When Chaitanya Mahaprabhu accepted sannyasa at Katwa early in 1510 and settled soon afterwards at Jagannatha Puri, the community that had formed around Him in Nabadwip broke up. It formed again, but with its members living far apart. Nityananda Prabhu was later sent back into Bengal to preach, and spent the rest of his life there. Advaita Acharya kept his household and his home at Shantipura on the Ganges. Srivasa Thakura could not bear to stay in Nabadwip without Mahaprabhu, who had been its centre. So he moved to Kumarahatta and came south once a year with the Bengali party for the Ratha-yatra. Gadadhara Pandit went to Puri and did not come back.
The Vow of Kshetra-sannyasa #
He made this formal by taking what the tradition calls kshetra-sannyasa. This is not the sannyasa of the staff and the wandering life. It is the vow of a man who leaves household life to live permanently in a holy place, Jagannatha Puri, Nabadwip or Mathura, and does not leave it. Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya lived under the same vow at Puri, and Bhaktivinoda Thakura considered it the form of retirement best suited to this age. Some accounts simply say that Gadadhara took sannyasa. Since he had never married, the practical difference was small. What the vow really bound him to was a place: he would die within the boundaries of the kshetra.
The Garden and the Deity of Tota Gopinatha #
Mahaprabhu gave him a service to go with it. Krishnadasa Kaviraja records that Gadadhara Pandit remained near the Lord and was given a place to live at Yamesvara, on the south-west side of the Jagannatha temple. There was a small garden there and a stretch of sandy beach known as the Yamesvara Tota. The word tota simply means garden, and the Deity in his charge takes His name from that garden: Tota Gopinatha, Gopinatha of the garden. Serving that Deity was the whole of Gadadhara Pandit's outward work for the next twenty-four years. The Chaitanya-bhagavata tells a homely story about it. When Gadadhara heard that Nityananda Prabhu had come to Puri, he invited Him to take the Deity's prasada. Nityananda brought fine rice from Bengal for the offering. Gadadhara cooked it with greens and vegetables from his own garden. While the offering was being made, Mahaprabhu arrived unannounced, and so the three of them ate together.
Reading the Bhagavatam to the Lord #
The other service, and the one for which the Puri years are chiefly remembered, was reading. Mahaprabhu lived a mile away, in the rooms at Kashi Mishra's house that came to be called the Gambhira. He came regularly to hear Gadadhara Pandit read the Bhagavatam aloud. Gadadhara was not teaching. He was reading to a listener who knew the text far better than he did. The reading was meant to create a mood. The tradition remembers one thing about those sessions. According to the accounts, the reader wept continuously as he read. At last, it was said, his tears had washed away the letters of the manuscript in his hands, so that it could no longer be read. Whether one takes that as a physical fact or as the devotees' way of saying what the reading was like, it is the picture the Gaudiya world keeps of Gadadhara Pandit. He is a man in a garden, reading a book whose letters he could no longer see, to a listener who had no need of it.
The Broken Vow and the Parting at Kataka #
One episode shows how much the vow cost him, and Krishnadasa Kaviraja gives it in detail. In 1516 Mahaprabhu set out from Puri intending to go to Vrindavana. Gadadhara Pandit began to walk with Him, and was forbidden. He was not to abandon his kshetra-sannyasa. His answer was that wherever the Lord was staying was Jagannatha Puri, and that his so-called vow could go to hell. When he was told to stay and serve Gopinatha, he replied that simply seeing the Lord's feet was a million times more service to Gopinatha. He was refused permission to travel with the party. So he travelled alone, keeping pace with it but apart from it, and at Kataka the Lord called him in. Krishnadasa Kaviraja comments that nobody can understand the close love between the two, and that Gadadhara gave up his vow and his Deity service as a man flicks away a straw. Mahaprabhu was pleased, but did not intend to show it. He took Gadadhara's hand and spoke to him in the anger of love. He said that the vow was broken and the service abandoned, and He asked whether Gadadhara wanted his own happiness or the Lord's. Then He got into a boat, and Gadadhara Pandit fell down unconscious on the bank. Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya was left to revive him. He told Gadadhara to get up, because such were the Lord's pastimes, and took him back to Puri. The text says that both of them were grief-stricken.
The Lord's own verdict on that episode came later, when the journey had been abandoned and He was back at Puri. He said, in front of everyone, that He had left Gadadhara Pandit behind and Gadadhara had become unhappy, and that for this reason He had not been able to go to Vrindavana.
Vallabha Bhatta and the Lord's Feigned Coldness #
One more episode belongs here, because the tradition uses it to explain Gadadhara's character. Late in the Puri years the Vedantist Vallabha Bhatta arrived. He found Mahaprabhu cool towards his scholarship, so he began to seek Gadadhara's friendship instead. He visited constantly and read Gadadhara his own commentary at length, whether he wanted to hear it or not. Mahaprabhu let it be known that He was displeased with Gadadhara too, and Gadadhara, who had done nothing, was terrified. Krishnadasa Kaviraja explains what the Lord was doing. He wanted to see Gadadhara's affectionate anger, but could never provoke it. Gadadhara was always aware of who Mahaprabhu was, and that awareness never let such anger come. His love, the text says, was of the kind Rukmini had for Krishna: too reverent for quarrelling. So the Lord pretended to be cold towards him instead. Gadadhara wept at His feet and was embraced, and the whole thing was over. It is a small, homely episode, and it is also the reason two of Mahaprabhu's names are Gadadhara-prananatha and Gadai-Gauranga.
What the Puri Years Amounted To #
Gaudiya Vaishnavas take the Puri years as the model of a particular kind of religious life. Gadadhara Pandit preached to nobody, converted nobody, wrote no book that survives under his name, and never left Puri except for that one journey as far as Kataka. By the usual standards used to measure a religious life, he had nothing to show. He kept a Deity, cooked, read aloud, and was there. Krishnadasa Kaviraja sums him up as celebrated everywhere for gentle behaviour, brahminical qualities and steady love. In these words the tradition gives its careful judgement that this was enough. What happened at the end of those years is told here.
