The Conversion of Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya

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.