Narottama, Srinivasa Acharya, and Shyamananda Prabhu left Vrindavana together, carrying with them manuscripts of the Goswamis' writings — the literature that would give the far-flung Bengali Vaishnava community access to the theology being worked out in Vrindavana. On the way, passing through Vishnupur, the manuscripts were stolen in the night by agents of the local ruler, who apparently mistook the chest for buried treasure. The three searched anxiously before learning that the local king held the books in his own storehouse. At that point Shyamananda Prabhu turned toward Odisha, Narottama continued on toward Kheturi, and Srinivasa Acharya stayed behind to recover the manuscripts — a mission that unfolds mainly in Srinivasa Acharya's own biography and is only touched on here.
A Pilgrim Among Old Devotees #
Before settling at Kheturi, Narottama made a wide circuit through the holy places of Bengal, calling on many of the older generation of Vaishnavas who had known Chaitanya Mahaprabhu directly. At Navadvipa he is said to have met an elderly brahmana who had watched Chaitanya Mahaprabhu discuss scripture at that very spot years before — an encounter that moved both men to tears — before going on to the households of Srivasa Thakura's family, Shuklambara Brahmachari, and Ishana Thakura, an old servant of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's mother Sachi Devi. He continued to Shantipura to see Advaita Acharya's son Acyutananda, to Ambika Kalna to meet Gauridasa Pandita's disciple Hridaya Chaitanya, and to Saptagram, where the devotees of the departed Uddharana Datta Thakura were still absorbed in grief at his passing. At Kharadaha he met Jahnava Devi and Vasudha, the consorts of Nityananda Prabhu, who are recorded in the Bhakti-ratnakara as having personally blessed him. He went on to Shri Khanda to see Narahari Sarkara Thakura, who had known his father, and to Khanakula to see Abhirama Gopala Thakura and his Gopinatha Deity, and to Ekachakra, the birthplace of Nityananda Prabhu itself. From there he traveled to Jagannatha Puri, visiting the samadhi of Haridasa Thakura and the Gopinatha temple associated with Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's final days, before continuing to Shyamananda Prabhu's base at Nrisimhapura.
Opposition on Grounds of Caste #
Once Narottama began actively making disciples in Bengal — including brahmanas by birth — he ran into fierce resistance. He came from a family that, whatever its royal standing, was not brahmana by caste; sources describe the family as Kulin Kayastha, a scribal and administrative caste that had risen to zamindari rank without holding priestly status. To a number of orthodox smarta brahmanas, the idea of such a person initiating brahmanas into vaishnava mantra was intolerable. Traditional accounts preserve more than one episode illustrating how this played out. In one, a brahmana who had publicly insulted Narottama as a shudra was afflicted with leprosy; only after seeking forgiveness at Narottama's feet, the story goes, was he healed. In another, two young brahmana sons of a zamindar named Shivananda Acharya took initiation from Narottama and his disciple Ramachandra Kaviraja after being sent to slaughter goats for a Durga puja, provoking their father's fury; when Shivananda brought in a celebrated logician from Mithila to publicly discredit Vaishnava theology, the debate instead went against him. A related episode has a different ruler sending the visiting scholar Rupa Narayana to defeat Narottama directly, only to have two of the debating party's own students bested first, unknowingly, by two of Narottama's own disciples working incognito as a potter and a betel-seller in the marketplace. Whatever the precise historical kernel in these hagiographical accounts, they preserve a consistent memory: Narottama's response to caste-based hostility was neither retreat nor confrontation, but a quiet insistence — echoed throughout later Gaudiya Vaishnava teaching — that surrender to Krishna, not birth, determines who may serve and who may lead.