Alongside Madhavendra Puri, a second, less commonly followed Gaudiya tradition names Lakshmipati Tirtha as the initiating guru of Nityananda Prabhu as well. Srila Prabhupada himself acknowledges this tradition twice in his purports to Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita, in both cases with careful hedging rather than settled certainty.
What Prabhupada's Purports Actually Say #
In his purport to Madhya-lila 3.85, discussing how people in Khadadaha sometimes misunderstood Nityananda Prabhu's own background, Srila Prabhupada writes: "Nityananda Prabhu was always a brahmachari of a sannyasi of the Vaidika order. Actually He was a paramahamsa. Sometimes He is accepted to be a disciple of Lakshmipati Tirtha. If He is so accepted, Nityananda Prabhu belonged to the Madhva-sampradaya. He did not belong to the tantrika-sampradaya of Bengal." Elsewhere, in the purport to Madhya-lila 8.128, discussing how great souls sometimes accept initiation outside expected social lines, he writes more directly still: "Similarly, Sri Nityananda Prabhu was initiated by Madhavendra Puri, a sannyasi. According to others, however, He was initiated by Lakshmipati Tirtha." In neither place does Prabhupada resolve which account is correct; both are presented as traditions in circulation, not as a settled fact requiring a choice.
The Fuller Devotional Story #
A more detailed account, preserved on gaudiyahistory.iskcondesiretree.com and drawn, by its own account, from an older devotional compilation, tells the story at length. Lord Balarama is said to have appeared to Lakshmipati Tirtha in a dream while the elderly sannyasi wept alone at night, singing of his own unworthiness. Balarama told him that a wandering brahmana, appearing as an avadhuta, a renounced madman, would arrive in his town, and instructed him to initiate that visitor into Vaishnava diksha. Lakshmipati Tirtha did so; the disciple was Nityananda Prabhu Himself, who later returned to him a second time in a dream, again as Balarama, before forbidding him ever to reveal what had passed between them and disappearing. Not long afterward, the account says, Lakshmipati Tirtha stopped speaking altogether, his disciples grew anxious watching him fade, and he left the world without warning.
A Second, Independently Reported Story #
The same page records a separate tradition, reported secondhand through H.H. Bhakti Hridoy Mangal Maharaja of Sri Chaitanya Gaudiya Math, who recalled Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura telling, in a class from the late 1920s, of a sannyasi who came begging alms at the home of Nityananda Prabhu's father, Hadai Pandit, as recorded in Chaitanya Bhagavata, and asked for the boy Nityananda Himself as alms. Hadai Pandit gave him, and the young Nityananda walked off with the sannyasi without looking back; that sannyasi, the account identifies, was Lakshmipati Tirtha.
How Seriously to Take This #
It is worth being honest about the strength of this material. Both stories trace to a single devotional website compiling older oral and textual reports, not to a source this project could independently corroborate elsewhere, and Prabhupada's own purports present the Lakshmipati-as-Nityananda's-guru tradition explicitly as one account among others, not as the primary or preferred one; most Gaudiya sources, including the account given on Madhavendra Puri's own page here, credit Madhavendra Puri as Nityananda's spiritual peer and near-contemporary in devotion rather than his guru. What can be said fairly is only this: within Gaudiya devotional memory, however loosely attested, Lakshmipati Tirtha carries the rare distinction of being credited, in different tellings, with initiating two of the tradition's most consequential figures.