Sri Anupama Mallika

Sri Anupama Mallika is remembered today chiefly through two facts: he was the youngest of the three brothers who gave Gaudiya Vaishnavism its most important theologians, and he was the father of Srila Jiva Goswami. He left no books and founded no institution, and Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita itself supplies almost everything reliably known about him. His birth name was Sri Vallabha. Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami records that Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu met him at Ramakeli and gave him a new name outright: Anupama Mallika. "Mallika" here is not a personal invention, and it is not a woman's name mistakenly attached to him - it was the same family honorific his elder brothers also carried for their service in the Bengal Sultanate's government, the very title behind Sanatana Goswami's own court name, Sakara Mallika. What Chaitanya-charitamrita preserves about Anupama beyond this renaming is unusually specific for a man who wrote nothing: a real disagreement with his brothers over whose Lord he should worship, and his own answer to it.

At a Glance

• Born Sri Vallabha, youngest of Kumaradeva's three sons who entered government service in Bengal and all received the family title Mallika (Mullik).
• Renamed Anupama Mallika by Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu at their meeting in the village of Ramakeli.
• Worshiped Lord Ramachandra from childhood and never shifted his devotion to Radha-Govinda, even when his own brothers urged him to.
• Traveled with Rupa Goswami toward Vrindavana, meeting the devotee Subuddhi Raya at Mathura and touring its twelve forests with him.
• Died in Bengal soon after that journey, before his infant son Jiva Goswami could grow up knowing him.

Three Brothers, One Family Title #

Chaitanya-charitamrita traces Anupama's family several generations back to a Karnataka-brahmana line that eventually settled in Bengal, but the part that matters for his own life begins with his father, Kumaradeva, who lived in Bakla-Chandradvipa, near present-day Fateyabad in the Jessore district of Bangladesh. Of Kumaradeva's several sons, three took up Vaishnava life: Sanatana, the eldest; Rupa, the middle brother; and Vallabha, the youngest. All three entered the service of Nawab Hussain Shah's government at Gauda. Sanatana rose to a senior ministerial post remembered as Sakara Mallika, Rupa became Dabir Khas or chief secretary, and Vallabha, by tradition, was placed in charge of the royal mint. Because the three brothers all served the Sultanate in this way, the family as a whole received the honorific Mullik - an Indo-Persian title roughly equivalent to "lord," given, as Srila Prabhupada explains in his purport to this history, to families of wealth and standing regardless of caste or religion. It was not unique to any one brother; what fixes it to Vallabha's own name is that Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu later folded the title directly into the new name He gave him.

Renamed at Ramakeli #

According to Srila Prabhupada's own purport to this history, the renaming happened at Ramakeli, the Maldah-district village where the family had by then settled and where Jiva Goswami would later be born: when Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu passed through on His way toward Vrindavana, He met Vallabha there directly. Chaitanya-charitamrita's main narrative introduces the new name a little later, as Rupa and his brother set out to find the Lord again at Prayaga: "Rupa Gosvami's younger brother was a great devotee whose actual name was Sri Vallabha, but he was given the name Anupama Mallika" (CC Madhya 19.36). From that point the text calls him only by this new name, and this website's own page title follows Chaitanya-charitamrita's choice rather than his birth name. Why "Anupama" ("incomparable" or "without equal") was chosen is never explained directly, though the sense fits a devotee whose fixed determination Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu Himself would later single out for praise. Because this Ramakeli meeting is the one clearly recorded encounter that shaped his spiritual life, Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition counts Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu Himself as his guru here, much as it does for Sanatana Goswami - though, unlike Sanatana's case, Chaitanya-charitamrita does not describe a separate, extended teaching given to him alone.

Loyal to One Lord #

Living among brothers absorbed in Krishna-bhakti did not change what Anupama Mallika himself worshiped. According to Sanatana Goswami's own later testimony to Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Anupama had been devoted to Lord Ramachandra "from the very beginning of his childhood... with great determination" (CC Antya 4.30), and even repeated, heartfelt appeals from Rupa and Sanatana - the two men who would soon become the most celebrated Krishna-bhaktas of the age - could not move him. The full story of that test, including his own words on the matter, is told on Tested Between Two Devotions.

The Journey to Vrindavana and a Sudden End #

When Rupa Gosvami resigned his post and set out to find Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Anupama went with him rather than stay behind. Their travels took them through Mathura, into Vrindavana itself under Subuddhi Raya's guidance, and finally to a meeting with Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu at Prayaga - after which the two brothers turned back toward Bengal to settle their affairs before an intended second meeting with the Lord at Jagannatha Puri. Anupama never completed that second journey. He died in Bengal not long after returning, and word reached his brother Sanatana only later, from Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu Himself. The complete account, including how Sanatana Goswami responded to the news, is told on The Journey to Vrindavana and a Sudden End.

A Father His Son Never Knew #

Anupama Mallika is not counted among the Six Goswamis his brothers and nephew helped establish in Vrindavana, and he left behind no commentary, no compiled work, nothing carrying his own name into later Gaudiya Vaishnava literature. What he left instead was a son: Jiva Goswami, still a child in Bengal at his father's death, who would grow up under his uncles' care in Vrindavana and become, by the estimate of Srila Prabhupada and generations of Gaudiya scholars since, the most systematic philosopher among the Six Goswamis. Chaitanya-charitamrita states the connection as plainly as it can be stated: "The son of Sri Vallabha, or Anupama, Srila Rupa Gosvami's younger brother, was the great learned scholar named Srila Jiva Gosvami" (CC Antya 4.227). Anupama Mallika's own place in this history is small next to that of his brothers or his son, and Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition has never pretended otherwise. What it has kept, carefully, across five centuries, is the name Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu gave him at Ramakeli, one verse recording his death, and his own brother's testimony that whatever else changed around him, his devotion to Lord Ramachandra never did.