Was there no sankirtan before Lord Chaitanya?
From: Vinay K
In many Prabhupad’s books, it is mentioned that Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu introduced Sankirtan Movement (Chanting of Hare Krishna Mahamantra), here my question is didn’t predecessor Gurus of Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu chanting Hare Krishna Mahamantra?
Transcript
This is an AI-generated transcript and may contain some errors.
Question from Vinay. In many Prabhupada’s books, it is mentioned that Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu introduced Sankirtan movement, chanting of Sri Krishna Mahamantra. Here my question is, didn’t predestined gurus of Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu chant the Hare Krishna Mahamantra? Answer, yes, they did.
Sankirtan was an activity that had happened for Chaitanya Mahaprabhu also. But Chaitanya Mahaprabhu made it into a movement. That’s why Srila Prabhupada says that Chaitanya Mahaprabhu started or introduced or expanded the Sankirtan movement.
A movement indicates dynamism, activity, propagation and widespread dissemination. So, before Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, the Vedic literature had talked about the glories of chanting of the holy names. And there have been great devotees, even not just the gurus of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, but even devotees in various parts of India who had chanted the holy names.
But it was Chaitanya Mahaprabhu who actively propagated it. In the sense of coming together and doing public Sankirtans, travelling from place to place and inspiring devotees to chant the holy names and explaining based on scripture how it is the chanting of the holy names is a sadhana and it is the most suited sadhana for this Kali Yuga. And even academic scholars acknowledge that one of the distinctive contributions of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu Sampradaya, the Gaudiya Sampradaya is to explain the theology of the holy name and to spread systematically and vigorously the chanting of the holy names.
So the process of chanting of holy names was mentioned in the Vedic literature and was also practiced. But Chaitanya Mahaprabhu gave it through his followers, especially the six Goswamis, gave it a systematic philosophical basis or rather revealed that systematic philosophical basis as it was given in the Vedic literature and explained it in current context for Kali Yuga. And further, he personally showed by his example how to ecstatically chant the holy names and inspired many many other people to chant.
So it is from his time that Sankirtan became a movement and Sankirtan became an emphasized and widespread sadhana which was rooted in strong philosophy.