Having named and mapped Vraja's forests, ponds and villages in the Vraja-bhakti-vilasa, Narayana Bhatta Goswami turned that written map into a pilgrimage people could actually walk. He is credited with giving this forest circuit the name it still carries: the Bana-yatra, or Ban-yatra. Ban (or vana) means forest, and yatra means journey or pilgrimage. The name itself quietly teaches a theological point. Vraja's holiness is not limited to its temples and towns. It fills the forests, groves and open pastureland around them too. An ordinary tirtha-yatra to famous shrines might otherwise pass by this ground.
A Pilgrimage Bound to a Calendar #
Traditionally, the Ban-yatra runs for twenty-three days. It goes from Krishna Ashtami of the month of Bhadrapada through to the Bhadrapada Purnima (the full-moon day), that is, through most of August into September. The pilgrimage's opening day, Bhadrapada Krishna Ashtami, is the very day of Sri Krishna Janmashtami, His appearance day. So the Ban-yatra starts inside the same festival season as Janmashtami itself. This does not mean that Narayana Bhatta Goswami personally set or reformed the rites of Janmashtami worship. Nothing in the available sources records that he did. The real connection that can be checked is in the pilgrimage calendar, not in the rites of the festival.
Rasa-Lila Brought Back to Its Own Ground #
Alongside the walking pilgrimage, Narayana Bhatta Goswami is credited with reviving another practice. This was performing rasa-lila as drama at the very sites where the pastimes are said to have occurred, not only reciting or reading about them. Srila Bhaktivedanta Narayana Maharaja's Sri Vraja-mandala Parikrama records in detail one specific example of this that has survived. Sankari-khor is the narrow hill passage near Barsana associated with the dana-ghati pastime described on Rediscovering the Twelve Forests of Vraja. There a performance still called budhi-lila was traditionally held each year on Bhadra Shukla Trayodashi, the thirteenth day of the bright fortnight of Bhadrapada. This places it, again, inside the same Bhadrapada festival season as the Ban-yatra itself. Today the same performance is also staged on Radhashtami, Srimati Radharani's appearance day. This shows that the tradition has been kept alive, not frozen to a single fixed date.
A Pilgrimage That Still Runs #
The Ban-yatra Narayana Bhatta Goswami organized did not stay limited to the sixteenth century. Pilgrims today still walk a version of the same circuit, and more and more of them now drive it. It is more often called the Chaurasi-kos Parikrama or the Vraja-mandala Parikrama, and it covers the same twelve forests. On foot the journey traditionally took thirty to forty days, though organized groups using buses or cars now commonly complete it in five to ten days. Foot pilgrims still generally follow it in the same Bhadrapada season Narayana Bhatta Goswami fixed for it. In this way they keep the older calendar, even though the speed of travel has changed. The scholar David L. Haberman described this living tradition in detail in his academic study Journey Through the Twelve Forests: An Encounter with Krishna. He treated it as a practice that has continued without a break, not as a curiosity from history.
Closer to home for Gaudiya Vaishnavas, the twentieth-century sannyasi Srila Bhaktivedanta Narayana Maharaja led his own Vraja-mandala Parikrama groups. By his own account, he based his guidebook for them directly on Narayana Bhatta Goswami's Vraja-bhakti-vilasa, alongside works such as Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita and the writings of the Vraja Goswamis. This clearly shows that a sixteenth-century route was still guiding pilgrims at the close of the twentieth century. Various Gaudiya Vaishnava teachers and temples still organize guided Vraja-mandala parikrama groups every year for exactly this reason. The route itself, and the naming of what pilgrims see along it, is still largely based on the work Narayana Bhatta Goswami did.
Several ISKCON teachers today, among others in the wider Gaudiya community, lead their own annual Vraja parikrama yatras. These walk mostly the same forests and villages. They are adapted for modern travel, but they can clearly be traced back to the route Narayana Bhatta Goswami first set down in writing. Devotees within Srila Prabhupada's own Krishna consciousness movement who visit or walk around Vraja's holy places today are following ground that this one Vrajacharya first walked, named and organized into a pilgrimage, whether they know his name or not.
