The Bakula tree at Mamgachi is, alongside the story of Sharanga Murari, the other detail every account of Sharanga Thakura's life returns to - and it is one of the few places in his story where the tree itself, not just the telling, is still there to be visited.
A Tree Beyond a Devotee's Own Power #
Sharanga Thakura did his daily Deity worship of Sri Sri Radha-Gopinatha beneath a Bakula tree in his Mamgachi courtyard, and it was this tree, sources agree, that Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu noticed beginning to wither during one of His visits there. The tree was, by every account, close to dead - its leaves gone or going, its trunk already showing the effects of age or disease. Asked about it, Sharanga Thakura is said to have answered that he saw no way to save it except through Mahaprabhu's own mercy: a devotee's honest admission that some things are simply beyond what his own worship or effort could fix.
An Embrace That Still Stands #
Mahaprabhu's response, in every telling of this story, is the same: He embraced the dying tree with His own arms. The tree, accounts say, recovered where it stood - green leaves and fragrant flowers returning within the story's own telling, rather than over some slow recovery. What makes this story different from many Gaudiya devotional tales is that its object did not disappear into legend afterward. A large Bakula tree, said to be well over five hundred years old and now hollow at its core, still stands in the temple courtyard at Mamgachi, and it is shown to pilgrims on Nabadwip-dhama parikrama today as the very tree Mahaprabhu is said to have embraced. Some devotees who visit collect fallen wood from beneath it to make japa beads, treating the tree itself as a living relic of the event rather than only a setting for it.
A Tree Still Tended #
The temple beside the tree has passed through periods of neglect and repair - the Deities and grounds are remembered as having been rescued and re-established in the twentieth century by a sannyasi of the Gaudiya Matha, Bhakti Vaibhava Sagara Maharaja, whose samadhi now stands at the same site. Day-to-day care of the tree and the altar beside it has, by one recent account, rested for decades with a single long-serving pujari who began attending the Deities as a boy of about ten and has continued for roughly sixty years since. It is a small, ordinary detail next to the story of Mahaprabhu's embrace, but it is the reason a five-hundred-year-old tree with a hollow core still has fresh leaves each season rather than only a story attached to its name.
As with the story of Sharanga Murari, this episode is known only through Vrindavana Dasa Thakura's Chaitanya-bhagavata and the devotional literature built on it; it is not found in Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita, and no Srila Prabhupada purport or lecture naming Sharanga Thakura directly has been located for this page. What can be said with more confidence is that the tree pilgrims visit at Mamgachi today is old enough, and has been pointed to as this tree for long enough, that the story and the site have supported each other for a very long time.
