Long before he ever knelt at Narottama Dasa Thakura's feet, Ganga Narayana Chakravarti was already one of the best-known men in Gambhila. He came from a wealthy brahmana family, had a scholar's education behind him, and ran a household school where, tradition says, hundreds of students studied under him at a time. In a Bengal where a brahmana's learning and birth still counted for almost everything, that combination made him a person of real standing. When Narottama's following began to grow, he became one of its sharpest critics.
An Uncomfortable Question of Caste #
The difficulty was not Narottama's teaching, which few could fault. It was his birth. Narottama belonged to the kayastha community, not the brahmana class. Even so, he had begun accepting brahmana disciples. This reversed the usual order, and it offended exactly the kind of learned, caste-conscious brahmana that Ganga Narayana was at that time. A generation earlier, Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu himself had taught that true devotion, not birth, was what qualified a person to teach and initiate others. Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami had written that same teaching down for all time in Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita. But Ganga Narayana, like many brahmana scholars of his generation, had not yet made it his own. Gambhila, known today as Jiaganj, lies a few stops from Murshidabad on the bank of the Bhagirathi. It was not a remote place where such questions could be avoided. It stood in a district full of brahmana scholars. So a scholar of Ganga Narayana's standing there had every reason to think his objection was simply common sense.
A Friend's Transformation #
The sources agree that what changed his mind was watching someone close to him take initiation from Narottama and come back a different man. But they disagree about who that person was. One early account, from the family history kept at Gambhila itself, names a close friend and fellow scholar, Ramakrishna Acharya. After his initiation, Ramakrishna Acharya's devotion suddenly deepened, and Ganga Narayana could find no way to dismiss it. A separate modern account says instead that the association of Harirama Acharya, another of Narottama's disciples, opened his eyes. Neither source can be checked directly against the other, so the question of which name is correct is left open. But both agree on the effect. A proud man saw, from very close, something in a friend's character that all his scholarship could not explain.
Regret, and a Decision #
The change in his friend did not stay a private observation for long. Ganga Narayana began to see his past criticism of Narottama as an offense, not as an opinion he could defend. Tradition says the regret that followed grew so heavy that he decided to seek out the very teacher he had once dismissed. Initiation on the Bank of the Ganges tells of that decision and the unusual way it was finally answered. It is the episode in which Gambhila's proudest scholar became one of Narottama Dasa Thakura's most devoted disciples.
