When Rupa Gosvami reached Vrindavana on Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's order, he found a forest that had lost, over centuries, almost every visible trace of the pastimes it was famous for. Krishna had once herded cows and danced with the gopis there. But local memory could point only vaguely at "these quarters", without any of the specific sites, temples or deities that mark the land today. Rupa's task was both practical and enormous. His brother Sanatana shared it with him once he too arrived. They were to find whatever could still be found, start worship where none existed, and write the philosophy of what they had rediscovered into lasting scripture.
| Detail | Description |
|---|---|
| Deities credited to Rupa's discovery | Sri Govindaji, at Gomatila; Sri Vrinda Devi, at Brahma-kunda |
| Daily sleep | About an hour and a half (four dandas), some days none at all |
| Daily food | Dry chapatis and a few fried chickpeas, begged from brahmana households |
| Reunited with | Sanatana Gosvami, arriving separately after his escape from prison |
| Later development | The Govindaji temple, completed in 1590 under Raja Man Singh of Amber |
The Long Road Between Prayaga and Vraja #
Rupa did not travel from Prayaga straight into a settled life in Vrindavana. He first reached Mathura. There, at Dhruva-ghata on the Yamuna, he met a poor woodcutter named Subuddhi Raya. Subuddhi Raya earned barely a few paise a day selling dry wood. Yet he spent nearly all of it feeding, massaging and otherwise caring for Bengali Vaishnavas who passed through the town. Out of pure affection, Subuddhi Raya personally guided Rupa through all twelve forests of Vraja. He kept Rupa company for a month before Rupa set out again, this time to search for Sanatana. That search took Rupa to Varanasi. There he stayed about ten days as the guest of a Maharashtrian brahmana named Chandrashekhara, and he took his meals at the home of Tapana Mishra. In Varanasi he also heard how Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu had recently delivered the Mayavadi sannyasis of that same city.
From Varanasi Rupa returned to Bengal, not to Vraja. Soon after, his youngest brother Anupama died there. This loss delayed Rupa's reunion with Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu by many months. Rupa eventually reached the Lord at Jagannatha Puri, and by tradition he stayed there for about ten months. Then came a final stay in Bengal of roughly a year. He spent it dividing what remained of his wealth among relatives, brahmanas and temples, so that his renunciation would not cause trouble for anyone. Only after he had settled every one of these duties did Rupa Gosvami arrive in Vrindavana to take up the work for which Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu had sent him. Some accounts place this in the year 1516.
Finding the Deity of Govindaji #
According to the tradition preserved at Vrindavana, Rupa Gosvami was sitting beside the Yamuna one day. He felt worn down by the huge size of the task he had been given. Then a radiant Vrajavasi approached him. The stranger told him that a deity of Govinda lay buried on a low hill called Gomatila. A cow was known to visit that place each morning and let down her milk onto the earth. The stranger vanished as suddenly as he had appeared. Rupa understood who the visitor must have been. He went to the spot with local villagers and dug there. He uncovered a deity that is said to have been first installed five thousand years earlier by Krishna's own great-grandson, Vajranabha. Worship of Sri Govindaji began immediately, in a simple thatched shelter. This shelter did not become the magnificent stone temple still associated with the name until decades after Rupa's own lifetime. Raja Man Singh of Amber completed that temple in 1590.
Vrinda Devi and the Name of the Forest #
At Brahma-kunda, Rupa is likewise credited with uncovering the deity of Vrinda Devi. She is the goddess said to preside over the forest of Vrindavana, and she is said to have been first established there by the same Vajranabha. Her name is, in fact, the source of the town's own name: Vrindavana, the forest of Vrinda. In the years that followed, the brothers also identified and marked many holy sites across Vraja. Through these two discoveries and these many sites, Rupa and Sanatana together gave back to Vrindavana many of the holy places that pilgrims still walk to today.
A Deity Sent from Puri #
Worship of Govindaji did not remain a simple, private affair for long. According to temple tradition preserved at Vrindavana, Purushottama later sent a deity of Srimati Radharani from Jagannatha Puri to be installed beside Govindadeva. Purushottama was a son of the Puri king associated with the line of Prataparudra. The same tradition says this was the first deity of Radharani ever formally established in Vrindavana. The grand stone temple that pilgrims associate with Govindaji today was so tall that its upper stories were once visible from Agra. It was not completed until 1590, decades after Rupa's own disappearance, with support from Raja Man Singh of Amber. The recovery of Vrindavana that Rupa and Sanatana began would continue to grow for generations after their own lifetimes were over.
A Life Reduced to Almost Nothing #
All this recovery work was done without any comfort. Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita describes the daily routine Rupa and Sanatana kept once they had settled in Vraja, in words meant to startle the reader. They had no fixed home, and slept one night beneath one tree and the next beneath another. Their food was only whatever a few brahmana households would give in alms, usually nothing more than dry bread and fried chickpeas. Their days were so full of chanting, hearing and writing that barely ninety minutes remained for sleep, and some days there was no sleep at all (Madhya 19.130). Word of this austerity travelled back to Bengal so widely that devotees returning from pilgrimage were regularly asked for news of "how Rupa and Sanatana are doing." According to Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita, that report never failed to fill the Lord's other associates with wonder at what such mercy could produce. The Bhakti-ratnakara adds a warmer, more personal detail to this picture. Rupa and Sanatana are remembered to have known ordinary Vraja families in detail. They knew how many sons and daughters each household had, whose child had recently married, how many cows and bullocks a family owned, and how their crops and health were faring. If they had not seen a family for some days, they would check on them, exactly as caring relatives would. This same disciplined, unbroken life of bhajana gave Rupa Gosvami the years he needed to write his major theological and dramatic works.
