Exactly when Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami passed away is not settled. Most modern accounts place his disappearance somewhere between about 1615 and 1620. Some Gaudiya Vaishnava traditions narrow this further to 1616 or 1617. Even his birth year is disputed by several decades, and Chaitanya-charitamrita itself gives no exact date for when it was completed. So this uncertainty is not surprising, and there is nothing suspicious about it. It is simply the kind of gap that remains when a very private man leaves behind an enormous book and almost no other record of himself.
A Legend Worth Naming and Rejecting #
One persistent story, associated with the later Sahajiya tradition rather than mainstream Gaudiya Vaishnavism, claims that Jiva Gosvami grew jealous of Chaitanya-charitamrita's reception and threw its manuscript into a well, and that Krishnadasa died of the shock. Serious Gaudiya Vaishnava scholars reject this story completely. The manuscript clearly survived, because Krishnadasa's own disciple, Mukunda, preserved it and published it after his disappearance. Jiva Gosvami was himself deeply respected in the same Vrindavana community, and nothing in the historical record connects him to any such act. We mention the story here only so that it can be set aside, not repeated without question.
The Samadhi at Radha-Damodara #
What is agreed upon is the place: Krishnadasa's samadhi, or memorial tomb, stands on the grounds of the Radha-Damodara temple in Vrindavana, near where he is believed to have spent his final years and completed his book. It remains a place of pilgrimage for Gaudiya Vaishnavas visiting Vrindavana today.
An Unbroken Chain of Disciples #
Apart from the book itself, Krishnadasa's most important legacy is the line of disciples that comes from him. His own direct disciple was Narottama Dasa Thakura. After him the line continued through Vishvanatha Chakravarti Thakura and Jagannatha Dasa Babaji to Bhaktivinoda Thakura, then to Gaura Kishora Dasa Babaji and Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura, and from him to Srila Prabhupada. Prabhupada said that Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura read Chaitanya-charitamrita whenever he had a spare moment. He also said that Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura predicted that people around the world would one day learn Bengali just to read it in the original. Prabhupada took this prediction seriously. So his own English translation prints the Bengali text beside it, word for word, and does not give only a paraphrase.
Kept in Print by a Devoted Editor #
Chaitanya-charitamrita has survived into the modern era largely thanks to Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura. He edited and published an important edition of the text through the Gaudiya Math. He also wrote its Bhumika, or introduction, which discusses the little that could be known for certain about Krishnadasa's own life. When Srila Prabhupada began his own English translation decades later, he carried forward this same edition and this same reverence for the text. He kept the original Bengali printed beside the English, so that nothing of Krishnadasa's own voice would be lost in translation.
Beyond the Household, Beyond the Ashramas #
Srila Prabhupada offered one more assessment of what happened to Krishnadasa once he reached Vrindavana: "After arriving in Vrindavana, Krishnadasa became indifferent to talk about his previous family life and totally absorbed in Hari-katha. This behavior is appropriate for someone in the third or fourth station and completely committed to the devotional life. Chaitanya-charitamrita is the composition of someone who has reached the status of a paramahamsa and is completely beyond the four ashramas," he wrote in his purport to the same chapter where he traced the disciple line from Krishnadasa down to himself (Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita, Adi-lila, Chapter 1, "The Spiritual Masters").
Some traditional accounts say that Krishnadasa's cremated remains are not at the Radha-Damodara temple itself. They place them at the Teen Goswami samadhi-pitha near Radha-kunda. These accounts add that certain Gaudiya Vaishnava saints of this time were cremated instead of being buried in the usual way, so that hostile forces could not later dishonour their remains. This page follows the more commonly repeated tradition, which places his samadhi at Radha-Damodara. But it honestly records this other account and does not try to settle the question.
The Measure Prabhupada Gave It #
Prabhupada's own judgement of the book shows Krishnadasa's legacy more clearly than anything else. He described the Bhagavad-gita as the entry-level study of Krishna consciousness, the Srimad-Bhagavatam as the graduate study, and Chaitanya-charitamrita as the postgraduate study, the deepest and most demanding of the three. It is not a small claim to make about a book written by a man who, by his own account, could barely see the page in front of him.
