The Final Word: The Caitanya Caritāmṛta and the Grammar of Religious Tradition. By Tony K. Stewart. Oxford: Oxford University Press: Journal of Vaishnava Studies

Abstract

The title of Tony Stewart’s recent monograph has a presumably unintended double-meaning. The book examines the crucial role that Kṛṣṇadāsa Kavirāja’s Caitanyacaritāmṛta played in consolidating the Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇava tradition which lacked a central structure of authority after the passing of its central figure, Caitanya (1486-1533). On the other hand, the book itself might be thought of as, at least for now, the final word in scholarship on the Caitanyacaritāmṛta, representing the culmination of decades of research by one of the leading scholars in the field of Bengali religious literature. As the subtitle suggests, Stewart’s book is not only retrospective in its historical contextualizing of Caitanyacaritāmṛta, but also shows how the work develops discursive modes (what he calls a “grammar”) to establish authority for itself and the theological positions it espouses and thereby creates a model followed by later hagiographical works in the tradition.