The Final Word: The Caitanya Carit[a.bar]mrta and the Grammar of Religious Tradition.

• Author: Manring, Rebecca
• Position: Book review

The Final Word: The Caitanya Carit[a.bar]mrta and the Grammar of Religious Tradition. By TONY K. STEWART. New York: OXFORD UNIVERSITY PRESS. 2010. Pp. xxvii + 442. $74.

The Final Word is a masterful and long-awaited work which examines the literary and theological history of the Gaud[i.bar]ya Vaisnava movement and makes some startling new claims about the role and purpose of Krsnad[a.bar]sa Kavir[a.bar]ja's hagiography, the Caitanya Carit[a.bar]mrta (henceforth CC, Stewart's "Final Word"). This work is an essential complement to the Dimock and Stewart translation of the CC that appeared a few years ago, work on which necessarily delayed Stewart's completion of the present piece. Further, it in itself comprises the "final word" on the early years of the Gaud[i.bar]ya movement, as no one else has attempted such a comprehensive examination of the formation and definition of that stage of the community. SK De and Ramakanta Cakravarty have both produced useful overviews of the Gaud[i.bar]yas, but neither volume is as voluminous or comprehensive as Stewart's work. Other scholars have written on specific subgroups of the Gaud[i.bar]yas--Glen Hayes and Jason Fuller in their as-yet-unpublished dissertations; Alan Entwistle on Braj; David Haberman on rasa theory; and this reviewer on the Advait[a.bar]c[a.bar]ry a corpus. The Final Word, however, brings all previous scholarship together and expands on it, and, more important, through its careful consideration of an enormous set of hitherto unexamined works, pushes our understanding of the CC well beyond previous boundaries. Scholars interested in hagiography, in community definition and formation, in the ways pieces of literature inform subsequent production and use, in rhetorical strategy, in addition, of course, to those working specifically in South Asia or even medieval Bengal, will all find much to ponder here.

Stewart's periodic re-statements of the issue under consideration allow the reader to follow the development of his overarching argument through the book. As the cover "blurb" states, "Tony K. Stewart investigates how, with no central leadership, no institutional authority, and no geographic center, a religious community nevertheless came to define itself, fix its textual canon, and flourish." Indeed the community had begun to show fissures even before the death of its charismatic leader. What, then, would come to be identifiable as Gaud[i.bar]ya Vaisnavism? Stewart discusses the problem...