KASHISHWAR GOSAI

KASHISHWAR GOSAI

His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada
Kashishwar Gosai was one of the contemporaries of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu who was with the Lord in Jagannath Puri. Also known as Kashishwar Pandit, he was a disciple of Ishwar Puri and son of Vasudev Bhattacharya, who be-longed to the dynasty of Kanjilal Kanu. His surname was Chaudhuri. His sister’s son, who was named Rudra Pandit, was the original priest of Vallabhapur, which is situated about one mile from the Srirampur railway station in the village of Chatara. Installed there are the deities of Radha- Govinda and Lord Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. Kashishwar Gosai was a very strong man, and therefore when Lord Chaitanya visited the temple of Jagannath, he used to protect the Lord from the crowds. Another of his duties was to distribute prasādam to the devotees after kīrtana.
Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Thakur vis-ited this temple at Vallabhapur. At that time the person in charge was a śaivite, Sri Sivachandra Chaudhuri, who was a descen-dant of Kashishwar Gosai’s brother. In Vallabhapur there was a permanent arrange-ment to cook nine kilos of rice, vegetables and other foodstuffs daily, and near the village there was sufficient land belonging to the deity on which this rice was grown. Unfortunately, the descendants of Kashishwar Gosai’s brother have sold a major portion of this land, and there-fore the deity worship has been hampered.
It is said in the Gaura-ga_oddeśa-dīpikā (137) that the servant of Krishna in Vrindavan named Bhringar descended as Kashishwar Gosai during the pastimes of Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. In our householder life we also sometimes visited this temple of Vallabhapur and took prasādam there at noon. The dei-ties of this temple, Sri Sri Radha-Govinda and the Gauranga vigraha, are extremely beautiful. Near Vallabhapur is a beautiful temple of Jagannath. We sometimes used to take prasādam in this Jagannath temple also. These two temples are situated within a one mile-radius of the Srirampur railway sta-tion, near Calcutta. _
— Purport to Cc. ādi 8.67. Bhaktivedanta Book Trust. Los Angeles. 1975.

21 November 2007 Śrī Utthāna Ekādaśī, 26 Damodāra, 521 Gaurābda Circulation,

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