Kavikarnapura

(mid-16th c.) Author of one version of
the Chaitanya-Charitramrta (“Nectar
of Chaitanya’s Deeds”), an account of the
life of the Bengali saint Chaitanya.
Kavikarnapura’s text was written in 1542,
nine years after Chaitanya’s death, when
the effort to declare Chaitanya a saint
had already begun. Kavikarnapura freely
acknowledges his debt to an earlier biography of Chaitanya, written by Murari
Gupta. He diverges from the earlier text
by portraying Chaitanya as an incarnation of Krishna, descending to earth to
bestow grace on ordinary mortals. As
with the other traditional accounts of
Chaitanya’s life, the author does not
claim this to be an “objective” biography
but instead a hagiography written by a
passionate devotee (bhakta).