Sri Nandana Acharya

Sri Nandana Acharya was a Bhattacharya brahmana householder of Navadvipa. On at least three separate occasions, his ordinary house became an extraordinary hiding place. Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Nityananda Prabhu and Advaita Acharya each took shelter there at different points in the Navadvipa-lila. In Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita, Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami names him directly as the seventeenth branch of the great tree of Mahaprabhu's devotees. Nandana Acharya is celebrated in the world for exactly this reason. Apart from these hiding-place episodes, the sources preserve only a few further details about him. His family background is also truly disputed between two different written traditions. That dispute is left here as the two traditions present it, without choosing a side.

Named Among the Branches of the Chaitanya Tree #

In the tenth chapter of Adi-lila, Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami lists the many branches of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's devotional tree one after another. Nandana Acharya appears as the seventeenth branch. The single verse devoted to him states plainly why he is remembered: his house sheltered "the two Prabhus," Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and Nityananda Prabhu, each in turn. Srila Prabhupada's purport to this verse adds that Nandana Acharya was another companion of the Lord during His kirtana pastimes in Navadvipa. It also explains what happened when Nityananda Prabhu, traveling as an avadhuta, first arrived in Navadvipa-dhama. He did not announce Himself, but went into hiding at Nandana Acharya's house. There He first met the assembled devotees of Mahaprabhu. The same purport notes that Advaita Acharya also hid there at one point. For the fuller narrative, it directs the reader to Sri Chaitanya-bhagavata, Madhya-khanda, chapters six and seventeen. These events are told in more detail on The Hiding of Nityananda Prabhu and Advaita Acharya's Test and the Lord's Own Hiding.

Two Traditions, One Name #

Nandana Acharya's family background is where the record becomes truly confused. The two available traditions do not differ only on small details. They disagree about who his brothers even were.

One tradition is followed, for example, in Srila Bhakti Ballabh Tirtha Maharaja's biographical collection Sri Chaitanya: His Life and Associates. Chaitanya-charitamrita's Adi-lila 11.43 names three brothers, Vishnudasa, Nandana and Gangadasa, as devotees particularly attached to Nityananda Prabhu. This tradition reads that verse as referring to this same Nandana Acharya. So it gives him a father named Chaturbhuja, and the other two men named in the verse as his brothers. This reading is also drawn from Sri Chaitanya-bhagavata 3.5.74.

A second tradition, recorded in the reference dictionary Gaudiya Vaishnava Abhidhana, firmly rejects this identification. It states that the "Nandana" of Adi-lila 11.43 is a different person altogether, and not Nandana Acharya. According to the Abhidhana, that Nandana was a writer of poetry and songs about whom little else is known, and he is counted as a branch of Nityananda Prabhu's own tree, not Mahaprabhu's. In its place, the Abhidhana gives Nandana Acharya an entirely different family. His father was Lakshmi Narayan, an astrologer-brahmana said to have been present at Mahaprabhu's own birth. His brother was one Bhagavan Adhikari Sarvabhauma. This name is easily mistaken for the celebrated Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya of the Jagannatha Puri royal court, though nothing in the sources suggests any actual connection between the two men. By this account the family were Shakadvipi brahmanas descended from Shanti Muni, son of Parashara, of the Bharata branch of the Vatsya gotra from Rarh. They lived for a time at Bahirkhanda village near Tarakeshvara in present-day Birbhum, before settling in Navadvipa's Shrihatiya or Dakshin Para quarter.

This disagreement between two named traditions cannot be settled from the sources at hand. So it is left unresolved, as the two traditions leave it, without choosing a side. Both traditions agree on one thing, and Chaitanya-charitamrita itself confirms it in Adi-lila 10.39. He was the Navadvipa host in whose house three of the five members of the Panca-tattva each took shelter at one time or another: Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, Nityananda Prabhu and Advaita Acharya.

There is also a second, simpler cause of possible confusion. "Acharya" is a title, not a family name, and several unrelated men carry it, from Advaita Acharya to Chandrashekhara Acharya. None of them is related to Nandana Acharya. They only share the same title.

A Lame Devotee's Eagerness #

One personal detail survives apart from the dispute about his family: Nandana Acharya was lame. The Gaudiya Vaishnava Abhidhana records an incident from the time when Mahaprabhu returned to Navadvipa after His tour of South India, and the devotees rushed to see Him. Despite his lameness, Nandana Acharya pushed his way to the very front of the crowd, to be among the first to perform puja to the Lord. It is a small detail, but a specific and human one. It fits the picture of him that we see elsewhere. His devotion showed itself far more in action, such as opening his house, cooking for the Lord and serving at Puri, than in anything he is recorded as having said or written.

Service in Puri and a House Remembered #

Nandana Acharya's name resurfaces later, after Mahaprabhu had taken sannyasa and settled at Jagannatha Puri. When Gopinatha Acharya later pointed out the Lord's Bengali associates by name to Maharaja Prataparudra, Nandana Acharya was among those named (Chaitanya-charitamrita, Madhya-lila 11.89). He is also recorded among the devotees who took part in the annual cleaning of the Gundicha and Nrisimha temples, in Mahaprabhu's bathing pastime at Indradyumna Sarovara, in the feast at the Ai Tota gardens, and in the Ratha-yatra festival itself. In the same year that Raghava Pandit first brought his famous bags of home-cooked offerings to Puri, Nandana Acharya too brought food preparations that pleased the Lord. Full details of this later Puri life, together with the fate of his house, are told on Service in Puri and a Lasting Sripat.

Neither his birth year nor the year of his disappearance is recorded in any available source. That is a gap in what we know, even though much else about this devotee is well recorded.