Ramachandra Kaviraja has his own account of this episode, told from his side. What follows is the same episode as Ganga Narayana Chakravarti's own tradition remembers it. More than any other story, it is the reason his name survived at all outside his own family's records.
Word of an Attack Reaches Two Disciples First #
A group of smarta brahmanas decided that Narottama Dasa Thakura had gone too far in initiating brahmanas despite his own kayastha birth. They did not come quietly. They recruited a local king, Raja Narasimha, and a powerful traveling debater, Rupanarayana Pandita. Rupanarayana was a dig-vijaya pandit, a scholar who had made a career of defeating rivals in open contest. The group set out for Kheturi to expose Narottama in public. Word of the plan reached Ganga Narayana and Ramachandra Kaviraja before the party arrived. The two disciples did not wait for the confrontation to come to their guru.
Two Ordinary Shopkeepers #
They traveled ahead to Kumarapura, a town the king's party would have to pass through. There they set up two market stalls under false trades. Ganga Narayana posed as a pan-walla selling betel nut, and Ramachandra as a potter selling clay cooking pots. Neither gave the slightest sign that two accomplished Sanskrit scholars stood behind the disguises. Then the smarta party's own students came to buy supplies. They found shopkeepers who answered them in fluent Sanskrit and drew them almost at once into a philosophical debate. According to the Bhakti-ratnakara, the debate was based on the Bhagavatam's own teaching that spiritual qualification rests on character and devotion, not on the family one happens to be born into.
A Debate Lost in a Marketplace #
Word of the argument reached the students' teachers, and soon the whole party, Raja Narasimha and Rupanarayana Pandita among them, had gathered at the two stalls. Rupanarayana himself entered the debate and lost it, defeated by two men he had taken for common tradesmen. Asked at last who they really were, Ganga Narayana and Ramachandra answered with practiced humility: two insignificant disciples of Narottama Dasa Thakura Mahasaya. The king turned to his own pandits with a pointed question: if they could not even defeat two ordinary disciples in a village marketplace, how did they expect to defeat the guru himself? Humiliated, the party turned back without ever reaching Kheturi.
A Dream That Finished What the Debate Started #
That same night, tradition says, Durga-devi appeared to Raja Narasimha and Rupanarayana Pandita in almost identical dreams. She warned them that only surrender at Narottama's own feet could undo the offense they had committed against him. Both men rose before dawn, bathed, and went back, this time to ask forgiveness, not to fight. In time they themselves were initiated by Narottama with the Radha-Krishna mantra. For his guru's sake, Ganga Narayana was willing to give up a scholar's dignity for a market stall. Ramachandra Kaviraja's own page remembers this as one more proof of how completely both disciples had given their lives to Narottama's mission.
