Long after Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's own pastimes had ended, the tradition mentions Mahesh Pandit's name once more. This time he is not shown beside Nityananda Prabhu Himself. Instead, he appears in the account of a much younger devotee who came looking for the associates Nityananda Prabhu had left behind.
Khardaha, Nityananda Prabhu's Own Seat #
Khardaha, on the Bengal side of the Ganges, was Nityananda Prabhu's own main seat in His later years. After His disappearance, His family and closest associates went on living there, and later generations of Vaishnavas came there to seek them out. Jahnava Mata, Nityananda Prabhu's wife, and their son Viracandra Prabhu both continued to lead the Vaishnava community gathered there. This is one reason the town went on drawing visiting devotees for generations after Nityananda Prabhu Himself had disappeared. By the time of the events described below, Mahesh Pandit himself was among those still to be found there. The sources give no date, only the fact of his presence in the town when the visit occurred.
Narottama Dasa Thakura's Visit #
Narottama Dasa Thakura belonged to the generation after Mahaprabhu's own direct associates. In Narahari Chakravarti's Bhakti-ratnakara, he is remembered as having traveled to Khardaha. While there, he sought out Mahesh Pandit especially to take darshan of his lotus feet. In the text it is a small act, a single sentence in a long history, but its meaning is easy to see. Narottama was a devotee of the next generation, already deeply established in bhakti. Still, he went out of his way to honor a surviving companion of Nityananda Prabhu, simply because that companion had walked beside Nityananda Prabhu. The Bhakti-ratnakara does not record what, if anything, passed between them beyond the visit itself.
Called a Parama-mahanta #
Vrindavana Dasa Thakura's Sri Chaitanya-bhagavata separately pays Mahesh Pandit a similar honor in different words. It calls him a parama-mahanta, a great and exalted soul, and notes especially how dear he was to Nityananda Prabhu. Different retellings of this reference place it at different points in the Chaitanya-bhagavata, so no single verse number can be given with confidence. Still, the basic fact, that Vrindavana Dasa Thakura uses this title for him, is recorded. It comes from a second author writing in a different book, apart from the Bhakti-ratnakara passage above.
The exact references do not fully match, but the two sources still give one clear picture. In his own lifetime, Mahesh Pandit was known mainly for his closeness to Nityananda Prabhu and for the unrestrained, dancing ecstasy for which he is remembered on his own main biography page. A generation later, at Khardaha, he was remembered as someone worth a special visit and worth a title kept for truly advanced devotees.
