By its nature, no one else can check a mother's account of her own child's infancy. Even so, Sachi Devi's account is preserved in the Chaitanya-bhagavata, the Chaitanya-charitamrita and Locana Dasa Thakura's Chaitanya-mangala. It is kept in so much specific and matching detail that Gaudiya Vaishnavas have never treated it as ordinary parental memory. These sources do not describe a baby who was simply wonderful in a general way. They record a series of very particular incidents. Sachi Devi herself saw each of them at close range, and several of them only she could have reported to the biographers who came after her.
At A Glance #
- Her infant son's crying stopped only for the sound of the holy name, never for anything else she tried.
- She caught Him eating clay and received an answer too clever for a toddler to have invented.
- Sita Thakurani's visit to see the newborn ended with the naming that stuck for twenty-four years.
- She was given a private vision of heavenly glory, heard as flute-song. It came to her directly, not through someone else's report.
The Crying That Only Stopped For Hari #
Vaishnava biographers record that the infant Vishvambhara cried in His mother's arms and could not be comforted, sometimes for hours. Nothing quieted Him except the sound of neighbourhood women calling out "Haribol! Haribol!" (chant the name of Hari). Sachi Devi is said to have learned this quickly, and she made a practice of it. Whenever her son wept, she would gather the women of the neighbourhood to chant. The crying stopped the moment the holy names were chanted, as surely as any remedy she might otherwise have tried. This pastime is charming, and it is easy to miss what it asked of her. Through a mother's ordinary trial and error, and without being told, she discovered exactly what the rest of Bengal would spend the next twenty years learning directly from her son.
Clay, Cooking Pots, and an Answer Too Sharp For A Toddler #
As He grew into a toddler, Nimai gave His mother more usual kinds of trouble. She once found Him eating clay from the courtyard instead of the sweets she had left for Him. She scolded Him and demanded to know why. By the tradition's own telling, He answered that earth is used to make cooking pots, and cooking pots hold the food she gives Him, so He saw no real difference between the two. Whatever a reader thinks of the theology around Him, this exchange, as it is recorded, is the kind of small, specific thing that a mother remembers and keeps. It is not the kind of thing a devotee invents afterwards.
Two Thieves Undone By Their Own Greed #
On another occasion two travelling thieves saw the unusually beautiful golden child playing alone. They tried to lure Him away with sweets, meaning to steal the gold ornaments He wore. The stories tell that they became hopelessly lost, wandering in circles around Navadwip for hours. At last terror and regret forced them to bring the child safely back to His mother's door. Sachi Devi's role in the episode is simple. She is the person the frightened thieves finally had to face. But the episode belongs to the small set of childhood pastimes that the tradition treats as clear signs that this was no ordinary brahmana boy. Anyone in Navadwip who cared to notice could see these signs.
Sita Thakurani's Visit and the Name That Stuck #
Word of the birth reached Shantipura quickly. Sita Thakurani, wife of Advaita Acharya, came in person to see the child. She brought ornaments, cloth, turmeric, sandalwood and the kind of gifts one brings to a newborn. Gaudiya tradition holds that she recognised at once who this child was. She saw that, except for a difference in complexion, the child in Sachi Devi's arms was Krishna of Gokula Himself. Sita Thakurani named Him Nimai, after the nimba tree beside the house. She reasoned that a name taken from a bitter tree would protect Him from the notice of evil spirits. The name held for the next twenty-four years, and Bengal still uses it. For Sachi Devi, this meant that within days of giving birth, one of Navadwip's most respected Vaishnava households had already recognised, formally though quietly, exactly who she was raising.
A Vision Given To Her Directly #
Not every sign came through other people's recognition. The Chaitanya-bhagavata records an episode from later in Nimai's boyhood. Sachi Devi herself heard the sound of a flute and was shown something of her son's hidden glory. This came in her own experience, not through anyone's report to her. Vaishnava readers place this episode beside the sacred-thread ceremony and other formal rites of His boyhood. They take it as evidence that her devotion was never simply borrowed from what others told her about Him. A related moment, better recorded in the sources, came somewhat later. Sachi Devi dreamt that the household Deities of Krishna and Balarama had taken the forms of her own son and Nityananda Prabhu, fighting playfully over an offering, as children do. The next day she invited Nityananda to take prasadam in her house and watched the two of them eat together. In that ordinary household scene she recognised exactly what her dream had shown her, and she fainted where she stood. The Chaitanya-charitamrita records this plainly, without adding anything, as one more example of what her own eyes, not her son's later fame, had already told her.
Small Domestic Frictions #
Not every memory preserved of these years is dramatic. The biographies also keep smaller, more ordinary moments of tension. Once young Nimai was annoyed with His mother because she was slow in gathering items for a Ganges worship. On a gentler occasion, Sachi Devi kept Him from playing with a stray puppy. These details matter for the same reason the grander ones do. They show that, whatever else this household was, it was also an ordinary Bengali brahmana home in its daily life. An ordinary mother was raising an extraordinary child inside it. This daily life is explored further in Raising Nimai Pandita, as Nimai grows into a scholar and a householder.
