A long and important appendix has now been added, giving the exact situation and some description of the various holy places visited by Chaitanya, (with references to the best and most modern sources of information, such as Gazetteers and maps). A SHORT LIFE OF CHAITANYA Navadwip, a town in the Nadia district of Bengal, situated on the river Ganges, 75 miles north of Calcutta, was a great trading centre and seat of Hindu learning in the 15th century. Sanskrit logic (_nyáy_) for which Bengal is most famous among all the provinces of India, was very highly developed and studied here, and the fame of its scholars was unsurpassed in the land. But, if we may believe the biographers of Chaitanya, the atmosphere of the town was sceptical and unspiritual. There was a lack of true religious fervour and sincere devotion. Proud of their intellectuality, proud of the vast wealth they acquired by gifts from rich Hindus, the local _pandits_ despised _bhakti_ or devotion as weak and vulgar, and engaged in idle ceremonies or idler amusements. Vedantism formed the topic of conversation of the cultured few; wine and goat's meat were taken to kindly by the majority of the people, and such _Shakta_ rites as were accompanied by the offering of this drink and food to the goddess and their subsequent consumption by her votaries, were performed with zeal and enthusiasm. Jagannáth Mishra, surnamed Purandar, a Brahman of the Vaidik sub-caste, had emigrated from his ancestral home in Sylhet and settled here in order to live on the bank of the holy Ganges. His wife was Shachi, a daughter of the scholar Nilámbar Chakravarti. One evening in February or March, 1485 A.D., when there was a lunar eclipse at the same time as full moon, a son was born to this couple. It was their tenth child; the first eight, all daughters, had died in infancy, and the ninth, a lad named Vishwarup, had abandoned the world at the age of sixteen when pressed to marry, and had entered a monastery in the Madras presidency. The new-born child was named Vishwambhar. But the women, seeing that his mother had lost so many children before him, gave him the disparaging name of Nimái or short-lived in order to propitiate Nemesis. The neighbours called him _Gaur_ or _Gauránga_ (fair complexioned) on account of his marvellous beauty. That the child was born amidst the chanting of Hari's name all over Navadwip on the occasion of the eclipse, was taken to be an omen that he would prove a teacher of _bhakti_. Passing over the lucky signs of his horoscope, and the miracles and Krishna-like antics with which pious imagination has invested his boyhood, we may note that he showed great keenness and precocity of intellect in mastering all branches of Sanskrit learning, especially grammar and logic.