When Rupa Gosvami reached Vrindavana on Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's order, he found a forest that had, over centuries, lost almost every visible trace of the pastimes it was famous for. Where Krishna had once herded cows and danced with the gopis, 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 assignment, shared with his brother Sanatana once he too arrived, was as concrete as it was enormous: locate what could be located, install worship where none currently 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 |
Finding the Deity of Govindaji #
According to the tradition preserved at Vrindavana, Rupa Gosvami was sitting beside the Yamuna one day, worn down by the scale of what he had been asked to do, when a radiant Vrajavasi approached and told him that a deity of Govinda lay buried on a low hill called Gomatila, where a cow was known to visit each morning and let down her milk onto the earth. The stranger vanished as suddenly as he had appeared. Rupa, recognizing the visitor for who he must have been, went to the spot with local villagers and dug there, uncovering a deity originally said to have been installed five thousand years earlier by Krishna's own great-grandson, Vajranabha. Worship of Sri Govindaji began immediately, in a simple thatched structure that would not become the magnificent stone temple still associated with the name until decades after Rupa's own lifetime, when Raja Man Singh of Amber completed construction in 1590.
Vrinda Devi and the Name of the Forest #
At Brahma-kunda, Rupa is likewise credited with uncovering the deity of Vrinda Devi, the goddess said to preside over the forest of Vrindavana and to have originally been established there by the same Vajranabha. Her name is, in fact, the source of the town's own: Vrindavana, the forest of Vrinda. Between these two discoveries and the many holy sites the brothers identified and marked across Vraja in the years that followed, Rupa and Sanatana between them gave Vrindavana back much of the concrete geography of devotion that pilgrims still walk 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, a son of the Puri king associated with the line of Prataparudra, later sent a deity of Srimati Radharani from Jagannatha Puri to be installed beside Govindadeva, making it the first deity of Radharani ever formally established in Vrindavana. The grand stone temple that pilgrims associate with Govindaji today, tall enough that its upper stories were once visible from Agra, was not completed until 1590, decades after Rupa's own disappearance, with support from Raja Man Singh of Amber — a reminder that the recovery of Vrindavana Rupa and Sanatana began was a project that would continue to grow for generations after their own lifetimes were over.
A Life Reduced to Almost Nothing #
None of this recovery work came at the cost of comfort. Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita describes the daily routine Rupa and Sanatana kept once settled in Vraja in terms meant to startle: no fixed residence, sleeping one night beneath one tree and the next beneath another; food limited to whatever a few brahmana households would give in alms, usually nothing more than dry bread and fried chickpeas; and a schedule so consumed by chanting, hearing and writing that barely ninety minutes remained for sleep, with some days offering none at all (Madhya 19.130). Word of this austerity travelled back to Bengal well enough that devotees returning from pilgrimage were regularly asked for news of "how Rupa and Sanatana are doing" — a report that, according to Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita, never failed to move the Lord's other associates to wonder at what such mercy could produce. It was this same disciplined, unbroken life of bhajana that gave Rupa Gosvami the years he needed to write his major theological and dramatic works.