The three Ghosh brothers, Govinda, Madhava, and Vasudeva, are almost always spoken of together in Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition, and their birth story is no different: no source treats any one of them apart from the other two. Where sources genuinely disagree is on exactly where the family came from.
The Kulai Tradition #
The more detailed and more often repeated account places the family's home village at Kulai, on the western bank of the Ajay river, about twenty kilometres west of Katwa in Bengal. This tradition names the brothers' father as Ballava Ghosh, and describes a large neem tree at the family homestead there, a tree later said to have supplied the wood from which Narahari Sarkara's circle at Srikhanda carved deities of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu in His dancing form. A few years after Ballava Ghosh moved the family to Halisahar, in what is now North 24 Parganas, the three brothers are said to have moved on again, this time to Navadvipa itself, where they came to know Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and Nityananda Prabhu directly.
The Sri Hatta Tradition #
A different, less common tradition instead traces the family to Sri Hatta, the same eastern Bengal region, now in Bangladesh, that Mahaprabhu's own father's family came from. It names a village called either Baduna or Burangi grama, and says the brothers' father lived at Kumara Hatta. This version agrees with the Kulai tradition on the point that matters most for the rest of their lives: after their father died, Govinda, Vasudeva, and Madhava Ghosh went to live in Navadvipa dhama. Which village is correct remains unresolved; both traditions describe the same family arriving at the same place, Navadvipa, for the same reason.
A Kayastha Family of the Uttara-Radhiya Section #
On the brothers' social background there is no real disagreement. Srila Prabhupada's own purport to Sri Caitanya-caritamrita states it directly: "The three brothers Govinda, Madhava and Vasudeva Ghosa all belonged to a kayastha family" of the Uttara-Radhiya, or northern Rarh, section of Bengal, a respected family of scribes and administrators, not a brahmin one. That detail is worth noting, because from the very first generation of Mahaprabhu's movement it shows that birth into a priestly family was never a requirement for closeness to the Lord. The same purport adds a detail about Madhava Ghosh that says as much about the family's musical gift as any single story could: "Madhava Ghosa was expert in performing kirtana. No one within this world could compete with him. He was known as the singer of Vrindavana and was very dear to Sri Nityananda Prabhu."
Listed as Branches of the Chaitanya Tree #
However their childhood unfolded, all sources come together again once the brothers reach Navadvipa. Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami, listing the many devotees of Mahaprabhu as branches of one great tree, names Govinda, Madhava, and Vasudeva Ghosh as the eighty-second, eighty-third, and eighty-fourth branches, and adds simply that Lord Chaitanya and Nityananda used to dance in their kirtana performances (Chaitanya-charitamrita, Adi 10.115). A few verses later the text describes a further turn in the brothers' lives: when Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu ordered Nityananda Prabhu back to Bengal to preach, three devotees went with Him, among them Madhava and Vasudeva Ghosh, while Govinda Ghosh chose to stay at Jagannatha Puri with Mahaprabhu and, the text says, "felt great satisfaction" (Adi 10.117-118). Because of this, Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami notes that Madhava and Vasudeva Ghosh came to be counted among the devotees of both Lords at once (Adi 11.14-15), a small detail that shows how easily devotees moved between Mahaprabhu's Navadvipa circle and Nityananda's Bengal preaching mission.
Each brother eventually settled at his own sripat, or place of bhajana: Govinda at Agradwip, Madhava at Dainhat, and Vasudeva at Tamluk, each not far from the others along the lower Ganga and its Bengal tributaries. Bhaktisiddhanta Sarasvati Thakura's Anubhasya commentary on Chaitanya-charitamrita records that the Deity of Gopinatha installed at Govinda Ghosh's sripat near Dainhat still, to this day, performs the annual shraddha ceremony marking Govinda's own passing, a tradition kept up by the raja-vamsha family of Krishnanagara descended from Raja Krishnachandra. What happened at each brother's own sripat, and what became of Vasudeva Ghosh's own kirtan and songwriting once he settled at Tamluk, is carried forward on The Kirtan That Moved Mahaprabhu and Disappearance and Legacy.
