The ten Pathan cavalrymen released Balabhadra Bhattacharya, Krishnadasa and the Sanoriya Vipra. By then they were convinced that Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was no robbery victim. He was a sannyasi who often fainted in ecstasy. Then the soldiers did something the text does not dwell on, though it does not leave it out either: they came forward and worshiped His feet themselves. The mood had changed from tension to reverence, and in this changed mood the encounter took its real turn. One member of the troop stepped forward, wanting to talk about theology. He was an older man dressed all in black, whom the others already treated as a saintly figure.
An Elder Grounded In The Koran #
Chaitanya-charitamrita identifies this man only as a grave, black-robed Sufi practitioner. He is the same person Mahaprabhu would rename Ramadasa only a little later. He wanted to prove, on the authority of his own scripture, that the Absolute Truth is ultimately impersonal, a formless oneness into which the soul merges. This was not just an odd private opinion of his own. Gaudiya commentators note that the Sufi tradition of that period relied on exactly this kind of impersonalism. It was summed up in the Sufi's own saying, analahak, "I am the Truth," a teaching that the soul and God are one and the same. In his purport to Madhya-lila 18.190, Srila Prabhupada traces this teaching back to the same impersonalist line of thought that Shankaracharya had started within Sanatana Dharma centuries earlier. Whatever this man argued, Mahaprabhu answered point by point, until he had no argument left to make.
What The Koran Actually Says #
Mahaprabhu did not dismiss the Koran. He discussed it directly and on its own terms, the way He argued from scripture everywhere from Puri to Kashi. He argued that the Koran itself, read to its real end and not only its opening arguments, proves impersonalism wrong. It establishes a personal, transcendental God. This God has a supreme, blissful body and is dark-complexioned. He is the single origin of creation, maintenance and dissolution, worshipable by everyone, and the cause of all causes. Real freedom from material bondage, He said, comes only through loving devotional service to that person, not through absorption into a formless light. The Sufi had no answer. He admitted plainly that everything Mahaprabhu had said was written in the Koran. But, he said, the scholars who taught him had never understood it that way. They had taught only the impersonal portions and had never looked closely at the rest.
Surrender, A New Name, And A Second Fall #
What followed happened quickly. The Sufi confessed that his pride as a learned man had melted away the moment he saw Mahaprabhu. He said that his tongue was already chanting Hare Krishna by itself, without his trying. Then he fell at the Lord's feet and asked to be taught the real goal of life. Mahaprabhu told him to rise: his sins of many lifetimes were already gone, since he had chanted the holy name. Then, turning to the whole troop, He called out for everyone present to chant Krishna's name. As they did, the text says, ecstatic love overtook them. Right at this moment, just after the Sufi's own initiation as Ramadasa, the second and younger Pathan in the group could hold back no longer. That was Bijali Khan, master of the very servants who had just surrendered around him. How he fell a moment later, and how the Lord placed His foot on his head, is the closing scene of his biography.
A Debate Preserved, A Debater Unnamed #
It is curious that the man whose argument fills most of this episode is never named until his conversion. But the boy who says almost nothing, only "Krishna!", is named, and is also described twice over: once by his birth, as the young son of the king (Madhya 18.207), and once by his later fame, which was celebrated at every holy place of pilgrimage (Madhya 18.212). Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita gives no sign that Bijali Khan spoke during the theological discussion itself. Here he is a listener. He is a young ruler's son, watching the elder of his own household defeated by an argument. When he rode out that morning, he could not have expected this. What changed him seems to have been not so much the argument itself as what he saw happen to Ramadasa in front of him. It was proof, right before his eyes, that this sannyasi's mercy could reach a man of his own faith and family.
