ABSTRACT
Historical understanding of the relations between Hindus and Muslims in India should include knowledge of how Hindus and Muslims perceived and felt about each other at different times and in the various regions of the subcontinent. There is, however, relatively little of comparable material written by Hindu authors about their Muslim contemporaries. Initially, the most striking feature of all the biographers’ discussions of the Muslims is, as has already been mentioned, the total absence of basic terms such as ‘muslim’, ‘musalman’ and ‘islam’. There is evidence in the texts examined of lingering anxiety over the past record and continuing potential of the jati that call Muslim and which the biographers usually called yavana or mleccha for inflicting injury. The one most influential document produced by the Caitanya Vaisnava community, the Caitanya-caritamrta of Krsnadasa Kaviraja, is both a sacred biography and a compendium of doctrine composed in Sanskritized Bengali and including numerous Sanskrit verses.
