Bake in Bengal

[gerard]

I just uploaded Arnold Bake's 1948 brochure about Mahaprabhu and kirtan in Bengal:

www.scribd.com/doc/49792766/Bake-A-Sri-Caitanya-Mahaprabhu

If you can read sheet music, there are some bhajans at the end.

[Deleted]

Jay Nitai,

This is a great essay. Thanks Gerard Ji.

The play Arnold Bake had mentioned "Nader Nimay" is a very famous play (Yatra) in Bengal played by a group of devotee in Howrah (near kolkata) who have been very close to Pathbari Temple and very specifically dear and near of Sripad Ramdas Babaji Mahasaya. Till this days the same group are performing the same play in various Gaudiya Festivals throughout bengal and once in a year in Pathbari himself.

They even have a temple of Mahaprabhu in howrah where they arrange the same play once in a year after Kirtan by Pathbari devotee.

Mr. Bake observed that though they are not professional actor , they are all devotee and they do not play the role or act, rather they lived within the characters. That is their sadhana, spiritual practice.

He wrote -

"The man who portrayed Nimay, in daily life a clerk in a Calcuta printing press, did not act his part he lived it. After one of his trances he had to be carrried away: a trembling human soul in all its nakedness"

Even in these days the same this happens.

Jay Nitai