Two different traditions describe Narottama Dasa Thakura's final days, and it is worth stating plainly that they do not fully agree. It is also worth noting that Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita, completed by Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami within or shortly after Narottama's own lifetime, does not narrate his life the way it does the Six Goswamis'; what is known of Narottama's final years comes instead from dedicated later biographical works such as the Bhakti-ratnakara, compiled by Narahari Chakravarti.
Grief for Ramachandra Kaviraja and Srinivasa Acharya #
According to the Bhakti-ratnakara, Narottama's own disciple Ramachandra Kaviraja traveled to Vrindavana in his final years and passed away there. When word of this reached Srinivasa Acharya, he could not bear the separation and passed away himself shortly after. Narottama, receiving this news, described himself as drowning in an ocean of separation, and it was in this state that he is said to have composed the song ye anilo prema-dhana. Soon afterward, at a temple of Mahaprabhu in a village called Gambhila near Kheturi, Narottama asked the assembled devotees to perform sankirtana, walked into the waters of the Ganges as they chanted, and disappeared from view while still absorbed in the holy name. His disappearance day is traditionally observed on Krishna Panchami in the month of Karttika.
A Different Telling #
A separate tradition, reflected in some modern retellings including the English-language Wikipedia article on Narottama, frames his final period differently: it ties his passing to the caste controversy over his brahmana disciples, describing a moment when brahmana critics attributed his failing health to the offense of initiating brahmanas as a non-brahmana, and adds an episode in which grieving disciples asked him to return so as to disprove his critics, after which he is said to have lived roughly another year before finally departing "by dissolving in the river Padma." Both traditions place his departure at a river near Kheturi and in a mood connected to sankirtana; they do not agree on what immediately preceded it, and neither supplies a year that can be checked against other evidence. This gap is left open here rather than resolved, in keeping with how much of Narottama's biography rests on devotional hagiography compiled generations after his lifetime rather than on contemporary documentation — a limitation true of most sources for this period of Gaudiya Vaishnava history.
A Living Legacy #
What is not in dispute is the size of what Narottama left behind. His samadhi stands in the courtyard of the Radha-Gokulananda temple in Vrindavana, near that of his own guru Lokanatha Gosvami, among the largest in that courtyard; tradition holds that in the eternal pastimes of Radha and Krishna he serves as the manjari Chamaka-manjari. Disciples such as Ganganarayana Chakravarti, a learned brahmana of Gambhila who took shelter of him after hearing his exposition of the Goswamis' teachings, and Ramakrishna Acharya carried his instruction forward in Bengal, and the community he helped unite at Kheturi continued to look to his and Srinivasa Acharya's writings as touchstones of Gaudiya Vaishnava theology. Centuries later, that legacy reached far beyond Bengal: Srila Prabhupada, a spiritual descendant of Narottama through Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura and Bhaktivinoda Thakura, carried Narottama's songs with him to the West, where they are sung today in ISKCON temples on every continent — a scale of influence that a prince who once walked away from a kingdom with nothing could hardly have measured for himself.