Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu

Introduction

Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu (1486–1534) is worshipped throughout Bengal, Odisha, and the wider Vaiṣṇava world as Kṛṣṇa Himself. He appeared in the mood and complexion of His greatest devotee, Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī, to taste and distribute pure love of God. Historically, He is the founder of Gauḍīya Vaiṣṇavism. He also made congregational chanting of the holy names, saṅkīrtana, into a widespread spiritual movement. During His lifetime, this movement spread throughout Bengal and Odisha, and through His followers it later reached the whole world.

Chapter 1

The Advent of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu

Gaura Purnima 1486, a lunar eclipse, a town already chanting, and the golden child born on the bank of the Ganges

Open as a separate page

The family into which Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was born had come to Nabadwip from elsewhere. His grandfather Upendra Mishra was a learned brahmana of the Srihatta district in eastern Bengal (modern Sylhet). Upendra Mishra's son Jagannatha Mishra travelled west to Nabadwip to continue his studies. At that time Nabadwip was the most famous centre of Sanskrit learning in Bengal. There Jagannatha Mishra studied under the astronomer and scholar Nilambara Chakravarti, and there he married Nilambara's daughter, Sachi Devi. The couple settled on the bank of the Ganges in the area now known as Sridhama Mayapur. They lived simply, as a learned but poor brahmana family.

Eight Daughters and the Birth of Vishvarupa #

Their married life was marked by repeated grief. Vaishnava biographers record that eight daughters were born to Sachi Devi before any child survived infancy. Each of them died shortly after birth. The first son to live was Vishvarupa, a boy of extraordinary beauty and seriousness. He would later leave home to accept the renounced order while still young. Then, after a long interval, Sachi Devi conceived again. The biographies describe how Jagannatha Mishra and his wife received signs that this child would be different from any that had come before. These signs came through dreams and through the words of visiting astrologers.

The Birth During the Lunar Eclipse #

The birth took place on the evening of the full moon of the Bengali month of Phalguna. In the Saka era the year was 1407, and by the Western calendar the date was the eighteenth of February, 1486. Vaishnavas remember this moment especially because of something that happened at the same time. That evening there was a total lunar eclipse. By a very old custom, followers of Sanatana Dharma bathe in a sacred river during an eclipse and chant the names of God for purification. So the whole of Nabadwip was standing in the Ganges, calling out the holy names of Krishna. At that very hour, the child was born a few yards away on its bank. The tradition does not see this as an accident at all. It sees it as the first and clearest sign of what He had come to do. A whole town was chanting together, without being asked, at the moment the Lord of the sankirtana movement entered the world.

The Horoscope and the Name Vishvambhara #

Nilambara Chakravarti, His maternal grandfather and a respected astrologer, drew up the child's horoscope. After reading it, he is said to have declared that this boy would become a teacher without equal, that His name would be honoured across the world, and that He would deliver countless souls. Nilambara Chakravarti gave Him the name Vishvambhara, "he who maintains the entire universe," a name with special meaning for Vaishnavas. They see in this choice a quiet sign that the grandfather recognised something far greater in this child than any grandparent usually hopes for.

How He Came to Be Called Nimai #

Because a nimba tree stood beside the house where He was born, He was given the household name by which the whole of Nabadwip would know Him for the next twenty-four years: Nimai. The biographies say that the name was chosen by Sita Thakurani, the wife of Advaita Acharya. She came from Shantipura with gifts for the newborn. She chose the name of a bitter tree to protect Him from the notice of ghosts and witches. His golden complexion was unusual, and people often spoke about it. It gave Him the other names He carried through life: Gaurahari, Gauranga and Gaura, all built on the Sanskrit word for gold.

Why Krishna Appeared as Gauranga #

Gaudiya Vaishnava theology does not treat this birth as the arrival of an unusually gifted religious teacher who was later recognised as divine. It holds that Krishna Himself descended, and in a special and deliberate way. He did not come in His own original form and dark complexion. Instead, He took on the golden complexion of His own greatest devotee, Srimati Radharani. More importantly, He took on Radharani's interior emotional life. The Chaitanya-charitamrita explains the reason. Krishna wished to taste for Himself the sweetness of the love that Radharani feels for Him. By its very nature, this experience is not open to Him as the object of that love. At the same time, He wished to distribute that love freely to everyone, which He had not done in His previous descent. The verses in which this is set out are gathered below.

Advaita Acharya's Call for the Lord #

There is another part of the tradition that is dear to Bengali Vaishnavas. Advaita Acharya was an elderly and greatly respected Vaishnava of Shantipura. For years he had been troubled by the irreligion of the age. He had worshipped Krishna with Ganges water and tulasi leaves, calling on Him with great intensity to descend and rescue the people of Kali-yuga. Vaishnavas hold that the Lord agreed to appear in answer to Advaita Acharya's appeal. Advaita Acharya was far older than Mahaprabhu in years. Even so, he is counted among the Panca-tattva, as one of the five features of the Lord's own descent, because Chaitanya-charitamrita explains that he is not different from the Lord Himself.

Yogapith and the Gaura Purnima Festival #

Today the temple known as Yogapith marks the house at Mayapur where the birth took place. It is one of the main places of pilgrimage in the Gaudiya Vaishnava world. The anniversary of the day, Gaura Purnima, is the most important festival in the Gaudiya calendar. Devotees observe it by fasting until moonrise, by reading the accounts of His pastimes and by performing sankirtana.

Back to top

Chapter 2

Childhood Pastimes

Nimai Pandita of Nabadwip, prodigy, prankster, and the Lord hidden in a brahmana's son

Open as a separate page

The Crying That Stopped at the Holy Name #

Even before He could speak, the infant Vishvambhara showed a nature that no ordinary child has. Vaishnava biographers record that He would cry in His mother's arms and could not be comforted, sometimes for hours. Nothing would quiet Him except the sound of women in the neighbourhood calling out "Haribol! Haribol!" ("Chant the name of Hari!"). Sachi Devi soon learned to invite the neighbourhood women to gather and chant whenever her son wept. The crying would stop the moment the holy names were chanted. It was as if the child Himself, even from the cradle, was teaching Nabadwip what would become the medicine for the whole world's suffering.

Eating Clay and His Answer to His Mother #

As a toddler He was mischievous in ways that tried His family's patience, though looking back they saw them as miraculous. It is said that He was once found eating clay from the courtyard instead of the sweets His mother had left for Him. Sachi Devi scolded Him and asked why. He innocently replied that earth is used to make cooking pots, and cooking pots hold the food she gives Him, so He didn't see the difference. This mischievous reasoning already gave a hint of the brilliant mind that was to come.

The Two Thieves Who Carried Him Away #

On another occasion two travelling thieves saw the extraordinarily beautiful golden child playing alone. They wanted to steal the gold ornaments He wore, so they tried to lure Him away with the promise of sweets. The stories tell that they then became hopelessly lost, wandering in circles around Nabadwip. At last, terrified and sorry for what they had done, they had no choice but to bring the child safely back to His mother's door.

The Dream of Sannyasis and the Offered Food #

Before his son was born, Nimai's father Jagannatha Mishra had once dreamed that many sannyasis had come to worship the child in his house. Wandering holy men and Vaishnavas were indeed drawn to their home. One detail appears again and again in the biographies. Whenever a guest arrived and left food offerings unattended even for a moment, the infant would help Himself. His embarrassed parents were forced to keep the doors closed to visiting brahmanas. This went on until they discovered that Nimai only ever touched food that had truly been offered to Krishna in the heart of the devotee bringing it. He never touched the food of a hypocrite, or of a casual visitor whose devotion was insincere. For those who could understand, small incidents like these were clear signs that this was no ordinary brahmana boy.

Learning the Alphabet in a Single Day #

At the age of five, Nimai was enrolled in the village pathasala and is said to have learned the entire Bengali alphabet within a single day of instruction, astonishing His teacher.

Studying Grammar Under Gangadasa Pandita #

By eight He was sent to study under the famous pandit Gangadasa at his tola in the neighbouring village of Ganganagar. There, within about two years, He mastered Sanskrit vyakarana (grammar), the most difficult of the traditional sciences. He also learned the beginnings of rhetoric (alankara) and logic. The accounts agree that He was a restless and playful student. Still, He understood in a single hearing what other students needed weeks to memorise. His father passed away while Nimai was still a boy. After that, He continued His education largely by teaching Himself from His father's books, studying especially smriti (scriptural law) and nyaya (logic).

The Young Logician of Nabadwip #

By His early teenage years Nimai had opened His own tola in Nabadwip. At that time Nabadwip was the leading centre of Sanskrit scholarship in all of Bengal, and He was already recognised there as one of its sharpest young logicians. This reputation prepared the way for His famous encounter with the visiting scholar Keshava Kashmiri Pandita, which is told in full on its own page. Besides His scholarship, Nimai was known among the townspeople for His wit, which could be gently cutting toward false pride and religious hypocrisy. He also had a playful sense of humour with His young friends and fellow students. Later, once He revealed Himself as Krishna Chaitanya, many of them remembered these moments as pastimes of clearly divine playfulness, not as ordinary childhood mischief.

Why These Pastimes Matter #

These childhood pastimes are precious to Gaudiya Vaishnavas, and not only because they are charming. They show that the child born in Sachi Devi's house was never an ordinary brahmana boy who later "became" enlightened. This is clear even before the Lord ever lifts His arms in sankirtana. From His very first cry, which only the holy name could quiet, He was Krishna Himself. He was playing the part of a human child so that Nabadwip, and through Nabadwip the entire world, would have a human life to look to, learn from and love.

Back to top

Chapter 3

Student Life and Nimai Pandita the Scholar

Grammar under Gangadasa, a school of His own, and the sharpest logician in the most learned town in Bengal

Open as a separate page

By the time Nimai was five He had been enrolled in the village school, and by eight He was studying at the tola of Gangadasa Pandita in the neighbouring village of Ganganagar. Vyakarana, Sanskrit grammar, was the foundation of the whole traditional course of study, and the hardest of its subjects. A student who could handle Panini's system and the commentaries built on it was considered fit for any other study that might follow. The biographies record that Nimai not only mastered grammar with unusual speed but also began writing His own commentaries on it. They also say that He would sometimes silence older students. He did this by showing that a rule they had taken as settled could be read in another way that could still be defended.

Vishvarupa Leaves Home for Sannyasa #

Two griefs shaped this period of His life. The first was the departure of His elder brother. Vishvarupa, some years older, had grown into a young man of strong detachment. His parents were arranging his marriage, but instead of accepting it he left home and accepted sannyasa, taking the name Shankararanya. For Sachi Devi and Jagannatha Mishra it was a hard blow. The Chaitanya-charitamrita relates that Nimai afterwards comforted His mother with a promise that He would not do the same. Vaishnava readers have always found this promise sad and touching, because they know what He would do at twenty-four. The chapter also preserves an episode in which Vishvarupa appeared to Nimai in a dream and invited Him to take sannyasa and join him. Nimai declined, and Vishvarupa sent Him back home.

The Death of Jagannatha Mishra #

The second grief was the death of Jagannatha Mishra, while Nimai was still a boy. The family, never wealthy, was left in real difficulty. Nimai continued His education largely on His own. He worked through His father's books in smriti, the literature of religious and social law, and in nyaya, the very difficult school of Indian logic. At that time Nabadwip was the most famous centre of nyaya in India. He gained a good working knowledge of nyaya almost entirely without a teacher, and this is one of the details the biographers stress. Students of nyaya commonly spent a decade under a master.

Opening His Own Tola in Nabadwip #

By His mid-teens Nimai had opened His own tola and was teaching grammar to His own students on the bank of the Ganges. Accounts of Him as a teacher are vivid, and they agree with each other. They describe Him as brilliant, playful, quick and merciless in debate, and quite ready to enjoy His own superiority. He is described walking the streets of Nabadwip with a crowd of students behind Him. He would stop any scholar He met, challenge him on some fine point, and then break down whatever position the man defended. Sometimes, after doing so, He argued the opposite side with equal force, just to show that He could. Nabadwip's pandits found Him a fearsome opponent and rather hard to bear. By the time He was sixteen, the town had decided that He was the sharpest logician of His generation, and that no one in Nadia could stand against Him in argument.

The Meeting With Keshava Kashmiri Pandita #

His reputation was confirmed once and for all in His encounter with the travelling scholar Keshava Kashmiri Pandita. Keshava Kashmiri had toured the gatherings of learned men across India, and he came to Nabadwip undefeated. He left it having accepted defeat from a teenager on the bank of the Ganges. The full account is given separately.

Ekadashi Fasting and the Ganges Pastimes #

The Chaitanya-charitamrita also records incidents from these years that already show, behind the scholar, where His life would lead. He forbade His mother to eat grains on Ekadashi, the fortnightly fast day observed by Vaishnavas. It was a small instruction at home, but a clearly Vaishnava one, coming from a boy whose fame rested entirely on worldly learning. On one Ekadashi He pretended to be ill and asked for the food being offered to Lord Vishnu at the house of the wealthy brothers Hiranya and Jagadisha, and they sent it to Him. He played in the Ganges with the other young men of the town and joked with the girls at the bathing ghats. Gaudiya commentators treat this last incident as more than youthful high spirits. This is because they read the whole of His household life as a time when the Lord conducted Himself in a fully human way, while always remaining, in His own nature, exactly what He was.

The Purpose of His Scholarly Pride #

This stage of His life raises a difficult question, and the tradition does not try to smooth it over. The young Nimai Pandita was proud, and knew He was, and enjoyed it. Vaishnava writers do not read this pride as a fault that was later corrected. They read it as part of the design. The Lord established Himself as the finest scholar in the most learned town in Bengal. So when He later gave up scholarship for the chanting of the holy name, no one could say He had taken up devotion because He was not capable of anything more demanding. The man who taught Nabadwip to chant was the same man who had first beaten Nabadwip at its own game.

Back to top

Chapter 4

The Debate with Kashmiri Pandita

How a young Nabadwip logician humbled India's undefeated traveling scholar without ever claiming victory

Open as a separate page

By the time He was a young pandit running His own school of Sanskrit grammar in Nabadwip, Nimai had already earned a reputation as the sharpest logician in a town famous for producing them. At this stage of His life Nimai was still a householder. He was still known simply as a brilliant and somewhat proud young scholar, and there was no outward sign yet of the sankirtana movement to come. It was then that a famous traveling pandit named Keshava arrived in Nabadwip. Keshava had been honoured with the title Kashmiri Pandita for his mastery of poetry and rhetoric.

The Digvijayi and His Hundred Verses #

Keshava Kashmiri Pandita had already toured the length and breadth of India as a "digvijayi". This is a scholar who challenges the gatherings of learned men in every city he visits and, if no one defeats him, claims the title of conqueror of all directions. He had reportedly triumphed over the greatest pandits of Kashi, Kanchi and countless other centres of learning. He arrived in Nabadwip expecting an easy victory, as everywhere else. He hoped to add the town's proud reputation for scholarship to his own list of conquests. In Nimai's honour and as a challenge, he composed on the spot a hundred Sanskrit verses in praise of the Ganges. The verses were so full of alliteration and double meanings that no scholar present could immediately find fault with a single syllable.

Nimai Finds the Flaws in the Verses #

The pandits of Nabadwip did not want to be humiliated, but they could not answer Keshava on his own terms. It is said that they quietly asked the young Nimai to test the visiting scholar. Even though He was young, they already knew Him to be unusually gifted. Nimai listened to the hundred verses once. Then, with a courtesy that gave no hint of what was coming, He praised one particular verse. With apparent innocence He asked whether a certain compound word in it could carry a second meaning. Keshava was puzzled and admitted he had not intended one. Then Nimai went through the verses one by one. He showed that many of Keshava's own famous lines, read with strict grammatical care, actually contained faults, needless repetitions or unintended meanings. A truly perfect composition should never contain such things. Nimai did this so respectfully and so exactly that the older scholar could find no honest way to disagree.

Victory Without Humiliation #

The encounter is remembered as more than an ordinary contest between scholars because of the way Nimai won. He never boasted, never humiliated Keshava Kashmiri Pandita in front of the crowd, and never claimed to have "defeated" him. He raised questions as a respectful junior seeking to understand, and He let the older pandit see the flaws for himself.

The Dream of Mother Ganga #

That night, so the histories relate, Keshava Kashmiri Pandita had a dream. In it the goddess of the Ganges herself, whom his hundred verses had glorified, appeared to him. She revealed that the young brahmana who had questioned him that day was in fact the Supreme Lord. She also gently scolded him for his pride in digvijaya conquest. Shaken, Keshava returned the next morning and openly accepted that Nimai was greater. The two are said to have parted as friends, not rivals. Keshava Kashmiri Pandita continued his life, free of the very pride that had shaped his whole career until then.

Why the Episode Matters #

For Gaudiya Vaishnavas, the episode is important in two ways. On the historical level, it firmly established Nimai as the finest scholar Nabadwip, and by extension all of Bengal, could produce. No one could rival Him, and this was settled before the sankirtana movement had even begun. Later He freely gave up this scholarly fame for the humility of the holy name, and His high position made that choice stand out even more clearly. On the spiritual level, later Vaishnava commentators read the story as an early, still-hidden hint of who Nimai really was. Even at the height of His fame as a logician, a moment's contact with Him was enough to reveal the presence of the Supreme Lord in a dream. Nabadwip itself would not fully recognise this truth until a short time later, when He returned from Gaya transformed forever.

Back to top

Chapter 5

Marriage and Household Life

Lakshmipriya, the journey to East Bengal, and His years as a grihastha pandit, a full household life that He would later give up

Open as a separate page

Marriage came to Nimai in the ordinary way and at the ordinary age. The bride was Lakshmipriya, also called Lakshmidevi, the daughter of Vallabhacharya of Nabadwip, from a respectable brahmana family of the town. The Chaitanya-charitamrita places the marriage after the death of Jagannatha Mishra, so Sachi Devi, a widow with little money, arranged it. The biographies say the match was proposed after Sachi Devi saw her son and the girl meeting near the Ganges. They record the wedding as a simple and entirely traditional one. Nimai was in His middle teens, and His wife was younger still.

The Teaching Journey to East Bengal #

What followed was just as ordinary. Nimai was a young brahmana pandit with a school of His own, and He had a widowed mother and a wife to support. He needed an income, and teaching grammar in Nabadwip did not provide much of one. So Nimai did what many Bengali scholars of that time did. He travelled east, into what is now Bangladesh, to teach and to seek the support of wealthy men there. The sixteenth chapter of the Chaitanya-charitamrita records that the journey had three purposes. They were to get financial help, to continue His own study, and to introduce sankirtana, which was important for what was to come. Even at this stage, before the transformation at Gaya, there are signs in the record that He was already teaching people in East Bengal to chant.

The Meeting With Tapana Mishra #

On this journey He met Tapana Mishra, a brahmana who was troubled about the goal of life and came to Nimai for guidance. Nimai instructed him in devotional service and told him to go and live at Varanasi. The instruction seems strange until one knows what happened later. Years later, when Mahaprabhu came to Varanasi as a sannyasi to challenge the Mayavadi scholars of that city, He took His meals in Tapana Mishra's house. Tapana Mishra's son Raghunatha served Him there. The tradition reads the episode as an early example of the Lord arranging His own future circumstances well in advance.

The Snakebite and the Death of Lakshmipriya #

While Nimai was still in East Bengal, Lakshmidevi died at home in Nabadwip. The Chaitanya-charitamrita states that she was bitten by a serpent. As he often does, Krishnadasa Kaviraja leaves the phrase open. Gaudiya commentators have long read it as the serpent of separation, meaning that she could not survive being parted from Him. She was very young. In a few short years the household had lost a father, an elder son and a daughter-in-law. Nimai returned to that household, and to a mother whose grief the biographers describe as it was, without any attempt to soften it.

The Second Marriage to Vishnupriya #

It was Sachi Devi who insisted on a second marriage. Nimai agreed to it out of respect for her, not out of any desire of His own. The bride this time was Vishnupriya, daughter of Sanatana Mishra. Sanatana Mishra was a scholar of high standing who held the position of raja-pandita, court pandit. His household was far richer than that of the widow Sachi Devi. So the marriage was a much grander occasion than the first. Vaishnava accounts describe at length the procession, the assembled pandits, and the astonishment of Nabadwip that the most brilliant young scholar in the town should be marrying into its most distinguished family.

Nimai as a Householder #

The household life that followed lasted only a few years, and the tradition remembers these years with a special tenderness. As a grihastha, Nimai taught in the morning and came back to a house where His mother and His wife waited. He argued with pandits in the street. In every outward detail His life was quite ordinary. This was the last period in which He belonged to anyone in the ordinary human way. Vaishnavas note that, by every account, He was an attentive son and a considerate husband, and that nothing in His conduct as a householder was lacking or half-hearted. This matters to the tradition because of what came next. When He renounced it all at twenty-four, walking out at night without a farewell, He was not abandoning a life that had disappointed Him or a family He had failed. He was giving up something that was still whole.

Vishnupriya Devi in Separation #

Vishnupriya survived Him by many decades. Vaishnava literature records that she remained in Nabadwip after His departure, living in great austerity. She worshipped a Deity of her husband and chanted on tulasi beads. For each round she completed, she set aside one grain of rice, and in the evening she cooked only what she had counted out that day. In Gaudiya Vaishnavism she is honoured not as a wife who was left behind, but as the living form of bhakti in separation. This is the mood in which Mahaprabhu Himself would live for the last years of His life at Puri.

Back to top

Chapter 6

The Journey to Gaya and Initiation by Ishvara Puri

A son's duty at the Vishnupada temple, initiation from a disciple of Madhavendra Puri, and the great turning point of His life

Open as a separate page

According to tradition, a son owes his departed father the shraddha ceremony. The place in all India where it brings the greatest religious merit is Gaya. There the offering is made at the temple of Vishnupada, the imprint of Vishnu's foot. Some years after Jagannatha Mishra's death, Nimai set out from Nabadwip for Gaya to fulfil that duty, taking with Him a party of His own students. When He went, He was a young married pandit, the most celebrated logician in Nadia, travelling to carry out a family obligation. He returned as someone His own town could hardly recognise.

Meeting Ishvara Puri at Vishnupada #

At Gaya He performed the ceremony for His father. And at the Vishnupada temple He met a wandering Vaishnava sannyasi named Ishvara Puri. Ishvara Puri was a disciple of Madhavendra Puri, and so he belonged to a line in which the mood of intense, personal, deeply felt devotion to Krishna had been carefully preserved. Gaudiya Vaishnavas see Madhavendra Puri as the one in whom that mood first fully blossomed, and Ishvara Puri had received it from him directly. From Ishvara Puri, Nimai received initiation and the ten-syllable Krishna mantra.

The Transformation on the Road Home #

All the biographies agree that the change was immediate and complete. The young man who had walked to Gaya arguing points of grammar with His students walked back from it weeping, trembling and losing consciousness. He was unable to hold a conversation without breaking into the names of Krishna. On the road home He is described as hardly able to travel, overcome again and again. His students were confused and more and more alarmed by what had happened to their teacher. His brilliant love of argument was simply gone. In its place He was now so completely absorbed that the ordinary business of life could no longer get His attention.

Nabadwip's Reaction and the Closed School #

Understandably, Nabadwip's reaction was confusion. The town's leading pandits had spent years being defeated by this man in argument. Now they found Him unwilling to argue at all. It is said that when His students assembled for their grammar lessons, He told them that every rule of grammar reminded Him of Krishna. He is said to have wept instead of teaching, until at last He closed His school altogether. Those who had resented His pride decided that He had gone mad, or that grief had disturbed His mind. Only a small number of people understood what they were looking at. One was Advaita Acharya at Shantipura, who had been praying for exactly this. Another was Srivasa Pandit, in whose courtyard the movement would soon begin. There were also a handful of others who were already inclined to devotion.

Why the Lord Accepted a Guru #

Gaudiya theology explains this episode carefully, because at first sight it seems to raise a difficulty. If Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is Krishna Himself, He cannot have needed initiation from anyone. He also cannot have gained at Gaya a devotion that He did not have before. The tradition's answer is that the Lord accepted a spiritual master in order to establish the principle for everyone else. The principle is that no one, however exalted, approaches Krishna without taking shelter of a guru in an authentic disciplic line. The Lord obeyed this rule Himself, so that no one after Him could claim to be free from it. In the same way, the tradition understands that the ecstasy which appeared on the road home was not newly created. It was only newly shown. It was the inner life He had come to demonstrate, which He now allowed to be seen.

The Turning Point of His Life #

However one explains it, the practical result is not in dispute. Everything that Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is remembered for begins after this journey. Before Gaya He is a scholar of exceptional gifts, known only in His own region. History would have kept His name, if at all, only as a small note in the story of Navya-nyaya logic. After Gaya He is the founder of a movement. Within a very short time of His return, the nightly gatherings at Srivasa Pandit's house had begun. From them the sankirtana movement went out into the streets of Nabadwip, and in the centuries that followed it went much further.

From Ritual Observance to Love of God #

The change was not from irreligion to religion. Nimai Pandita had been a perfectly orthodox brahmana. He performed the prescribed duties, observed Ekadashi, and travelled to Gaya to make an offering for His father. At Gaya His religious observance did not change. What changed was the thing His attention was fixed on. The tradition points to this as the very difference it wants us to understand. Religion correctly performed is not the goal. It is the ground from which love of God may or may not grow. At Gaya, in the case of this particular pilgrim, it grew.

Back to top

Chapter 7

Inaugurating the Sankirtana Movement

From Srivasa Angan's closed courtyard to the open streets of Nabadwip, and the confrontation with Chand Kazi that made public sankirtana permanent

Open as a separate page

When Nimai returned to Nabadwip from Gaya, having received initiation from Ishvara Puri, the town that had known Him as its most brilliant young logician hardly recognised Him. The calm, argumentative pandit had become a man who wept at the sound of Krishna's name, who fell to the ground in the marketplace overwhelmed with emotion, and who could no longer complete an ordinary conversation without breaking into the maha-mantra. Many of His students and fellow scholars thought it was grief, or even madness. Only a small circle recognised what was really taking place. Chief among them was Nityananda Prabhu, who arrived in Nabadwip around this time. There was also Advaita Acharya, an elder Vaishnava who had for years been praying for the Lord to appear, and the devoted brahmana Srivasa Pandit.

Nightly Kirtana at Srivasa Angan #

The sankirtana movement was born in the courtyard of Srivasa Pandit's house, still known today as Srivasa Angan. Each night the doors were shut, and Nimai, Nityananda, Advaita Acharya, Gadadhara Pandit, Srivasa Pandit and a small but growing circle of devotees would sing and dance before the Deity until dawn. Together they explored the ecstatic moods of devotion that Nimai's presence seemed to awaken in everyone around Him. This worship began in private, even in secret, but it could not stay hidden for long. The sound of mridanga and karatalas, and the sight of grown men weeping and dancing through the night, drew first curiosity and then hostility from the more conservative brahmana community of Nabadwip. They saw in it a dangerous break from orthodox ritual religion.

Taking the Chanting Into the Streets #

The turning point came when Nimai made a decision that changed the nature of the movement forever. Sankirtana would no longer be kept inside Srivasa's courtyard. He commanded that it be taken out into the open streets of Nabadwip, for everyone to see and join, whatever their caste, learning or social standing. He organised the assembled devotees into kirtana parties. For the first time, Nabadwip saw a full-scale nagara-sankirtana, a procession of congregational chanting moving through the town's streets and squares, with Nimai Himself dancing at its centre.

Chand Kazi Breaks the Mridanga #

This public turn angered the town's Muslim administrator, the Kazi (locally called Chand Kazi). Resentful orthodox brahmanas were pressing him, complaining that the noise of drums and the mixing of castes at these gatherings threatened public order. Under this pressure the Kazi sent men to break up one of the kirtana parties, and in the process he smashed a mridanga drum. He forbade any further sankirtana in Nabadwip and threatened punishment for anyone who disobeyed. Nimai did not retreat. Instead, He organised the single largest sankirtana procession Nabadwip had ever seen. By some accounts there were fourteen separate kirtana groups, with thousands of torches lighting the night, all moving together toward the Kazi's own residence.

The Conversation With the Kazi #

When Nimai faced the Kazi, He met not anger but clear fear. So Nimai engaged him in a calm, respectful theological conversation. It is reported that He even addressed the Kazi as a relative, because the Kazi's family and Nimai's shared an ancestral connection from earlier generations. He reasoned with him from the Kazi's own religious texts about how glorifying God through His names is universal. The Kazi was moved by the sincerity of the conversation and, tradition says, by a direct spiritual experience during the exchange. He wept, embraced Nimai, and publicly withdrew his prohibition. He permitted sankirtana to continue in Nabadwip without restriction for as long as the town should exist. Local memory holds that the Kazi's own descendants honoured this assurance for generations afterward.

Sankirtana Becomes a Public Institution #

The Kazi's change of heart removed the last major obstacle to the movement's growth. From that point, sankirtana in Nabadwip was no longer a secret practice of a small circle of devotees meeting behind closed doors. It became an open, public and established practice of congregational chanting. This was exactly the form in which Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu intended the chanting of the holy names to spread. It was to spread first through Bengal and Odisha in His own lifetime. Afterward, through the Six Goswamis and the unbroken line of acharyas who followed Him, it was to reach the rest of the world.

Back to top

Chapter 8

Chand Kazi and the Great Kirtana Procession

A magistrate breaks a drum, and Nabadwip answers with torches: the night that made public chanting permanent

Open as a separate page

By about 1509, Nabadwip had changed beyond recognition. On Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's own instruction, what had begun as a closed nightly gathering in the courtyard of Srivasa Pandit had moved into the open. The Chaitanya-charitamrita says that congregational chanting was going on in every household of the town. It says that nothing else could be heard in Nabadwip but the words "Hari! Hari!", the beating of mridangas and the clash of hand cymbals. That part of the story is told, along with the beginnings of the movement, on its own page. This page tells of the episode that ended the town's short attempt to stop the chanting. It also tells of the conversation that ended that attempt, which Krishnadasa Kaviraja preserved in unusual detail.

The Complaints That Reached the Kazi #

Nabadwip was governed under the Bengal Sultanate. Its magistrate was a qadi, a judge applying Islamic law, remembered in the Vaishnava literature simply as Chand Kazi. The complaints that reached him came from two directions, and the second is the more surprising. Some of the town's Muslim residents, angered by the noise, complained to him. But the Kazi himself later revealed that a group of five or seven orthodox Hindus had also come to him. These men had known Nimai Pandita as a promising young scholar, and now they wanted Him removed from the town. Their objections are recorded almost word for word. They said that He had abandoned the religious principles of Sanatana Dharma and invented a form of worship that no scripture approved. They said that singing and dancing all night was proper for the worship of local goddesses such as Mangalachandi and Vishahari, but not for this. They said that since returning from Gaya He had begun singing, clapping, drumming, laughing, weeping, falling down and rolling on the ground, and had made the whole town as mad as Himself. They said that He had dropped His own name and taken to calling Himself Gaurahari, and that nobody in the neighbourhood could sleep. Their last objection goes to the heart of the matter. Lower-class people were now chanting the maha-mantra, they said, and a holy name heard by everyone would lose its potency. They asked the magistrate to make Him leave.

Breaking the Mridanga and the Ban #

The Kazi acted one evening. He came to a house where kirtana was going on and broke the mridanga with his own hands. The biographer preserves three statements he made. The first was a taunt: these people had never bothered to follow their own religion before, and he would like to know on whose support they were suddenly following it so eagerly. The second was an order: no one was to perform sankirtana in the streets of the town. The third was a threat: he was excusing the offence this once, but anyone found chanting in public again would have his property taken away and would be converted to Islam. Then he went home.

The Lord Calls for Torches #

The devotees brought the news to Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, and His first recorded response was not a gentle one: go and perform sankirtana, He said, and today I shall kill all the Muslims. What He actually did was something else. He saw that the townspeople were now chanting in fear, not in joy. So He called them together and gave instructions of a quite different kind. That evening the whole city was to be decorated. A torch was to be lit in every house. He would take responsibility for everyone's protection. And then, He said, let us see what sort of Kazi comes to stop our kirtana.

How Large the Procession Was #

The sources differ about the size of what followed. Krishnadasa Kaviraja gives only a short account. He says the Lord formed three parties: Haridasa Thakura dancing at the head of the procession, Advaita Acharya dancing in the middle, and the Lord Himself dancing at the rear with Nityananda Prabhu moving beside Him. He then stops to say that Vrindavana Dasa Thakura has already described the whole incident in detail in the Chaitanya-bhagavata, and that he will not repeat it. That is why the much larger figures known from popular retellings, commonly given as fourteen kirtana groups, come from the earlier biography, not from the Chaitanya-charitamrita. Both books agree on what kind of event it was. It was a night procession, lit by thousands of torches, moving slowly and with purpose through every quarter of the town and coming together at the magistrate's house.

The Crowd at the Kazi's House #

The Chaitanya-charitamrita does not make the crowd look better than it was. It records that the sound terrified the Kazi, who shut himself in his room and would not come out. It also records that the people, protected by the Lord and roaring in anger, became reckless, and that some of them wrecked his house and damaged his flower garden. The Lord had not ordered this, and the narrative gives no sign that He approved it. When He reached the house He did not go in. He sat down by the doorway and sent respectable men to ask the Kazi to come out.

The Kazi Comes Out #

The Kazi came, with his head down. What happened next, not the procession, is the reason this episode is remembered. The Lord stood, offered him respect, and gave him a seat. Then, in a friendly tone, He began with a complaint about manners: I have come to your house as your guest, and on seeing Me you hid in your room; what sort of etiquette is that? The Kazi answered honestly. He said that his guest had arrived very angry, and that hiding had seemed the surest way of allowing Him to calm down. Now that He had calmed down, the visit was an honour.

Uncle and Nephew Through Nilambara Chakravarti #

Then the Kazi brought up the fact on which the whole conversation turned. The scholar Nilambara Chakravarti, he said, was his uncle by village relationship, and he described this bond as stronger than a bodily one. Nilambara Chakravarti was Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's maternal grandfather. That made the Kazi His maternal uncle and the Lord his nephew. The Kazi drew the conclusion himself: when a nephew is angry the uncle tolerates it, and when the uncle gives offence the nephew does not take it seriously. From that point the two addressed each other as uncle and nephew for the rest of the exchange. Krishnadasa Kaviraja adds an interesting note. He says that a good deal of what they said to each other was spoken in hints, and that nobody outside could follow the inner meaning of the conversation.

The Question About Cow Killing #

The Lord's questions did not begin with kirtana. They began with cows. You drink cows' milk, He said, so the cow is your mother; the bull produces the grain that maintains you, so he is your father; how then can you kill and eat your own father and mother, and what religion is that? The Kazi answered as the trained judge of law that he was. You have your Vedas and Puranas, he said; we have the Koran. It distinguishes two paths, one of increasing worldly engagement and one of decreasing it. On the path of renunciation the killing of animals is prohibited. On the path of regulated activity it is permitted under scriptural sanction, and therefore it is not sinful. Then he argued back: your own Vedic scriptures sanction the killing of a cow in sacrifice, and the great sages performed such sacrifices.

Sacrifice and the Power to Restore Life #

The Lord agreed with the Kazi's starting point, but not with the way he applied it. The Vedas do prohibit cow-killing, and the exception for sacrifice depended on one condition. One may take a life for such a purpose only if one can restore it. The sages who performed those sacrifices took old and worn-out cows and revived them by the power of Vedic mantra. So what looked like killing was a benefit to the animal. Brahmanas of the present age have no such power, He said, which is why the sacrifice of a cow is among the acts specifically forbidden in the age of Kali. Since you cannot bring the animal back, the killing is simply killing, and the responsibility is yours.

The Kazi Concedes the Argument #

The Kazi, the biographer says, was stunned into silence. He thought the matter over and accepted defeat. He then admitted a great deal more than the argument required. What You have said is true, he answered; our scriptures are of recent composition and are not logical or philosophical; I know they contain a good deal of imagination and mistaken idea, and I accept them because I am a Muslim and for the sake of my community, though their support is thin. However one understands the theological content of this exchange, the record shows it as a debate that the Lord conducted entirely from His opponent's own beliefs. His opponent accepted defeat, and he was not humiliated in front of the crowd.

Why the Kazi Stopped Enforcing His Order #

Chaitanya Mahaprabhu then smiled and asked the question He had come to ask. Chanting goes on in your city day and night; as a Muslim magistrate you have the authority to stop Sanatana Dharma ceremonies, and you have stopped enforcing your own order. Why? The Kazi asked to be taken somewhere private. The Lord refused: these are all My confidential associates, speak in front of them. Then the Kazi, addressing Him by the name the town used, Gaurahari, told the whole story.

The Dream of the Man-Lion Form #

On the night he had broken the drum, he had dreamed of a roaring form with the body of a man and the face of a lion. It sprang onto his chest and set its claws on him. It said that it would tear him open exactly as he had broken the mridanga. It had spared him because the disturbance he had caused was not yet great, but it promised to return if he interfered again. He had woken terrified. Here, he said, and opened his shirt in front of the assembly to show the marks of the claws. The people who saw them, the biographer records, accepted the incident as wonderful.

The Orderlies With Scorched Faces #

Then his orderlies (attendants) had come to him one by one, each with the same report. When they went to stop the chanting, their faces had been scorched, their beards burned and their cheeks blistered. He had told them to go home and leave the chanting alone.

The Tongue That Would Not Stop Chanting #

And then the Muslims of the town had come back to complain again. One of them explained the reason for his own visit. He had started mocking the Hindus, who name their sons Krishnadasa and Ramadasa and Haridasa and go about calling "Hari, Hari," and since that day his own tongue had chanted the name without stopping. He could not make it stop. Another man said the same. The Kazi's conclusion was simple, and remarkable coming from a Muslim judge: I know that Narayana is the supreme God of the Hindus, and I think within my mind that You are that same Narayana.

The Pledge to His Descendants #

The Lord touched him. He told him that the three names he had just spoken, Hari, Krishna and Narayana, had wiped out the reactions of all his sinful activity, and that he was now supremely pure. The Kazi wept, took hold of the Lord's feet, and asked for one thing only: that his devotion should remain fixed. In return the Lord asked one favour of him. He wanted a pledge that the sankirtana movement would not be stopped, at least in the district of Nadia. The Kazi did not give this as a simple permission. He gave it as a binding instruction to his own line: to as many descendants as are born in my family in future, I give this grave admonition: no one is to stop the sankirtana movement. The Lord rose chanting, the whole assembly rose with Him, and the Kazi walked back with the kirtana party before being sent home.

The Kazi's Tomb at Nabadwip #

The memory of the episode has lasted five centuries. The Kazi's tomb still stands at Nabadwip beneath an old champaka tree. Vaishnavas visit it, and local tradition holds that his descendants honoured the pledge for generations. Historians of Bengal read the incident as one of the better-documented examples of peaceful agreement, not confrontation, between the new devotional movement and the Sultanate's local government. Gaudiya Vaishnavas read it differently and more simply. Faced with a legal ban, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu neither obeyed it nor met it with violence. He broke it in public, on a large scale, with light and sound and so many people that it could not be quietly punished. Then He sat down in the dust outside the magistrate's door and talked to him, until the man who had imposed the ban withdrew it himself. The argument He used was not about the rights of Hindus. It was about cows, and then about the magistrate's own dream. What He finally asked for was not for Himself. It was for a practice to continue forever, in a district He was about to leave for good.

Back to top

Chapter 9

Deliverance of Jagai and Madhai

Nabadwip's most notorious criminals become the living proof that no soul is beyond the mercy of the holy name

Open as a separate page

Among the many souls touched by the sankirtana movement in Nabadwip, none is remembered more vividly, or cited more often, than the two brothers Jagai and Madhai. They were born into a respectable brahmana family, but they had given up every trace of their upbringing. The biographies describe them as habitual drunkards, meat-eaters, thieves and troublemakers who terrorised the neighbourhood. They had fallen so low that ordinary townspeople crossed the street to avoid them. No one any longer expected, or even hoped, that they would change.

Nityananda Prabhu Approaches the Brothers #

Nityananda Prabhu was the first to approach them directly. He met the two brothers drunk in the street and spoke to them gently about the value of chanting the Lord's name. He also spoke of a different life, which is possible for every soul without exception.

Madhai Strikes Nityananda Prabhu #

Madhai was drunk. Instead of receiving this compassion with gratitude, he became furious at what he took to be interference. He struck Nityananda Prabhu and cut His forehead so badly that blood flowed freely. Jagai was also drunk, but he was horrified at his brother's violence toward a Vaishnava sannyasi who had come only to help them. Jagai tried to hold Madhai back.

The Lord's Anger and Nityananda's Plea #

News of the attack on Nityananda Prabhu reached Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. It is said that He rose in righteous anger, unlike anything the devotees had seen from Him before, and went to face the brothers Himself with the Sudarshana disc called into His hand. But Nityananda Prabhu, still bleeding, threw Himself between the Lord and the two brothers and begged the Lord to forgive them. He reminded Chaitanya Mahaprabhu that He had appeared in this age for this very purpose, to deliver the fallen. He also reminded Him that Jagai and Madhai, however low they had fallen, were exactly the souls His mission existed for. Moved by His own devotee's mercy, the Lord gave up His anger.

The Surrender of Jagai and Madhai #

What happened next is the heart of the story. Jagai and Madhai saw Nityananda Prabhu's blood and heard of the Lord's compassion even after such an attack. They broke down completely. They fell at the feet of both Nityananda Prabhu and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, weeping and begging forgiveness for a lifetime of sin. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu accepted them on the spot. He asked only that they give up their old habits of intoxication and violence. Vaishnava tradition holds that from that moment the two brothers were changed within, as completely as they had once fallen into a life of crime. In some tellings, Madhai was somewhat more likely to fall back into old ways and needed the Lord's continued mercy. But in the end both were recognised as sincere, dedicated devotees.

Why the Story Is Remembered #

News of the two most notorious sinners in Nabadwip becoming devotees spread through the town far faster than any sermon could have. The debate with Kashmiri Pandita had shown Nabadwip Nimai's unmatched intellect. The sankirtana processions had shown the town His power to inspire ecstatic devotion. But the deliverance of Jagai and Madhai showed something that convinced even doubters about the true nature of His mission. It showed that the mercy of the holy name asked nothing of birth, learning or past conduct. For this reason "Jagai-Madhai" has become the standard example of the saving power of the holy name, in the whole of Gaudiya Vaishnava literature and preaching. Devotees still pray, quoting the example of these two brothers, that if even they could be delivered by the Lord's mercy, no fallen soul is ever truly beyond hope.

Back to top

Chapter 10

Accepting the Sannyasa Order of Life

At twenty-four, Nimai Pandita renounces home, caste and family to become Sri Krishna Chaitanya

Open as a separate page

By the time He was twenty-four, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu had already transformed Nabadwip. A nightly gathering of devotees in a private courtyard had grown into open, town-wide sankirtana. The local Muslim government had withdrawn its opposition, and even the town's most notorious sinners had been saved. Yet in the eyes of most of Bengal, Nimai was still a brilliant young householder pandit. His mission was to give love of Krishna freely to every soul, whatever their caste or position in society. Nimai became convinced that this mission could not fully succeed while He remained a grihastha (householder). He was convinced of this because Bengali society automatically gave great honour and respect to a married brahmana scholar. That honour would always stand between Him and the most fallen people He most wished to reach.

Why the Renounced Order Was Necessary #

The renounced order of sannyasa gave exactly the opposite social message from that of a respected householder. A sannyasi renounces all family ties and all claim to caste privilege. He depends on the charity of others even for his food. So in the eyes of society he becomes the equal of anyone, high or low. By formally accepting sannyasa, Nimai would remove the last worldly difference that stood between Himself and the people He had come to deliver. This decision fitted everything He had already been doing in the sankirtana movement, but it went much further.

Sannyasa from Keshava Bharati at Katwa #

Once He had decided on this, He is said to have left home quietly at night, so that His mother and young wife would be spared the pain of watching Him go. He travelled from Nabadwip to the town of Katwa on the banks of the Ganges. At Katwa He went to the sannyasi Keshava Bharati and asked to be initiated into the renounced order. At first Keshava Bharati hesitated to accept as his disciple someone so clearly exalted. But Nimai insisted, and Keshava Bharati performed the sannyasa ceremony. Keshava Bharati shaved Nimai's head and gave Him the danda (the sannyasi's staff) and kamandalu (water pot). He dressed Him in the simple kaupina and bahirvasa of one who has renounced the world. Then he gave Him the sannyasa name by which He would be known for the rest of His life and for all the centuries since: Sri Krishna Chaitanya.

The Grief of Sachi Devi and Vishnupriya #

When the news reached Nabadwip, the devotees hurried to Katwa, led by Nityananda Prabhu and including Mukunda Datta and others. They arrived in time to see what happened just after the ceremony. When Sachi Devi and Vishnupriya learned that Nimai had renounced the world without even a final farewell, they were overcome with grief. The biographies do not soften this moment. They describe at length the household's pain at losing the son and husband on whom their whole home life had depended, all in a single night.

The Last Meeting at Shantipura #

Advaita Acharya and the assembled devotees eventually persuaded the new sannyasi Krishna Chaitanya to travel first to Shantipura, to the home of Advaita Acharya. They did this so that Sachi Devi could see her son once more in His new condition before He left for Puri. This meeting is remembered as one of the most tender and sorrowful in the entire Vaishnava literature. Through their tears, mother and son both accepted that His path now lay elsewhere.

Life as a Wandering Sannyasi #

From Katwa onward, Sri Krishna Chaitanya belonged to no one household and no caste, in the fullest social sense. He was a wandering sannyasi who lived on alms. For the following twenty-four years of His manifest presence, He first walked the length of India, teaching kings and outcastes with the same freedom. Then He finally settled at Jagannatha Puri for the last eighteen years. Gaudiya Vaishnavas do not regard His acceptance of sannyasa as a rejection of family life itself, which the tradition continues to honour. They regard it as a deliberate, personal sacrifice. Through it the Lord removed every remaining social barrier between Himself and the most fallen souls of the world He had come to deliver.

Back to top

Chapter 11

The Conversion of Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya

The greatest Vedantist in Orissa offers to teach the young sannyasi Vedanta. On the eighth day, the sannyasi gives His answer.

Open as a separate page

Early in 1510, a few weeks after He had accepted the renounced order at Katwa and taken the name Sri Krishna Chaitanya, the young sannyasi walked into Jagannatha Puri for the first time. He had come by way of Remuna and Kataka, and He arrived ahead of the devotees travelling with Him, unable to slow His pace once the temple towers came into view. Krishnadasa Kaviraja relates that He passed through the gates, saw the form of Lord Jagannatha, and ran forward to embrace the Deity, and then collapsed unconscious on the floor of the temple. A watchman saw a stranger running towards the altar and raised his stick. An elderly, heavily built brahmana stopped the watchman. This brahmana had also seen the fall, and he recognised at once that whatever this was, it was not ordinary. That brahmana was Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya, and the conversation that began between them in the following weeks is one of the decisive events in the history of Gaudiya Vaishnavism.

The Foremost Logician in Odisha #

Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya (Vasudeva Sarvabhauma) was not an ordinary local temple pandit. He was widely accepted as the foremost scholar in Odisha and one of the most powerful logicians in India. He was born at Nabadwip, the son of Mahesvara Visarada. As a young man he went to Mithila in Bihar to study logic under Pakshadhara Mishra, who was then the head of the leading school of nyaya in the country. Tradition holds that he memorised the whole course of study, returned to Bengal and opened his own school, and that this moved the main centre of Indian logic from Mithila to Nabadwip, where it has remained ever since. Later he came to Puri as the royal pandit under Maharaja Prataparudra and the recognised authority on Vedanta in Odisha. His Vedanta was Sankara's Vedanta. It taught that the Absolute Truth is impersonal, formless and without energies, and that the personal form of God is a product of the material mode of goodness.

Carrying the Unconscious Lord Home #

Now this great scholar had an unconscious sannyasi to care for. With the help of the watchman and some of his students, he carried the Lord to his own house and laid Him in a purified room. He found no movement in the abdomen and no breath. So he held a thin piece of cotton to His nostrils until it moved very slightly. Sitting down beside Him, Sarvabhauma recognised the condition as a transformation of ecstatic love. The scriptures describe such a transformation as appearing only in eternally liberated devotees, and he wondered how it could possibly appear in a human body.

Sarvabhauma's Plan to Correct the Young Sannyasi #

The Lord revived, and Sarvabhauma learned that He was the grandson of Nilambara Chakravarti, a family his own father had respected. Sarvabhauma then came to a conclusion that was affectionate and entirely wrong. Here was a beautiful young man of about twenty-four who had accepted sannyasa from Keshava Bharati. So in Sarvabhauma's ranking He was a second-class sannyasi of the Bharati line, not of a first-rate branch of the Sankara order. Worse, He wept, fainted, danced and lost consciousness at the sight of a Deity. To a man trained in nyaya, this was a very promising young sannyasi who was being ruined by uncontrolled emotion. To him the remedy was obvious. He would recite Vedanta philosophy to Him again and again, so that He would remain fixed in renunciation and take up the path of monism. He even offered, if the Lord wished, to initiate Him again into a more respectable sampradaya.

Gopinatha Acharya's Protest #

Sarvabhauma's brother-in-law Gopinatha Acharya came from Nadia and already knew who this sannyasi was. He argued furiously against Sarvabhauma. He said that the Supreme Lord is known only by His own mercy and never by logical reasoning, and that Sarvabhauma, with all his learning, was blind to what stood in his own house. Sarvabhauma replied, smiling, that the scriptures say there is no incarnation of Vishnu in the age of Kali. Gopinatha Acharya and Mukunda Datta were distressed and reported these exchanges. But Chaitanya Mahaprabhu refused to hear a word against Sarvabhauma. The Bhattacharya, He said, was acting out of a father's affection, and He accepted him as His spiritual master in the matter.

Seven Days of Silent Listening #

So the classes began. They sat in the Jagannatha temple. Out of respect for a sannyasi, Sarvabhauma sat on the floor, and Chaitanya Mahaprabhu sat on a seat. There the greatest Vedantist in Odisha explained the Vedanta-sutra according to Sankara's Sariraka-bhasya. For seven days the Lord listened without a word. He did not object, did not agree, did not ask a question. On the eighth day Sarvabhauma finally stopped and said what had been troubling him: You simply sit in silence, and I cannot tell whether You are understanding this or not.

The Commentary That Covered the Sun #

Mahaprabhu's first answer was the humble one He used all His life. He said He was a fool who did not study the Vedanta-sutra. He said He listened only because a sannyasi is supposed to, and because Sarvabhauma had ordered Him to. Sarvabhauma pressed Him: even a man who does not understand asks questions. Then the Lord gave the real answer. He understood the meaning of every sutra perfectly well. What He could not understand were the explanations. The sutras of Vyasadeva, He said, carry their own clear purport. Sarvabhauma's commentary had covered that purport the way a cloud covers the sun. The Bhattacharya had not explained the Brahma-sutra. Instead, he seemed to be hiding it.

The Direct Meaning of the Vedic Statements #

After that sentence, the seven days of one-sided lecturing became a real debate, and this is the debate the biographies actually remember. The Vedanta-sutra, Mahaprabhu maintained, is the summary of the Upanishads, and the direct meaning of a Vedic statement must be accepted as it stands; the moment we substitute an interpretation of our own devising, the self-evident authority of the Veda is gone. The Veda calls conchshell and cow dung pure, though by ordinary reckoning they are bone and stool, and no one presumes to explain that away. If we may not reinterpret so small a thing, why should we reinterpret the description of the Absolute? And when the Vedas describe the Absolute in negative or impersonal terms, they are denying material characteristics, not denying personality: the mantra that rejects hands and feet in the same breath says that He walks swiftly and accepts what is offered to Him. Every impersonal description in the end establishes a person.

The Absolute Truth and His Energies #

As Mahaprabhu presented it, the heart of the disagreement was the question of energy. The Mayavadi position denies that the Absolute has potencies, and this is its basic error. It is an error because the Vedic literature everywhere describes the Supreme as full of inconceivable energies. There is the internal spiritual potency. There is the marginal potency, which is the living being. And there is the external potency of nescience (ignorance), which covers the living being's constitutional position. The internal potency itself appears as eternity, knowledge and bliss. To call the Supreme formless is to call formless someone who is complete in six opulences. And to say that He has no energy leaves nothing that could explain either the world or the soul. The living entity is the marginal energy of the Lord. Therefore he is neither identical with the Lord, as monism claims, nor completely separate from Him. This is the position later explained in full as achintya-bheda-abheda-tattva, the inconceivable simultaneous oneness and difference of the soul and the Supreme.

Transformation of Energy Versus Illusion #

He pressed the same point on the question of how the world came to be. The Vedanta-sutra teaches that the cosmos arises through the transformation of the Lord's inconceivable potency. A touchstone produces gold from iron without itself changing. In the same way, the Supreme manifests the creation by His energy while remaining unchanged in His own eternal form. He argued that Sankara took this to mean that the Absolute itself is transformed, found this absurd, decided that Vyasadeva had made a mistake, and replaced transformation with illusion. But illusion applies to the soul's wrong identification with the body. It does not apply to the cosmos, which is temporary but not false. Sankara also stressed the phrase "you are that" and passed over omkara, the sound form of the Supreme from which all Vedic knowledge comes. In this way the commentator made a secondary statement carry the whole weight of the Veda. Krishnadasa Kaviraja records that Chaitanya Mahaprabhu pointed out hundreds of faults in the Sariraka-bhasya. He also records that Sarvabhauma defended it with everything his training could give him, and lost. The Lord closed with a summary that would become the framework of all His teaching. The Vedic literature, He said, has three subjects: one's eternal relationship with the Supreme Person, the activity by which that relationship is acted upon, and the goal of life which is love of God. Any other reading is imagination.

The Atmarama Verse Explained Eighteen Ways #

Then He softened the whole exchange with a remark that turned it in a new direction: even sages who are fully self-satisfied are drawn to the loving service of Krishna, whose qualities are transcendental and whose activities are wonderful. That is the atmarama verse of the Srimad-Bhagavatam. Sarvabhauma, still a scholar at heart, asked to hear it explained, and the Lord, with perfect courtesy, asked him to go first. Sarvabhauma explained it in nine different ways, using all his knowledge of logic and scripture. Mahaprabhu praised the performance without reservation: no one in the world, He said, could expound a verse like that. And then, without touching any of the nine, He took the eleven words of the verse one by one, combined each in turn with the word atmarama, and gave eighteen explanations of His own.

Sarvabhauma Sees the Lord's Original Form #

At this, Sarvabhauma's resistance broke down. The tradition records that he understood at that moment that this was Krishna Himself. It records that he condemned himself aloud as an offender who had been blinded by his own learning. It also records that Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, seeing him surrender, showed him first the four-armed form of Vishnu and then His own original form of Krishna with a flute at His lips. Sarvabhauma fell flat, rose, and began to compose. In a very short time he produced one hundred verses in praise of the Lord. Krishnadasa Kaviraja remarks that Brihaspati, the teacher of the demigods, could not have composed them so fast. The Lord embraced him, and the greatest logician in Odisha fainted, wept, trembled, perspired, and got up and danced.

Eating Maha-Prasadam Before the Morning Bath #

Sarvabhauma's change of heart showed itself in a small matter of proper conduct. Early the next morning Mahaprabhu carried garlands and food remnants from the Jagannatha temple to Sarvabhauma's house and put them into his hands. The Bhattacharya had not yet washed his mouth, bathed or performed his morning duties. For a brahmana of his standing, eating anything at such a time was unthinkable. But Sarvabhauma quoted two verses which say that maha-prasadam should be eaten without regard to time or place, and he ate it on the spot. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu embraced him, and the two of them danced together. Today, He said, He had conquered the three worlds.

The Two Verses on the Palm Leaf #

Some days afterwards Sarvabhauma composed two verses on a palm leaf and sent them to the Lord. Mukunda Datta, intercepting the leaf, copied them onto the outside wall of the room before delivering it; Mahaprabhu read them and tore the leaf up, but the devotees had already learned them from the wall. In them Sarvabhauma declared that Krishna had descended as Chaitanya Mahaprabhu to teach detachment and devotion, and that He had come to restore the ancient system of devotional service to Himself which had almost been lost to the influence of time. Those two verses are still recited by Gaudiya Vaishnavas.

Changing Liberation to Devotion #

One last exchange is recorded because it shows how completely the man had turned. Reciting a verse of Lord Brahma's from the Bhagavatam, Sarvabhauma altered two syllables, replacing a word meaning "the shelter of liberation" with one meaning "the shelter of devotion." Mahaprabhu caught it at once and objected: the original word refers directly to Krishna, at whose feet all forms of liberation stand, so why change the text? Sarvabhauma did not give way. He knew the Lord's reading was correct, he said. But the very sound of the word "liberation" made him uneasy, while the word "devotion" filled his mind with bliss. The pure devotee, he said, would sooner go to hell than merge into the effulgence. Mahaprabhu laughed and embraced him. The man who had spent his life teaching that merging into Brahman is the goal of existence now felt uneasy even at the sound of the word.

Why This Meeting Mattered #

For Gaudiya Vaishnavas this episode is far more important than its length would suggest. Historically it gave the movement a firm base in Odisha. With Sarvabhauma converted, Kashi Mishra and the leading men of Puri followed. Through Sarvabhauma the Lord eventually gained the confidence of Maharaja Prataparudra himself, and this gave the sankirtana movement royal protection in a second kingdom. It was Sarvabhauma who sent Him to Ramananda Raya on the South India tour. Philosophically, it is the first full statement of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's case against impersonalism, and the source from which the later Goswamis drew their criticism of it. And devotionally, the tradition sees it as proof that scholarship alone, however vast, cannot reach the Supreme Person. It also sees it as proof that the same scholarship, once surrendered, becomes an instrument in His service. Sarvabhauma's own summary was blunter than any of that. Delivering the whole world, he told the Lord, was no great achievement. Delivering him was the wonder, he said, because reading too many books of logic had turned him into a bar of iron, and the Lord had melted him.

Back to top

Chapter 12

The South India Tour

Two years on foot from Puri to Cape Comorin, curing a leper, recovering two lost books, converting whole provinces

Open as a separate page

When Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu accepted sannyasa at Katwa, He had intended to walk straight to Vrindavana. But His devotees turned Him toward Jagannatha Puri instead. His life as a wandering sannyasi actually began there, in the first months of 1510. Krishnadasa Kaviraja gives the dates carefully. The Lord took sannyasa in the month of Magha and reached Puri in Phalguna, where He saw the Dola-yatra festival. He converted the great logician Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya in Chaitra, and at the beginning of Vaishakha He announced that He was leaving on a tour of the south. The reason He gave was that He wished to search for His elder brother Vishvarupa, who had taken sannyasa years earlier and vanished into the south. But the biographies note plainly that He already knew Vishvarupa had passed away. They say that the search was only an outward reason for a preaching journey.

Krishnadasa the Servant and Sarvabhauma's Request #

He wanted to travel alone, and said so, but the devotees would not agree. Nityananda Prabhu argued that a man whose two hands are always busy chanting and counting the holy names cannot also carry a waterpot and a change of cloth. He also argued that when the Lord fell unconscious in ecstasy on the road, there would be nobody to look after His belongings. The compromise was a simple, quiet brahmana named Krishnadasa. He would carry the waterpot and the garments and, as Nityananda put it, would not say a word. Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya sent four sets of cloth after Him and made one more request. He asked the Lord to be sure to meet a government officer named Ramananda Raya on the banks of the Godavari. He also asked Him not to turn Ramananda Raya away because he came from a family that the brahmanas of Bengal would have called low. The devotees walked with Him as far as Alalanatha, and the Bhattacharya fainted at the roadside as He left. Krishnadasa Kaviraja records plainly that the Lord did not turn round.

Preaching Village by Village #

The method of the tour was fixed in the first few days, and it never changed. He walked chanting Krishna's names aloud, and asked every person He passed to chant "Hari! Hari!" Those who did so followed Him for a while, and when He judged the moment right He embraced them and sent them home. The Chaitanya-charitamrita describes what happened next. Each person He had embraced went back to his own village chanting, laughing, weeping and dancing, and asked everyone he met to chant. Those villagers in turn became devotees. Visitors came from neighbouring villages simply to look at this changed man, and they were changed in the same way. And so, village by village, the practice spread far ahead of the Lord's own footsteps. The biographer sums up that hundreds of thousands of people in the south became Vaishnavas without ever meeting Him. He also notes frankly that Chaitanya Mahaprabhu had not shown this power to empower others in Nabadwip, but He showed it in the south.

The Brahmana Kurma and the Order to Preach #

At Kurma-kshetra, the temple of the tortoise incarnation on the Andhra coast, He was received by a Vedic brahmana named Kurma who washed His feet, fed Him, and then begged to be allowed to abandon his household and follow Him. The Lord refused, and His answer has become one of the most quoted sentences in the whole tradition: stay at home, chant Krishna's name always, teach everyone you meet what Krishna teaches in the Bhagavad-gita and the Srimad-Bhagavatam, and in that way become a spiritual master and deliver this country. Krishnadasa Kaviraja states clearly that this was not a one-time instruction but the pattern of the whole tour. He says that wherever the Lord took a meal, He gave His host the same instruction before moving on. Gaudiya Vaishnavism has always sent householders out to preach on the strength of this instruction.

The Healing of Vasudeva the Leper #

In the same village lived a brahmana named Vasudeva. His leprosy was so advanced that his body was full of worms. The biographies record one thing that shows what kind of man he was: when a worm dropped from him, he would pick it up and put it back rather than let it die. He heard that the Lord had come, and the next morning he went to Kurma's house. He found that the Lord had already left, and he collapsed in the road. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu turned back and embraced him. The accounts say that the disease and the distress left him together and that his body became beautiful. They say his first reaction was to worry that he would now become proud. For this, again, the Lord's remedy was constant chanting and constant preaching. From this episode He received one of His less familiar names, Vasudevamrita-prada, "He who gave nectar to Vasudeva."

Jiyada-Nrisimha and the Meeting with Ramananda Raya #

Continuing south He visited the temple of Jiyada-Nrisimha and then came to the Godavari. There the sight of the river reminded Him of the Yamuna, and the woods along its bank reminded Him of Vrindavana. At the bathing place near Vidyanagara, He met Ramananda Raya, who was then governor of the Godavari region on behalf of the king of Odisha. The conversations that followed over several evenings are the theological centre of the entire Chaitanya-charitamrita. They are told in full on their own page. The most important meeting of the tour happened only a few weeks after it began. Afterwards the Lord ordered Ramananda Raya to resign his post and come to Puri.

Chaturmasya at Rangakshetra with Venkata Bhatta #

From the Godavari the route ran through a great many temple towns, including Mallikarjuna, Ahovala-Nrisimha, Siddhavata, Tirupati and Tirumala, Kanchi and Vriddhakola. At the start of his account, Krishnadasa Kaviraja admits that he cannot record them in order and will simply list what he can. At Rangakshetra, the great Srirangam temple on an island in the Kaveri, a Sri Vaishnava brahmana of the Ramanuja line named Venkata Bhatta invited the Lord to his home. Venkata Bhatta pointed out that the four months of Chaturmasya had begun, so a wandering sannyasi was required to stay in one place. The Lord stayed the whole four months.

The Illiterate Brahmana Who Read the Gita #

It is at Srirangam, too, that the tour produced its most charming episode: an illiterate brahmana who read the whole Bhagavad-gita aloud every day, mispronouncing it so badly that people laughed at him, and who wept as he read. Asked which passage moved him, he answered that he did not understand a word, but that while he read he saw Krishna sitting on the chariot with the reins in His hands, and could not look away. The Lord embraced him and told him he had understood the Gita correctly.

The Goddess of Fortune and the Rasa Dance #

With His host Venkata Bhatta the Lord had a long argument, and He deliberately tried to provoke him. He teased him by asking why the goddess of fortune, who had performed austerities to enter the rasa dance, was never admitted to it, while ordinary cowherd girls were. Venkata Bhatta's entire tradition held Narayana to be the supreme form of God, and he could not answer. At last the Lord told him that the joking had a purpose. He led him to the conclusion that Krishna in Vrindavana is the original and complete form of the Divine.

The Boy Who Became Gopala Bhatta Goswami #

The household included a boy who served the Lord throughout those four months. Krishnadasa Kaviraja does not name him. The reason is given elsewhere in the Chaitanya-charitamrita. Before beginning his book, the author sought the blessings of the surviving Goswamis. This Goswami gave his blessing on condition that his own name should never appear in it. The boy was Gopala Bhatta, later Gopala Bhatta Goswami of Vrindavana, one of the Six Goswamis. He installed the Radharamana Deity, and he is the compiler behind the Hari-bhakti-vilasa.

From Rishabha Hill to Cape Comorin #

Beyond Srirangam the Lord went on to Rishabha Hill. There He met the elderly sannyasi Paramananda Puri, a godbrother of His own guru, and persuaded him to come to Puri. Next He went to southern Mathura, the modern Madurai. There a brahmana devoted to Ramachandra was starving himself to death, out of grief that Sita had been touched by Ravana. The Lord consoled him by explaining that Ravana had abducted only an illusory form. This was later confirmed to the brahmana from an old palm-leaf manuscript of the Kurma Purana, which the Lord tracked down at Rameshvaram and carried back to him. Finally, past Kanyakumari, the Lord went to Cape Comorin at the very tip of the peninsula.

Krishnadasa and the Bhattatharis #

On the way back up the western side, the Lord came to a settlement of Bhattatharis in Mallara-desa. There His servant Krishnadasa was lured away and had to be brought back by force. In the end this incident cost Krishnadasa his place in the Lord's service.

Recovering the Brahma-samhita at Adi-keshava #

In the temple of Adi-keshava, on the banks of the Payasvini in the far south, the tour produced its most lasting concrete result. There, among a group of advanced devotees who were discussing spiritual subjects, the Lord found a manuscript chapter of the Brahma-samhita. At that time the text was practically lost. Krishnadasa Kaviraja praises it without reserve. He says there is no scripture equal to it on the final conclusion, and that it is essential among all Vaishnava literatures. The Lord had it copied and carried it with Him.

Krishna-karnamrita and the News of Vishvarupa #

Some months later, at Pandarpur in the Maratha country, He learned from Sri Ranga Puri that the sannyasi Sankararanya, who had attained perfection in that town, was in fact His own elder brother Vishvarupa. Next, on the bank of the Krishna-venva river, He came upon a community of brahmanas who read daily from a book of devotional poetry called Krishna-karnamrita, by Bilvamangala Thakura. He had that copied too. The two manuscripts came back to Odisha with Him, and the biographer calls them the two jewels He brought home. The first thing He did on reaching Vidyanagara again was to hand both to Ramananda Raya, who copied them.

Debating the Philosophers of the South #

The Chaitanya-charitamrita sums up the debates of the tour in only a handful of verses. The chapter's opening verse says that the people of the south were as strong as elephants, but were held in the jaws of the crocodiles of Buddhist, Jain and Mayavada philosophy. The narrative that follows names the opponents whom He met and answered using their own ways of reasoning, before establishing devotion. They were logicians of the Nyaya school, followers of Jaimini's Mimamsa, Sankhya philosophers, yogis of Patanjali's system and the impersonalist followers of Shankaracharya.

The Buddhist Teacher and the Impure Offering #

One Buddhist episode is told at length. A learned teacher came to argue the nine principles of his school, and he was defeated. Then the Buddhists made a plot. They brought the Lord a plate of untouchable food and presented it as if it were sacred offered food. The plot failed. A very large bird appeared, carried the plate away in its beak and dropped it on the chief teacher's head. The metal edge cut him, and he fell unconscious. It ended with the teacher's own disciples reviving him by chanting the names of Krishna into his ear, until he chanted them himself.

Questioning the Tattvavadis at Udupi #

At Udupi, the seat of Madhvacharya and the Tattvavadi tradition, the Lord questioned the head of the school. He did it so respectfully that at first the man did not realise he was being examined. Then the Lord took apart the Tattvavadi position that the perfection of life is to dedicate one's varnashrama duty to Krishna in order to obtain liberation. His reason was that pure devotees reject liberation itself.

What the Tour Left Behind #

The tour lasted roughly two years, and the Lord returned to Puri by much the same road, so the villages He had converted saw Him a second time. Its results were far greater than its length would suggest. Two lost books came back with Him, and they became foundation texts of a school that did not yet exist. A boy in a Srirangam household became one of its six great theologians. A governor on the Godavari became His most confidential associate. And an instruction given casually to a village brahmana over lunch became the lasting order under which the movement has brought in new devotees ever since. From the South India tour, Gaudiya Vaishnavas learn that Chaitanya Mahaprabhu did not treat the chanting of the holy name as a simple folk practice for people who could not read, while keeping argument only for scholars. He did both, in the same journey, with the same calm mind. And, as the biographer puts it, He left behind whole provinces where the only sound to be heard on the road was the name of Krishna.

Back to top

Chapter 13

The Ramananda Samvada

Ten evenings on the Godavari, in which every proposed goal of life is refused until the last one

Open as a separate page

When Chaitanya Mahaprabhu set out from Jagannatha Puri on His long tour of South India in 1510, Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya, who had recently given himself completely to Him, gave Him one specific piece of advice. Somewhere on the Godavari, in the town of Vidyanagara, there was a man He must meet. Sarvabhauma had said honestly that he himself did not know the topics of Lord Krishna. Those, he said, were known to Ramananda Raya. The Lord took the advice so seriously that He said afterwards He had come to that stretch of river for no other purpose. The conversation that followed took place over ten evenings on the bank of the Godavari. It is the single most important theological dialogue in Gaudiya Vaishnavism. Krishnadasa Kaviraja states that his account of it is taken from the notebook of Svarupa Damodara Goswami, who in later years was Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's close personal secretary. This means that the tradition preserved the conversation as a record, not as a memory.

Who Ramananda Raya Was #

Ramananda Raya was a most unlikely partner for such a conversation. He was a government officer. He was governor of the southern province of the Gajapati kingdom of Maharaja Prataparudra, based at Vidyanagara on the Godavari, in the district the Chaitanya-charitamrita calls Madras. He was the eldest son of the devotee Bhavananda Raya. He was a truly accomplished poet and dramatist, the author of the Sanskrit play Jagannatha-vallabha-nataka, deeply read in the literature of rasa, and a musician. By birth, however, he was not a brahmana. He belonged to the karana or scribe community, which orthodox people of that time counted as sudra. He travelled by palanquin with a group of Vedic brahmanas attending him. He came down to the river to bathe and make offerings to his forefathers. There he saw an extraordinary sannyasi, brilliant as a hundred suns, sitting a little way from the bathing place. Ramananda came over and fell flat on the ground.

The Meeting at the Bathing Place #

Mahaprabhu asked whether he was Ramananda Raya. Ramananda answered that he was His most fallen servant and that he belonged to the sudra community. The Lord embraced him, and both of them were completely overcome. They trembled and wept, and the word "Krishna" came out of them in broken syllables. Then Mahaprabhu noticed the shocked faces of the ritualistic brahmanas standing around, and He controlled Himself. The brahmanas were thinking exactly what one would expect them to think. They thought that a sannyasi with the lustre of Brahman was weeping in the arms of a fourth-caste man, and that the grave and learned governor was behaving like a lunatic. The whole conversation that follows takes place with this scandal in the background, and before the conversation was over, the Lord spoke to the scandal directly.

The Question Put on the First Evening #

They arranged to meet in the evening, privately. When Ramananda came, with a single servant, Mahaprabhu gave him a question and a method: recite a verse from the revealed scriptures concerning the ultimate goal of life.

Varnasrama-Dharma Rejected as External #

Ramananda began where any responsible Vedic scholar would begin. He quoted the verse from the Vishnu Purana which says that Lord Vishnu is worshipped by properly carrying out one's prescribed duties within the system of varna and asrama, and that there is no other way to satisfy Him. The Lord's answer was two words that would be repeated all evening: this is external. Say something further.

Offering the Results of Work to Krishna #

Ramananda went one step further. If mere performance of duty is external, then let all the results of one's work, whatever one does, eats, sacrifices, gives in charity, or performs as austerity, be offered to Krishna. That is the teaching of the Bhagavad-gita, and it converts ordinary duty into worship. External, said the Lord. Go on.

Renouncing Occupational Duty Altogether #

The third proposal was to renounce occupational duty altogether. A person may examine the duties given in the scriptures and understand their merits and their defects. If he then abandons them entirely in order to serve the Supreme Person, he is a first-class man. Ramananda supported it with Krishna's own final instruction in the Gita, to abandon all varieties of religion and simply surrender. This is the most extreme position on the usual ladder of paths, and the Lord rejected it too.

Devotional Service Mixed With Knowledge #

Next Ramananda offered devotional service mixed with knowledge. The Gita describes this state. A man who is transcendentally situated realises the Supreme Brahman and becomes joyful. He no longer laments or hankers, he sees all beings equally, and in that condition he attains pure devotion to Krishna. Since the Absolute is here reached first as Brahman and only afterwards as the Lord, Mahaprabhu again set it aside as external.

Unalloyed Devotion Accepted at Last #

Only with the fifth proposal did the Lord's reply change. Ramananda now offered pure devotional service, free from speculation. He quoted Lord Brahma's prayer about those who give up the attempt to know God by their own mental effort. Instead they live by hearing about His name, form, qualities and pastimes from realised devotees, and they surrender with body, words and mind. The prayer says that such people conquer the unconquerable, and that they may do so while remaining in whatever social position they happen to occupy. The Lord did not call this external. He said it was correct, and asked for more. Everything before this point had been rejected. Everything after it would be a climb higher, not a correction.

Spontaneous Love and the Price of Greed #

Next Ramananda added that devotion is not only a duty but also a taste. As hunger makes food pleasurable, so love makes the acts of worship themselves a source of transcendental bliss. He also said that this love cannot be bought with piety gathered over millions of lifetimes. The only price it has is intense greed for it, and if it can be found anywhere, one should buy it at once without delay. That verse is among the most quoted in the whole tradition. Hearing it, the Lord accepted spontaneous love as a genuine advance and asked to be taken further still.

Dasya, the Mood of Eternal Service #

From here the dialogue climbs through the relationships in which love of God becomes personal. Ramananda described dasya, service, in which the devotee knows himself as the Lord's eternal servant and asks for nothing beyond permanent employment in that service.

Sakhya, Friendship With Krishna #

Above it he placed sakhya, friendship. The cowherd boys of Vrindavana play with Krishna as an equal. The Bhagavatam says that their fortune cannot be understood by those who know the Lord only as Brahman or only as master.

Vatsalya, the Love of Nanda and Yasoda #

Above that he placed vatsalya, parental love: what pious acts had Nanda Maharaja performed to receive Krishna as his son, and what had Yasoda done that the Absolute Truth should call her mother and take milk from her breast. The Bhagavatam observes that such a favour was never obtained by Brahma, by Siva, or by the goddess of fortune herself. Each time the Lord said that this was very good and that something still surpassed it.

Madhurya, the Summit of Conjugal Love #

The summit of that ascent is madhurya, conjugal love. Ramananda argued for it by showing how the relationships are built, not by appealing to feeling. The five relationships are not five separate choices. They build on one another. Among the material elements, from ether to earth, each one gains the qualities of the one before it and adds its own, until earth possesses all five. In the same way, each higher relationship with Krishna keeps the qualities of those below it and adds its own. First there is neutrality, then service, then the trust of friendship, then the protective closeness of a parent, and finally, in conjugal love, the offering of oneself entirely. Because it contains all the others, its taste is the fullest. Krishna returns each devotee's love according to the way that devotee approaches Him. So He admits that He is unable to repay the gopis of Vrindavana, and He remains eternally in their debt. Krishna's own beauty, Ramananda added, is the height of sweetness. Yet it increases when He stands among the gopis, as an emerald increases in beauty when set in gold.

The Supreme Love of Srimati Radharani #

This, said Mahaprabhu, is certainly the limit of perfection. Then He asked him to speak further if there was anything more. Ramananda's answer at that point is one of the moments the tradition treasures. Until that day, he said, he had not known anyone in this world who could inquire beyond that stage. And then he went beyond it. Among the gopis, the love of Srimati Radharani for Krishna is supreme. He argued it from the rasa dance itself. When Krishna treated all the gopis alike, Radharani left the circle in Her pride and displeasure. Krishna could not relish the dance without Her. So He abandoned hundreds of thousands of gopis and went alone into the forest to search for Her, lamenting. The Lord is satisfied in Himself, yet He is not satisfied in that vast assembly and goes out after one person. The tradition reads this as the strongest possible statement of who She is.

Knowledge of Krishna, Not Birth, Qualifies a Guru #

At this point Mahaprabhu pressed him to explain the underlying truth of Radha and Krishna and the nature of rasa itself, and Ramananda protested. He did not know these things, he said. He was a parrot repeating what the Lord Himself was making him speak, a stringed instrument with the Lord's hand on it, a puppet dancing on the Lord's strings. Mahaprabhu answered that he should stop flattering Him as a learned sannyasi. Then He made the statement that settled the question the brahmanas by the river had been thinking about that morning: whether a man is a brahmana, a sannyasi or a sudra makes no difference: whoever knows the science of Krishna is, by that fact, qualified to be a spiritual master. No other line in the tradition has done more to separate spiritual authority from birth.

Radharani as the Hladini Potency #

So Ramananda spoke on the underlying tattva. Krishna is the original Personality of Godhead, the source of all incarnations, eternally youthful in Vrindavana, attractive even to Cupid and even to Himself. His energies are three: spiritual, material and marginal. Of these, the spiritual or internal energy is supreme. The internal potency itself appears as eternal existence, knowledge and bliss. The bliss-portion, the hladini, is the potency through which the Lord tastes His own pleasure and gives it to His devotees. The essence of that pleasure potency is prema. The essence of prema, its most concentrated form, is mahabhava, and mahabhava is personified as Srimati Radharani. She is therefore not one gopi among many. She is the source of love of Krishna, and Lalita, Visakha and the rest are expansions of Her. Ramananda described Her ornaments as so many different ecstasies and Her dress as shyness and affection. He concluded that even Krishna cannot reach the end of Her qualities.

Prema-Vilasa-Vivarta and the Covered Mouth #

Then Ramananda mentioned that there was one further topic, called prema-vilasa-vivarta. He warned that he did not know whether the Lord would be pleased to hear it. Ramananda began to sing a song of his own composition on the transformation of love in separation. It tells of an attachment that began in an exchange of glances and grew past all limit. In it neither is enjoyer nor enjoyed, and in separation it becomes something that cannot be explained at all. Mahaprabhu covered Ramananda's mouth with His own hand.

Following in the Footsteps of the Gopis #

The last question was the practical one, and it produced the most important answer in the dialogue. The goal is one thing; by what process is it reached? Ramananda replied that the pastimes of Radha and Krishna cannot be entered through servitude, friendship or parental affection. Only the gopis have the right to them, and therefore only one who worships in the mood of the gopis, following in their footsteps, can enter. This is not sentiment. It is a rule, and its consequence is stated. The goddess of fortune herself wanted to join the pastimes of Vrindavana, but she could not, because she was held back by her knowledge of Krishna's majesty. Awareness of opulence stands in the way of intimacy. The Upanishads personified, the sruti, are described as having attained the lotus feet of the son of Nanda Maharaja by following the gopis. And the mood of the gopis is known by what it leaves out. It contains no trace of desire for one's own enjoyment. Radharani's own happiness increases tenfold when the gopis, rather than She Herself, are engaged with Krishna.

The Combined Form of Radha and Krishna Revealed #

By now Ramananda had understood who he was speaking to. Ramananda saw the Lord sometimes as a sannyasi and sometimes as Syamasundara with a flute, and he begged Him to stop concealing Himself. Ramananda said he could see that this was Krishna, who had accepted the mood and the golden complexion of Srimati Radharani in order to taste His own sweetness from Her side. Mahaprabhu revealed that combined form to him, and Ramananda lost consciousness and fell. When he came to his senses, the Lord embraced him. The Lord told him that no one else had ever seen it, and asked him to keep the whole matter secret, since people would only laugh at behaviour that looks like madness. Then He added, putting him at ease: I am a madman, and you are also a madman, so we are on the same platform.

Ten Nights and the Order to Come to Puri #

Ten nights passed in this way. On other evenings the talks took a lighter, question-and-answer form: what is the highest education, the greatest wealth, the sharpest suffering. Ramananda answered that of all distresses he knew none more unbearable than separation from a devotee of Krishna. He concluded that those who taste only dry philosophy are like crows chewing the bitter fruit of a nimba tree, while devotees are cuckoos eating the buds of the mango. Krishnadasa Kaviraja compares the whole conversation to a mine from which copper, bell metal, silver, gold and touchstone are dug out one after another, each better than the last. At parting the Lord gave Ramananda an instruction that shows what He thought of him: give up your government post and come to Jagannatha Puri. Ramananda did so. For the rest of the Lord's life, along with Svarupa Damodara, he was one of the very small circle admitted to His most confidential moods.

Why the Ramananda Samvada Matters #

The Ramananda Samvada matters to Gaudiya Vaishnavism in three distinct ways. It is the tradition's own map of the spiritual path. It is arranged as a ladder, with every rung named and every rung below the top clearly refused. For this reason later acharyas treat it as the measure by which any claimed goal of life is judged. It is the main scriptural basis for the theology of Srimati Radharani as the hladini-sakti and for the practice of following the gopis. And it establishes that the qualification to speak about Krishna is knowledge of Krishna, not birth. It shows this through a non-brahmana governor of a province teaching the Supreme Lord, who had appeared in the dress of a sannyasi. The movement has acted on this principle ever since.

Further Reading #

Read Ramananda Raya's own full biography at Srila Ramananda Raya: his life as governor of Vidyanagara, his resignation to serve at Puri, and his place in Krishna-lila theology.

Back to top

Chapter 14

The Instructions to Rupa and Sanatana Goswami

Two ministers of the Sultan of Bengal are taught for ten days at Prayag and two months at Varanasi, and then given a mission

Open as a separate page

When they first began writing to Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, the two men who would become Rupa Goswami and Sanatana Goswami were among the most powerful Hindus in Bengal. They were also among the most despised. Their family were Yajur-vedi brahmanas of the Bharadvaja gotra, whose ancestors had come north from Karnataka and settled in Bengal. Their father was Kumaradeva. There were three brothers: Sanatana the eldest, Rupa in the middle, and Vallabha, later known as Anupama. All three had been pulled, more or less against their will, into the government of Alauddin Hussain Shah, the Sultan of Bengal. The Sultan wanted their learning and would not accept a refusal. Sanatana became revenue minister, holding the title Sakara Mallik. Rupa became the Sultan's private secretary, holding the title Dabir Khas. They lived at Ramakeli, near the capital, in what is now Maldah district. Because they served a Muslim court, they had been formally cast out of brahmana society, and they seem to have fully accepted that judgment of themselves.

The Letters Before They Met #

They had begun writing to Chaitanya Mahaprabhu before they ever saw Him. He later told them that He had written back once. He had sent them a single verse about a woman who is attached to a man other than her husband. She appears fully absorbed in her household work, but her heart is elsewhere. It was an instruction about how to live in a position one cannot leave.

Sankirtana at Ramakeli #

Then, in about 1514, on His way toward Vrindavana through Bengal, He came to Ramakeli itself and performed sankirtana there. Countless people came out. When the Sultan heard of it, he concluded that a man who attracts such numbers without giving out charity must be a genuine prophet. He ordered his officers not to stop Him. The Sultan also asked Rupa privately what he thought of the visitor. Rupa answered that the Supreme Person, whom the Sultan accepted as a prophet, had taken birth in the Sultan's kingdom. Rupa said that the King should consult his own mind, because whatever came to his mind could be taken as evidence.

The Brothers Come at Night in Disguise #

The brothers came at night, in disguise, with straw between their teeth and cloth bound round their necks, and fell flat before Him like rods. Their prayer is one of the strongest expressions of humility in Vaishnava literature. They said that the deliverance of Jagai and Madhai had cost Him nothing. Those two were brahmanas of Nabadwip who were only addicted to sin. But the brothers themselves were servants of meat-eaters, and their whole work was harmful to cows and brahmanas. So they were millions of times more fallen. If the Lord would deliver them, they said, the name Patita-pavana, saviour of the fallen, would be truly earned.

The Names Rupa and Sanatana Given #

Chaitanya Mahaprabhu answered that they were His eternal servants birth after birth, and that from that day their names were Rupa and Sanatana. He asked them to stop humbling themselves, because it was breaking His heart. He also told them that He had no business in Bengal at all and had come only to see the two of them. No one else in Ramakeli understood this. Before they left, the brothers gave Him some advice. A crowd of thousands following Him to Vrindavana would make the pilgrimage impossible. He acted on their advice and turned back to Puri to plan a quieter journey.

Leaving the Service of Hussain Shah #

Getting out of Hussain Shah's service was the harder half. Rupa resigned, went home and divided his property carefully: half in charity to brahmanas and Vaishnavas, a quarter to relatives, a quarter kept aside in case of legal trouble, and ten thousand coins left with a Bengali grocer for emergencies.

Sanatana's Imprisonment and Escape #

Sanatana was more senior and could not be released so easily. He said he was ill and stayed at home, studying Srimad-Bhagavatam with brahmana scholars. The Nawab sent his own physician, who found nothing wrong. Then the Nawab came in person, understood that his minister meant to resign, and had him arrested and imprisoned. Sanatana bought his way out. He persuaded the Muslim jailer that releasing a prisoner is itself a pious act, and fled across the Ganges with a servant named Ishana, who was carrying eight gold coins. An innkeeper in the hills learned of the coins and prepared to murder them for the money. Sanatana simply handed seven of the coins over to him. The innkeeper gave up his plan and guided them safely across the hill tract instead. Meanwhile, Rupa had left with Anupama to find the Lord, and caught up with Him at Prayag.

Ten Days With Rupa at Prayag #

Those ten days at Prayag, at the Dasasvamedha-ghata where the Ganges and the Yamuna meet, are the origin of the theological literature of Gaudiya Vaishnavism. Krishnadasa Kaviraja says clearly that the Lord taught Rupa Goswami everything He had heard from Ramananda Raya, and empowered him to understand it. The Lord entered Rupa's heart, so that Rupa's conclusions would agree with the disciplic succession and not with his own opinion. In its main points, what the Lord gave him is the outline of the Bhakti-rasamrita-sindhu.

How Rare a Pure Devotee Is #

The teaching begins with a kind of counting that shows the listener where he stands. There are countless living beings in 8,400,000 species, wandering up and down through the universe according to their acts. Only a small part of them are human. Of humans, only some follow any revealed principle at all, and half of those only claim to follow it. Of the sincere ones, most are weighing good and bad work for their own advantage. Out of many such people, one becomes truly wise. Out of many millions of the wise, one attains liberation. And out of many millions of the liberated, a pure devotee of Krishna is very difficult to find. The purpose of this counting is not to make one lose hope. It shows what is rare and therefore valuable. And this rare thing is not earned by merit. It is passed on through contact. Wandering through the universe, one fortunate soul obtains by Krishna's grace the association of a genuine spiritual master. From the mercy of Krishna and the guru together, he receives the seed of the creeper of devotional service.

The Seed and the Creeper of Devotion #

Everything else in the Prayag teaching is built on that picture. The seed, the bhakti-lata-bija, is planted in the heart, and the devotee becomes a gardener. He waters it with hearing and chanting, and it sprouts and grows. The Lord describes the path of its growth in a striking way. It climbs past the walls of the universe, crosses the Viraja river and passes through the impersonal Brahman effulgence. Then it reaches Goloka Vrindavana. There it takes shelter at the wish-fulfilling tree of Krishna's lotus feet and produces its fruit, which is love of God. The gardener remains here, sprinkling water. The fruit ripens there, and when it falls he tastes it.

The Mad Elephant and the Weeds #

Two dangers are named. The first is offence at the feet of a Vaishnava. The Lord compares it to a mad elephant that gets inside the garden and uproots the creeper, so that its leaves dry up. The gardener must put up a fence to protect the creeper from it. The second danger is weeds. These are unwanted creepers that grow beside the bhakti creeper and drink the same water. The Lord names them one by one: desire for material enjoyment, desire for liberation, deceitful behaviour, violence toward animals, desire for profit, and the craving for worldly praise and importance. If the gardener cannot tell one creeper from another, his watering feeds the weeds and starves the devotion. So an intelligent devotee cuts them out the moment he sees them.

What Pure Devotional Service Is #

From there Mahaprabhu explained what pure devotional service really is. It is service offered favourably to Krishna, in the way Krishna wants it. It is free of any other desire, and it is not covered by either speculative knowledge or fruitive action. He called desire for enjoyment and desire for liberation two witches that haunt the heart. While they remain, the bliss of devotion cannot be tasted. He explained how attachment ripens into love through the example of sugar: cane seed, cane, juice, liquid molasses, solid molasses, sugar, candy, rock candy. He also set out the five relationships in which love is tasted, from neutrality through servitude, friendship and parental affection to conjugal love.

Majesty at Mathura, Sweetness in Vrindavana #

And He explained a difference on which the whole Gaudiya teaching about rasa rests. Where awareness of Krishna's majesty is strong, as at Mathura, Dvaraka and Vaikuntha, love is somewhat held back by reverence. Where that awareness is absent, as in Vrindavana, Yasoda can bind the Absolute Truth to a mortar with a rope, and the cowherd boys can climb on His shoulders. Then, as was His way, He stopped. I have given only a general survey, He said, and you may consider how to adjust and expand it. Rupa Goswami spent the rest of his life doing exactly that.

Rupa Sent On to Vrindavana #

When the Lord left for Varanasi, Rupa begged to come with Him, but the Lord refused. He told Rupa: your duty is to carry out My order, and you are close to Vrindavana now, so go there. Rupa fainted on the riverbank as the boat pulled away.

Sanatana and the Woollen Blanket #

Sanatana reached Varanasi soon after and stood at the door of Chandrasekhara's house. The instruction began with clothes. Sanatana was still dressed as a nobleman. He was told to change, and he tore up an old cloth of Tapana Mishra's to make himself a dhoti and underwear. When a Maharashtrian brahmana offered him regular meals, he refused. He said he would beg a little from several houses instead. But he was still carrying an expensive woollen blanket from his days as a minister, and the Lord looked at it again and again without saying anything. Sanatana understood. He went down to the Ganges, found a Bengali beggar drying a torn quilt, and traded the blanket for the quilt, though the man was astonished and objected. When Sanatana came back, Mahaprabhu made one of His most quoted comments: a good physician who has cured a disease does not leave a little of it behind.

Who Am I and Why Do I Suffer #

Then, for two months, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu taught him. Sanatana opened by asking the questions the tradition treats as the beginning of all enquiry: not what should I do, but who am I, and why do the threefold miseries of material life trouble me. He added that he did not even know how to ask properly.

The Living Entity as Marginal Energy #

The Lord's answer began with the constitutional position of the living being. The living entity is eternally a servant of Krishna, because he is the marginal energy of Krishna. He is one with Krishna and at the same time different from Him, as a spark is one with fire and yet is not fire. Krishna's energies are three: the spiritual, the living beings, and the illusory. Because the soul is marginal, he may live in either world. He has forgotten Krishna since time without beginning, and so he has been captured by the external energy. By turns he is raised to comfort and plunged into suffering, like a criminal whom a king repeatedly pushes under water and lifts out again. He cannot recover by his own effort. So Krishna educates him from three directions at once: through the revealed scriptures, through a realised spiritual master, and from within, as the Supersoul.

Sambandha, Abhidheya and Prayojana #

On that foundation the Lord laid out the three-part structure that organises all Gaudiya theology. The scriptures inform the living being of his eternal relationship with Krishna: that is sambandha. Acting on that relationship through devotional service is abhidheya. And the awakening of love of God, which is life's ultimate goal, is prayojana.

The Astrologer and the Buried Treasure #

He illustrated it with a story. An astrologer visited a poor man and told him that his father had died elsewhere, leaving a great treasure buried in that very place. In this way the astrologer showed the poor man his connection to a wealth he did not know he had. But knowing about it did not put it in his hands. So the astrologer told him where to dig. If he dug on the south, wasps would drive him off. On the west, a ghost would stop him from touching it. On the north, a black snake would devour him. But on the east, a little digging would bring his hand to the pot. The three wrong directions are fruitive work, mental speculation and mystic yoga. The east is devotional service.

The Syllabus Taught at Varanasi #

What followed over those weeks was an extraordinary course of teaching. The Lord explained the Absolute Truth as Brahman, Paramatma and Bhagavan. He described the Lord's expansions and the classes of incarnation, the opulence and the sweetness of Krishna, and the relation between them. He taught the sixty-four items of regulative devotional service and the difference between regulated practice and spontaneous love. He described the symptoms of emotion and love, and the stages by which they grow stronger until they reach mahabhava. And He described Goloka Vrindavana.

The Atmarama Verse in Sixty-One Ways #

At Sanatana's request the Lord also explained the atmarama verse of the Srimad-Bhagavatam in sixty-one different ways, examining every word of it. Sanatana had heard that the Lord once gave eighteen explanations of it at Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya's house in Puri, and he wanted to hear it for himself. The Lord also gave Sanatana a summary of what would become the Hari-bhakti-vilasa, the manual of Vaishnava practice. At the end Sanatana said his mind could not hold even a drop of the ocean he had been given. He asked the Lord to put His hand on his head and declare that everything He had taught would be revealed to him. Mahaprabhu did exactly that.

The Twin Mission for Vrindavana #

Then He gave the two brothers their mission, and it had two halves. He told them: Broadcast the revealed scriptures on devotional service, and excavate the lost places of pilgrimage in the district of Mathura; establish the worship of Radha and Krishna in Vrindavana, and preach from there. In 1515 this was a very difficult task. Vrindavana was then mostly forest and farmland, and the sites of Krishna's pastimes were known only in pieces, from local memory and hints in the scriptures.

The Six Goswamis and Their Books #

Both halves were carried out. Rupa and Sanatana were later joined by Gopala Bhatta, Raghunatha Bhatta, Raghunatha Dasa and Jiva, and together they became the Six Goswamis of Vrindavana. They found and restored the holy places, and established the temples of Govindaji and Madana-mohana. They also wrote the main books of the tradition: Bhakti-rasamrita-sindhu, Ujjvala-nilamani, Hari-bhakti-vilasa, Brihad-bhagavatamrita and much else. Every later Gaudiya acharya has depended on these books. Devotees returning from Vrindavana were asked how the brothers lived. They answered that the brothers had no fixed home and slept under a different tree each night. The brothers begged a little dry bread and fried chickpeas, and owned a waterpot and a torn quilt. They chanted and wrote almost day and night, and slept an hour and a half.

Why This Episode Matters #

Gaudiya Vaishnavas take two things from this episode above all. The first is that the movement's philosophy is not simple popular religion. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu deliberately had it written. He wrote almost nothing Himself. Instead, He trained two men over ten days and two months and sent them to write it down. This is why the tradition regards Rupa Goswami's books as carrying His own authority. The second is who those two men were. The men who laid the theological foundations of Gaudiya Vaishnavism were officials in the court of a Muslim sultan. The brahmanas of their own province had cast them out. When they came to the Lord, they called themselves lower than the worst criminals of Nabadwip. The tradition has never forgotten that, and knows them by the names He gave them that night at Ramakeli.

Back to top

Chapter 15

The Debate with Prakashananda Sarasvati at Varanasi

The Mayavadi sannyasis of Kashi call Him an illiterate man ruled by emotion, and He agrees before He answers

Open as a separate page

In 1515, after the journey to Vrindavana and the ten days with Rupa Goswami at Prayag, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu came to Varanasi and stayed there for about two months. It was not a comfortable place for Him. Varanasi (Kashi, Benares) was the intellectual capital of Sankara's Vedanta, and it maintained a large and prestigious community of ekadandi sannyasis whose life consisted of meditation and the study of the Vedanta-sutra according to the Sariraka-bhasya. Their leader was Prakashananda Sarasvati. He and his followers had views about the golden sannyasi from Bengal, and they expressed them freely.

The Charges Against the Sannyasi From Bengal #

The charges were specific. This Chaitanya, they said, is an illiterate sannyasi who does not know the duties of His own order. Instead of studying Vedanta He chants and dances in the streets in the company of sentimental people, guided by emotion and not by knowledge. Before He accepted the renounced order, He had been Nimai Pandita, the finest young logician in Nabadwip. Either they did not know this, or they did not think it mattered. When He first passed through the city, Mahaprabhu's response was to smile and say nothing. He did not attend the sannyasis' gatherings or accept their invitations. He ate only at the house of Tapana Mishra, and He stayed with Chandrasekhara, who was a kayastha by caste. This choice itself said something.

The Maharashtrian Brahmana's Invitation #

His two hosts found the situation unbearable. While He was teaching Sanatana Goswami, they came to Him and said that they would rather give up their lives than go on hearing Him insulted. He smiled again and remained silent. Then a brahmana from the Maharashtra country arrived with a plan. He was a devotee who lived in Varanasi, and he had been quietly thinking about the same problem. He had invited every sannyasi in Benares to his house. He knew the Lord never went to anyone else's home, but he asked Him to come. His reasoning was simple. Anyone who saw Chaitanya Mahaprabhu at close range would understand who He was. And if he did not try, he would spend the rest of his life in Varanasi regretting it. The Lord accepted the invitation.

Sitting at the Washing Place #

What happened at that lunch is told at length in the seventh chapter of the Adi-lila of the Chaitanya-charitamrita. It is mentioned again in the twenty-fifth chapter of the Madhya-lila. There Krishnadasa Kaviraja says that he will not repeat himself, but will add what he left out. Mahaprabhu found the assembly of sannyasis already seated. He offered them obeisances, went to wash His feet, and then sat down on the ground at the washing place instead of taking a seat among them. Krishnadasa Kaviraja records that an effulgence came from His body like the light of millions of suns, and that the sannyasis rose. Prakashananda Sarasvati himself came over and called Him forward: why are You sitting in an unclean place? Mahaprabhu answered that He belonged to a lower order of sannyasis and did not deserve to sit with them. Then Prakashananda took Him by the hand and seated Him in the middle of the assembly.

Prakashananda Sarasvati's Challenge #

Then Prakashananda put the challenge politely and directly. He knew who this was. It was Sri Krishna Chaitanya, a disciple of Keshava Bharati, and therefore a member of their own Sankara sampradaya, living in their own city. Why then did He avoid them and refuse even to be seen? Meditation and the study of Vedanta are the whole business of a sannyasi. Why had He abandoned both to chant and dance with fanatics? You look, Prakashananda said, as though you were Narayana Himself; explain why You have adopted the behaviour of low-class people.

What His Spiritual Master Had Told Him #

Mahaprabhu's reply is the most famous single sentence of the encounter, and it is not a counter-argument. My spiritual master, He said, considered Me a fool, and chastised Me. He told Me: You are a fool, You are not qualified to study Vedanta philosophy, and therefore You must always chant the holy name of Krishna, which is the essence of all mantras. He said that simply by chanting one is freed from material existence and comes to see the Lord's lotus feet, and that in this age of Kali there is no religious principle other than the holy name. So, said Mahaprabhu, I have done what I was told.

The Maha-Mantra and the Fifth Goal of Life #

He then described what had followed, and in this way He turned the charge of madness into His argument. Chanting as instructed, He had found Himself laughing, weeping, dancing and singing like a madman. In real alarm He had gone back to His spiritual master to ask what sort of mantra His guru had given Him. His guru had smiled and said that this is the nature of the maha-mantra: whoever chants it develops ecstatic love for Krishna. Religiosity, economic development, sense gratification and liberation are the four goals of human life accepted everywhere. But love of God is a fifth, and beside it the other four are as insignificant as straw in the street. The symptoms that had alarmed Him were perspiration, trembling, tears, a faltering voice and apparent madness. These were the natural signs of that love. So His guru had not corrected Him. Instead, he had ordered Him to continue, and to go out and preach the value of chanting Krishna's name in order to deliver the fallen. Mahaprabhu added that, compared with the ocean of bliss available in the holy name, the happiness of impersonal Brahman realisation is like the water in a canal.

Why Do You Avoid the Vedanta-Sutra #

The assembly was moved by this, and Krishnadasa Kaviraja says their minds changed. But they came back to the main point. There is no objection to Your being a great devotee of Krishna, they said. Everyone is satisfied with that. But why do You avoid the Vedanta-sutra? What is the fault in it?

No Fault in the Sutra, Only in the Commentary #

Mahaprabhu asked permission to answer, and then answered at length. There is no fault in the Vedanta-sutra. The Vedanta-sutra is the word of the Supreme Person Himself, spoken in the form of Vyasadeva, and therefore free of the four defects of ordinary human speech: mistake, illusion, cheating and defective senses. The fault lies in the commentary. Sankaracharya explained the Vedic literature in terms of indirect meanings, and whoever hears such explanations is ruined by them. Mahaprabhu was careful about whom He blamed. He said that Sankaracharya himself is not at fault. Sankaracharya covered the real purport of the Vedas on the order of the Supreme Lord, for a purpose of the Lord's own. It is those who take the Mayavada philosophy as final who lose everything they have gained.

The Errors of Mayavada Philosophy #

He then went through the specific points. They are the same points He had made to Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya at Puri. Taken directly, the Absolute Truth is the Supreme Personality of Godhead. He is full of all spiritual opulence, and no one is equal to Him. His body, His name, His fame and His entourage are all spiritual. To hold that the form of Vishnu is a product of the material mode of goodness is the gravest of offences. The living beings are energies, not the energetic (the source of the energies). They are sparks of a blazing fire, not the fire. The scriptures divide the Lord's potencies into the spiritual, the living beings, and nescience (ignorance). Mayavada philosophy takes the tiny living being to be the Absolute Truth itself. This does not raise the soul up. It only hides the glory of God. On creation, Vyasadeva teaches that the cosmos arises by the transformation of the Lord's energy. Sankaracharya supposed that such a transformation would change the Absolute itself, so he would not accept it. He concluded that Vyasadeva had made a mistake, and he put the doctrine of illusion in its place. But a touchstone turns iron into gold without itself being changed. If such an inconceivable potency exists in a stone, why should the Supreme Person not possess one? Illusion belongs to the soul's identification with the body. The world is temporary, not false. And omkara is the basic sound vibration of the Veda, the Supreme in the form of sound. The phrase "you are that" is only secondary. Yet Sankara's followers have made this secondary statement carry the whole weight of the tradition, while covering the main one. In every case, He argued, the Vedic text taken directly is self-evident, and it is the highest evidence. Interpretation destroys that self-evident character.

The Sannyasis Concede the Argument #

The Mayavadi sannyasis' response is one of the more remarkable passages in the Chaitanya-charitamrita, because they admitted a great deal. They told Him that they had no quarrel with His refutation. They said they knew very well that Sankaracharya's juggling of words is imaginary. They accepted it only because they belonged to his school, they said, and it did not satisfy them. Then they said: let us see how well You can explain the sutras in their direct meaning.

The Sutras Explained in Their Direct Meaning #

So He did. Brahman means the greatest, and the greatest is the Supreme Person. He is full in six opulences, the reservoir of all truth and all knowledge, and free of material contamination. To describe Him as impersonal is to deny His spiritual potencies. One who accepts half the truth cannot understand the whole. He is approached only by devotional service, beginning with hearing. Regulated devotional service performed under the direction of a spiritual master awakens the love of God that is already sleeping in the heart. That is the process. And love of God is the fifth and highest goal of life. It is so exalted that, because of it, the infinite Lord makes Himself submissive to a tiny devotee. Every aphorism of the Vedanta-sutra, He concluded, deals with these three subjects and nothing else: one's relationship with the Supreme, the activity by which that relationship is lived, and the goal of life.

The Sannyasis Ask to Be Excused #

When they had heard this, the sannyasis addressed Him as Vedic knowledge personified and asked Him to excuse the offences they had committed in criticising Him. He excused them and gave them the holy name. Then He took His meal sitting among them, and the biographers record this with clear satisfaction.

Prakashananda's Public Retraction #

The Madhya-lila records what happened after this reconciliation. One of Prakashananda's own disciples, a scholar as learned as his guru, stood up in the sannyasis' assembly. He argued at length for Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's position. He said that scholars accept Sankaracharya's interpretations in words, but these do not satisfy the heart, and that in the age of Kali formal renunciation delivers no one. Then the disciple began chanting the name of Krishna. After this Prakashananda Sarasvati himself spoke, and in effect he publicly took back his earlier position. He said that Sankaracharya had explained Vedanta as he did because he was determined to establish monism, and that anyone who wishes to establish his own opinion cannot interpret a scripture directly. He also said that the six schools of Indian philosophy are each busy arguing against the others, and none of them arrives at the Supreme Person. Dry argument cannot reach a final answer, he said, and so the proper course is to follow the mahajanas, the great authorities. The words of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, he said, are a shower of nectar.

Dancing at the Bindu Madhava Temple #

Not long afterwards Mahaprabhu bathed at Panchanada and went to the temple of Bindu Madhava. There the sight of the Deity overwhelmed Him, and He began to dance in the courtyard, with Chandrasekhara, Paramananda Puri, Tapana Mishra and Sanatana Goswami chanting beside Him. Hundreds of thousands of people took up the chanting. Prakashananda heard the sound from nearby, came with his disciples and joined it. When the kirtana stopped, he caught hold of the Lord's feet. Then each of them insisted that he was lower than the other. Mahaprabhu protested that Prakashananda was the spiritual master of the world, and that He was not fit to be the disciple of Prakashananda's disciple. Prakashananda answered that his offences had been removed by touching those feet, and that from then on he would practise devotional service. When Prakashananda described Him as the Supreme Lord, Mahaprabhu objected sharply. He did so on the principle that to identify a fallen conditioned soul with God is a serious offence.

The Bhagavatam as Vyasadeva's Own Commentary #

This time Prakashananda's questions were asked in a completely different spirit. He asked to hear the Brahma-sutra from Him. Mahaprabhu answered that Vyasadeva had explained his own aphorisms, and that his commentary is the Srimad-Bhagavatam. It gives the same purport in eighteen thousand verses. Mahaprabhu traced the chain by which its essence was passed down. Krishna spoke four verses to Brahma, Brahma gave them to Narada, Narada gave them to Vyasadeva, and Vyasadeva expanded them into the Bhagavatam. Mahaprabhu explained those four verses and showed that they contain sambandha, abhidheya and prayojana. He advised Prakashananda to study the Bhagavatam closely, because then the actual meaning of the Brahma-sutra would become clear.

The Atmarama Verse in Sixty-One Ways #

At that point the Maharashtrian brahmana mentioned that Mahaprabhu had recently explained the atmarama verse of the Bhagavatam in sixty-one different ways. This is the verse stating that even those who are entirely self-satisfied are drawn to the loving service of Krishna. The assembly was astonished and asked to hear these explanations, and He gave them again. Everyone present concluded that this was Krishna Himself.

Varanasi Turned Into a Second Nabadwip #

From that day, Krishnadasa Kaviraja writes, the Mayavadi sannyasis and the scholars of Varanasi began discussing Srimad-Bhagavatam. The city that had mocked Him spent five days chanting Hare Krishna with Him in the streets. In the end the crowds around His lodgings grew so great that He left for Puri through the Jharikhanda forest. Laughing, He told His companions that He had come to Varanasi to sell His goods and had found no customers. It had begun to look as though He would have to carry them home. But since His devotees were so unhappy about it, He had given them away for nothing. Krishnadasa Kaviraja's summary is that He turned the whole city into a second Nabadwip.

Why the Debate Is Remembered #

Gaudiya Vaishnavas remember this episode for reasons beyond its outcome. It is the one place in the biographies where Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's argument against impersonalism is set out at length before an expert and hostile audience, and not before a devotee. And there His opponents openly admit His points, as the record shows. It is also the standard example of His method. He did not begin by stating His own position. He began by accepting the charge against Him and repeating His guru's low opinion of Him, and He argued only when He was asked to. And it answers the charge that the sankirtana movement was only emotion with no philosophy behind it. It answers this by showing, not by claiming.

Prakashananda and Prabodhananda Sarasvati #

One more note comes down from later centuries. Some Gaudiya writers have said that Prakashananda Sarasvati was the same person as Prabodhananda Sarasvati, the poet of the Radha-rasa-sudha-nidhi. But this identification is disputed. Most authorities, including Srila Prabhupada in his purports, treat them as two different persons. Prabodhananda came from the Ramanuja line in the South, not from the Sankara sampradaya of Kashi.

Back to top

Chapter 16

The Final Years at Jagannatha Puri

Eighteen years at Kashi Mishra's house: Ratha-yatra, the Bengali devotees, and a king refused and then embraced

Open as a separate page

Krishnadasa Kaviraja describes the pattern of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's life with unusual exactness. He was visible in this world for forty-eight years, from 1486 to 1534. The first twenty-four He spent as a householder in Nabadwip. The remaining twenty-four He spent as a sannyasi based at Jagannatha Puri. Of those, the first six were taken up by travel: to South India, back through Bengal, and to Vrindavana and Prayag. The last eighteen were spent continuously at Puri without leaving. This page is about those eighteen years, and especially the twelve at the end of them. The tradition regards those twelve years as the most inward part of His life, and the hardest to describe.

The Gambhira at Kashi Mishra's House #

The house was chosen for Him. The devotees were looking for a place near the temple that would be quiet enough. King Prataparudra suggested the house of a brahmana named Kashi Mishra, close to the Jagannatha temple, private and calm. When the proposal reached Kashi Mishra, he said that he was fortunate. When the Lord arrived, he fell at His feet and surrendered himself and everything he owned. Inside that house was a small inner room, the Gambhira. Throughout the Gaudiya tradition, the last phase of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's life is known by the name of this room, not by the name of the house. The site is still shown to pilgrims in Puri.

The Circle of Devotees at Puri #

The circle around Him formed quickly and hardly changed afterwards. Svarupa Damodara Goswami served as His confidential secretary. More importantly for later generations, he kept notes. The Chaitanya-charitamrita states plainly that its account of the middle and final pastimes rests on Svarupa Damodara's notebooks. The Lord had met Ramananda Raya on the Godavari and ordered him to resign his governorship. Ramananda Raya retired on full pension and moved to Puri. There he became the second of the two men whom the Lord allowed to be with Him through the nights. Paramananda Puri, an elderly godbrother of the Lord's own guru, was given a room in the same house. Gadadhara Pandit took kshetra-sannyasa, the vow never to leave the holy place. He settled at the Tota Gopinatha temple in a garden by the sea, and the Lord came there to hear him read the Bhagavatam. Govinda served as personal attendant and slept across the doorway of the Gambhira. Haridasa Thakura was a Muslim by birth, so he would not enter the temple. He was given a quiet place to live nearby. Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya, the Vedantist the Lord had converted in His first weeks at Puri, was constantly present. So were Jagadananda Pandit, Shankara Pandit and a changing group of Odia devotees.

Daily Darshana and the Yearly Visit From Bengal #

Two things happened regularly through these years. The first was daily: darshana of Lord Jagannatha in the temple, and kirtana. The Lord's ecstatic states in the temple courtyard, and especially at the Simha-dvara, the lion gate, are described so often in the Antya-lila that they no longer seem like special events. They are simply what happened. The second was yearly. Every year, at the season of the chariot festival, the devotees of Bengal came down to Puri in a large party organised by Shivananda Sena. Shivananda Sena took charge of the ferry tolls and lodgings for the group. It included Advaita Acharya, Nityananda Prabhu, Srivasa Pandit, wives and children, and on one famous occasion a dog. They stayed four months, through Chaturmasya, and went home. This was the Lord's one lasting contact with the movement He had left behind in Bengal, and He used it to give instructions. The most important came in the year He told Nityananda Prabhu to stop coming to Puri altogether and remain in Bengal to preach.

The Chariot Festival and the Seven Kirtana Parties #

The chariot festival itself was the centre of the year. Krishnadasa Kaviraja describes the Lord dividing His kirtana party into seven divisions with two mridangas each, fourteen drums in all, and dancing before the chariots as they were dragged along the sandy road from the main temple to the Gundicha temple. King Prataparudra swept the road ahead of the chariot with a golden-handled broom.

Cleansing the Gundicha Temple #

Chaitanya Mahaprabhu Himself established the practice of washing out the Gundicha temple with water before the deities arrive. The practice is still observed today. He did the scrubbing personally, and this is why the episode is remembered as a lesson in service, not as just a ceremony.

Radharani Calling Krishna Back to Vrindavana #

What He experienced in the festival is the theological heart of the Puri years, and the biographies are clear about it. As the chariot moved, He fell behind the procession, and the chariot stopped. When He came forward, it moved again. At one point He raised His arms and recited a verse. Krishnadasa Kaviraja says that nobody present understood it except Svarupa Damodara. In the verse a woman speaks. She says that the man who stole her heart in her youth is her husband again. The nights and the flowers and the breezes are the same as they were, and she herself is the same. Yet her mind is not happy here, and she longs for the riverbank where they first met. Then the Lord Himself explained it. The gopis of Vrindavana had once met Krishna again at Kurukshetra, after years of separation, and had not been comforted by it. Addressing Lord Jagannatha directly, He said: You are the same Krishna and I am the same Radharani, and We are meeting as We met at the beginning. But at Kurukshetra there are crowds and horses and chariots, and in Vrindavana there are flower gardens and bees and birds. Here You are dressed as a royal prince surrounded by warriors, and there You were a cowherd boy with a flute. Here there is not a drop of the happiness I had with You there. Come back to Vrindavana. Understood in this way, the whole Ratha-yatra is Radharani pulling Krishna's chariot away from His royal capital and back towards the village where He was loved without any thought of His power. This is why Gaudiya Vaishnavas identify the Gundicha temple with Vrindavana. It is also why the festival is performed in cities all over the world today with that meaning attached.

Refusing to Meet King Prataparudra #

But the same years also saw one of the most stubborn refusals of His life. Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya asked, on King Prataparudra's behalf, for a meeting with the Lord. The Lord covered His ears with His hands. For a man in the renounced order, He said, meeting a king is as dangerous as meeting a woman, and to do either is to drink poison. The Bhattacharya protested that this king was a great devotee. The Lord answered that the King might be a devotee, but he was still to be regarded as a poisonous snake. He warned that if the request were repeated, Sarvabhauma would not see Him in Puri again. Ramananda Raya tried later, and to him the Lord was blunter: there may be a great quantity of milk in a pot, but one drop of liquor makes it untouchable; the King has every good quality, but the single word "king" has infected everything. When this was reported to the King, he lost all hope: has Chaitanya Mahaprabhu come to deliver every kind of fallen soul except Prataparudra? He said that if he did not receive the Lord's mercy, his body and his kingdom were both useless to him.

The Campaign to Win an Interview #

What followed was a long effort by everyone around Him, full of affection and clever planning. Nityananda Prabhu obtained a used outer garment of the Lord's from Govinda and had it sent to the King. The King worshipped it as he would have worshipped the Lord Himself. Ramananda Raya, a skilled diplomat, brought the subject into conversation at every opportunity, until the Lord's resistance began to soften. When they pressed Him once more for a meeting, the Lord made another offer, which was also a joke about Himself: bring Me the King's son instead, since scripture says the son represents the father. The prince came. He was a beautiful boy with a blackish complexion, dressed in yellow. The Lord was reminded at once of Krishna, and He embraced him.

Sarvabhauma's Plan for the Balagandi Garden #

Finally Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya gave the King a plan. On the day of the chariot festival, after the dancing, the Lord would rest in the garden at Balagandi. Go there alone and out of your royal dress, he said, recite the chapters of the Bhagavatam that describe Krishna's dance with the gopis, and take hold of His feet while He is absorbed.

Prataparudra Receives the Lord's Embrace #

The King did exactly that. He asked the assembled devotees' permission before approaching. Then he knelt and began to massage the Lord's legs as He lay with His eyes closed, and he recited the gopis' song of separation. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu said, again and again, go on reciting. The King came to the verse in which the gopis call the narration of Krishna's activities the life of those who are suffering in this world. At that verse the Lord stood up and embraced him, crying that he was the most generous of men. The biographer stresses that at that moment the Lord did not know who the man was. Only afterwards did He ask. The King answered that he was the servant of the Lord's servants and hoped to be accepted as such. The Lord's mercy was given because of the King's service. It was not held back because of the royal office he held. Krishnadasa Kaviraja does not comment on the irony.

The Last Twelve Years in the Gambhira #

The last twelve years are a different matter altogether. The Chaitanya-charitamrita states that all through them the Lord was continuously overwhelmed, night and day, by separation from Krishna. It says that He passed His nights in the Gambhira with only Svarupa Damodara and Ramananda Raya. There He recited verses and tasted their meanings until morning. The verses came from Jayadeva's Gita-govinda, from the Bhagavatam, from Ramananda Raya's own play, from Bilvamangala Thakura's Krishna-karnamrita, and from eight verses of His own composition.

Chataka-Parvata, the Sea and the Fisherman #

As the Antya-lila records them, almost all the outward events of those years happened to Him without His intending them. One night Govinda and Svarupa Damodara found the three doors of His room bolted from inside and the room empty. They found Him unconscious outside the lion gate of the temple. His body had become unnaturally long, and the joints of His bones were loose. They brought Him back by chanting into His ear. He mistook a sand dune outside Puri, called Chataka-parvata, for Govardhana Hill and ran towards it. On a full-moon night He mistook the sea for the Yamuna and walked into it. The current carried Him towards Konarka. A fisherman pulled Him ashore in his net, thinking he had caught a very large fish. Then, from touching Him, the fisherman went mad for a short time. At night in the Gambhira He would stand and rub His face against the stone walls until it bled, so Svarupa Damodara had to arrange for Shankara Pandit to sleep in the room with Him.

Separation as the Highest Attainment #

The two great biographies record these years more than they try to explain them. Vrindavana Dasa Thakura, who covers the Nabadwip period at length, becomes brief. Krishnadasa Kaviraja, who covers this period, says again and again that the Lord spoke like a madman, that only Svarupa Damodara understood what He was saying, and that his own intelligence cannot enter into it. What the tradition takes from the Puri years is not mainly a set of teachings. Those were given elsewhere, to Rupa and Sanatana and Ramananda Raya. What it takes is a demonstration. Gaudiya Vaishnavism holds that the highest attainment in devotion is not union but a particular quality of separation, vipralambha-bhava. It holds that Chaitanya Mahaprabhu spent the last twelve years of His life showing it in a human body, so that the claim would not remain only a theory. The essence of what those nights produced is the set of eight verses He composed, described on its own page. After them the biography stops.

Back to top

Chapter 17

The Siksastaka: His Only Written Legacy

Eight verses are all He wrote, and the whole theology of Gaudiya Vaishnavism is folded inside them

Open as a separate page

Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu founded a school of theology. He trained the men who wrote its books, and He left it a body of teaching that fills libraries. But He wrote almost none of it Himself. He left no commentary on the Vedanta-sutra, no other book of teaching, no life story and no letters. What remains of His own writing is eight Sanskrit verses, together called the Siksastaka, the "eight verses of instruction." All the other words of His that the tradition preserves have come to us through other people. They come through Svarupa Damodara Goswami's notebooks and through Murari Gupta's diary of the Nabadwip years. They come through Vrindavana Dasa Thakura's Chaitanya-bhagavata and Krishnadasa Kaviraja's Chaitanya-charitamrita. They also come through the systematic works of the Six Goswamis. He gave the Six Goswamis their task in person and then left them to write.

Why He Wrote So Little Himself #

Gaudiya Vaishnavas explain that He wrote so little because He divided the work on purpose. Rupa Goswami was given the subject of rasa, the taste of devotion. Sanatana Goswami was given its practice, Jiva Goswami its philosophical defence and Gopala Bhatta Goswami the rules of worship. The founder kept for Himself only the essence. Whether or not one accepts this explanation, the result is unusual. The movement has a deep and detailed philosophy, yet everything its founder wrote can be recited aloud in under three minutes.

Where the Verses Appear in the Biography #

The verses appear in the biography at the very end. The twentieth and last chapter of the Antya-lila describes the nights of the last twelve years at Jagannatha Puri. On those nights the Lord would sit in the Gambhira with only Svarupa Damodara Goswami and Ramananda Raya and recite verses until morning. The verses came from Jayadeva, from the Bhagavatam, from Bilvamangala Thakura, and from these eight. Krishnadasa Kaviraja is careful to explain the order of events. The Lord had composed the eight verses earlier, to teach people in general. Now He was tasting their meaning for Himself. That is why, in this chapter, each verse is followed by the Lord's own broken explanation of it in Bengali. So the eight verses come to us together with their author's own notes on them.

Verse One: The Victory of Sankirtana #

The first verse is not about the speaker at all. It declares victory for the congregational chanting of Krishna's names, and it lists seven things that this chanting does. It cleanses the mirror of the heart. It extinguishes the forest fire of material existence. It spreads the cooling moonlight under which the white lotus of good fortune opens. It is the very life of all knowledge, described in a striking image as knowledge's bride. It swells an ocean of bliss. It gives, at every step, a full taste of nectar. And it bathes the entire self. The order is important. The first two effects remove a problem: a mirror is cleaned and a fire is put out. Only after that does the verse turn to what is gained. First the illness is found, and then the remedy is given. And the remedy is a practice done together and in public, not in private.

Verse Two: The Name Open to Everyone #

The second verse turns from the practice to the fact that it is open to everyone. Then it says something that shapes all the verses after it. God, it says, has innumerable names, and has invested His full potency in each of them. The mantras of Vedic ritual are surrounded by rules of time, place, initiation and purity. But the holy name has no such restrictions: it can be chanted anywhere, by anyone, at any hour. The verse has just made the most generous claim in the whole tradition. Yet it ends by turning that claim against the speaker: and I am so unfortunate that I have no attachment to them. From here on, the Siksastaka is spoken in the first person by someone who describes himself as having failed.

Verse Three: Humbler Than a Blade of Grass #

The third verse gives the qualification for chanting, and it is the most often quoted verse in Gaudiya Vaishnavism. One who thinks himself lower than the grass in the street, who is more tolerant than a tree, who takes no honour for himself and is ready to offer honour to everyone else, can chant the holy name constantly. The Chaitanya-charitamrita gives the Lord's own commentary on the picture of the tree, and it is very practical. A tree does not protest when it is cut down, and when it is drying up it asks nobody for water. It gives away its fruit and flowers to anyone who comes. It stands in scorching heat and in torrents of rain and still shelters others. So this verse describes a person's character, not a devotional emotion. This means that the right to the highest practice depends on a person's conduct and nature, not on birth, learning or status. In sixteenth-century Bengal this was a very bold idea that could shake society, and the tradition has never stopped quoting it.

Verse Four: Wanting Nothing but Devotion #

The fourth verse defines the goal by refusing everything else. I do not want wealth, it says, nor followers, nor a beautiful wife, nor the results promised in the ornate language of the ritual scriptures; all I want, birth after birth, is unmotivated devotional service. The list fairly covers what people usually use religion for. And the words "birth after birth" quietly set aside the last thing on that list too. Even liberation from rebirth is not being asked for. Gaudiya teachers understand that in this verse devotion stops being a means to get anything else.

Verse Five: I Am Your Eternal Servant #

The fifth verse moves from what the speaker wants to who he is. It addresses Krishna as the son of Nanda Maharaja, the cowherd father, not as the king or the ruler of the universe. It says: I am Your eternal servant, and by my own actions I have fallen into this ocean of ignorance; be causelessly merciful and consider me a particle of dust at Your feet. The speaker does not ask for this relationship. He states it as a fact that was forgotten and is now being remembered. This is exactly the Gaudiya teaching about the soul's true and original identity.

Verse Six: When Will These Tears Come #

The sixth verse asks a question instead of making a claim: when will my eyes be filled with constantly flowing tears as I chant Your name, when will my voice falter and the hair of my body stand on end? These are the recognised bodily signs of ecstatic devotion, and Rupa Goswami describes all of them in full detail. The verse does not say that the speaker has them. It asks when they will come. Later acharyas give this point great importance. They treat the verse as the tradition's own guard against people who imitate the signs of ecstasy. This was already a problem in Bengal in the century after the Lord's disappearance, and it has come up again and again since then.

Verse Seven: The World Empty Without Govinda #

The seventh verse is the first in which the main feeling is separation, not hope of reaching the goal. A moment has become a great millennium; tears fall from the eyes like torrents in the rainy season; the whole world has become empty in the absence of Govinda. The speaker has also changed. The Chaitanya-charitamrita says clearly that in this verse and the next, the Lord is speaking as Srimati Radharani. These are not the words of a devotee longing for God in a general way. They are the words of the one person whose separation from Krishna, in the tradition's theology, is held to be the measure of love itself.

Verse Eight: Love That Asks Nothing Back #

The eighth verse is the highest point the tradition claims to be able to reach, and it is not a cry of victory. Let Him embrace me, it says, or trample me, or break my heart by never showing Himself again; He can do as He likes; He is unconditionally the Lord of my life, and no one else. Krishnadasa Kaviraja gives more than a dozen verses of commentary on this one. In them love is tested again and again, and each test is harder than the one before. My own distress does not concern me; I want Krishna's happiness, and if He is made happy by giving me distress, that distress is the best of my happiness. If He is attracted to another woman and cannot obtain her, I will go to her, take her by the hand, and bring her to Him. The power of the verse is that it does not end in a happy solution. There is no reunion in the eighth verse, and no promise of one. It describes a love that no longer depends on being loved back.

The Arc of the Eight Verses #

Read in order, the eight verses make one single journey. The first is public and confident. It declares what the chanting of the holy name does in the world. The second opens the practice to everyone, and then the speaker admits his own failure. The third gives the character that makes the practice possible. The fourth removes every selfish motive from the goal. In the fifth, the speaker remembers who he is. The sixth asks for the signs of awakened love. The seventh is filled with separation. And in the eighth, the speaker surrenders within that separation without asking for it to end. So the journey goes from cleaning a mirror to standing in the dark, refusing to want anything except the one who has gone. Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura and the acharyas after him read the verses as a path in stages, from the first practices of sadhana up to the highest levels of prema. Because of that reading, the eight verses are treated as a course of teaching, not as a hymn.

The Seed of Gaudiya Theology #

This is why the Gaudiya tradition sees the Siksastaka as the seed of its entire theology. Rupa Goswami's Bhakti-rasamrita-sindhu can be read as an expansion of the third and sixth verses. Jiva Goswami's Sandarbhas can be read as a philosophical defence of the fifth. And the whole teaching that separation is the highest form of union can be read as an unfolding of the seventh and eighth. In daily practice, the reach of the verses is even easier to see. The third verse is recited before kirtana in temples all over the world. It is also the standard answer given to anyone who asks how one should chant. The eighth is quoted at the other end of the same tradition, where it describes the final purpose of chanting. Everything that Gaudiya Vaishnavism teaches lies somewhere between those two. According to the biography, the eight verses were composed during the years described on the page about His last years at Puri. Once Krishnadasa Kaviraja has finished recording them and the Lord's commentary on them, he closes his book.

Back to top

Chapter 18

The Disappearance of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu

What the biographies say about the night in 1534, what they refuse to say, and what He left behind

Open as a separate page

By the last years at Jagannatha Puri, Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's condition had become such that His associates kept watch over Him. The Antya-lila of the Chaitanya-charitamrita records what happened. One night Govinda and Svarupa Damodara found the three doors of His room bolted from the inside and the room empty. They found Him lying unconscious outside the lion gate of the Jagannatha temple. The joints of His bones had loosened, and His body had become unnaturally long. On a full-moon night He walked into the sea, mistaking it for the Yamuna. He drifted towards Konarka and was pulled out in a fisherman's net. He also mistook a sand dune outside the town for Govardhana Hill and ran towards it. In the small room called the Gambhira, He would stand at night and rub His face against the stone walls until it bled. So Svarupa Damodara arranged for Shankara Pandit to sleep in the room with Him. Those years are described more fully on their own page. The point to note here is simple. When the end came, it came to a man whose body had for a decade clearly been unable to contain what was happening within it.

The Date of His Disappearance #

The dates are among the few things in this story that are certain. Krishnadasa Kaviraja gives them plainly. Chaitanya Mahaprabhu appeared in the year 1407 of the Saka era, which corresponds to 1486, and disappeared in 1455 Saka, which corresponds to 1534. He was visible in this world for forty-eight years. Modern reference works generally give 14 June 1534. The traditional accounts place the event in the month of Asadha, at the height of the chariot festival season. Several of them name the seventh day of the bright fortnight, but the accounts do not fully agree on the day. The year is much more certain than the day.

The Silence of the Primary Sources #

The most striking thing about the earliest sources is what they leave out. The Chaitanya-charitamrita, the most authoritative biography in the tradition, does not tell the story of the disappearance. Its final chapter describes the nights in the Gambhira and records the eight verses of the Siksastaka with the Lord's own commentary. Then it gives a chapter-by-chapter summary of the whole book, and it ends with the author's prayers and the date he completed it. Bhaktivinoda Thakura's summary of that chapter says only that the author hints at the Lord's disappearance. Vrindavana Dasa Thakura's Chaitanya-bhagavata, the earlier biography, also does not describe it. Krishnadasa Kaviraja was writing in Vrindavana around 1615, some eighty years after the event. He had Svarupa Damodara Goswami's notebooks, the record of the man who slept at the Lord's door. Yet he chose not to tell the story. This silence did not happen because the story was lost over time. It was a choice, made by more than one author.

The Differing Traditional Accounts #

Into that silence the tradition has placed several accounts, and they do not agree.

Merging Into the Tota Gopinatha Deity #

The account most widely held among Gaudiya Vaishnavas is that He entered the Tota Gopinatha temple in Puri and merged into the Deity there. Tota Gopinatha stands in a garden near the sea. In Odia, tota means garden, and that is how the Deity got the name. The biographies connect it closely with Gadadhara Pandit, who took the vow never to leave the holy place and served there. This Deity is the one image of Krishna in Puri shown seated instead of standing. Devotees explain this with a story from the same group of stories. Gadadhara Pandit had grown old and could not reach up to garland Him. Then the Lord sat down, and Gadadhara Pandit was relieved. In this account, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu entered the temple in the mood of separation that had filled His last years, and He did not come out.

Vanishing While Embracing Lord Jagannatha #

A second account is given in Lochana Dasa Thakura's Chaitanya-mangala. It places the event in the great temple instead. In this account, the Lord entered the inner shrine of Lord Jagannatha and vanished while embracing the Deity. It names the day in Asadha when this happened, and it says that a temple servant was the witness.

Walking Into the Sea in Trance #

A third account holds that He walked into the sea in a state of trance and was never found. One thing clearly supports this version. The Chaitanya-charitamrita itself records that He had almost done this once already, and a fisherman had dragged Him out. But this version also has a clear weakness. The same biographers who recorded the earlier rescue in detail record no second time in the sea from which He did not return.

The Wounded Foot in Jayananda's Account #

A fourth account comes from Jayananda's Chaitanya-mangala. This is a separate work from Lochana Dasa's, and it is the only early text that gives a connected story of the Lord's departure at all. In it, He injures His left foot on a brick while dancing during the chariot festival. The wound does not heal. He passes away at Tota Gopinatha, after telling Gadadhara Pandit in advance the night on which He would go. Some scholars have doubted this account. They point out that Krishna's own departure at Prabhasa was also caused by a wound to the foot, so the two are exactly alike. They suggest that Jayananda may have shaped his account to show that the Lord is Krishna. Devotional readers, however, have generally seen this likeness as the very point of the story, not as a problem.

Other Early Versions of the Story #

Other versions are found in Kavi Karnapura's plays and poems and in the Odia Shunya Samhita, which is said to be by Achyutananda. They do not fit neatly into any of the four accounts above.

Modern Theories of Accident or Violence #

A few twentieth-century writers suggested that He met with an accident or with violence inside the temple grounds. No sixteenth-century source, devotional or otherwise, supports these ideas, and they are rejected across the tradition. They are mentioned here only because they sometimes appear in popular accounts.

Aprakata-Lila and the Absence of a Samadhi #

The way the tradition understands its own silence is itself part of the answer. Its theology teaches that an avatara's advent and departure are both His own act. It teaches that what took place was not death. Instead, His pastimes became unmanifest, that is, hidden from our sight. The technical term is aprakata-lila, unmanifest pastime. In this view no body was left behind. That is why, uniquely, there exists nowhere in the world a samadhi tomb of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. Yet the samadhis of every acharya in His line after Him are carefully maintained and visited.

Why the Biographers Stopped Where They Did #

There is also a simpler explanation, and both explanations can be true together. The men who wrote these books had lived through the loss, or had been raised by people who had. The customs of Bengali Vaishnava writing did not require them to describe it. For that community it was the worst grief in its history, and describing it in detail would have served no devotional purpose. Krishnadasa Kaviraja says more than once in the final chapters that he cannot enter into the Lord's deepest pastimes and will not pretend to. His stopping where he does fits everything else we know about him.

What He Left Behind #

What He left behind is not in doubt. In Vrindavana His work was carried on by six men: Rupa, Sanatana, Raghunatha Bhatta, Gopala Bhatta, Raghunatha Dasa and Jiva. He sent Rupa, Sanatana and Raghunatha Bhatta there Himself, and the other three came to live there in time. He had given Rupa and Sanatana two tasks, and all six took them up. They were to find and restore the lost sites of Krishna's pastimes, which were then mostly forest and farmland. They were also to write the theology of the movement. They did both. The result is one of the largest collections of systematic devotional books produced anywhere in medieval India. It includes Rupa Goswami's works on rasa, the taste of devotion, Sanatana's works on practice, Jiva's philosophical Sandarbhas and Gopala Bhatta's rules of worship. Nityananda Prabhu had been sent back to Bengal and had spread the movement across the province. Krishnadasa Kaviraja, writing eight decades later, produced the biography that fixed how the tradition remembers Him. The line of teachers continued through Vishvanatha Chakravarti Thakura and Baladeva Vidyabhushana to Bhaktivinoda Thakura and Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries. In the twentieth century it went on through Srila A.C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada to the rest of the world. In a much-quoted line, the Chaitanya-bhagavata had claimed that this would happen in every town and village on earth. And there are the eight verses, treated on a page of their own. They are all that He wrote, and the tradition regards them as containing everything else in short form.

Gaura-Purnima and the Unmarked Anniversary #

Gaudiya calendars keep the anniversary of His appearance, Gaura-purnima, as the greatest festival of the year, and it is observed wherever the movement has reached. His disappearance is generally not kept with anything like the same emphasis. In most calendars it is not marked as a festival at all. Given how the biographers handled the event, this does not seem to be an oversight. It seems to come from the same feeling that kept the biographers silent. For five centuries the tradition has been content not to know exactly what happened on that night in Puri, and to say so openly.

Back to top

Closing

His Parents and the Name Nimai #

His father, Jagannātha Miśra, was a pious brāhmaṇa from Sylhet in East Bengal who had settled in Navadvīpa. His mother, Śacī Devī, is remembered in Vaiṣṇava literature as an ideal chaste and devoted mother. Viśvambhara was their tenth and last child. Of their earlier children, only His elder brother, Viśvarūpa, survived infancy. Viśvarūpa later accepted sannyāsa while still young. Śacī Devī then gave all her motherly affection to her youngest son. Because a nimba tree stood near the place where He was born, the child was affectionately called Nimāi. His golden complexion later gave Him the names Gaurahari and Gaurāṅga, meaning "the golden one."

How These Pages Are Arranged #

Each stage of His life summarised above has its own detailed page. The pages follow the order of His life, from His advent at Mayapur to His disappearance at Puri. The relevant verses of the Chaitanya-charitamrita and Srimad-Bhagavatam are given in full on each page. The complete sequence is listed above.

Songs in the Vaishnava Song Book #

The Vaishnava Song Book carries 2 songs attributed to Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. See the full author page here.