Madhava Ghosh, Govinda Ghosh and Vasudeva Ghosh were three brothers born into a kayastha family from northern Rarh, the old name for the part of Bengal west of the Ganges. Every source agrees on that much. Where they were actually born is a real question with two different answers, and both are kept here side by side rather than choosing one over the other.
| Detail | Description |
|---|---|
| Family | Govinda, Madhava and Vasudeva Ghosh, kayastha family of northern Rarh |
| Tradition one | Born in Kulai village, on the Ajay river, about 20 km west of Katwa |
| Tradition two | Ancestral home in Baduna or Burangi grama, Sri Hatta; father resided at Kumarhatta |
| Era | Contemporaries of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, early 16th century |
| Eventual home | Navadvipa, where their kirtan joined Mahaprabhu's sankirtana circle |
Two Traditions of One Birthplace #
Several modern Gaudiya pilgrimage writers, and the Vaishnava Song Book, say all three brothers were born in Kulai, a village on the bank of the Ajay river about twenty kilometers west of Katwa. People there still tell a vivid story about the brothers' childhood home: a neem tree said to have stood by their house, whose wood Sri Narahari Sarkar Thakura is remembered to have carved into three deities of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in his intoxicated, dancing form. The tallest of the three deities is worshiped today at Sri Gauranga Bari in Katwa. The shortest stays at Narahari Sarkar's own home in Srikhandha. It is a beautiful story, but only one source tells it this way, and other accounts of the same three deities describe their carving without mentioning this tree at all. So it is shared here as a local tradition worth knowing, not a settled fact.
An older line of testimony tells a different story. Here, the family's true ancestral home lay far to the east, in Sri Hatta, in a village called Baduna or Burangi grama, and the brothers' father lived at Kumarhatta, closer to Navadvipa. Only after his death, this tradition says, did Govinda, Madhava and Vasudeva leave their father's home and settle in Navadvipa dhama itself. The two versions cannot simply be merged into one: a village near Katwa on the Ajay river and a village in Sri Hatta are not the same place, and nothing available here settles which is right. What can be said for certain is this: however it happened, the three brothers arrived in Navadvipa, and it was there that their singing entered the record.
Three Voices, One Sankirtana #
Once in Navadvipa, Govinda, Madhava and Vasudeva Ghosh became regular members of the sankirtana around Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in His last years as a householder and in the early years of His sannyasa. Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita counts all three among the "branches" of Mahaprabhu's associates, one line for each brother, and Srila Prabhupada's purport at that verse already marks Madhava out on his own: "known as the singer of Vrindavana," and "very dear to Sri Nityananda Prabhu." Their kayastha background mattered to no one in this circle. What mattered, from the very first mention of them in the text, was their voices.
Their name as singers rests on specific pastimes: the beda-kirtana processions, the Ratha-yatra festival at Jagannatha Puri, and Madhava's own place among Nityananda Prabhu's associates. These are told in Singing for Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. What tradition remembers of Madhava's later life, his shripata at Dainhat, and his one surviving song are gathered in Legacy and Disappearance.
