Srila Uddhava Dasa

Two much more famous people share this name, and this Uddhava Dasa is neither of them. One is Krishna's own dear friend and cousin Uddhava, the counselor of the Srimad-Bhagavatam's Dvaraka-lila and the one who received the celebrated Uddhava-gita. He belongs to an entirely different part of Vaishnava literature. The other is Srila Paramananda Puri. His life story shows that the Gaura-ganoddesha-dipika identifies him as that very Uddhava, who came again to be at Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's side. The Uddhava Dasa described here is a third person. He was an ordinary Gaudiya Vaishnava devotee of Vrindavana, named directly in Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami's Chaitanya-charitamrita. Only a handful of lines about his life have come down to us.

Not Krishna's Uddhava, and Not Paramananda Puri #

It is important to clear up this confusion at the start, because all three names appear close together in Gaudiya Vaishnava literature. Krishna's Uddhava is a full personality of the Bhagavatam itself. He is the wisest of the Yadus, the friend Krishna chose to receive His final instructions before leaving this world. Paramananda Puri is a historical sannyasi of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's own generation. The Gaura-ganoddesha-dipika (verse 118) identifies him as that same Uddhava, returned to Gaura's side. Uddhava Dasa, the plain, ordinary devotee described here, is neither of these. He never appears in the Bhagavatam. The Gaura-ganoddesha-dipika, at verse 112, identifies him quite differently. Tradition says he was an avesha incarnation of the Moon-god, not of Krishna's own cousin and counselor. What survives of his actual life does not come from any account of Dvaraka or of Mahaprabhu's Puri years. It comes from two short, specific mentions of him in Vrindavana, in the generation after the Six Goswamis settled there.

In the diacritic Sanskrit edition of the Gaura-ganoddesha-dipika this is verse 112. It names Uddhava Dasa right after Chandrashekhara Acharya:

candraśekhara ācāryaś candro jñeyo vicakṣaṇaiḥ
śrīmān uddhava-dāso'pi candrāveśāvatārakaḥ

"The learned devotees know that Candrasekhara Acarya was an incarnation of the moon-god and Sriman Uddhava dasa was an empowered incarnation of the moon-god." (Gaura-ganoddesha-dipika 112)

The verse gives only his name. It does not say where this Uddhava Dasa lived, so by itself it cannot tell apart the devotees of this name described below.

A Branch of Gadadhara Pandit's Family #

Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita builds much of its account of Mahaprabhu's community around the image of a great tree. Nityananda Prabhu, Advaita Acharya and Gadadhara Pandit are its three central trunks, and their followers are branches and sub-branches spreading out from each. In this picture, Adi-lila 12.84 names Uddhava Dasa as the sixteenth branch coming from Gadadhara Pandit, together with Shrinatha Chakravarti, Jitamitra and Kashthakata Jagannatha Dasa. Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura's Anubhasya, quoted in Srila Prabhupada's own purport to this verse, adds one more detail from an older source, the Shakha-nirnayamrita of Yadunatha Das: "Similarly, verse 35 mentions Uddhava dasa as being greatly qualified in distributing love of Godhead to everyone." That same verse 35, read in full, is a short verse of praise, not a biography. It tells us that he was regarded as generous with bhakti toward the most fallen. It does not tell us where he was born or whom he served as guru. Neither source explains whether "branch of Gadadhara Pandit" here means formal discipleship, or simply a place within Gadadhara Pandit's wider circle of devotion. Nothing more should be guessed beyond what the texts themselves state.

Present When Rupa Gosvami Saw Gopala at Mathura #

The only episode about Uddhava Dasa that can be told as a full story comes later in Chaitanya-charitamrita's Madhya-lila, during Srila Rupa Gosvami's old age. Rupa Gosvami and Sanatana Gosvami had long ago chosen never to climb Govardhana Hill themselves, because they treated the hill as non-different from Krishna. In the end, what kept Rupa Gosvami away from Govardhana altogether was not that vow. It was his advancing age and failing health. Because of fear of raids by Muslim forces, the Gopala Deity he longed to see was moved to Mathura. The Deity was kept for a full month in the house of Vitthalanatha, the Vallabha-sampradaya acharya who was the youngest son of Vallabhacharya. This was a different lineage from Rupa Gosvami's own. Vitthalanatha's home simply happened to shelter the Deity that season. There, finally, the old Gosvami had his darshan. The full list of devotees who stayed with him that month, including Uddhava Dasa, is given in Seeing Gopala at Vitthalanatha's House.

With Shrinivasa and Raghava at Nandishvara #

A second, later mention comes from Narahari Chakravarti's Bhakti-ratnakara, not from Chaitanya-charitamrita itself. Shrinivasa Acharya and Narottama Dasa Thakura were touring the holy places of Vraja-mandala with Raghava Goswami of Govardhana as their guide, and at Nandishvara they stopped at the hut where Sanatana Goswami had lived and where his disciple Gopala Mishra was staying. Uddhava Dasa was among the devotees there, and the book says that they all met one another with great joy (Bhakti-ratnakara, Fifth Wave, p. 252). Later he was counted among the devotees who gathered to see off Shrinivasa Acharya, Narottama Dasa Thakura and Shyamananda Prabhu. The three were setting out for Bengal, carrying the precious manuscripts entrusted to them by Jiva Gosvami. This is the same journey told in fuller detail in Carrying the Scriptures to Bengal. Both moments are told in With Shrinivasa, Narottama and Raghava at Nandishvara.

Two Devotees Who Share a Name #

The sources themselves raise one more difficulty. The Gaudiya Vaishnava Abhidhana, a later reference book of Gaudiya Vaishnava biography, states that there were at least two separate devotees called Uddhava Dasa. One was a follower of Sanatana Gosvami who worshipped in Vraja on the bank of Pavana Sarovara. The second was a much later figure. He was born Krishnakanta Majumdar, was an initiated disciple of Radhamohana Thakura, lived in Murshidabad district, and wrote devotional songs about Radha-Krishna's pastimes. Neither Chaitanya-charitamrita nor Bhakti-ratnakara clearly says whether either of these two men, listed in a later book, is the same person named in the two episodes above. They also do not say whether a third Uddhava Dasa, not recorded anywhere else, is meant. Here the two episodes above are given to Chaitanya-charitamrita's Vrindavana devotee, the one present at Vitthalanatha's house and among the devotees at Sanatana Goswami's hut in Nandishvara. We do not force an answer that the sources themselves do not give.