By the time Krishnadasa was well established at Vrindavana, Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu had already passed some decades earlier, and Vrindavana Dasa Thakura's Chaitanya-bhagavata stood as the standard account of his life. But the Vrindavana Vaishnava community felt the book left a gap: it treated Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's youth in Navadvipa in rich detail but passed quickly over his last eighteen years at Puri - years Krishnadasa alone, through his guru Raghunatha Dasa Goswami, had any real access to. As those who remembered those years firsthand grew fewer, the Vaishnavas of Vrindavana asked Krishnadasa to set the record down before it was lost.
Seeking Permission at the Madana-mohana Temple #
Krishnadasa did not treat this as a request he could simply accept. He describes going before the Deity of Sri Madana-mohana - one of Vrindavana's principal worshipable Deities, established by Sanatana Gosvami - to ask permission directly, in front of the assembled Vaishnava community. According to the traditional account, Madana-mohana's garland fell from around the Deity's neck as Krishnadasa prayed, and the temple's pujari lifted it and placed it on Krishnadasa's own chest. The gathered devotees took this as an unmistakable sign of the Lord's sanction, and Krishnadasa began to write.
An Author Who Says So, Repeatedly #
What makes this episode more than pious legend is that Krishnadasa refers to it himself, more than once, inside Chaitanya-charitamrita - most explicitly near the very end of the book, where he writes: "Sri Madana-gopala has given the order that is making me write. Although this should not be disclosed, I disclose it because I am unable to remain silent." He adds, almost apologetically, that to stay silent about the order would itself be an act of ingratitude toward the Lord, and asks his readers not to mistake his disclosure for pride. Few authors in Vaishnava literature state their own claim to write with this much self-consciousness, and fewer still combine that claim with such open admission of personal unfitness for the task - a tension explored further in Composing Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita.
Permission Sought, and One Refusal Honored #
Krishnadasa did not stop at Madana-mohana. Vaishnava tradition also records that he sought and received specific permission from Lokanatha Gosvami and Raghunatha Bhatta Gosvami before setting pen to page - and that Lokanatha Gosvami, in granting it, made one request of his own: that his name be left out of the finished book. Krishnadasa honored this so consistently that Lokanatha Gosvami is barely mentioned anywhere in the whole of Chaitanya-charitamrita, a small but telling detail of how literally Krishnadasa took the wishes of the Vrindavana Vaishnavas he was writing to satisfy.
A Dancing Dog, By His Own Description #
Krishnadasa's opening words to the entire work strike exactly this note. He begins Chaitanya-charitamrita by offering respects to Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, "by whose desire I have become like a dancing dog and suddenly taken to the writing of Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita, although I am a fool." The image is deliberately undignified - a performing animal, not a scholar, set in motion by another's will. Read alongside the Madana-mohana episode, it frames the entire work that follows as something Krishnadasa understood himself to be executing rather than authoring: an order from Vrindavana's own Deities, carried out by an old man who considered himself unfit even to attempt it.