The Shripat at Atapur

The shripat most closely tied to Parameshvara Dasa's own name stands at Atapur, formerly called Vishakhala, in the Hugli district of West Bengal. There, at the order of Jahnava Mata and with her personally present for the installation, Parameshvara Dasa installed Sri Sri Radha-Gopinatha. A separate Deity of Baladeva was added to the same altar later, since, as Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura's Anubhasya explains, Krishna, Radha and Baladeva are not ordinarily placed together on one throne in this tradition's transcendental mellows - Baladeva's presence beside Radha-Gopinatha at Atapur is therefore a later addition to Parameshvara Dasa's own installation.

Family and Temple #

Parameshvara Dasa's own family belonged to the vaidya, or physician, caste, and his descendants have gone on carrying the family titles Adhikari and Gupta into the twentieth century and beyond, some of them still living near the Chanditala post office in Hugli district at the time the Anubhasya was written. The Anubhasya notes, with a certain plainness, that his descendants gradually took up the physician's profession themselves, and that they no longer worship the Deity directly but employ paid brahmanas to do so - one of the rare details in this devotee's record that comes with an honest, unflattering edge rather than pure hagiography. In front of the temple, between two bakula trees and beneath a kadamba tree that reportedly produces only a single flower each year - offered to the Deity when it appears - stands Parameshvara Dasa's own samadhi. A second temple at Atapur, founded later by the Mitra family and known as the Radha-Govinda temple, stands separately from the Radha-Gopinatha temple Parameshvara Dasa himself established - a distinction worth keeping clear, since both temples share the same village and a nearly identical Deity name.

The Kadamba Tree and the Disappearance Festival #

Every year, on the full-moon day of the month of Vaishakha, Atapur observes Parameshvara Dasa's disappearance festival. As part of the observance, his khunti - a decorated staff carried at the head of a sankirtana party, said in local tradition to trace back to a promise the Muslim Kazi of Navadvipa once made that no sankirtana party would ever again be disturbed - is placed beside his samadhi mandira for the day, dressed with eyes, tilaka, garlands and cloth, and worshiped as a manifestation of Mahaprabhu Himself. This is Bengal shripat tradition rather than Chaitanya-charitamrita's own record, but it is the form in which Parameshvara Dasa continues to be remembered at the temple he built.

The Dead Fox at Akna Mahesh #

A single narrated miracle is attached to Parameshvara Dasa's name, recorded on gaudiyahistory.iskcondesiretree.com rather than in Chaitanya-charitamrita itself: during a nama-sankirtan festival at Akna Mahesh, near Rampur - the shripat of the gopala Kamalakara Pippalai - Parameshvara Dasa was dancing in full God-intoxication when a group of miscreants, finding a dead fox lying nearby, flung it into the middle of the kirtan party to mock the devotees. The assembled Vaishnavas showed no anger, the account says, but Parameshvara Dasa was moved to sorrow at the sight of the dead animal, and by his merciful glance restored it to life; the fox trotted out of the hall on its own, and the miscreants who had thrown it fled in astonishment. No earlier or independently corroborating source for this specific episode was found for this page; it is reported here as devotional tradition attached to Parameshvara Dasa's memory at his own shripat, not as an incident Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami or Vrindavana Dasa Thakura themselves recorded.