No account of any conversation or teaching between Lakshmipati Tirtha and Madhavendra Puri survives in any source found. Only a single background fact survives. Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita mentions it briefly in its account of Madhavendra Puri. It says that Madhavendra Puri took sannyasa in the Madhva sampradaya under an acharya named Lakshmipati Tirtha. Nearly everything that can be said about the relationship between the two men has to come from that one sentence and from Srila Prabhupada's purport on it.
The Purport That Defines Him #
Srila Prabhupada's purport to Madhavendra Puri's own verse of separation, chanted at the end of his life, states the connection directly:
"Beginning from Madhvacharya down to the spiritual master of Madhavendra Puri, the acharya named Lakshmipati, there was no realization of devotional service in conjugal love. Sri Madhavendra Puri introduced the conception of conjugal love for the first time in the Madhvacharya-sampradaya."
This is an unusual way for history to remember someone. Lakshmipati Tirtha is described here almost entirely by what he was not. He was the last acharya in a long line that was strict and careful in philosophy, just before his own disciple broke from it. The purport does not blame him for any fault. It simply places him at the very end of a tradition that, in Prabhupada's view, had not yet developed madhurya. Madhurya is the mood of loving Krishna the way the gopis of Vrindavana do.
A Guru Present Mainly by Absence #
Once Madhavendra Puri's own devotional life really takes shape, the record turns its attention away from Lakshmipati Tirtha almost completely. Madhavendra Puri became famous across the Vaishnava world through a well-loved story. He walked around Govardhana Hill. A cowherd boy brought him milk. He recovered the buried Gopala Deity and installed Him. A Deity stole sweet rice for him at Remuna. He composed the verse of separation and chanted it until his death. All this is told at length on Madhavendra Puri's own page and its account of life in the Madhva sampradaya. None of it involves any further recorded appearance by his guru. Whatever formal training Lakshmipati Tirtha gave him in sannyasa and Vedanta, the devotional change that defines Madhavendra Puri's place in Gaudiya history happened later, elsewhere, and, as far as any source shows, without Lakshmipati Tirtha.
The Only Named Disciple #
Wikipedia's brief entry on Lakshmipati Tirtha lists exactly one disciple by name: Madhavendra Puri. This may show what the surviving record really holds, or it may simply be a gap. If it is the first, then Madhavendra Puri may be the only reason Lakshmipati Tirtha is remembered by name at all outside Madhva matha succession lists. And, as Life in the Madhva Lineage explains, those lists may not include him either. It is a rare kind of legacy. Lakshmipati Tirtha is known to history almost entirely through one disciple. By Prabhupada's own account, that disciple's devotion moved in a direction that his teacher's own line had not yet gone.
