Narottama-vilasa, the traditional biography of Narottama Dasa Thakura compiled by his followers, does not describe Ganga Narayana Chakravarti simply walking up and asking for initiation. It tells the story as a dream. After a day spent grieving over how he had once looked down on Narottama, Ganga Narayana fell into a troubled sleep, and Narottama himself is said to have appeared to him there, effulgent and full of compassion, smiling as he spoke: "Why do you lament? You are my servant. All your desires shall be fulfilled. You will get to meet me tomorrow while bathing in the Ganges. I shall come over here from Kheturi; we shall talk more tomorrow while bathing."
A Hesitant Guru #
Ganga Narayana woke, finished his morning duties, and went straight to the river — the same stretch of the Bhagirathi, a tributary of the Padma, that still flows past Murshidabad today. Narottama was there, exactly as promised, and Ganga Narayana fell at his feet at once, begging for initiation. But the answer he got was not an immediate yes. Narottama pointed out the very difficulty Ganga Narayana himself had once raised against others: he was a kayastha, Ganga Narayana a brahmana, and initiating him would only hand fresh ammunition to brahmana critics who would blame them both. It was a genuine warning, not a formality — the same controversy would in fact catch up with Narottama's brahmana disciples not long after, in the events told on The Disguised Shopkeepers of Kumarapura.
An Answer That Settled the Matter #
Ganga Narayana's reply is the line by which this meeting is remembered: a disciple who has taken shelter at Narottama's feet, he said, has nothing to fear from any brahmana devoid of devotion. Whatever doubt Narottama still carried, that answer resolved it. Pleased with Ganga Narayana's conviction, he initiated him then and there, on what Narottama-vilasa calls an auspicious day, and — in the biography's own words — offered him unto the lotus feet of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu himself.
Criticism, and an Answer to It #
The criticism Narottama had predicted came quickly. Brahmanas who heard that Ganga Narayana Chakravarti — of all people, the very scholar who had once mocked Narottama's kayastha birth — had taken initiation from him made him a target of exactly the mockery he had once dealt out. Tradition says it had no real effect: Ganga Narayana had, by his own account, already found what he had spent his scholarship failing to find, and in time some of the very brahmanas who had criticized him became his own disciples in turn. He went on to study the writings of the Six Goswamis under Narottama's guidance, engaging himself, the family record at Gambhila says, in near-constant harinama sankirtana, and to become the foremost among all of Narottama's disciples — a teacher, by the same account, of countless disciples of his own in later years, well known and dearly regarded among the Vaishnavas of Vrindavana even though his own household never left Bengal.
An Ordinary Life Made Extraordinary #
What makes Ganga Narayana's story worth telling in detail, where so many of Narottama's other disciples survive only as names in a list, is exactly this reversal: a man whose scholarship and wealth had once made him unwilling to bend was, within a single episode, ready to bend completely — and stayed that way for the rest of his life. He was devoted enough, before long, to risk his own safety in his guru's defense, the episode told next on The Disguised Shopkeepers of Kumarapura.