श्री चैतन्य चरितामृत
The life and teachings of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, as Srila Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami set them down in Vrindavana and finished in 1615. Sixty of its sixty-two chapters are here in Hindi, with the भूमिका — free to read, nothing to sign, nothing to install.
Bhaktivedanta Book Trust Hindi edition · translation and purports by Srila Prabhupada
“I am old and worn out, and deaf and blind; my hand trembles, my mind is not steady.”
Srila Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami, on himself, as he set out to write this book. He completed it in Vrindavana in 1615 — the date is recorded in the book's own closing verse, at Antya-lila 20.157.
Sixty-two chapters in all — seventeen, twenty-five and twenty
The groundwork. It opens with the line of teachers, then spends chapter after chapter on the question of who Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is; the fourth gives the three confidential reasons for his descent — to know the glory of Srimati Radharani's love, to know the sweetness in himself that she tastes, and to feel the happiness she feels. It closes on the Navadvipa years, the deliverance of Jagai and Madhai, the discourses with Chand Kazi, and a summary of his life up to his acceptance of sannyasa.
The long middle, and by a wide margin the largest of the three. On the bank of the Godavari, Srila Ramananda Raya offers one standard of attainment after another and is told each time that it is still not the thing itself, until he arrives at Radharani's love and Mahaprabhu shows him who he is. Then Prayag, and the seed of the creeper of devotion; four chapters of instruction to Srila Sanatana Goswami; sixty-four items of regulative devotional service; and one verse of the Srimad Bhagavatam opened sixty-one different ways.
The Puri years — eighteen of them. Six were spent in public kirtan, drawing the devotees into chanting and dancing; the last twelve were passed in the small room at the Gambhira, attended chiefly by Svarupa Damodara Goswami and Srila Ramananda Raya. The chapter titles alone tell you where it is going: feelings of separation, transcendental madness, bodily transformations. Srila Haridasa Thakura is glorified in the third chapter and passes away in the eleventh. It ends at the twentieth, on the eight Shikshashtak verses.
Stated plainly, including the parts that are missing
Chapter titles, headings, page after page — all of it Hindi. There is no English edition on this reader and no attempt is made to suggest otherwise. If Hindi is not what you came for, you know that before you open a chapter rather than after.
No advertising, no sign-up, no email address, nothing to install. Open a chapter and read it. Because there is no account, there is no reading history attached to you.
The भूमिका, then Adi-lila one through seventeen, then Madhya-lila — 23 of its 25 — then Antya-lila one through twenty. A contents panel sits beside the text, so you can move to Madhya 8 or Antya 20 without walking the length of the book.
The source is scanned pages of the printed Hindi edition, put through OCR. What you read on screen is the recognised text, reflowed to fit whatever you are holding — which is also what makes it searchable. All sixty-one entries have been processed.
Two searches sit at the top of the reader: one across chapter titles, one across the text itself. There is a bookmarks panel for the passage you want to come back to, and a settings control for how the page is set.
The original is Bengali — roughly 24,000 lines, mostly in payara couplet, interspersed with more than a thousand couplets quoted from some seventy-five Sanskrit sources. Any Hindi reading of it, including this one, is a reading in translation. Scholars write the title Caitanya-caritamrta.
Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu left almost nothing in writing. The eight Sanskrit verses traditionally held to be his own composition — the Shikshashtak — sit inside this work, in Antya-lila 20, at verses 12, 16, 21, 29, 32, 36, 39 and 47. The chapter is titled for them.
In Madhya 6, Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya explains a verse of the Srimad Bhagavatam in nine ways; Mahaprabhu answers with eighteen more and touches none of Sarvabhauma's. Eighteen chapters later, at Sanatana Goswami's asking, he takes the same verse — the atmarama verse — and explains it in sixty-one.
Two chapters of Madhya-lila are missing. Both fall in Madhya — chapter 3 near its opening, chapter 25 at its close — so the run from Madhya 4 through 24 is unbroken, and Adi-lila and Antya-lila are whole.
Who wrote it, when, in what language, and what is on this reader
Srila Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami, in his old age, by the order of Sri Madana-mohana and at the request of the Vaishnavas of Vrindavana. The book's own closing verse, at Antya-lila 20.157, dates its completion to Vrindavana in 1537 Sakabda — AD 1615 — in the month of Jyaistha, on the fifth day of the waning moon.
Bengali. Banglapedia describes roughly 24,000 lines, mostly in payara couplet, interspersed with more than a thousand couplets quoted from about seventy-five Sanskrit sources. Any Hindi or English reading is therefore a reading in translation, and this reader carries the Hindi text only.
Sixty-two in all: seventeen in Adi-lila, twenty-five in Madhya-lila and twenty in Antya-lila. Sixty are online here, plus the भूमिका, which makes sixty-one entries. The two that are absent are Madhya-lila 3 and Madhya-lila 25.
The source is scanned pages of the Bhaktivedanta Book Trust's Hindi edition, put through OCR. What the reader shows you is the recognised text, reflowed to your screen and searchable, rather than the page image itself.
No — and this is not the first. The Chaitanya Bhagavata of Vrindavana Dasa Thakura came earlier. The Chaitanya Charitamrit is the later and more theologically detailed one, which Banglapedia calls the authoritative final word in the hagiographical tradition devoted to Chaitanya Mahaprabhu.
Srila Prabhupada placed this work at the top of a reading order, calling it the postgraduate study of spiritual life, and wrote in his own introduction that it is not intended for the novice. The common practice is to read the Bhagavatam first, though the two are often read alongside each other.
Late sixteenth to early seventeenth century. Citations inside the text point to a date after 1592, and scholarly work places the composition between 1609 and 1615. The book's own closing verse dates its completion to 1615, in Vrindavana.
Three lilas, sixty-two chapters, and roughly 24,000 lines of Bengali by Banglapedia's count. Verse totals in circulation disagree with one another, so none is printed here. Madhya-lila is the longest of the three sections by a considerable distance.