Life Among the Goswamis of Vrindavana

A few years after Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu returned from South India to Puri, Prabodhananda left Srirangam for good and settled at Kamyavana, one of the twelve sacred forests of Vraja near Mathura. There, absorbed in the most intimate teachings Mahaprabhu had given him during those four months at Srirangam, he lived the rest of his years as a renunciant devoted entirely to Radha-Govinda. It was this same road to Vraja that his young nephew, Gopala Bhatta, would eventually follow.

Guru to His Own Nephew #

On Sri Gopala Bhatta Goswami's own page on this site, it is recorded that his formal diksha initiation came, in Srila Prabhupada's own words, from his uncle Prabodhananda Sarasvati - a detail this page's account is written to match exactly. Before that formal initiation ever took place, Prabodhananda had already spent years teaching his young nephew Srimad-Bhagavatam and the other core texts of devotional life; the initiation, when it came, simply confirmed in a formal ceremony a relationship of study and guidance that had begun much earlier in the household at Srirangam. The clearest textual proof of the bond survives in the opening pages of the Hari-bhakti-vilasa itself, the great Gaudiya Vaishnava code of devotional conduct that Gopala Bhatta is remembered for compiling: its own second verse identifies its author as "the disciple of Prabodhananda who is dear to the Lord," gathering these devotional practices to please Raghunatha Dasa Goswami, Rupa Gosvami and Sanatana Gosvami.

Among the Goswamis #

Prabodhananda's own standing among the Goswamis of Vrindavana was considerable in its own right. Kavi Karnapura's Gaura-ganoddesha-dipika, the traditional key identifying the eternal spiritual forms of Mahaprabhu's associates, names Prabodhananda as Tungavidya, one of the eight principal gopi-companions of Srimati Radharani - a mark of very high regard within the Gaudiya tradition's own internal reckoning of its early leaders. Later Gaudiya histories describe him as a rasika acharya without peer in his generation for describing the intimate pastimes of Radha and Krishna in the groves of Vraja, and record that his handsome bearing, his skill as a singer, dancer and poet, and his overflowing affection for other devotees left a deep impression on all who knew him. By the time his nephew reached Vraja, Prabodhananda was already an established figure among its devotees, which made his introduction of the newly-arrived Gopala Bhatta into that same circle - and, in particular, into the close company of Rupa Gosvami and Sanatana Gosvami - a natural continuation of a guidance that had begun years earlier at Srirangam.

A Humility That Ran in the Family #

One small, telling episode belongs here. Readers of Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita sometimes ask why Prabodhananda - by every account a figure Mahaprabhu held in the highest regard - is barely mentioned anywhere in Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami's great work. The Bhakti-ratnakara supplies the answer: it records that Prabodhananda himself, through Gopala Bhatta, asked that his own activities not be included in Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami's Chaitanya-charitamrita, and that Krishnadasa Kaviraja felt unable to disobey the request. It is the same instinct for self-effacement that, on Gopala Bhatta Goswami's own page on this site, is recorded of the nephew himself - who made an almost identical request about his own name appearing only sparingly in the same text. Whatever the precise reasoning, later Gaudiya writers have generally read it as a mark of unusually deep humility running through this whole family line, uncle and nephew alike. What Prabodhananda left behind in writing, rather than in the record of his own life, is the subject of Literary Works and Radha-rasa-sudha-nidhi.