Srila Madhavendra Puri

Srila Madhavendra Puri belongs to a small group of devotees whom Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita honors not just for personal holiness, but for starting something entirely new. Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami calls him the point where the seed of love of Godhead first cracked open in this age. That seed later grew, through his own disciple's disciple, into Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu Himself. Madhavendra Puri was formally a sannyasi of the Brahma-Madhva-Gaudiya sampradaya (the Madhva, or Tattvavadi, order). But his devotion went far beyond that order's rules and rituals. So Gaudiya Vaishnavas remember him less as a Madhva monk and more as the source of their own special mood of loving, often tearful, separation from Krishna. This mood is called vipralambha-bhakti.

A Sannyasi Whose Devotion Outgrew His Order #

Tradition places Madhavendra Puri's initiation with an acharya named Lakshmipati Tirtha, in the disciplic line coming down from Madhvacharya. Srila Prabhupada states this plainly in his purport to Chaitanya-charitamrita: "Out of the four sampradayas, the Sri Madhvacarya-sampradaya was accepted by Madhavendra Puri... Sri Madhavendra Puri introduced the conception of conjugal love for the first time in the Madhvacarya-sampradaya" (Madhya 4.197). Before him, Prabhupada explains, this line had almost no real cultivation of madhurya, the mood of loving Krishna the way the gopis of Vrindavana do. It was mostly ritual and philosophy. Modern historians are more careful about which sampradaya he belonged to. Some argue that Madhavendra Puri's own teacher belonged to an Advaita Vedanta order of monks, not the Madhva line. They also argue that later Gaudiya and Pushtimarga writers each added him to their own account of the lineage at a later time. Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita simply calls him a sannyasi of the Madhva sampradaya. Then it moves on to what really made him remarkable, which was his conduct.

That conduct is shown by a story Chaitanya Mahaprabhu Himself retold with approval. In Mathura, Madhavendra Puri had once accepted a Sanodiya brahmana as his initiated disciple. He had even eaten a meal cooked in that brahmana's home, though sannyasis did not normally accept food cooked by Sanodiya brahmanas. Years later, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu met that same brahmana and asked to eat at his home too. He explained why caste custom did not apply here: "A devotee's behavior establishes the true purpose of religious principles. The behavior of Madhavendra Puri Gosvami is the essence of such religious principles" (Madhya 17.185). This is one of the clearest statements in the whole text of how highly Chaitanya-charitamrita regards Madhavendra Puri. It places his personal conduct above the formal rules of caste and community. The fuller story of his life within, and beyond, the Madhva sampradaya is told on Life in the Madhva Sampradaya.

Gopala Found on Govardhana Hill #

Late in his life, wandering Vrindavana in almost constant ecstasy, Madhavendra Puri circled Govardhana Hill and bathed at Govinda-kunda. There Krishna Himself, appearing as an unnamed cowherd boy, brought him milk. Then Krishna came to him in a dream. He said that He was lying buried in a nearby thicket, where a priest had hidden Him when the priest fled during a time of danger. He asked to be uncovered and installed on the hilltop. Madhavendra Puri gathered the villagers, found the Deity, and held an installation festival. It was so large that it grew into the annakuta tradition still observed at Govardhana today. Later he gave the care of the Deity to two Bengali brahmanas who had given up worldly life and whom he had initiated. Rupa Goswami and Sanatana Goswami would build on this arrangement of temple worship when they settled in Vrindavana not long after. This whole story, along with the different views about what later happened to that same Deity, is told in full on Discovering the Gopala Deity at Govardhana.

The Gopinatha Who Stole His Sweet Rice #

Sent by Gopala in a second dream to fetch sandalwood from Jagannatha Puri, Madhavendra Puri passed through the village of Remuna and stopped at the temple of Gopinatha. He learned that the Deity was offered pots of famous sweet rice every night, and for a moment wished he could taste a little himself. He thought that even this wish was an offense, and he left the temple without asking anyone for food at all. That night Gopinatha secretly told His own priest to carry a hidden pot of the sweet rice out to the old sannyasi. Madhavendra Puri was sitting hungry in the village marketplace, without having asked anyone for food. The Deity has been called Kshira-chora Gopinatha, the sweet-rice thief, ever since. The full pastime is told on The Kshira Chora Gopinatha of Remuna. That page also explains why Srila Prabhupada returned to it again and again as proof of Krishna's complete freedom to act however He pleases for His devotee's sake.

The Seed of the Bhakti Creeper #

Chaitanya-charitamrita opens its list of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's associates with a verse of praise that it gives to very few names: "All glories to Sri Madhavendra Puri, the storehouse of all devotional service unto Krishna! He is a desire tree of devotional service, and it is in him that the seed of devotional service first fructified" (Adi 9.10). Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami then traces that seed forward one generation at a time. It sprouts next in Isvara Puri and finally grows into the full tree in the person of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu Himself. Srila Prabhupada's own purport makes this clear. Madhavendra Puri was the first in his disciplic line to show real signs of love of Godhead. He was also the first to compose the verse beginning ayi dina-dayardra natha. This is the very verse he recited again and again at the end of his life. In this verse, Prabhupada writes, "is the seed of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's cultivation of love of Godhead." Madhavendra Puri showed the world not devotion in general, but one very special kind of it. Later Gaudiya acharyas spent centuries explaining it. It is an aching, tearful longing for Krishna in His absence. The full account of this verse and this mood, and of the many places where Prabhupada spoke about it at length, is on The Seed of the Bhakti Creeper.

Isvara Puri and the Line to Mahaprabhu #

Among Madhavendra Puri's disciples, two stand out for opposite reasons. Isvara Puri served him with complete humility through his final illness and was rewarded with a blessing of pure love for Krishna. He went on to become Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's own diksha-guru, so that the seed Madhavendra Puri sowed passed, quite literally, into Mahaprabhu's own initiation. A second disciple, Ramacandra Puri, mistook his teacher's tears of separation for ordinary grief, tried to correct him, and was sharply rebuked instead. Chaitanya-charitamrita treats the two men together as a single lesson: one shows what a great soul's mercy looks like, the other what his correction looks like. The fuller account of Isvara Puri's place in this lineage, and of Madhavendra Puri's other disciples, is on Isvara Puri and His Disciples.

Final Days and a Lasting Legacy #

Chaitanya-charitamrita gives no exact date for Madhavendra Puri's disappearance. The commonly cited estimate of around 1490 is a modern guess, not a year recorded in any Vaishnava text. What the text does preserve, in real detail, is the manner of his passing. He was cared for by Isvara Puri, and he chanted his own verse of separation until the very end. Tradition places his samadhi at Remuna, beside the same Gopinatha temple where the sweet rice was stolen for him. Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu spoke of him with open reverence throughout His own pastimes. Centuries later, Srila Prabhupada kept returning to Madhavendra Puri's example in lecture after lecture. For Prabhupada, it was one of the clearest pictures available of what pure, spontaneous love of Krishna really looks like. His final years, and how the tradition has honored him since, are told on Final Days and Disappearance.

Further Reading #

A short devotional piece on him is also available here: Sri Madhvendra Puri.