This energetic and frenzied singing of hymns to Krishna and Radha is still today associated with Chaitanya and the movement that followed him; it became, in effect, devotional street-theatre. Chaitanya (c. 1486-1533) was a remarkable saint and ecstatic who was born in Navadvip, north of present-day Calcutta. The story tells that the all-important moment of change came upon him when he made a visit to the town of Gaya in Bihar. While there, and in a way that we can no longer fathom from the legendary literature, he underwent a religious experience so profound that, when he returned home, he was an obsessed devotee of Krishna and soon gave up the life of a teacher and a householder; he was lost in devotion to Krishna. This new phase of his life was marked by unabashed and complete abandonment, most characteristically exemplified in the new form of devotion that he and his associates in Navadvip developed, the 'sankirtan'. This was made up of a number of features based on congregational devotion. Essential were calling on the name of Krishna and singing of his love for Radha, and of hers for him. To these were added the playing of the drum, 'khol', and of the cymbals, 'kartal', and, as the emotion gathered intensity, wild devotional dancing, followed eventually by an uncontrolled procession through the streets.

The influence of Chaitanya on his followers was so great that even in his own lifetime he was regarded as an incarnation of Krishna or indeed in some mystical way as a combination, in one body, of both Krishna and Radha. He thus represented the ultimate, as he experienced not only the love of Krishna for Radha but also hers for him. Paintings from the Kalighat shrine in Calcutta show him in both this and (in nineteenth- and early twentieth-century versions) a further syncretic form, where he is six armed and bearing the attributes of Rama (green arms and a bow), Krishna (blue arms and playing the flute) and the historical figure of Chaitanya (yellow arms and carrying the bag and staff of the mendicant).

In Navadvip he gathered around him a group of disciples, important among whom was Nityananda. He was, in a sense, seen as Chaitanya's brother and thus, in the same way that Chaitanya was considered to be Krishna, Nityananda was held to be an incarnation of Krishna's brother Balarama. In popular prints from the early lithographic presses of the late nineteenth century the two appear together flanked by their 'earlier' forms, Krishna and Balarama. It may have been through the influence of Nityananda (often colloquially known as Nitai) that ideas linked to the tantras, as well as caste inclusivity, became a stream of the new Bengali devotion to Krishna. This sub-school envisaged the physical body of the devotee as actually containing Krishna himself. The body was viewed as a microcosm of the cosmic, universal Krishna, a realization facilitated by rituals that included sexual union with a female devotee. In this sectarian view the male devotee could actually become Krishna, rather than merely being an attendant on Krishna, ever separate from but in the presence of the godhead. These ideas about microcosm and macrocosm surely draw on earlier tantric concepts that were current in both Buddhist and Hindu cults in eastern India in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries.The Chore Bagan studio produced popular prints for the mass market comparable to those being created at the larger Calcutta Art Studio. Lithography was gaining momentum as a medium for picture production in the 1870s, and the Chore Bagan studio, located in Bhoobun Bannerjee’s Lane, Calcutta, was active in the 1880s and 1890s. Images produced include depictions of Kali, the fight between Rama and Ravana, as well as prints depicting the followers of Chaitanya. Hand-written captions in English have been added to the Bengali letter-press of the majority (some letterpress also in Hindi). The majority of the prints in this album were produced in Calcutta and reflect Bengal devotional cults; the final four prints were published by the Ravi Varma Press from Lonavla, c. 1910.

- Curator's comment, British Museum

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