Arrival in Vrindavana

When Jiva Goswami reached Vrindavana, his uncles Srila Rupa Gosvami and Srila Sanatana Gosvami were already busy with the work Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu had personally given them. They were recovering Krishna's lost pastime places and writing the tradition's first systematic scriptures. Rupa had been instructed at Prayag and Sanatana at Varanasi years earlier, long before Jiva himself had left Bengal. That earlier meeting and instruction are told on their own pages. This page tells what happened when the nephew arrived. Jiva was already a trained Sanskrit scholar, yet he came to place himself under two uncles who had chosen to live as beggars in the forest.

Arriving Among Friends #

Reaching Vrindavana, Jiva found devotees already gathered there who received him with love and friendship: Prabodhananda Saraswati, Kashishvara Pandit, and Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami among them. Rupa and Sanatana themselves were overjoyed to see their nephew, who was already known as a scholar, taking his place among the Vrindavana devotees.

Choosing to Begin at the Bottom #

Jiva did not arrive in Vrindavana expecting people to treat him specially because of his own education. All the surviving accounts say that instead he took up the humblest services in Rupa Goswami's household. He washed his uncle's feet, prepared the palm-leaf manuscripts his uncle wrote on, and proofread finished work before it went further. When Jiva first approached his eldest uncle, Sanatana, for initiation, Sanatana out of humility passed the responsibility on to Rupa. Before agreeing, Rupa tested him. He had Jiva prepare articles for Deity worship, beg alms, cook, research texts, massage his feet, and prepare the very palm leaves Rupa wrote his own books on. Jiva also regularly brought water for his uncles' bath and cleaned their asrama. Rupa was highly pleased with Jiva's selfless spirit. Only after this period of direct, personal service did Rupa formally accept him as a disciple and initiate him into the Vaishnavism of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. So, of the two uncles, it was Rupa Goswami who became Jiva's diksha-guru, the spiritual master who gave him mantra initiation. Sanatana stayed just as close to Jiva throughout these same years, guiding him with instruction.

Proofreading the Bhakti-rasamrita-sindhu #

Once Jiva was accepted as a disciple, he was given exactly the kind of work his training had prepared him for. He reviewed and proofread Rupa Goswami's own writing, including the verses of the Bhakti-rasamrita-sindhu. This systematic study of devotional rasa is still one of Rupa's central works. Jiva did much more with this text than simply proofread it. He later wrote his own full commentary on it, the Durgama-sangamani, discussed further in Other Literary Works. He also proofread Sanatana Goswami's own commentary on the Tenth Canto of the Bhagavatam. Following Sanatana's instruction, he produced a condensed version of his own. Jiva worked this closely on both his uncles' books, not just through formal study. This gave him the working knowledge he would later draw on for his own systematic work, the Sat-sandarbha. That story is told in full at Writing the Sat-sandarbha.

The Gift of Radha-Damodara #

According to the early-seventeenth-century Sadhana-dipika, Rupa Goswami was skilled enough to carve and draw deities with his own hands. The Sadhana-dipika was written by Radha-Krishna Goswami, who was then head of the Govindaji temple. Tradition says that Rupa Goswami carved a small black-marble deity of Damodara with his own hands and gave Him into Jiva's care. This is usually dated to 1542. But Jiva did not buy the land around it at Seva Kunja until 1558, so the exact order of events is not clear. No source fully explains this difference, so we report it here instead of hiding it. Jiva worshiped this same deity, known today as Sri Sri Radha-Damodara, for the rest of his life. The temple that later grew up around this worship became one of the most important places in Vrindavana connected with the Six Goswamis, and it still is today.

A Household Under Two Uncles #

Throughout these years Jiva lived and worked in close daily contact with both Rupa and Sanatana. He took in not only their conclusions but also their way of working. They always checked their statements against the Bhagavatam and other scripture. They insisted on quoting authority instead of stating their own opinion. And they were eager to defend the tradition's main claims about Krishna, even against far more senior and famous scholars. At this time Vrindavana was still a forest of scattered bhajana-kutiras, not a settled town. The Goswamis who lived there, with Jiva among the youngest of them, followed a discipline of very little eating and very little sleep. They spent almost all their time in study of scripture and in chanting. Jiva came from a background of formal Sanskrit education. By the time he arrived, his uncles had already practiced austerities for years. So Jiva had to learn this discipline directly, by living inside it, not by reading about it.

Jiva had a trained scholar's confidence, but the household he lived in valued restraint and respect above all else. These two things did not always fit easily together. From this same training Jiva had picked up an early habit of defending his gurus' arguments with more force than caution. This habit would soon place him at the center of one of the more debated episodes in early Gaudiya Vaishnava history. It is told in Defending His Gurus' Honor.