Vishvarupa was Jagannatha Mishra and Sachi Devi's elder surviving son, several years older than his younger brother, who would later become Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. Chaitanya-charitamrita describes him as highly qualified and unusually serious for his age. It also says he was an incarnation of Lord Baladeva Himself. As Vishvarupa grew into a young man, his parents naturally began to think about arranging a marriage for him. This was the ordinary next step for any son of a respectable Bengali brahmana household in Nabadwip.
A Decision Made in a Single Day #
Chaitanya-charitamrita tells the moment in a single verse. As soon as Vishvarupa heard that a marriage was being arranged for him, he left home immediately. He did not wait to argue the matter or to be talked out of it. He set out to accept sannyasa and travel from one holy place to another. There is no scene of debate or discussion in the text. The decision and the departure happen at the same moment. This is part of the reason later Vaishnava writers see Vishvarupa's vairagya, his spirit of renunciation, as so complete and so uncompromising.
A later Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition is recorded in the Gaudiya Vaishnava Abhidana, not in Chaitanya-charitamrita itself. This tradition holds that Vishvarupa travelled to Varanasi and received sannyasa there from a sannyasi named Krishna Bharati, at about sixteen years of age. It also holds that at this ceremony he took the name he is remembered by: Shankararanya. Chaitanya-charitamrita does not name his sannyasa-guru. So this detail should be read as a later devotional memory, not as an established fact from the earliest source.
The Parents' Grief #
Jagannatha Mishra and Sachi Devi were devastated. So much of the family's future had rested on their elder son. Now he was gone, and gone by his own sudden choice. By tradition, his new life meant never returning to the household he left. The young Chaitanya, still a boy Himself, took on the work of consoling His grieving father and mother.
Bhala Haila #
Chaitanya's words to His parents are preserved as a direct quotation in Chaitanya-charitamrita. They are surprising, because they so firmly approve of what has just happened. It is good, He tells them, that Vishvarupa has accepted sannyasa, because by doing so he has delivered both his father's family and his mother's family. It is a strange thing to say to grieving parents. Srila Prabhupada's purport to this verse (Adi-lila 15.14) takes care to explain it. The reason is that elsewhere Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is recorded warning against the casual acceptance of sannyasa in this age.
Part of the puzzle is that sannyasa itself has a mixed reputation in scripture. The Brahma-vaivarta Purana lists the acceptance of sannyasa among five acts specifically discouraged in the Age of Kali, alongside the sacrifice of a horse or a cow. The verse says, "In this Age of Kali, five acts are forbidden: the offering of a horse in sacrifice, the offering of a cow in sacrifice, the acceptance of the order of sannyasa, the offering of oblations of flesh to the forefathers, and a man's begetting children in his brother's wife" (Brahma-vaivarta Purana, Krishna-janma-khanda 185.180, quoted in Chaitanya-charitamrita, Adi-lila 17.164). Yet in Chaitanya-charitamrita, Adi-lila 15.14, the words quoted above show Chaitanya Mahaprabhu praising His own brother's sannyasa fully. The answer lies in what kind of sannyasa is being praised. One kind of sannyasa is taken to dedicate one's life fully to Krishna's service, in the proper spirit of varnashrama-dharma. This is not the same thing as the sannyasa of a "so-called Mayavadi," a renunciant who merely wanders about, imagining himself already one with Narayana. Such a person does nothing to actually serve Him. Vishvarupa's sannyasa was formally received within the Dashanami order and carried a Dashanami title. Even so, it belonged to the first kind, the kind Chaitanya Mahaprabhu Himself would accept a few years later. It was never the empty or self-serving renunciation Chaitanya criticized elsewhere. Chaitanya-charitamrita's own text also gives the clearest evidence on one more point. The name "Shankararanya" tells us only about the outward monastic title Vishvarupa carried, not about the philosophy he actually lived and taught.
Chaitanya assured His parents that He Himself would remain and serve them, and this promise gave them at least some peace of mind. It would be some time yet before either of them heard anything more of Vishvarupa. The news that finally came, and how it reached the family, is told in Word From Pandharpur. Not long after this, Chaitanya Himself went through a strange and revealing episode at home. That is told in The Vision at Nabadwip.
