In his years as a renunciant living on alms at Suryakunda, Jagannatha Dasa Babaji once asked his servant Bihari Dasa to find a Deity for worship there. Bihari Dasa approached a local zamindar of the weaver caste, who arranged for Deities of Gaura-Nitai to be brought from Dainhata. After they were installed, the Deities were so beautiful that, in the words of the tradition, they appeared to be made of gold. Because of this, the Deities were very nearly lost from Suryakunda altogether.
Another devotional account tells this same episode somewhat differently. It says that the villagers of Suryakunda themselves built a room and small temple for Jagannatha Dasa Babaji, and that he asked Bihari Dasa to install a Deity in it. In this account, Bihari Dasa travelled instead to Sonaruddi village, about eight miles from Katoa, where a local landlord gave him the Gaura-Nitai Deities. Then Bihari Dasa went on to Calcutta and collected five thousand rupees toward Their installation from Srinath Rai, the Laha family, and others. The two accounts do not agree on where the Deities came from, or on whether any money was collected. Both are reported here, instead of being quietly combined into one.
The Dacoits Who Dropped the Deities #
A band of dacoits heard of Deities that looked golden and came to steal them. Jagannatha Dasa Babaji told the robbers plainly that he had nothing of value and that they were welcome to search the temple themselves. They broke open the door, gathered up everything they could carry, including the Deities, and fled. In their hurry they stumbled at the doorstep and dropped the Deities. They saw that the sun was beginning to rise, and they did not want to be caught in daylight. So the dacoits left the Deities there and escaped with the rest of what they had taken. It was certainly a narrow escape, and Jagannatha Dasa Babaji learned the obvious practical lesson from it.
Sonara Gaura and the Six-Armed Deity #
After the robbery he asked Bihari Dasa to arrange for the Deities to be cared for somewhere else. Bihari Dasa carried Them to Vrindavana. There he placed Them in the care of a devotee known as Mother-Goswamini of Gayespur, along with a donation of two thousand rupees. Those same Deities are still worshipped today at Dhopapada in Gopalbag, under the name that this incident gave Them: Sonara Gaura, "the golden Gaura."
Some time afterward, Jagannatha Dasa Babaji asked Bihari Dasa to find him another Deity. This time Bihari Dasa found a six-armed form of Lord Chaitanya. A Manipuri Vaishnava named Dinu Babaji, near Radhakunda, had kept this Deity hidden inside a bag of cattle feed. Bihari Dasa cleaned and dressed the Deity and brought Him to Suryakunda, where Jagannatha Dasa Babaji worshipped Him for ten years. At the end of that decade, Jagannatha Dasa Babaji told Bihari Dasa that he wished to go to Nabadwip, and that his body should in the end be offered at the lotus feet of Lord Gauranga there. This is the first clear sign in the sources of his move toward Bengal, which would shape the rest of his life. The six-armed Deity was placed in the care of Narottama Dasaji, head of the Gopalaguru Matha, and is today worshipped in a lane of Nidhuvana in Vrindavana.
Vraja Knows No Caste #
Not every episode from these years concerned Deities. On one occasion Jagannatha Dasa Babaji accepted bread offered to him by a person of the sweeper caste in Vrindavana, and the local Vaishnava community criticised him sharply for it. When challenged to explain himself, he answered, "Do you know who these sweepers are? Before appearing in Vraja-dhama, Lord Krishna asked eighty-eight thousand sages to take birth there, and they were born in low families. Devotees reside in Vraja-dhama simply to get the opportunity of smearing their bodies with its dust, and to give up their bodies here. These sweepers are always serving the dust of Vrindavana. I therefore regard them as servants of Vraja-dhama, no different from any other Vaishnava."
Even so, the criticism hurt him. Afterward he withdrew to a quiet, lonely spot called Pesi Kadamkhandi, near Khandiravana, one of Vraja's twelve forests, and took only Bihari Dasa with him. There the two of them fasted completely through Dashami and Ekadashi. On the next morning, Dvadashi, Bihari Dasa began to worry. His guru had gone to a place with nothing to eat, and there was no way to break the fast properly on grains. But Jagannatha Dasa Babaji simply had him chant the maha-mantra loudly with karatalas. Before noon a resident of Vraja arrived with grains for them to cook. From the next day onward, milk arrived for them daily without fail.
The Departure for Nabadwip #
When the time came to leave Vraja for good, Bihari Dasa carried his guru-maharaja on his shoulder in a bamboo basket to the railway station at Mathura and boarded a train bound for Bengal. At the Memari station in Bardhaman a British railway officer, struck by the simplicity and blissful nature of the old Babaji, went out of his way to assist them. They left the train before reaching Nabadwip, hired a bullock cart, and travelled to the ashrama of a renowned soul named Bhagavan Dasa Babaji, who lived at Ambika Kalna.
Bhagavan Dasa Babaji was overjoyed to see him. He cried out "Oh! My friend has come!" and embraced him. The two elderly Babajis fell to the ground together in a deep spiritual trance. They lay motionless in each other's arms from ten o'clock in the morning until eleven o'clock that night. Their attendants grew anxious and finally asked Bihari Dasa to help. He brought them back to outer awareness by massaging his guru's chest and chanting the maha-mantra. Jagannatha Dasa Babaji had neither eaten nor drunk through three full days of travel. He broke his fast at midnight, and afterward the two old friends rested.
They stayed ten days at Kalna. During that time Bhagavan Dasa Babaji, who was very poor, insisted on giving all the money he had left, eighteen rupees, for the onward journey. Then Jagannatha Dasa Babaji set out again by bullock cart for Nabadwip. There Bihari Dasa suggested that they stay at the well-known Bada-akhara ashrama, but his guru refused: "No, we will not stay in any ashrama. We will stay under some tree." They did exactly that, until a devotee named Madhava Datta bought the land beside the tree and gave it to the Babaji. A year later Bhaktivinoda Thakura built two small huts there for him. The landlord Vanamali Rai added three more huts and a boundary wall, and a wealthy elderly lady had a well dug nearby for drinking water. Jagannatha Dasa Babaji stayed at this spot in Kuliya for thirty-two years. Whenever his travels took him to Calcutta, he stayed at Bhaktivinoda Thakura's own house on Maniktala Street. Otherwise he declined the many invitations of devotees who wished to host him for prasada. He later gave a Govardhana-shila to Bhaktivinoda Thakura, who kept and worshipped it at his Bhakti Bhavan.
