ABSTRACT
This chapter examines a range of biographical writings around the figure of Caitanya in nineteenth-century Bengal—from literary histories of Bengali to sacred biographies and theological treatises. The chapter argues that a new vocabulary, borrowed from Protestant Christianity and rooted within a reformist framework of religion, was being adopted and deployed by a host of contemporary Bengali intellectuals to understand and explain the complexities of Caitanya as a Vaiṣṇava avatāra. By invoking related concepts of representation and translation, the chapter seeks to extend an understanding of religious interactions in the period of colonial encounter as based upon semeiotic manoeuvres, where the framework of Protestant Christianity operated as the primary and universal language of religion. The chapter concludes by showing that in a period of heightened cultural nationalism of late nineteenth century Bengal, such “translations” often gave way to more parochial and located ways of understanding religious figures, thereby reinstating the superiority of Hindu traditions over all other World Religions.
