Srila Murari Gupta

Srila Murari Gupta was special in two ways among the many devotees who surrounded Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in Navadvipa. He was a working physician, and he is remembered for treating the Lord Himself on more than one occasion. He was also the first person known to have sat down and written Mahaprabhu's life story while Mahaprabhu was still living it. His Sanskrit account of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's early years is usually called his Kadaca, or diary. It is the earliest biography of the Lord that the Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition has. It is older than Vrindavana Dasa Thakura's Chaitanya-bhagavata, and older still than Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami's Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita. Chaitanya-charitamrita, at least, drew on it directly.

A Physician's Family from Srihatta #

Murari Gupta was born into a family of vaidyas, physicians trained in the Ayurvedic tradition, in Srihatta. This district, on the eastern edge of Bengal, was also the ancestral home of Mahaprabhu's own father, Jagannatha Mishra. When his family moved to Navadvipa, they settled very close to the Mishra household. So Murari grew up almost next door to the boy who would become Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. Chaitanya-bhagavata explains his name in this way. The word gupta means "hidden," and the tradition takes his name as a sign that Murari, which is one of Krishna's own names, lay secretly at rest in this physician's heart from the start. No source records his parents' names, and no birth year survives either. Every account agrees only that he was somewhat older than Mahaprabhu. His training and the daily practice of his work are described more fully in Birth and Training as a Physician.

Growing Up Beside Nimai Pandita #

As a young man, Murari studied at the tol, or school, of Ganga Das Pandit in Navadvipa. The boy Nimai Pandita later attended the same school. Murari was the senior student, but he could never defeat Nimai in debate, however many times he tried. Chaitanya-bhagavata remembers a lively scene from these days. The two of them lost their patience and wrestled their way into the Ganges, until the water became too muddy for anyone else to bathe. Tradition says that it was around this time that Nimai teased Murari directly about his hopes of becoming a scholar. Nimai pointed out that a future vaidya had no real need of grammar and logic, since leaves, roots and simple remedies were his actual trade. A related and even sharper version of the same teasing comes from Lochana Dasa Thakura's Chaitanya-mangala. It is told in full in Boyhood Friendship with Nimai Pandita.

Revealed as Hanuman #

From childhood, Murari's own worship belonged to Sri Sita-Rama, not to Krishna. In the Gaura-ganoddesha-dipika, Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition directly identifies him as Hanuman, Lord Ramachandra's eternal servant, now present in Mahaprabhu's Nadia pastimes. Tradition holds that this identity was confirmed during Mahaprabhu's mahaprakasha at Srivasa Thakura's courtyard. This was a display of the Lord's divinity in ecstasy that lasted twenty-one hours. During it, the Lord showed Murari a vision of Himself as Ramachandra, bow in hand, with Sita and Lakshmana at His side and an army of monkeys singing His praise. When he saw himself among those monkeys, Murari fainted at once. In his purport to this part of Chaitanya-charitamrita, Srila Prabhupada clearly confirms the episode: "When Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu exhibited His maha-prakasa form, He appeared before Murari Gupta as Lord Ramacandra."

The verse of Kavi Karnapura's Gaura-ganoddesha-dipika (verse 91) reads:

murāri gupto hanumān aṅgadaḥ śrī-purandaraḥ

"The devotee named Murari Gupta in Lord Caitanya's pastimes had previously been Hanuman." (Gaura-ganoddesha-dipika 91)

Mahaprabhu Himself says the same in Chaitanya-charitamrita. Before all the devotees at Puri, He recalls how He once tested Murari's loyalty to Lord Ramachandra and then praised him: "Indeed, you are the incarnation of Hanumān. Consequently you are the eternal servant of Lord Rāmacandra." (Chaitanya-charitamrita Madhya 15.156)

Physician to the Lord Himself #

Chaitanya-charitamrita describes Murari's work and its deeper purpose in one short, direct couplet. As he treated his patients, both their bodily disease and the deeper disease of material existence subsided by his mercy. This was seen in real events. Once a devotee fed Mahaprabhu food cooked with too much ghee, and the next day the Lord fell ill. He went to Murari's house for treatment. Murari offered his own drinking water as a simple remedy for indigestion, and it cured Him at once. On another occasion the Lord came to Murari's home absorbed in the mood of Varaha, the boar incarnation. He lifted a waterpot in His teeth and danced on Murari's shoulders in Murari's own courtyard. These episodes, and what they show about Murari's place among Mahaprabhu's Nadia associates, are told more fully in Serving as the Lord's Physician.

The Earliest Life of Mahaprabhu #

Murari Gupta's most lasting contribution to the tradition is a book. While Mahaprabhu was still alive, or not long after, Murari wrote down in Sanskrit verse what he had personally seen of the Lord's Nadia years. This work is generally called his Kadaca, meaning diary or notebook. Its more formal name is Sri Krishna-Chaitanya-Caritamrita. Sources vary on the exact title. The page on Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami calls it the Sri-krishna-chaitanya-charanamrita, and some sources give Sri-Krishna-Chaitanya-carita-mahakavya instead. Whatever its exact name, no one disputes that it is the earliest surviving life of Mahaprabhu. Generations later, Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami himself drew on it for the order of events when he wrote Chaitanya-charitamrita. Banglapedia records that Kavikarnapura, Lochana Dasa Thakura and Narahari Chakravarti also drew on Murari's account when writing their own. The work itself, how it is arranged, and its uncertain relationship to the larger biographies that followed it are discussed in Writing the Earliest Biography of Mahaprabhu.

Devotion Tested and Confirmed #

Murari's own worship belonged to Ramachandra. So Mahaprabhu is said to have tested him directly. More than once He urged Murari to turn his devotion to Krishna instead, since Krishna is the source from whom Rama and every other incarnation appears. Murari could not do what the Lord asked, but he would not disobey Him either. He spent a sleepless night in anguish. In the morning he came before the Lord, ready to give up his life rather than choose between them. "I have sold my very head to the lotus feet of Raghunatha," he told Mahaprabhu, by his own account preserved in Chaitanya-charitamrita, "I cannot take it back, and my mind aches with the pain of it." The Lord was not displeased at all. He praised this very refusal as the mark of real devotion. Later, in Chaitanya-charitamrita's Antya-lila, He spoke of His past test of Murari Gupta and held it up as the standard for Jiva Goswami's father Anupama. Sanatana Goswami once described Anupama in almost identical terms.

Disappearance and Legacy #

No source records a disappearance year for Murari Gupta. Tradition places the day itself on Sharad Purnima, the same autumn full-moon that is associated with Krishna's rasa-lila festival. Some accounts say that in Navadvipa Murari looked up to an elder devotee called Chandrashekhara Acharya, also known as Acharyaratna. This is a different person from the Varanasi physician of the same name, who has his own page. Srila Prabhupada's own recorded conversations clearly separate the two, and this page follows that instead of merging them. Murari's sripat, where Deities of Sita, Rama, Lakshmana and Hanuman are still worshipped, stands near Ballal Dighi in Sri Mayapur today. Srila Prabhupada himself spoke about Murari Gupta more than once in his own lectures. Most memorably, he used him to illustrate alambana, the stage of devotion in which a single reminder of Krishna is enough. For Murari, that reminder was a peacock feather glimpsed from an elephant's back, and it made the old physician faint on the spot. More about his final years, and about how the tradition has remembered him since, is given in Disappearance and Legacy.