Nimai returned from a pilgrimage to Gaya in 1509 a changed young man, absorbed now in devotion to Krishna rather than in the grammar and logic that had once been his whole world. The Navadvipa devotees - among them Srivasa Thakura, Gadadhara Pandit and others - watched the transformation with amazement and joy. Ganga Dasa Pandit, his old teacher, was no exception, but what he did next is the detail Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition has never let go of.
Bowing to His Own Student #
Even in this changed state, Nimai continued going to Ganga Dasa Pandit's house and offering obeisances at his feet, setting an example, tradition says, of exactly how a disciple ought to honor a teacher - regardless of how far beyond ordinary schooling that disciple had since traveled. Ganga Dasa Pandit, in turn, met him not with the plain respect due a former student but with the warmth a guru shows a beloved disciple, embracing him with evident affection. According to Sri Chaitanya-Bhagavata, Ganga Dasa Pandit was overjoyed at the transformation, telling his former pupil that his life, and the lives of his ancestors on both sides, were now blessed - but also, in the same breath, telling him plainly to keep teaching. It is a small, human moment inside a much larger pastime: two men who both understood, in their different ways, that something remarkable had just happened between them, and who each kept their footing anyway - one still a teacher giving instruction, the other still, by his own choice, a student paying respect.
The Ferryman on the Ganges #
A second episode, set earlier in Ganga Dasa Pandit's life, surfaced only years later, and in a striking way. One night, fleeing his home with his wife and children out of fear of the region's Muslim rulers, Ganga Dasa Pandit had waited by the bank of the Ganges for a ferry that never came, terrified that his family would be harmed if no boat arrived before daybreak. At the point of despair, a ferryman appeared out of nowhere, took his family safely across the river, and vanished. Ganga Dasa Pandit told no one what had truly happened that night - until, tradition holds, Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu himself brought it up. During the Mahaprakasha, the day the Lord revealed his divine identity for some twenty-one hours at Srivasa Thakura's house and called each of his devotees forward in turn, he reminded Ganga Dasa Pandit of the ferry crossing - a private memory only Ganga Dasa Pandit himself could have known. Hearing it recounted aloud, Ganga Dasa Pandit is said to have fainted in ecstasy, understanding at last who had carried his family across the river that night.
A Pilgrim at Puri #
After Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu accepted sannyasa at Katwa and eventually settled at Puri, Ganga Dasa Pandit was among the first group of Bengali devotees to make the journey south to see him there. Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita records that when these Navadvipa devotees arrived, Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya introduced them one by one to King Prataparudra - naming Ganga Dasa Pandit specifically among them - and that the Lord himself praised and embraced him warmly before the assembled Orissan devotees. In the great kirtana processions before Prataparudra's Jagannatha cart, Ganga Dasa Pandit took his place as one of five singers answering Srivasa Thakura's lead in the second kirtan group, alongside Haridasa Thakura and others, with Nityananda Prabhu dancing as the group's chief. It is the last clearly dated appearance of Ganga Dasa Pandit in the record available for this page - a former Navadvipa schoolteacher, still singing the Lord's names among the Lord's own devotees, years after the schoolroom at Ganganagara had closed for good.