Professor Janardan Chakravarti (1901-1987) was a renowned scholar in Vaishnav literature and a celebrated professor of Bengali. He was awarded the DLitt by the University of Calcutta for his contributions to Bengali literature.
His other specialization was on Bengali poet Madhushudan Dutta . Professor Chakravarti's literary contributions include a book on Vaishnava theology and literature entitled "Sri Radha Tatwa and Sri Chaitanya Sanskriti".It was delivered as Kamala Lecture in 1972 at the Calcutta University.
He wrote another book of Reminiscence "Smriti Bhare" in Bengali. Professor Chakravarti delivered the prestigious Biman Bihari Lecture series at the Asiatic Society which was later published as a book entitled "Bengal Vaishnavism and Sri Chaitanya".
He retired from the West Bengal Senior Education Service in 1955 from Presidency College and went on to become the Head of the Department of Bengali at Burdwan University. He was also associated with the Post Graduate Department of C. U. in the capacity of a Part time Lecturer. He served at two other institutions namely Muralidhar Girls’ College and Maharani Kashishwari College in Kolkata as the Principal.
Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was a 15th-century Indian saint who is considered to be the combined avatar of Radha and Krishna by his disciples and various scriptures. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's mode of worshipping Krishna with ecstatic song and dance had a profound effect on Vaishnavism in Bengal. He was also the chief proponent of the Vedantic philosophy of Achintya Bheda Abheda Tattva. Mahaprabhu founded Gaudiya Vaishnavism. He expounded Bhakti yoga and popularized the chanting of the Hare Krishna Maha-mantra. He composed the Shikshashtakam.
Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati, born Bimala Prasad Datt, was a Gaudīya Vaisnava Hindu guru, ācārya, and revivalist in early 20th century India. To his followers, he was known as Srila Prabhupāda.
Gaudiya Vaishnavism, also known as Chaitanya Vaishnavism, is a Vaishnava Hindu religious movement inspired by Chaitanya Mahaprabhu (1486–1534) in India. "Gaudiya" refers to the Gaura or Gauḍa region of Bengal, with Vaishnavism meaning "the worship of Vishnu". Specifically, it is part of Krishnaism—Krishna-centric Vaishnavite traditions.
Bhaktivinoda Thakur, born Kedarnath Datta, was a Hindu philosopher, guru and spiritual reformer of Gaudiya Vaishnavism who effected its resurgence in India in late 19th and early 20th century and was hailed by contemporary scholars as the most influential Gaudiya Vaishnava leader of his time. He is also credited, along with his son Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati, with pioneering the propagation of Gaudiya Vaishnavism in the West and its eventual global spread.
Mayapur is a neighbourhood of Bamanpukur, in the Nabadwip CD block in the Krishnanagar Sadar subdivision of the Nadia district in the state of West Bengal, India. It is situated adjacent to Nabadwip, at the confluence of two rivers, where the waters of the Jalangi River mix with Bhagirathi, a distributary of the Ganges. It is located about 130 km north of Kolkata. Along with Nabadwip, it is considered a spiritual place by the adherents of Gaudiya Vaishnavism.
Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja Gosvāmī was the author of the Caitanyacaritāmṛta, a biography on the life of the mystic and saint Caitanya Mahāprabhu (1486–1533), who is considered by the Gaudiya Vaishnava school of Hinduism to be an incarnation of Rādhā and Kṛṣṇa combined.
Rupa Goswami was a devotional teacher (guru), poet, and philosopher of the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition. With his brother Sanatana Goswami, he is considered the most senior of the Six Goswamis of Vrindavan associated with Caitanya Mahaprabhu, a hidden avatar (incarnation) of Krishna in Kali Yuga.
Sanatana Goswami was a principal follower of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. Sanatana wrote a number of important works in the bhakti tradition of Gaudiya Vaishnavism and was the seniormost of the influential Six Goswamis of Vrindavan, among whom was his brother Rupa Goswami.
Jiva Goswami was an Indian philosopher and saint from the Gaudiya Vaishnava school of Vedanta tradition, producing a great number of philosophical works on the theology and practice of Bhakti yoga, Vaishnava Vedanta and associated disciplines. He is known as one of the Six Goswamis of Vrindavan and was the nephew of the two leading figures, Rupa Goswami and Sanatana Goswami.
Rai Bahadur Dinesh Chandra Sen was a Bengali writer, educationist and researcher of Bengali folklore from the Indian subcontinent. He was the founding faculty member and the Ramtanu Lahiri Research Fellow of the Department of Bengali Language and Literature of the University of Calcutta. He died in Calcutta in 1939.
Radha-Krishna are collectively known within Hinduism as the combined forms of feminine as well as the masculine realities of God. Krishna and Radha are the primeval forms of God and his pleasure potency, respectively, in several Vaishnavite schools of thought.
Bhashacharya Acharya Suniti Kumar Chatterjee was an Indian linguist, educationist and litterateur. He was a recipient of the second-highest Indian civilian honour of Padma Vibhushan.
Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyā was a form of Hindu tantric Vaishnavism focused on Radha Krishna worship that developed in the region of Greater Bengal. This tradition flourished from the 16th to the 19th century. The Vaiṣṇava Sahajiyā tradition produced many great poets who wrote in the Bengali language, the most famous of these poets all wrote under the pen name Chandidas. Their religious literature was mainly written in Bengali vernacular.
Bhakti Hridaya Bon, also known as Swami Bon, was a disciple of Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati and a guru in the Gaudiya Math following the philosophy of the Bhakti marg, specifically of Caitanya Mahaprabhu and Gaudiya Vaishnava theology. At the time of his death, he left behind thousands of Bengali disciples in India.
Krishnaism is a large group of independent Hindu traditions—sampradayas related to Vaishnavism—that center on the devotion to Krishna as Svayam Bhagavan, Ishvara, Para Brahman, the source of all reality, who is not an avatar of Vishnu. This is its difference from such Vaishnavite groupings as Sri Vaishnavism, Sadh Vaishnavism, Ramaism, Radhaism, Sitaism etc. There is also a personal Krishnaism, that is devotion to Krishna outside of any tradition and community, as in the case of the saint-poet Meera Bai. Leading scholars do not define Krishnaism as a suborder or offshoot of Vaishnavism, considering it a parallel and no less ancient current of Hinduism.
Rasikendra Nath Nandi a Vaishnav scholar, a social reformer and a zamindar was born in the village named Bhat-bera in district Pabna of undivided Bengal in 1882. As a serious scholar of Vaishnavism, he wrote several manuscripts explaining the Vaishnavism in simple Sanskrit. Apart from his scholarly activities, he established schools for spreading of modern education in Pabna and in Agarpara, where he died in 1962. Rasikendra Nath is one among those unsung stars of Bengal who was forgotten in the midst of political and economic turmoil of Bengal after Indian independence.
Dharmaraj is a Hindu deity of death and justice, worshipped by villagers in the traditional Rarh region in the present day Indian state of West Bengal as one of their special village gods. He is represented by a shapeless stone daubed with vermillion and is normally placed under a tree or placed in the open, but sometimes enshrined in a temple. The worship takes place in the months of Baisakh, Jaistha and Asarh on the day of full moon and sometimes on the last day of Bhadro. Dharmaraj is worshipped mainly by all castes.
The Vaishnava Padavi movement refers to a period in medieval Bengali literature from the 15th to 17th centuries, marked by an efflorescence of Vaishnava poetry often focusing on the Radha-Krishna legend. The term padavali has the literal meaning "gathering of songs".
Hirendranath Mukhopadhyay, also known as Hiren Mukerjee, was an Indian politician, lawyer and academic. He was a member of the Communist Party of India having joined in 1936 when it was still illegal. He was elected to the Lok Sabha the lower house of the Indian Parliament from the Calcutta North East constituency in 1951, 1957, 1962, 1967 and 1971. He suffered an electoral reverse when he lost to Pratap Chandra Chunder in 1977 after the CPI supported Emergency.
Khudiram Das was an Indian scholar, educationist, critic, litterateur, an authority on Rabindra literature and linguistic expert.