Srila Shrikanta Sena

Shrikanta Sena appears in only a handful of verses of Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita. Yet Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami takes the trouble to name him individually, instead of leaving him as one of a crowd. He names him as the nephew of Srila Shivananda Sena and as a singer in the Ratha-yatra kirtan parties. He also names him as the boy who once, for a moment, misunderstood something Lord Nityananda Prabhu did to his own uncle. Kavi Karnapura's Gaura-ganoddesha-dipika goes further and names him as the Vraja-gopi Katyayani-devi appearing in Gaura-lila. By any measure, very little is recorded about him. But what is recorded is real and specific. We also need to be careful about which "Shrikanta" it belongs to.

A Name Shared By Several Vaishnavas #

First of all, this name needs to be made clear, because it belongs to more than one figure in Gaudiya Vaishnava sources. "Shrikantha" is also a well-known name of Lord Shiva, "the one with the beautiful throat," referring to the blue mark left on his neck by the poison he swallowed at the churning of the ocean. That is a name for a deity, not a devotee, and it has nothing to do with the person described here. Separately, Chaitanya-bhagavata and Chaitanya-charitamrita both mention that Sri Srivasa Thakura had three brothers living with him in Navadwip. Later Vaishnava reference works name the youngest of them as Shrikanta, also called Shrinidhi Pandit. He is a quiet figure about whom almost nothing is recorded, and he is not the Shrikanta discussed below. The Shrikanta described below is Shrikanta Sena, Shivananda Sena's nephew. He is named repeatedly in Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita and identified in the Gaura-ganoddesha-dipika. He is also the only one of the three for whom any specific episode survives.

Nephew of Shivananda Sena #

Chaitanya-charitamrita's tenth chapter of Adi-lila lists, one by one, the main branches and sub-branches of the "Chaitanya tree". These are the devotees who carried the movement forward in their own households and local areas. Among them is this entry: "Shrivallabha Sena and Shrikanta Sena were also subbranches of Shivananda Sena, for they were not only his nephews but also unalloyed devotees of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu" (Chaitanya-charitamrita, Adi 10.63). Shivananda Sena is remembered as the householder who organized and paid for Bengal's devotees on their yearly walk to Jagannatha Puri for Ratha-yatra. He paid every toll and ferry fare along the way. Shrikanta evidently grew up inside that same household of service, alongside his cousin Shrivallabha.

That upbringing shows in the one detail about his service that Chaitanya-charitamrita gives. During the Ratha-yatra sankirtana, the assembled devotees were divided into singing parties, and "another two persons, Shrikanta and Vallabha Sena, joined as responsive singers. In this group, the senior Haridasa Thakura was the dancer" (Madhya 13.41). Srila Prabhupada's purport names the full party, Vasudeva, Gopinatha, Murari, Shrikanta and Vallabha Sena, under the leadership of Srila Mukunda Datta. It is a small detail. But it places Shrikanta inside the most senior circle of Ratha-yatra kirtan. He sang back the melodic lines Mukunda's party led, with Haridasa Thakura himself dancing in front of them.

A Gopi Named Katyayani #

Kavi Karnapura wrote the Gaura-ganoddesha-dipika to record the Krishna-lila identity behind each of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's associates. At text 174 it states plainly: "The Vraja Gopi Katyayani Devi appeared as Srikanta Sena." The strict Katyayani-vrata in Srimad-Bhagavatam is named after the goddess Katyayani. It was the vow the young gopis of Vraja kept every morning of the month of Margashirsha. They worshipped the goddess Katyayani and prayed only that Krishna would become their husband. Srila Prabhupada's own purport to Adi 10.63 repeats this identification directly. It also adds one more detail about the incident that made Shrikanta briefly well known. When he and his cousin left Shivananda Sena's party as a protest (see below), "the Lord could understand the feelings of the boys, and He asked His personal assistant, Govinda, to supply them prasadam until the party of Shivananda arrived."

In Kavi Karnapura's Sanskrit, the line quoted above (Gaura-ganoddesha-dipika 174) reads:

vraje katyāyanī yāsīd adya śrīkānta-senakaḥ

Srila Prabhupada's own words in his purport to Chaitanya-charitamrita Adi 10.63 are: "In the Gaura-gaṇoddeśa-dīpikā (174) it is said that the gopī whose name was Kātyāyanī appeared as Śrīkānta Sena."

The Boy Who Protested And Was Comforted #

The one full episode Chaitanya-charitamrita gives Shrikanta happens on the road to Jagannatha Puri, during one of the annual pilgrimages Shivananda Sena led. Shivananda Sena had been delayed at a toll post, so Nityananda Prabhu was left hungry and without lodging. Nityananda Prabhu then kicked Shivananda Sena in loving anger. Shrikanta, "only a boy," took it as an insult to his uncle's standing as one of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's own associates. So he walked on ahead alone to Puri instead of staying with the party. The Boy Who Left The Party tells in full what happened when he arrived, how the Lord received him, and what he chose not to say.

A Possible Meeting At Hajipura #

Later in Chaitanya-charitamrita's Madhya-lila, Srila Sanatana Gosvami escapes from prison and makes a difficult journey toward Vrindavana. The text says he reached a town called Hajipura. There he met "a gentleman named Shrikanta, who happened to be the husband of Sanatana Gosvami's sister". This Shrikanta was also a government officer entrusted with 300,000 gold coins for the royal horse trade (Madhya 20.38-39). He gave Sanatana a woolen blanket and helped him cross the Ganges before Sanatana pressed on toward Varanasi. It is tempting to join this with the story above and say that the same young man grew up to hold a government post. But Chaitanya-charitamrita itself never says so. No purport or verse anywhere connects the two. Also, a "boy" (balaka) protesting on the Puri road does not fit easily with a trusted royal officer managing a fortune in gold. The honest answer is that the Hajipura Shrikanta may or may not be Shivananda Sena's nephew. The sources do not settle the question either way.

Only Verses, No Independent Life #

There is no tradition of Shrikanta Sena's birth, disappearance, home town, or any teaching, book, or verse composed by him. Everything known about him is carried inside someone else's story: his uncle Shivananda Sena's household, Mukunda's kirtan party, a single afternoon of injured pride outside Jagannatha Puri. Even this lack of detail is worth thinking about. Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita is, among other things, a careful record of exactly this kind of devotee. He was not a teacher, not an author, and not a famous person of the renounced order. He was a named face inside a moving crowd of pilgrims, singers and family members. The tradition considered the devotion of such devotees worth remembering by name, instead of letting it disappear into the words "and many others."