446 BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. [Chap. Cyamananda, Narottama Das and Raghunath Das were held in the hightest esteem by the Vaisnava community; nay, many good Brahmins acknowledged them as their spiritual heads, though they belonged to inferior castes. Narahari Chakravarti, a Brahmin author, wrote a life of Narottam, a (5৫12 with feelings verging on worship. Sucha thing kad been in- conceivable with the orthodox community of the period and yet became too true, shewing that a new life had dawned in this land, awakening men to a right appreciation of the value of character and spirituality amongst men in preference to caste- honour. Narahari, the Brahmin, often declared himself eager to take the dust of the feet of Narottam, a Cadra. The biographical literature of the Vaisnavas is as varied as it is rich, and it gives us a graphic account of the history of Bengal society in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries. (a) Kadcha or notes by Govinda Das. Let us first begin with the biography of Chaitanya Deva by his servant Govinda Karmakar, who accompanied him during his travels in the Deccan. Itis not a biography properly so called, the book is called Kadcha or notes. He says,— “T got down notes of his doings very privately.”*— privately, because Chaitanya Deva would not like that his companions should take notes of the in- cidents of his life. He would not tolerate any act
- “কড়চা করিয়া রাখি অতি সংগোপনে ॥"
Kadcha.
