Men of God

BIRTH AND EARLY LIFE

Chaitanya was born in 1486 A.D. (Feb. 18) at Navadvip (Nadea), famous for Sanskrit learning and respected by all parts of India as the home of Nyaya, Indian Logic. His ancestors originally belonged to Orissa and had settled at Dhakadakshin, a village in the Sylhet district. In the middle of the 15th century his father Jagannatha Misra came to Nadea to complete his education and win academic laurels. Poverty and political conditions in the Sylhet district did not encourage his return to his village. So, after becoming a scholar of renown, he stayed on and married Sachi Devi, the daughter of Nilambara Chakravarty, a venerable scholar, who like himself had come to Sylhet and settled at Nadea.

Chaitanya was the ninth (according to some eighth) child of this Brahmin couple. He was born in the evening on the full moon day of Phalgun, when the moon just came out free from an eclipse. There was everywhere jubilation and from the very beginning there was a special charm about the child which was his title to be called Gouranga, ’he of the fair body’. Though Vishwambhar was the classical name given to the child, they named him Nimai since a humble name was thought fit to ward off evil influences so that the boy might not share the fate of his seven shortlived sisters before him. Some say that the baby got fever and was by advice kept under a Nim tree (margosa) for cure and hence he came to be so called.

Nimai, the child, was full of fun and mischief, possessed of vigour and energy that kept his mother busy. His boyhood was that of a real boy, buoyant with an exuberance of childish pranks. After a few years in the primary school he was admitted, when he was 8 years, into the Sanskrit Tol of a famous professor, Gangadas Pandit. His intelligence and intellectual keenness was easily above the average. And the super-abundant energy of the young lad often found went in the childish pranks flung on the old and the young, as well as on boys and girls. He would enter the temple in the evening, put out the lights and irritate the priests. He would then go to the Brahmin sitting with closed eyes on the banks of the Ganga, sprinkle water on his face, disappear as suddenly as he came. If he saw a Brahmin meditating with eyes shut and a holy text in his hand, the urchin would come from behind, snatch the book, fly away. Again if someone stood in knee-deep water in the Ganges, muttering his prayers, Nimai would plunge into the water, forcibly carry him by one of his legs. Nor were boys and girls spared.