Study a Verse

• This is a scheme for performing kīrtana in a procession.
• During Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu’s time, one party was composed of twenty-one men: four people playing mṛdaṅgas, one leading the chanting, and sixteen others striking karatālas, responding to the leading chanter.
• If many men join the saṅkīrtana movement, they may follow in the footsteps of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu and form different parties according to the time and the number of men available.

Śrīla Prabhupāda's own sentences, chosen from the purport as its central points. Read the full purport on Vedabase to see them in place.

Public courage and ecstatic joy. The saṅkīrtana movement confronts opposition and moves toward recognition and expansion.

The mood of Ādi 17 as a whole, an editorial reading, not the text itself. See the emotional atlas

Ādi 17: The Pastimes of Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu in His Youth

From Śrīla Prabhupāda's chapter summary, the lines nearest this verse:

When Śrī Kṛṣṇa assumed the form of the four-armed Nārāyaṇa, the gopīs showed their respect, but they were not very interested in Him. In the ecstatic love of the gopīs, all worshipable forms but Kṛṣṇa are rejected.