Sri Sharanga Thakura

Sri Sharanga Thakura was a bhajananandi devotee of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. He lived at Mamgachi, a village on the Ganges in Modadrumadwipa, one of the nine islands of Nabadwip. This was during Mahaprabhu's own years there, in the late fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. He left behind no writings and founded no formal following. Instead, what we have of him is a small set of specific episodes that are often retold. He spent a lifetime in solitary Deity worship under a Bakula tree, which Mahaprabhu is said to have personally revived. He also had a single disciple. Tradition says this disciple was raised from a corpse floating in the Ganges. Sharanga Thakura then joined the disciple's name to his own, and so became Sharanga Murari Thakura.

At a Glance

• Spent his days in solitary Deity worship at Mamgachi and crossed the Ganges each evening to join Mahaprabhu's sankirtana at Mayapur.
• Vowed never to accept a disciple, gave in only after Mahaprabhu's repeated urging, and then initiated the first person he met. This was a dead boy whose body had been set afloat on the river.
• Watched Mahaprabhu personally embrace his dying Bakula tree at Mamgachi; the tree is still alive at the site today.
• Named in Kavi Karnapura's Gaura-ganoddesha-dipika as the gopi Nandimukhi. In the same passage, Kavi Karnapura records that his own father did not accept a different identification.

Bhajana Under the Bakula Tree at Mamgachi #

No year or place of birth for Sharanga Thakura survives in any known source, and no source names a guru who initiated him. When the sources first mention him, he is already settled at Mamgachi, on the Ganges in Modadrumadwipa. There he worshiped Sri Sri Radha-Gopinatha under a Bakula tree. Devotional accounts describe his routine as almost entirely self-sufficient. He gathered his own fruit, vegetables and firewood, begged rice, cooked, and bathed and dressed the Deity himself, day after day, alone. Only after a full day of this solitary service would he cross the Ganges in the evening to join Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's hari-nama sankirtana in Mayapur. Then he would return to Mamgachi to begin the same round again the next morning. Later devotional biographies present this rhythm as his whole character, before either of the two episodes for which he is remembered: hard, private worship by day, and sankirtana by night.

Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition calls such a devotee a bhajananandi. A bhajananandi stays absorbed in his own devotional practice and does not take up preaching. A goshthy-anandi devotee, on the other hand, works to spread Krishna consciousness. Srila Prabhupada explains this difference in his purport. He writes that a bhajananandi Vaishnava sometimes does not even take the savitra-samskara (sacred thread initiation). Then he says, "A bhajananandi is not interested in preaching work, but a goshthy-anandi is interested in spreading Krishna consciousness to benefit the people and increase the number of Vaishnavas" (Chaitanya-charitamrita, Madhya-lila 8.128, purport). Sharanga Thakura's whole life looks like a living example of the first kind. But no early source uses this word for him directly. It became part of how he is known only in later tradition.

The Vow Never to Take a Disciple #

Sharanga Thakura had made a private vow never to accept a disciple, and for a long time he kept it even against Mahaprabhu's own wishes. Sources agree that Mahaprabhu pressed him again and again to reconsider. Sharanga Thakura finally gave way, but not by simply agreeing. He set himself an almost impossible condition. He would initiate the first person he happened to meet the next morning, and no one else. The full story of what came of that condition, and how it became the event he is best remembered for, is told on The Disciple Raised From the Ganges.

Mahaprabhu's Embrace of the Bakula Tree #

The same Mamgachi courtyard also holds the site's other well-known story. The Bakula tree under which Sharanga Thakura did his daily worship began to wither and die. Every devotional account says that Mahaprabhu Himself stepped in. A living tree, several centuries old, still marks this moment today, and pilgrims visit it as part of Nabadwip-dhama parikrama. The fuller telling is on The Bakula Tree Mahaprabhu Embraced.

Nandimukhi of Vraja #

Sri Kavi Karnapura's Gaura-ganoddesha-dipika links Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's associates with who they were in Krishna's Vraja-lila. In its text 172 it names Sharanga Thakura as Nandimukhi, a gopi or vraja-brahmani of Vraja. In the same passage, Kavi Karnapura also records that some devotees of his own time identified Sharanga Thakura with Prahlada Maharaja instead. He records that his father, Shivananda Sena, did not accept that other view. This small detail gives a real glimpse of how these identifications were actually debated among Mahaprabhu's own associates and their sons. They were not settled once and never questioned. Kavi Karnapura's own stated conclusion, Nandimukhi, is the accepted identification. But the other opinion did exist, and it is recorded by name.

Here is the verse, with Kavi Karnapura's note on his father's view:

vraje nāndīmukhī yāsīt sādya sāraṅga-ṭhakkuraḥ
prahlādo manyate kaiścin mat-pitrā na sa manyate

"The vraja-brahmani Nandimukhi-devi appeared as Saranga Thakura. Some people think that Saranga Thakura was the incarnation of Prahlada Maharaja. My father (Sivananda Sena) did not agree with them." (Gaura-ganoddesha-dipika 172)

Srila Prabhupada's purport to Chaitanya-charitamrita Adi 10.113, the verse that names Sharanga Thakura as the seventy-seventh branch of the Chaitanya tree, quotes Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura's Anubhasya: "In the Gaura-gaṇoddeśa-dīpikā (172) it is stated that Sāraṅga Ṭhākura was formerly a gopī named Nāndīmukhī."

Ecstatic States and the Company of Wild Animals #

Most of what is known about Sharanga Thakura's inner life comes from Vrindavana Dasa Thakura's Chaitanya-bhagavata. It describes him as a devotee who had only the slightest awareness of the outside world, because he was otherwise always absorbed in the bhava of his bhajana. The same account says that he could stay under water for long periods without seeming discomfort, and that he moved fearlessly among tigers and pythons. The text says this ability came from the mercy of Nityananda Prabhu, not from any power of Sharanga Thakura's own. Gaudiya devotional biographies give details of this kind about many of Mahaprabhu's more absorbed, less publicly visible associates. They are best taken as Vrindavana Dasa Thakura's own description, not as history checked against other sources.

Legacy at Mamgachi #

The Radha-Gopinatha Deities Sharanga Thakura worshiped are still in daily worship at Mamgachi. Over time the same altar came to house Madana-Gopala, a Deity associated with Vasudeva Datta Thakura, together with Gaura-Gadadhara. Bhakti Vaibhava Sagara Maharaja was a sannyasi of the line of Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura. He is remembered for rescuing and re-establishing worship at the site in the twentieth century, after a period of neglect. His samadhi now stands there as well. The temple remains an active stop on Nabadwip-dhama parikrama.

Sharanga Thakura's name does not appear in Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita itself, or in any known purport or lecture by Srila Prabhupada. Gaudiya Vaishnavas treat these two kinds of source as the most authoritative. Everything recorded here comes instead through Vrindavana Dasa Thakura's Chaitanya-bhagavata and through later Gaudiya biographical collections. Several of these differ on small points, such as exactly when the disciple Murari identified himself after being revived. Readers should take the outline of Sharanga Thakura's life as well recorded in Gaudiya tradition. But it should not be taken as separately confirmed, as it would be for a devotee named directly in Chaitanya-charitamrita or in Srila Prabhupada's own words.