The marriage of Nityananda Prabhu to Vasudha and Jahnava, the two daughters of Suryadasa Sarakhela, is told in full — the refusal, Vasudha's collapse, and Nityananda's restoring her life on condition that the marriage go forward — on this site's own page for Nityananda Prabhu, which draws that dramatic account from the Bhakti-ratnakara and the Premavilasa. That page is the fuller and more authoritative telling of the episode from Nityananda's side; readers wanting the complete story of the courtship should go there first. This page instead follows what happened around and after it, from Jahnava's own side.
A Vision Before the Wedding #
Some retellings of the Bhakti-ratnakara describe the match arising more peacefully than the dramatic account of the refusal and Vasudha's collapse: Suryadasa, turning over the question of his daughters' marriage late one night, is said to have fallen asleep and dreamed of Nityananda Prabhu as Balarama Himself, radiant beyond description, with his own two daughters standing at his sides in their forms as Revati and Varuni. Waking in ecstasy, Suryadasa is said to have sent a Brahmin friend to Navadwip to place the proposal before Srivasa Thakura, at whose house Nityananda Prabhu was then staying, and through him before Advaita Acharya as well, both of whom received the news with joy. Whether the courtship unfolded through this vision, through the more dramatic events already told on Nityananda Prabhu's own page, or through some combination the surviving texts no longer let a reader disentangle, the different versions of the Bhakti-ratnakara agree on their outcome: Suryadasa gave both daughters to Nityananda Prabhu, and did so gladly.
The Wedding at Shaligrama #
The preliminary adhivasa rites were performed at the house of Krishnadasa Sarakhela in Shaligrama, with the Brahmins of the surrounding villages in attendance, and Suryadasa then gave his two daughters to Nityananda Prabhu according to the full religious rite. From Shaligrama the new household made the customary rounds any Bengali bridegroom's family would make: to Sachi Devi at Nabadwip, who received both brides with open affection, and to Advaita Acharya's house at Shantipur, where Sita Thakurani took them into her lap and blessed them. Afterward Nityananda Prabhu settled the family at Khardaha, on the Ganges north of present-day Calcutta, which remained Jahnava's own home for the rest of her life and became the headquarters of the entire Bengal mission.
Vasudha's Children and Jahnava's Motherhood #
Vasudha bore Nityananda Prabhu eight sons and one daughter, but seven of the sons died in infancy. The two children who survived were the daughter, Ganga Devi, and the youngest son, Virabhadra, also called Virachandra. According to the Gaura-ganoddesha-dipika, these two children are themselves identified with Kshirodakashayi Vishnu and the river Ganges, and the same text identifies Ganga Devi's own husband, Madhavacharya, with King Shantanu of the Mahabharata, husband of the river-goddess Ganga in that earlier age. Vasudha herself died not long after their birth. Jahnava, who bore no children of her own, raised both of them, and the sources are unanimous that Virabhadra became her particular favorite. When he grew, it was Jahnava who gave him initiation — not Vasudha, his own mother by birth, and not Nityananda Prabhu himself. Virabhadra later saw her in a four-armed form, an experience that is said to have settled in his own mind that she, and not any other, was to be his diksha-guru.
Virabhadra grew into one of the most consequential figures of the second generation in his own right — Chaitanya-charitamrita calls him the greatest branch of the movement after Nityananda Prabhu, and Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami takes shelter of his feet before beginning to write that work at all — but that story belongs most properly to Nityananda Prabhu's own page. What belongs here is the simple fact that a household built around two sisters married to one man produced, within a generation, both the hereditary Nityananda-vamsa that carried the family's worship forward in Bengal, and the woman who would soon be recognized as the head of the entire movement to which that family belonged. Her rise to that recognition is the subject of Leading the Movement After 1534.
