Srila Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami

śrī-rūpa-raghunātha-pade yāra āśa
caitanya-caritāmṛta kahe kṛṣṇadāsa

"Desiring the mercy of Sri Rupa and Sri Raghunatha, Krishnadasa narrates Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita." These are Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami's own words of surrender, repeated at the close of nearly every chapter of Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita itself.

Srila Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami is remembered above all as the author of Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita, the work Gaudiya Vaishnavas regard as the single most authoritative account of the life and teachings of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. Very little about his own life can be said with any confidence, because he wrote almost nothing about himself. His own writing gives only a handful of scattered verses about his family and his call to Vrindavana. Yet those few verses, together with the enormous book he left behind, are enough to make him one of the greatest figures of the entire Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition.

Early Life in Bengal #

Krishnadasa was born in the village of Jhamatpur, near Naihati in the Katwa area of Bengal's Burdwan (Barddhaman) district, to a father named Bhagiratha and a mother named Sunanda. He had a younger brother, Shyamadasa. Apart from these bare facts, little can be said with certainty about his early years. Gaudiya Vaishnava writers have long explained this silence by his own extreme humility, not by any lack of a story worth telling.

Even his caste is disputed. Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura edited an early printed edition of Chaitanya-charitamrita. He wrote openly that no one could say for certain whether Krishnadasa was born a brahmana, a kayastha, or a vaidya (the physicians' caste, with which the title "Kaviraja" is sometimes linked). He left the question open and did not force an answer. Sources are also divided on when he was born. Estimates range from about 1496 to about 1528, and no single date is generally accepted.

The Dream That Sent Him to Vrindavana #

The one episode from his Bengal years that Krishnadasa records in real detail concerns a kirtana festival at his own home. A servant of Nityananda Prabhu named Minaketana Ramadasa attended, weeping and dancing in open ecstasy. Afterward, Krishnadasa's brother Shyamadasa argued with Ramadasa. Shyamadasa showed firm faith in Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu but little regard for Nityananda Prabhu. So Krishnadasa scolded his own brother in front of the gathering. Chaitanya and Nityananda, he said, are a single body in two forms, and to trust one while doubting the other is like being satisfied with half a hen.

That same night, Krishnadasa relates, Nityananda Prabhu appeared to him in a dream and spoke words he later set down in Chaitanya-charitamrita itself: "O Krishnadasa, do not be afraid. Go to Vrindavana, for there you will attain all things." He left Bengal for Vrindavana soon after and, so far as his own writing suggests, never returned. The fuller story of that night is told in Early Life and the Call to Vrindavana.

Years of Training Among the Goswamis #

At Vrindavana, Krishnadasa joined the circle of the Goswamis. Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu had personally directed them to recover the holy places of Krishna's Vraja and to give Gaudiya Vaishnava theology its systematic foundation. Krishnadasa accepted Raghunatha Dasa Goswami, one of Chaitanya's most renounced personal associates, as his diksha-guru. He states this plainly in his own closing words to Chaitanya-charitamrita. He also named Rupa Gosvami, Sanatana Gosvami, Jiva Gosvami, Raghunatha Bhatta Gosvami and Gopala Bhatta Gosvami among the teachers who shaped his understanding. Raghunatha Dasa Goswami had lived under Svarupa Damodara Gosvami's personal care during Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's final years at Puri. So it was above all Raghunatha Dasa Goswami who gave Krishnadasa the close, detailed knowledge of those years of the Lord's life, about which the least had been written.

The Order to Write Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita #

By the time Krishnadasa reached old age, Vrindavana Dasa Thakura's Chaitanya-bhagavata already existed as a biography of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. But it told of the Lord's youth in far more detail than his final eighteen years at Puri. The Vaishnavas of Vrindavana asked Krishnadasa to complete the record while people who remembered those years were still alive. He describes how he first asked for permission. Standing before the Deity of Madana-mohana, he prayed for a sign. Then, in the presence of the Vrindavana Vaishnava community, Madana-mohana's garland fell from around the Deity's neck, and the pujari placed it on Krishnadasa's own chest. He took it as an order to write. He says so directly, more than once, in the pages of the finished book. This episode is told in full in The Command to Write Chaitanya-charitamrita.

An Old Man's Last, Great Labor #

Krishnadasa was already old when he began Chaitanya-charitamrita, and by his own account he was nearly blind and deaf. Near the very end of the book he describes his condition openly, hiding nothing. His hands trembled as he wrote, and his memory failed him. He says that he was troubled by five kinds of disease at once, any of which might end his life "at any time of the day or night." He finished the work anyway. He said that he was able to do it not by his own strength, but by the mercy of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Nityananda Prabhu, Advaita Acharya, Svarupa Damodara Gosvami, Rupa Gosvami, Sanatana Gosvami, Jiva Gosvami, and his own guru Raghunatha Dasa Goswami. And, he insists again, it was by the direct order of Madana-mohana.

Disappearance and Place in the Guru-parampara #

Krishnadasa is believed to have passed away at Vrindavana sometime between about 1615 and 1620. Some traditions narrow this to 1616 or 1617. His samadhi stands today on the grounds of the Radha-Damodara temple, where he spent his final years. A later legend from the Sahajiya tradition claimed that Jiva Gosvami, out of jealousy, threw the manuscript of Chaitanya-charitamrita into a well. Mainstream Gaudiya Vaishnava scholars reject this story completely. The manuscript clearly survived, and after Krishnadasa's disappearance it was published by his own disciple, Mukunda.

The guru-parampara continued from Krishnadasa. His direct disciple was Narottama Dasa Thakura. From Narottama Dasa Thakura the line continued in turn through Vishvanatha Chakravarti Thakura and Jagannatha Dasa Babaji to Bhaktivinoda Thakura, Gaura Kishora Dasa Babaji, Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura, and Srila Prabhupada himself. Prabhupada described Chaitanya-charitamrita as nothing less than "the postgraduate study of Krishna consciousness," and in his own account of spiritual education he placed it even beyond the Bhagavad-gita and Srimad-Bhagavatam. This is because of the depth it demands of its reader. Seen in this light, an old man with trembling hands, near the Radha-Damodara temple, wrote the book that would carry the Chaitanya tradition, intact, into the modern world.

Songs in the Vaishnava Song Book #

The Vaishnava Song Book carries 4 songs attributed to Srila Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami: see the full author page here.