Of everything remembered about Sharanga Thakura, the story told most often is the one about his only disciple - and about how strange the circumstances of that initiation were.
A Private Vow #
Sharanga Thakura had, at some point in his life at Mamgachi, made a private vow: he would never accept a disciple. Devotional accounts do not explain why - whether from humility, from a sense that he had nothing to offer another soul, or from simple preference for his own solitary bhajana under the Bakula tree. Whatever the reason, he held to it firmly enough that even direct requests from Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu did not immediately move him.
Mahaprabhu Will Not Let It Stand #
According to every account that survives, Mahaprabhu did not agree with the vow. He returned to the subject more than once and urged Sharanga Thakura to accept disciples as other devotees did. Sharanga Thakura's final answer was not a simple change of heart. Instead, he set himself a condition. The next morning, he would initiate the first person he happened to meet, and only that person, whoever it turned out to be. This does not read like agreement. It reads more like a way of testing whether Mahaprabhu's wish was really meant to be followed. Or it was a way of leaving the decision to the Lord's arrangement instead of making it himself.
The Body on the River #
The next morning, Sharanga Thakura went to bathe in the Ganges as he always did. What he met there was not a person walking by, but a corpse - the body of a boy, already dead, floating down the river. In the Bengal of that time, a child who died of snakebite was, by custom, not cremated but set afloat on the water, and this boy, sources agree, had died that way. His body drifted against Sharanga Thakura while he stood in the river.
Having bound himself to initiate the first person he met that morning, Sharanga Thakura kept his word to a corpse. He spoke or chanted the initiating mantra into the dead boy's ear - some tellings have him touching the body with his foot as he did, others have Mahaprabhu Himself present and instructing him to proceed. The boy's body came back to life. Regaining consciousness, he identified himself by the name Murari, and, astonished at what had happened to him, bowed down to the man who had just become his guru.
Sharanga Murari #
Murari did not go home. When his parents learned what had happened, they came to Mamgachi to take their son back. By every account, the boy refused. He chose to stay with the guru who had, quite literally, given him back his life. He would not return to the family that had already given him up for dead and set him afloat on the river. Devotional retellings present this choice as a small teaching in itself. An ideal disciple puts his guru and his worship of Radha-Gopinatha first, above the family ties he might otherwise have been expected to honor. From that point on, Murari trained under Sharanga Thakura. Because of this one disciple, and no other, Sharanga Thakura came to be known by the combined name Sharanga Murari Thakura. He is remembered by this name on temple signs and in pilgrimage guides at Mamgachi to this day, and most Gaudiya biographical sources also name him this way.
The story is preserved only in Vrindavana Dasa Thakura's Chaitanya-bhagavata and in the Gaudiya biographical literature that draws on it. It does not appear in Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita, and no Srila Prabhupada purport or lecture retelling it directly is known. Retellings also differ on small details. They differ on whether Murari was the boy's name before his death or the name given to him afterward. They also differ on whether Mahaprabhu was present in person at the riverbank or only heard of the revival afterward. But every version agrees on the main event. There was a vow, a condition set almost as a challenge, and a dead body that became a living disciple.
