Srila Vrindavana Dasa Thakura

Srila Vrindavana Dasa Thakura wrote Sri Chaitanya-Bhagavata, the first full-length biography of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's life. He composed it in Bengali verse a few years after the Lord's own disappearance. Vrindavana Dasa wrote very soon after the events themselves. Also, his own mother had grown up in the household most closely connected with Mahaprabhu's early pastimes. For these reasons, his book gives unusually rich detail about Mahaprabhu's childhood and youth in Navadvipa. These are the very years that Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami's later Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita covers only briefly. Krishnadasa wrote decades afterward, and he deliberately left that part of the story to Vrindavana Dasa. Gaudiya Vaishnavas honor Vrindavana Dasa as the Vyasa of Chaitanya-lila. This means he is the Vedavyasa of Sri Chaitanya's pastimes, just as the sage Vyasadeva compiled Krishna's pastimes in Srimad-Bhagavatam.

Birth in Bengal #

Vrindavana Dasa was born around 1507 CE. Most traditions say he was born at Mamgachi in the Navadvipa area of Bengal, though at least one early account gives Kumarahatta instead. His father, Vaikunthanatha Vipra, was a brahmana from Sylhet in East Bengal who died while Vrindavana Dasa was still very young. His mother, Narayani Devi, was the niece of Srivasa Thakura. Narayani, not her son, had the closer personal connection to Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu Himself. As a small child she lived in Srivasa's house, and she was present there when Mahaprabhu revealed His divine identity. Chaitanya-Bhagavata's own verses remember her as a girl who regularly received the Lord's own food remnants. The fuller story of Vrindavana Dasa's family is told in Birth and Family in Bengal. That page also makes clear who exactly received the Lord's mercy, a detail that is often told too simply.

Nityananda Prabhu's Blessing #

In his youth, by most accounts around age sixteen, Vrindavana Dasa took initiation from Nityananda Prabhu and became one of his last accepted disciples. Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita itself calls him nityananda-krpa-patra, "the favored recipient of Nityananda's mercy," and it says plainly that this closeness is exactly why Vrindavana Dasa became the Vyasa of Chaitanya-lila. Vaishnava tradition holds that Nityananda Prabhu personally directed and empowered him to write the account of Mahaprabhu's life that later Vaishnavas needed. This is the subject of Nityananda's Blessing and the Order to Write.

Writing Sri Chaitanya-Bhagavata #

According to tradition, Vrindavana Dasa composed his book in 1535 CE. But later literary scholars date it some years after that, to the mid-1540s. He first called it Chaitanya-mangala. But when the poet Lochana Dasa Thakura wrote his own work with the same title, the Vaishnava community at Vrindavana gave Vrindavana Dasa's book a new name, Sri Chaitanya-Bhagavata. In Chaitanya-charitamrita, Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami praises the book in the highest words he could use. He says that hearing it destroys misfortune, and that even a confirmed atheist who hears it becomes a great devotee. More about the writing of the book appears in Writing Sri Chaitanya-Bhagavata. That page also gives what tradition says about how the book was received, even in Vrindavana Dasa's own lifetime.

Structure and Scope of the Book #

Chaitanya-Bhagavata is organized into three sections, or khandas. The Adi-khanda's sixteen chapters cover the religious condition of Bengal before Mahaprabhu's birth, His childhood, education and first marriage, and His initiation from Ishvara Puri at Gaya. The Madhya-khanda has twenty-seven chapters and is by far the longest section. It describes the growth of the sankirtana movement in Navadvipa, including the conversion of the sinners Jagai and Madhai and the famous confrontation with the Muslim magistrate Chand Kazi. The Antya-khanda's ten chapters cover Mahaprabhu's acceptance of sannyasa and His early years at Puri. But they end well before His final eighteen years there. This is the gap that Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami was later asked to fill in his Chaitanya-charitamrita. The Scope and Structure of Chaitanya-Bhagavata gives a fuller picture of what each khanda contains. It also explains why the amount of detail the book gives to each period matters so much for how Gaudiya Vaishnavas read Mahaprabhu's life.

Vrindavana Dasa and Krishnadasa Kaviraja #

Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami wrote his own Chaitanya-charitamrita some decades later. He treats Vrindavana Dasa with open reverence and calls him equal to Vyasadeva himself. Krishnadasa says that he means only to fill in what Vrindavana Dasa's book had left out, because Vrindavana Dasa feared that his book would grow too long. Modern scholarship sees the two books as completing each other, not competing with each other. Chaitanya-Bhagavata is valued for its simplicity and for its uniquely detailed record of the Navadvipa years. Chaitanya-charitamrita explains the theology more fully and gives by far the fuller record of Mahaprabhu's last eighteen years at Puri. Gaudiya Vaishnavas have long said that together the two books give a complete picture that neither gives alone. This is explored further in His Place Among the Biographers.

Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita (Adi 11.55) says it simply: "Śrīla Vyāsadeva described the pastimes of Kṛṣṇa in Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam. The Vyāsa of the pastimes of Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu was Vṛndāvana dāsa." Kavi Karnapura's Gaura-ganoddesha-dipika (verse 109) gives his eternal identity in full:

veda-vyāso ya evāsīd dāso vṛndāvano’dhunā
sakhā yaḥ kusumāpīḍaḥ kāryatas taṁ samāviśat

"Vedavyasa appeared in Lord Caitanya's pastimes as Vrndavana das Thakura. Lord Krsna's cowherd friend Kusumapida also entered the body of Vrndavana das Thakura." (Gaura-ganoddesha-dipika 109)

Srila Prabhupada confirms this in his purport to Chaitanya-charitamrita Adi 11.55: "Śrīla Vṛndāvana dāsa Ṭhākura was an incarnation of Vedavyāsa and also a friendly cowherd boy named Kusumāpīḍa in kṛṣṇa-līlā." Here Vedavyasa means Srila Vyasadeva, the compiler of Srimad-Bhagavatam.

Final Years and Legacy #

Vrindavana Dasa settled at Mamgachi. There he installed Deities of Nitai-Gauranga, who are still worshiped there today. By most accounts he lived out his life as a celibate devotee, absorbed in their service. He is remembered as having attended the historic Gaura-Purnima festival at Kheturi-grama together with Jahnava Devi, Nityananda Prabhu's consort. Narottama Dasa Thakura helped organize that gathering. Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition places his disappearance around 1589 CE. But, as with much of his life, the exact year is not settled. His samadhi stands today in the 64 Samadhis area of Vrindavana. Later, Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura prepared an edited edition of Chaitanya-Bhagavata with his own commentary. This kept the book in active use for the generations that followed. The fuller story is in Final Days and Disappearance.