Page:The Message and Ministrations of Dewan Bahadur R. Venkata Ratnam, volume 2.djvu/406

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glory of Hari, and in converting people to Vaishnavism. But as years passed on, Chaitanya gave signs of mental abstraction. His disciples could perceive it. A certain evening, when the sky was clear, the moon shone in full effulgence and nature presented a most charming appearance. Chaitanya had gone out for his usual walk. Fancying that the Chilka lake was the river Jumna and that the surrounding scenery represented Madhura, he rushed forth to embrace his favourite Krishna and drowned himself in the lake. Some fishermen caught his body in their nets on the following day. Probably this was the closing scene of a glorious life. But his disciples hold that the name of Hari revived the saint, who afterwards mysteriously disappeared from his followers. Whether or not there be any truth in the statement, it is certain that Chaitanya disappeared from the world in the forty-eighth year of his age, in the year