Student Life and Nimai Pandita the Scholar

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.