Virabhadra Goswami
Virabhadra Goswami (Vīrabhadra Gosvāmī IAST) or Virachandra Goswami (Vīracandra Gosvāmī IAST) Is a Hare Krishna saint who lived in the 16th in Bengal. It is considered the incarnation of Ksirodakasayi Vishnu – one of the expansions of . He was the son of the second wife of Nityananda Vasudha and a disciple of Jahnava /
In the Caitanya-caritamrta it is said that "Virabhadra Goswami is the largest branch after Nityananda Prabhu. From it, in turn, countless shoots and processes depart. It is impossible to describe all of them. He is the central pillar of the devotional hall that Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu has erected. Internally, Virabhadra Gosani was aware that he was acting as the Supreme Lord Vishnu, but outwardly he did not show the slightest pride. Thanks to the unlimited mercy of Virabhadra Goswami, people all over the world now have the opportunity to chant the names of Caitanya and Nityananda. „… Although Birachandra was God Himself, he presented himself as a great devotee. Although he was transcendental to all Vedic injunctions, he strictly followed all Vedic rituals.
Two devotees of Caitanya named Abhirama Thakura and Gadadhara Dasa lived with Virabhadra Goswami. When Nityananda went to preach in Bengal, Abhirama Thakur and Gadadhara Dasa left with him. Therefore, sometimes they are classified as followers of Caitanya, and sometimes as followers of Nityananda.
In the Bhakti-ratnakara it is described that when Virabhadra Goswami visited Vrindavan, all the inhabitants of Vrindavan came out to see him. They were very happy to receive his darshan. Everyone was astonished to see the symptoms of ecstatic bhakti that they were exhibiting. Birachandra Prabhu received darshan of the main deities of Vrindavan: Madana-mohana, Radha-Govinda, Radha-Gopinatha. On the order of Jahnava Devi, he performed the Vraja-mandala parikrama. During his long pilgrimage, he displayed many amazing and wonderful signs of divine love. His puspa samadhi is located in the 64 samadhi region of Vrindavan.
Pedigree of the descendants of Virabhadra Goswami
In the village of Jhamatapura, in the Hoogli region (now in West Bengal), Virabhadra Goswami had a disciple named Yadunathacharya, who had two daughters – his own daughter Srimati and his adopted Narayani. They both got married and their names are mentioned in the Bhakti-ratnakara. Virabhadra Goswami had three disciples, who are called his sons: Gopijana-vallabha, Ramakrishna and Ramacandra. The youngest of them, Ramacandra, came from the family of Sandilya and bore the family name Vatavyala. He lived in Khadadaha with his family, whose descendants bear the title „goswami of Khadadaha." An older disciple named Gopijana-vallabha lived in the village of Lata (near the Manakara railway station in the Burdwana region). The middle disciple, Ramakrishna, lived near Maladahi, in the village of Ganeshapura. All three disciples belonged to different Gotras, had different surnames and lived in different places, from which Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati concludes that they were not the sons of Virabhadra Goswami. had four sons, the eldest of whom was Radhamadhava. The latter’s third son was named Yadavendra. Yadavendra had a son, Nandakisora, and he had Caitanyacandra. The son of Krishnamohan was born to Caitanyacandra, and Jaganmohan was born to Krishnamohana. The son of Jaganmohana was called Vrajanatha, and the son of Vrajanatha was Shyamala Goswami. This is the lineage of the descendants of Virabhadra Goswami, which is quoted by Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura.
The legend about the statue of the murti Radhavallabha, Syamasundara and Sri Krishna Raya
Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakur describes in Anubhashya that three kilometers from the village of Kumarahatta (Kamarhatta), located a few kilometers from Calcutta, there is another village called Kanchadapada, where Sivananda Sen lived at one time. There he built a temple to Sri Gauragopala. Srinatha Pandita founded another temple in the same place, installing the murti of Sri Radha-Krishna in it. The murti in this temple is called Sri Krishna Rai. In 1786, a famous zamindar named Nimai Mallik, who lived in Pathuriya-ghata, Calcutta, built a new large temple of Sri Krishna Raya. In front of the temple there is a large courtyard surrounded by a high wall. The name of Srinatha Pandit, his father and grandfather, as well as the date when the temple was completed, are written on a tablet in the temple. Srinatha Pandita, one of the disciples of Advaita Acarya, was the spiritual master of the third son of Sivananda Sena, whose name was Kavi Karnapura. It is said that the murti of Krishna Raya was installed under Kavi Karnapur. According to legend, Virabhadra Goswami brought a huge stone from Murshidabad, from which three murti were sculptured: Radhavallabha from Vallabhapura, Syamasundara from Khadadaha and Sri Krishna Rai from Kanchadapada. Sen’s house stood on the banks of the Ganges near a dilapidated temple. They say that the same Nimai Mallik from Calcutta once saw this destroyed temple of Krishna Raya on his way to Varanasi and later erected a new temple that has survived to this day.
