In his later years Pundarika Vidyanidhi came to spend long stretches at Jagannatha Puri, and at least once, the Chaitanya-charitamrita notes, he stayed on through the season when the rest of the Bengali devotees went home. It was during these Puri years that his friendship with Svarupa Damodara Goswami deepened into something the tradition treats as remarkable in its own right.
An Equal in Krishna-katha #
Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami describes the two as having a warm, intimate friendship, and says plainly that when it came to discussing Krishna, they stood on exactly the same level — high praise, given that Svarupa Damodara was Mahaprabhu's own closest literary companion and the person most trusted to judge devotional sentiment at Puri. One meeting between them, after a long separation, is remembered fondly: both men wanted to take the dust of the other's feet as a mark of respect, and neither would allow it, so that what began as courtesy turned into a good-natured scuffle, each trying to catch the other's feet while guarding his own — a sight that made Mahaprabhu laugh along with everyone watching.
Splashing at the Chandana-yatra #
The friendship shows itself in smaller, lighter moments too. Each year at Puri's Chandana-yatra festival, Mahaprabhu and His devotees would gather to play in the water of Narendra Sarovara, also called Chandan Pukur, and Pundarika Vidyanidhi and Svarupa Damodara are remembered as having spent the festival happily splashing water at one another like two boys, laughing all the while. He is also recorded taking part, alongside the rest of Mahaprabhu's Puri devotees, in the annual cleaning of the Gundicha temple before Ratha-yatra, sharing in the mahaprasada that followed the work — the same yearly gathering of Bengali devotees at Puri, headed by Advaita Acharya and Nityananda Prabhu, that the Chaitanya-charitamrita says would stay with Mahaprabhu for four months at a stretch, enjoying His company in return.
The Unwashed Cloth #
That same closeness with Svarupa Damodara is the setting for the best-known incident of Pundarika Vidyanidhi's Puri years. Each year, at the beginning of winter, the temple observed a festival called Odana-shashthi, when Lord Jagannatha was given His first winter covering. Correct temple procedure called for the cloth to be washed free of starch before it touched the Deity. One year Pundarika Vidyanidhi, watching the ceremony, noticed that the priests had skipped this step, and said as much to Svarupa Damodara — not happily. Svarupa Damodara answered that the Supreme Lord is beyond all rules of purity and impurity, and that no fault attached to the priests on that account. Pundarika Vidyanidhi was not satisfied. That reasoning might hold for the Lord Himself, he said, but His servants were not of the same nature, and their conduct could still be judged by the ordinary standards of scripture.
Jagannatha's Nighttime Correction #
That night, Lord Jagannatha visited Pundarika Vidyanidhi in a dream, together with Lord Balarama, and the two brothers, smiling all the while, slapped his cheeks. There is no end to your fault-finding, Jagannatha told him — if there is no question of purity or impurity where I am concerned, the same holds for those who serve Me; if you thought Puri too impure a place, you were free to leave it. In the morning the other devotees saw the marks of the slaps still swollen on his cheeks and laughed, and Pundarika Vidyanidhi, for all the correction, was privately delighted rather than ashamed — proof, the tradition says, of just how dear he was to Jagannatha, since the Lord troubles Himself to personally discipline only His most intimate devotees. Krishnadasa Kaviraja notes that this incident had already been told in full by Vrindavana Dasa Thakura in the Chaitanya-bhagavata, and gives only the outline of it himself.
The episode sits alongside the story of Gadadhara Pandit's second initiation, which the Chaitanya-charitamrita places in the very same year — a reminder that Pundarika Vidyanidhi's closing years at Puri were still full of the same mixture the whole of his life had shown: real devotion, a real capacity for misjudgment, and a Lord who loved him enough to correct him without loving him any less.