GAUDIYA MATH

The Gaudiya Math is a Gaudiya Vaishnava Matha (monastic organisation) formed on 6 September 1920, about 30 months (2.5 years) after Om Vishnupad Paramhamsa Parivrajak-acharya Ashtottrashat Sri Srimad Bhakti Siddhant Saraswati Goswami Thakur Jagadguru Prabhupada took sannyasa, the renounced order of life. On 7 March 1918, the same day he took sannyasa, he established the Sri Chaitanya Math in Mayapura in West Bengal, later recognised as the parent body of all the Gaudiya Math branches. Its purpose was to spread Gaudiya Vaishnavism, the philosophy of the medieval Vaisnava saint Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, through preaching and publishing.

From the beginning of Chaitanya's bhakti movement in Bengal, devotees, including Haridasa Thakur and others. This openness and disregard for the traditional caste system received a boost from the "broad-minded vision" of Bhaktivinoda Thakura, a nineteenth-century magistrate and prolific writer on bhakti topics, and was institutionalised by his son and successor Bhakti Siddhanta Saraswati Thakura Prabhupada in the twentieth-century Gaudiya Math. The Gaudiya Math had established 64 branches and counting Worldwide.