Blog

Navadvīpa– A Timeless History… By MañjarīDevīDāsī

By the will of the Lord and His pure devotees, His eternal abode is visible to us today.

(Following is an article from “The Back To Godhead magazine – Mayapur Special issue” dated 1999. The article is so beautiful and mesmerizing that it is worth sharing with devotees. So read and enjoy!)

It is just after six o’clock in the evening, and the sun is setting on the horizon in Mayapur. The beautiful red-orange hue of the evening sky reflects on the flowing waters of the Ganga and dominates the horizon. This is my favourite time of the day, and my favourite place- BhaktisiddhantaSarasvatiMarg, the main Mayapur road- to walk while chanting the Hare Krsnaon my beads. The road is lined with the Ganga on one side and the temples on the other. As the temples begin their evening worship, I am drawn into a deep sense of peace and timelessness.

The air fills with the sounds of voices, bells and hand cymbals as the devotees sing the Lord’s glories. The eternal activity of worshiping the Lord saturates the atmosphere, and past, present, and future merge. Such a sense of eternal time is possible only here, in the holy dhama (abode) of the Lord; which continues to exist even after this world is annihilated. And such an atmosphere naturally evokes contemplation on the amazing sequences of events, taking place over the centuries, that have brought me here today, far from my native land.

While histories view the Mayapur area in terms of the Muslim and Hindu kings who conquered and ruled here, devotees see it as a timeless spiritual realm of the Lord, Sri NavadvīpaDhama. For devotees, history is the eternal pastimes of the Lord recorded by His associates in various scriptures.

The creation of Sri Navadvīpa is recorded in the Ananta-samhita, Lord Siva, speaking to his wife, Parvati, explains how SrimatiRadharani had heard on two occasions that Krsna  was enjoying with the gopiViraja but the She had been unable to catch them together. Thinking of a way to entice Krsna  away from this girlfriend, SrimatiRadharani gathered Her friends between the Ganges and the Yamuna rivers. There She created a beautiful place decorated with creepers and trees filled with bumble bees. Bucks and does happily wandered about, and the fragnance of jasmine, mallika, and malati flowers filled the air. Forests adorned that transcendental land, and Tulsi plants decorated its various groves.

On Radha’s order, the Ganges and Yamuna, with their pleasant water and banks, acted as a moat to protect the garden. Cupid, along with springtime itself, decided to reside there eternally, and birds constantly sang the auspicious name of Krsna.

To attract Krsna, Radharani played a beautiful melody on a flute. On arriving, Krsna understood Radharani’s mood and spoke with a love-choked voice: “O lovely Radha,You are My very life. No one is more dear to me than You. I will never leave You. Just for Me, You have created this wonderful place. Staying with You, I will transform this place, filling it with new cowherd girls and groves. The devotees will glorify this place as New Vrindavana [Nava Vrindavana]. As this place is like an island [dvīpa], the wise will call it Navadvīpa. By My order, all the holy place will reside here. Because You have created this place for My pleasure, I will live here eternally.” Krsna then merged with the body of SrimatiRadharani. Seeing this, the cowherd girlfriends of SrimatiRadharani excitedly shouted “Gaurahari!” (a name of Lord Caitanya meaning “golden Lord”) and changed their forms to male forms to continue their service to the divine couple, now appearing in Their most beautiful golden form of Sri CaitanyaMahaprabhu.

Lord Caitanya in Navadvīpa

Although the appearance of Navadvīpa dates to an unknown time in the distant past, Lord Caitanya lived there fairly recently, from 1486 to 1510, until He was twenty-four. He then lived in JagannathaPuri, where He ended His manifests pastimes at the age of forty-eight. In the book Sri NavadvīpaDhamaMahatmya, SrilaBhaktivinodaThakura writes that soon after the disappearance of Lord Caitanya, Navadvīpa also became hidden.

Lord Nitayananda, speaking more than four hundred years ago, told SrilaJivaGosvami: “When our Lord [Caitanya] disappears, by His desire the Ganges will swell. The water will almost cover Myapur for a hundred years and then recede. For some time, only the land will remain, devoid of houses. Then, by the Lord’s desire, Mayapur will again become prominent, and people will live here as before. All the ghats (bathing places) on the bank of Ganges will again be visible, and the devotees will build temples. An exceedingly wonderful temple will appear, from which Lord Caitanya’s eternal service will be preached everywhere….In this way, the devotees will reveal the lost places. Know this for certain. At the end of four hundred years, the task of recovering the lost holy place will begin.”

In the late 1800s, through extensive research of scriptures, old maps, and government records, BhaktivinodaThakura discovered many lost holy places in NavadvīpaDhama, including the site of Lord Caitanya’s birth. He also wrote extensively on the teachings of Lord Caitanya. Then shortly before leaving this world, he instructed his son and spiritual successor, SrilaBhaktisiddhantaSarasvatiThakura, to “develop Sri NavadvīpaDhamaparikrama [circumambulation], for by its performance all people of the world can be liberated.

SrilaBhaktisiddhanta fulfilled his father’s desire. Upon setting up his headquarters in Navadvīpa in 1918, he initiated an annual parikrama of Sri NavadvīpaDhama. The parikrama was done in grand style, with elephants leading to huge parade of thousands of devotees carrying flags and dancing in kirtana. Each day they walked to different holy places and gathered to hear SrilaBhaktisiddhanta speak on the pastimes of Lord CaitanyaMahaprabhu.

Following in the footsteps of his spiritual master, His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada established the headquarters of his ISKCON in NavadvīpaDhama. Each year thousands of devotees from all over the worlds perform Navadvīpaparikmrama as part of ISKCON’s annual GauraPurnimafestivle, honoring the appearance day of Lord Caitanya.

The Mission OfNavadvīpa

In CaitanyaMangala, LochanaDasaThakura explains that Lord Caitanya appeared and preached in Navadvīpa just to establish the chanting of Hare Krsnamaha-mantra as the religious process for this age of Kali. Lord Caitanya said, “I want to flood the whole world with the chanting of the holy names. I will personally preach and flood India with the holy name. Later, my commander-in-chief devotee [senapatibhakta] will come, preach in distant countries, and flood the world with the chanting of Hare Krsna.”

Lord Caitanya left the mission of spreading the chanting of Hare Krsna worldwide to future acaryas, or prominent spiritual master in His line. First, BhaktivinodaThakura reestablished the teachings of Lord Caitanya and wrote on them extensively. In 1896, he sent to the West the first English book on Lord Caitanya- Sri CaitanyaMahaprabhu: His Life and Precepts. SrilaBhaktisiddhanta continued the mission by strongly preaching Lord Caitanya’s message all over India and sending his leading sannyasi preachers to England. After some time, these sannyasis returned to India without any tangible success. They said it was not possible for the Westerners to follow the practices of Krsna Consciousness.

Then, just two weeks before he left this world, SrilaBhaktisiddhanta instructed a young householder disciple to deliver the teachings of Lord Caitanya to the West. By taking this instruction to heart, that disciple inherited the spiritual legacy handed down by Sri CaitanyaMahaprabhu and the previous spiritual masters. He later became His Divine Grace A. C.Bhakyivedanta Swami Prabhupada, the founder acarya of ISKCON, and spread the chanting of the Hare Krsnamaha-mantra to virtually every country. He thus made great strides in fulfilling Lord Caitanya’s prophesy: “In every town and village in the world, My name will be heard>”

By SrilaPrabhupada’s grace, one of the towns the holy name and the mission of Sri CaitanyaMahaprabhu reached was my hometown. As a result, I am here today at the birthplace and holy abode of that Sankirtana mission, Sri NavadvīpaDhama.Haribol!