More than one Goswami-era temple of Vrindavana enters Baladeva Vidyabhusana's story, and they are easy to mix up. So we should be clear about which temple he is actually associated with. His teacher Vishvanatha Chakravarti Thakura founded and served at the Radha-Gokulananda temple. According to Gaudiya History's biography, Baladeva personally worshiped the Deities of Jaya and Vijaya Govinda kept there during his training years. But in his later life Baladeva himself became most closely and lastingly connected with a different temple, Radha-Shyamsundar. It was founded by followers of Shyamananda Pandita. This was the very spiritual line that had produced Baladeva's own diksha-guru, Radha-Damodara Gosvami, two generations after Shyamananda.
Installing the Large Deities #
According to the temple's own historical account, Baladeva Vidyabhusana obtained permission from the mahanta of the time, Sri Brajajanananda Deva Gosvami, to install larger Deities at Radha-Shyamsundar. It is said that he was inspired by the splendour of the large Deities of Radha-Govindaji that he had come to know at Jaipur. A block of stone from the Nilgiri hills was carved into the form of Shyamsundar, while Srimati Radharani's deity was made from ashta-dhatu, the traditional eight-metal alloy. These Deities were installed on the altar on Vasanta Panchami of 1719, and they remain the temple's central Deities today. Some accounts also say that Baladeva installed Radha-Shyamasundara Deities associated with Shyamananda Prabhu's line. But this is less certain. Even devotional sources describe it as "the opinion of some devotees," not as settled fact.
If the 1719 date for this installation is accurate, it fits the early end of the range of possible dates proposed for the Jaipur debate. It would mean that Baladeva may have brought the memory of Jaipur's grand Deity worship back to Vrindavana within a few years of the events that made him famous there, and not decades afterward. The two episodes fit together quite naturally in this way. This is one of the few points in Baladeva's life where an early date for the Jaipur controversy seems to fit the story better than a later one. But this detail only suggests it. It is not proof either way.
A Long Vrindavana Career #
Apart from these specific episodes, the record of Baladeva's years at Vrindavana gives few events and only general descriptions. He is remembered as living to a great age, and as continuing to write and to teach the philosophy of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu to whoever came to hear it. One biography notes that he immersed himself in the literature of all six Goswamis of Vrindavana: Rupa, Sanatana, Jiva, Raghunatha Bhatta, Gopala Bhatta and Raghunatha Dasa. He did not study only Jiva Gosvami's Sat-sandarbha, which had been his introduction to Gaudiya theology at Puri. Several sources say that after Vishvanatha Chakravarti Thakura's own disappearance, Baladeva became in practice the senior acharya of the Gaudiya sampradaya in Vrindavana for the rest of his life. But, as with so much else in his biography, no source gives an exact date for when this change happened. No source names anyone who might be considered his own direct successor in that role either.
Why the Distinction Between Temples Matters #
It would be easy to blur Radha-Gokulananda and Radha-Shyamsundar into a single general "Baladeva's temple," especially since popular retellings of his life often summarize his Vrindavana years without naming either specifically. But the difference shows something true about how Gaudiya Vaishnavism was actually organized in this period. Each of the major Goswami-founded temples of Vrindavana had its own line of acharyas and its own community of worshipers. So a great scholar like Baladeva could be trained at one temple, be closely tied to a second by lineage and later be responsible for major decisions there, and also help to protect a third. His life did not center on any single temple. It connects three separate temple communities: Vishvanatha Chakravarti Thakura's Radha-Gokulananda, the Radha-Shyamsundar of his own guru-parampara, and, less directly, the Jaipur temple of Govindaji, whose right to worship he helped to secure.
Radha-Shyamsundar is counted, along with Radha-Damodara, Radha-Govindadeva, Radha-Gokulananda, Radha-Madana-mohana, Radha-Gopinatha and Radha-Raman, among the seven principal Goswami-founded temples of Vrindavana. One account of these seven temples says plainly how Baladeva came to be in charge of this temple. It says that once Baladeva had helped establish Gaudiya Vaishnavism as a genuine sampradaya, he "was awarded the stewardship of Radha-Shyamasundara's temple, a service that he performed up to his last breath." So Baladeva was connected with two of these seven temples. He was a student at one, and he was in charge of another for the rest of his life. For a man who had entered the Gaudiya sampradaya as an outsider only decades before, this placed him unusually close to its central temples.
