri Chaitanya:

"The great who came to save this suffering world
And rescue out of Time's shadow and the Law,
Must pass beneath the yoke of grief and pain:

They are caught by the Wheel that they had hoped to break,

On their shoulders they must bear man's load of fate.

Heaven's riches they bring, their sufferings count the price

Or they pay the gift of knowledge with their lives.

The Son of God born as the Son of man

Has drunk the bitter cup, owned Godhead's debt,

The debt the Eternal owes to the fallen kind

His will has bound to death and struggling life

That yearns in vain for rest and endless peace."¹

February 21,1950 DILIP KUMAR ROY

Postscript. I gratefully acknowledge my debt to my friends, Miss Joyce Chadwic, K. D. Sethna and Professor Sisir Kumar
Ghosh of Santiniketan for the help I received from them.

1 Cent. Vol. 29, Bk. VI, C. 2

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