Some years after His conversation with the two brothers at Puri, Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu set out from Nilachala on what would become His first attempt to reach Vrindavana, a journey that was cut short in Bengal by the sheer press of devotees wanting to see Him. Moving through Nadia district, the Lord called at a rapid succession of households: Srivasa Thakura's house, then Shivananda Sena's, then Vasudeva Datta's, and from there He came to the house of Vidya-Vacaspati at Vidyanagara, Madhusudana Vachaspati's own home.
News Travels Faster Than the Lord #
The Chaitanya-charitamrita, quoting the Chaitanya-bhagavata's account of the same events, describes what happened next in vivid terms: word of the Lord's arrival at Vidyanagara spread through the surrounding countryside almost instantly, and people converged from every direction chanting the names of Hari. The crowd grew so dense that people could not find open ground to stand on and had to clear paths through the forest simply to approach the house. Across the Ganges, still more people tried to reach Vidyanagara by boat, and the crossing became so congested that, in Madhusudana Vachaspati's own urgent response, he hurried to assemble as large a fleet of boats as he could gather, and still it was not enough. People crossed however they were able, some without waiting for a boat at all.
It is easy, reading a list of place names in a purport, to miss how extraordinary a scene this actually was: an ordinary scholar's house on the bank of the Ganges became, for a few days, the single most sought-after destination for the devotees of an entire district, and its owner found himself, in effect, running an improvised ferry service so that his neighbors could see the Lord he was hosting.
A Quiet Departure at Night #
The crowd around Vachaspati's house did not subside, and Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, who consistently avoided public spectacle when He could, eventually chose to leave rather than let the commotion continue. The Chaitanya-charitamrita states simply that "the Lord remained some time at the house of Vidya-Vacaspati, but then, because it was too crowded, He went to Kuliya," the nearby town on the far side of the Ganges, in what is now Nabadwip proper. Srila Prabhupada's purport locates Vachaspati's house precisely: at Vidyanagara, close to Koladvipa, the older name for the Kuliya area. From Kuliya the Lord's Bengal travels continued, eventually drawing in a still larger crowd that included Sri Nityananda Prabhu and, famously, ended the attempt to reach Vrindavana altogether when the devotees prevailed on the Lord to turn back toward Puri.
For Madhusudana Vachaspati himself, the episode is the last extended narrative the Chaitanya-charitamrita gives of him in Bengal. What is recorded after this comes from a different city entirely, told on teacher-of-the-goswamis-in-kashi.