Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu left Navadvipa for good and took sannyasa. Years later, Purandara Acharya, the elderly brahmana who had once been greeted at his own front door as "father", appears in the record one final time. This time he is not in Bengal, but far away in Jagannatha Puri, in Odisha. He is in a crowd of devotees the Lord was embracing one by one.
Devotees Arrive From Bengal #
Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita's account of the Lord's return to Jagannatha Puri, after a long tour of pilgrimage places in South India, describes a stream of familiar faces arriving from Bengal to see Him again. Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami calls this part of the story the Lord's beda-kirtana pastimes. Beda-kirtana is kirtana performed with the Lord surrounded by His own devotees. This part of the story opens with Mahaprabhu, back among His people, dancing before the Deity of Jagannatha with an intensity that "merged the entire world into the ocean of ecstatic love."
The devotees were met and welcomed one by one, starting with the most senior among them. Advaita Acharya offered prayers at the Lord's feet first, and Mahaprabhu embraced him immediately, in ecstatic love. One by one, the rest of the party followed. Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami describes one arrival in special detail. This was Murari, almost certainly Murari Gupta, who is long remembered in the tradition as an incarnation of Hanuman. Murari tried to run from the Lord so that he would not be touched. He protested, "My Lord, please do not touch me. I am most abominable and am not fit for You to touch because my body is sinful." Mahaprabhu would not accept the refusal. "My dear Murari, please restrain your unnecessary humility," He said, and embraced him anyway. He sat him down and personally wiped the dust from his body.
Named in the Same Breath as the Lord's Own Elders #
A little further into this same scene, Purandara Acharya's name appears again. It comes in a list of senior devotees the Lord embraced together and praised: "Lord Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu then again and again embraced all the devotees, including Ācāryaratna, Vidyānidhi, Paṇḍita Gadādhara, Gaṅgādāsa, Hari Bhaṭṭa and Ācārya Purandara. The Lord described their good qualities and glorified them again and again."
The devotees named on either side of him are well known. Acharyaratna was the honorific title of Chandrashekhara Acharya, the Navadvipa elder who had taken young Nimai in as an adopted son. Vidyanidhi was Pundarika Vidyanidhi, another senior figure from the same circle of Navadvipa devotees. So these were not new people being greeted for the first time. They were the elders whose homes Mahaprabhu had grown up visiting, now gathered around Him one more time, years later and a very long way from home. Once, Purandara Acharya's house had been a fixed stop on a young man's rounds through his own neighborhood. Now he was a guest whom the Lord Himself sought out to embrace and praise by name.
Looking for the One Who Stayed Back #
The scene closes on a detail that says as much about Mahaprabhu as about anyone He embraced that day. After greeting the whole party, the Lord noticed that someone was missing and asked about him: "Where is Haridasa?" Haridasa Thakura had not come forward to be greeted at all. He was found further off, lying flat on the open road, offering obeisances from a distance instead of pushing himself into the Lord's sight.
Purandara Acharya's own reaction to being singled out and embraced is not recorded. Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita names him only as one among the many devotees the Lord was glad to see again. But his name is placed between two men whose stories are well recorded, and that itself tells us something. Whatever else has been lost about him, the Lord Himself considered him worth embracing twice. The first time was as a young householder's neighbor in Navadvipa. The second time was as an old friend found again on the far side of India.
