Texts

The scriptures and treatises the tradition reads most closely: the Bhagavad-gita, the Bhagavata Purana, the Brahma-samhita, Rupa Gosvami's works on devotion and later verse anthologies.

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  Bhakti-rasamrita-sindhu: Rupa Gosvami's ocean of devotional feeling

  Rupa Gosvami's Sanskrit treatise of 1541 turned classical Indian aesthetics into a theology of devotion. Its four 'oceans', its stages from faith to love, and its English translations, including the 1960s version by Bhakti Hridaya Bon.

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  Kalki: the avatar of the end of the age

  Kalki is the tenth and future avatar of Vishnu, expected at the end of the Kali age. What the Bhagavata Purana and later texts say about him, how he is depicted, and how the figure has been used in modern times.

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  The Bhagavad-gita in the Gaudiya tradition

  The Bhagavad-gita is read across Hinduism. How Gaudiya Vaishnava commentators from Vishvanatha Chakravarti to the twentieth century interpreted it, which verses they treated as its core, and the main editions they produced.

• The Brahma-samhita: a South Indian hymn at the heart of Gaudiya theology

  The fifth chapter of the Brahma-samhita, a Sanskrit hymn to Krishna as Govinda, was found by Chaitanya in a temple in Kerala's far south. Its content, its refrain, Jiva Gosvami's commentary and the 1932 English translation.

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  The Buddha as an avatar of Vishnu

  How the Buddha came to be listed among the avatars of Vishnu in the Puranas and in Jayadeva's Gita Govinda, how Vaishnava and Gaudiya authors explained his role, and how Buddhists and historians see the idea.

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  Who is a Vaishnava? The Vaishnava-tattva chapter of the Gaudiya Kanthahara

  The Gaudiya Kanthahara is a twentieth-century anthology of Sanskrit and Bengali verses. Its third chapter gathers the classic texts on who counts as a Vaishnava, the grades of devotees and the qualities expected of them.