By Patita Pavana das Adhikary
To celebrate ISKCON’s yearly pilgrimage to Vrindavana and Mayapur, we offer a selection from the book Vrindaban Days:
Memories of an Indian Holy Town by Hayagriva Swami about his 1972 Kartik pilgrimage. Hayagriva was known as Prof. Howard Wheeler when he joined Shrila Prabhupada in 1966 as one of the original devotees. He was Shrila Prabhupada’s first book editor, and the early issues of BTG carry many of insightful articles and poems of this talented writer. He accepted sannyasa just before his death in 1989, and Vrindavana Days, which appears on the Vedabase 2003, was published the following year. The following piece, which gives a lively overview of Mathura’s history, has been slightly condensed for Dandavats.
A Brief History of Mathura
After five more miles, we arrive at the perimeter of Mathura. From the main highway we can see the city buildings—two and three stories tall. Aurangzeb’s mosque dominates the skyline. The population grows denser as small farms give way to clusters of mud huts, and side streets empty onto the main highway. Cobblestone lanes teem with children, mangy dogs, cows, goats, and pigs.
Only within the past hundred years has the population—now exceeding 130,000—destroyed Mathura’s idyllic atmosphere. In the 1880s, deer were so numerous that one could hardly travel a mile without seeing a herd bound across the road. At that time, the cows of Mathura outnumbered human beings, and over half of the district engaged in agriculture. The very name “math,” meaning “to churn,” connotes a place rich in cows and butter.
Mathura’s girls and Gokula’s cows
Will never move while fate allows.
This, then, is Mathura!
I feel that I’ve arrived home. In the United States, I’m a stranger in a strange land. Now, as I look into the astonishing variety of North Indian faces, I sense having known these people, having lived and died with them aeons before in their ancient villages. At last, I’ve come to rejoin my spiritual family in the land of Krishna.
Vendors call out to me, holding up wooden japa beads and bright saffron gamshas imprinted with the holy Sanskrit names of God. Yes! This is today’s Mathura…
Mathura! Birthplace of Lord Krishna. God’s hometown. “Muttra! Muttra! Muttra!” the drivers helper cries out. The bus halts at one of the station platforms. Mathura. Muttra. Matura. The British favored the “Muttra” spelling, perhaps because it best approximates the local pronunciation. But this seems as antiquated as “Hindoo.” Today, the “Mathura” spelling prevails.
The Skanda Purana dates Mathura’s history back to Satya Yuga, more than two million years ago, when Dhruva Maharaj performed austerities here. Srimad Bhagavatam relates that over a million years ago, during the Treta Yuga, the Mathura area was a dense forest inhabited by a giant ogre named Madhu. Being a conceited demon, Madhu named this forest after himself—Madhuban—and bequeathed it to his son, the fierce Lavana. At that time, Lord Rama was ruling the earth as King of Ayodhya. The superhuman Lavana challenged Rama to single combat, but Rama considered Lavana an unworthy opponent and sent His younger brother Satrugna to battle him. After killing Lavana, Satrugna hewed down the woods at Madhuban and founded on its site the city of Madhu Puri.
More recent were Lord Krishna’s times, only five thousand years ago. Then, the throne of Mathura was occupied by the family of Bhoja, descendants of the great Yadu dynasty. King Ugrasena was the last emperor in this family, and Kamsa was his only son. Although he would have been crowned in due time, Kamsa was so demonic that he imprisoned his father and usurped the throne. Kamsa was no ordinary mortal, but a reincarnation of the demon Kalanemi, who had been killed ages ago by Lord Vishnu Himself.
Kamsa learned of his previous life through the sage Narada. Narada prophesied that Lord Vishnu, as the son of Vasudeva and Kamsa’s sister Devaki, would kill Kamsa again. Hoping to thwart destiny, Kamsa imprisoned Vasudeva and Devaki and killed their offspring as soon as they were born. When Devaki became pregnant for the seventh time, the Supreme Lord appeared in her womb in the form of Balarama. By the Lord’s own yoga-maya potency, Balarama was transferred from Devaki’s womb to that of Rohini, one of the wives of Vasudeva in Vrindaban, and everyone thought that Devaki had a miscarriage.
Devaki’s eighth child, Krishna, was not begotten in the womb like an ordinary child. He manifested Himself before Vasudeva and Devaki in an effulgent form colored like a raincloud. He had four arms, and in His hands He held a conchshell, mace, disc, and lotus flower. His hair was long, as black as a raven, and His beautiful dark eyes were shaped like lotus petals. He was dressed in yellow silks, and He wore necklaces, bracelets, earrings, a crown, and other ornaments, all made with precious metals and dazzling jewels. Indeed, the very brilliance of His body lit up all directions.
Devaki feared that Krishna would meet the same fate as her other children. “I understand that this transcendental form is generally seen only by great sages,” she said, “but I’m still afraid. As soon as Kamsa realizes that You’re here, he will try to kill You. For now, please, become invisible to our material vision.”
The Lord relieved Devaki’s anxiety by assuming His primal two-armed form as Krishna and casting a spell over all the residents of Kamsa’s palace. The dungeon guards fell into a deep sleep, and the gates of the dungeon flew open. Vasudeva then picked up Krishna, who now appeared as an infant, and carried Him from Mathura to Gokul on the other side of the River Jamuna. There, while everyone was asleep, he exchanged Krishna with a baby girl who had just been born to a cowherd king, Nanda Maharaj, and his wife Yasoda. Vasudeva then returned to the prison with the girl.
When Kamsa was informed of the birth, he hurried to the dungeon and seized the newborn infant to dash her upon the stone floor. Instantly, the infant rose into the air and assumed the eight-armed form of Durga, goddess of material nature. “Fool!” said Durga. “You can’t kill me. And the child who will kill you is already born.”
It was then that Kamsa began his persecutions, sending forth powerful demons to hunt out and kill Krishna, but Krishna and His brother Balarama easily dispatched them all.
Living in the beautiful land of Vrindaban and tending cows, Krishna manifested His transcendental pastimes with His parents and friends, the gopas (cowherd boys) and gopis (milkmaids). Through the ages, these pastimes have given joy to sages, who worship them as replicas of the Lord’s eternal activities in the spiritual sky. Dancing with the gopis, herding cows and playing with the other cowherd boys, killing demons and protecting the inhabitants of Vrindaban, Lord Krishna at all times displayed His divine opulences.
When Krishna attained His sixteenth year, He left Vrindaban and went to Mathura. He promptly killed King Kamsa and restored Ugrasena to his throne.
Krishna defended Mathura seventeen times against Jarasanda, the vain king of Maghda (modem Rajgir in Bihar). Finally, Krishna chose to retreat to Dwarka on the coast of modem Gujarat. There He ruled an opulent kingdom. When Mathura fell into Jarasanda’s hands, all the palaces and temples of the Yadu dynasty were destroyed and new buildings erected in honor of Jarasanda’s conquest. During the Battle of Kurukshetra, Lord Krishna, Bhima, and Arjuna invaded Maghda, killed Jarasanda, and burned his capital.
Reportedly, at the site of Lord Krishna’s birth, a temple was built by Vajranabha, King of Mathura and son of Lord Krishna’s grandson Aniruddha.
Apart from references in the Ramayana and Mahabharata—and the later Puranic accounts, which fix the advent of Kali Yuga and death of Maharaj Pariksit (Arjuna’s grandson) at 3042 B.C.-there’s no specific historical mention of Mathura until Alexander’s crossing of the Indus in 326 B.C.
Though bhakti cults devoted to Lord Krishna are known to have existed in Mathura centuries before Christ, Mathura’s Buddhist culture thrived after Emperor Ashoka espoused the faith in the third century B.C. About 175 B.C., Pushyamitra Sunga, a Hindu sun-worshiper whose origin is unknown, repelled a Greek invasion by Demetrios of Bactria and Menander. Pushyamitra occupied Mathura and inaugurated brahminical resistance against Buddhism. At this time, Patanjali was compiling his Sanskrit grammar. The Yuga Purana of the Gargi Samhita refers to a Greek conquest in 144 B.C. “Then those hateful conquerors, the Greeks, after reducing Saketa [Ayodhya or Oudh], the country of Panchala [the area north and west of Delhi, from the Himalayas to the River Chambal], and Mathura, will take Kusuma-Dhvaja [Pataliputra, modern Patna], and every province will assuredly become disordered.”
Beginning in the first or second centuries B.C., the Sakas migrated from the northern passes and established their kingdoms in the Punjab and Mathura. “Saka” was a term given loosely by the Indians to the Afghans and other tribes dwelling in the northwest frontier.
Geographically, north India is most vulnerable to attack. Century after century, soldiers would sweep through the northwest mountain passes and cross the Indus River: Persians, Greeks, and Afghans, the armies of Alexander the Great, Mahmud of Ghazni, Timur, and Babur. Nothing could discourage the hordes from Central Asia. They crossed the Indus and took the route of least resistance, avoiding the scorching desert of Rajputana and entering the fertile Ganges and Jamuna plains, rich alluvial land capable of sustaining great armies. The Ganges and Jamuna flowed through India’s spiritual and artistic center, its heart’s core, a valuable place for a conqueror to obtain and hold. Here indeed was the seat of empires.
The Buddhist sculptures of Sarnath and Mathura date from the reign of Kanishka in the second century A.D. They include gracious lifesize carvings of standing Buddhas and bodhisattvas whose faces and delicate flowing robes combine the best of the Greek influences with Indian art. Like Ashoka before him, Kanishka dedicated himself to the spread of Buddhism, though his ancestors were Zoroastrians. Architecture also flourished under his reign and that of his successors, and many fine buildings lined Mathura’s streets. Indeed, Mathura attracted Buddhist pilgrims from as far away as China. In 400 A.D., Fa Hian journeyed to India in search of ancient Buddhist texts. He noted that most citizens of Mathura were staunch Buddhists. There were no less than twenty Buddhist monasteries, some stupas, and three thousand Buddhist monks.
Chandragupta founded the great Gupta dynasty in 320 A.D. He ruled from Pataliputra, and his son Samudra added Mathura to the Gupta empire. His grandson, Chandragupta Vikramaditya, built a great temple at Lord Krishna’s birthplace, and this temple stood until the advent of the Muslims in 1018. With the Guptas dawned a Hindu renaissance, a golden age of music, sculpture, painting, and architecture. A partial breakup of the empire in 480 was precipitated by an invasion of nomadic Huns pouring in from central Asia. With the death of Harsha in 647, the empire disintegrated into small kingdoms whose histories are unknown.
In the seventh century, Hwen Thsang visited Mathura. He noted that five temples had been erected to Vedic deities and that the number of Buddhist monks had declined to two thousand. “The people [of Mathura] are soft and easy-natured,” wrote Hwen Thsang, “and take delight in performing meritorious works with a view to a future life.” At that time, the soil was fertile, and grain grew abundantly. Cotton of a fine texture was cultivated, and there were great forests of mango trees. Hwen Thsang even described the two different types of mango: the large, which remains green, and the small, which turns yellow as it ripens.
By the ninth century, all the Buddhist edifices in Mathura had been destroyed. Once again Mathurans sought shelter in the authority of the Vedas, which had been rejected by Buddha. This change is generally attributed to the influence of Shankaracharya’s teachings. Shankara’s exact dates are unknown, but most scholars place him in the eighth or ninth century. In any case, his Vedantic doctrine succeeded in weakening Buddhism in India by the ninth century. The Muslim invasions of the twelfth century dealt the death blow to Buddhism as an organized religion in India. To escape massacre, Buddhist monks fled to Nepal and Tibet.
In 1018 A.D., Mahmud of Ghazni and his hordes attacked Mathura. Mahmud’s secretary, Mir Alutbi, writes: “A Hindu king named Kulchand was overconfident of his strength, for no one had ever defeated him. He ruled vast territories, owned great wealth, and led a numerous and brave army with huge elephants. When Kulchand saw Mahmud of Ghazni advancing against him, he drew up his army and elephants in a great forest [maha-ban]. Unable to repulse the invaders, the Hindus quitted the fort and tried to cross the broad river [Jamunal. When some 50,000 men had been killed or drowned, Kulchand took a dagger, slew his wife, then killed himself. From this victory, the Sultan Mahmud gained 185 fine elephants, besides other booty.” (Tarikh-i-Yamini)
The iconoclastic invaders quickly proved themselves a destructive force, for their policy was one of systematic plunder and massacre. Mahmud’s attack on Mathura was devastating. Vikramaditya’s great temple at Krishna’s birthsite was destroyed, although Mahmud himself admitted that it must have taken two hundred years to construct. “In the middle of the city there was a temple larger and finer than the rest, which can neither be described nor painted,” Mahmud noted. The Deities included “five of red gold, each five yards high, with eyes formed of priceless jewels.” After viewing the great temple, Mahmud ordered it and all other Hindu temples in the area “burned with naptha and fire, and leveled to the ground.” Thus he obliterated the grandest monuments of ancient India.
When Mahmud died in 1030, his kingdom stretched from Mesopotamia and the Caspian to the Punjab and the northern Jamuna, almost to Delhi itself. Thus he paved the way for the Delhi Sultanate and the Mughal Empire, which would engulf most of the subcontinent.
Despite torture and oppression, most Mathurans remained Hindu, thanks to the almost exclusively brahminical population. It was the low shudra (laborer) caste, as well as the outcastes, that were converted. Hindu temples were robbed, jewels torn off the Deities, altars desecrated, priests beaten. If temples were left standing, it was because it took too much effort to knock them down.
Mathura’s history is almost a total blank during the five hundred years from Mahmud’s first attack to the beginning of Akbar’s reign (1018-1556). The Hindus tried to live inconspicuously, afraid of provoking their conquerors. They continued to worship in their impoverished temples and were careful not to display wealth by offering large donations to temples and priests. Fanatics would sometimes desecrate Hindu holy places by slaughtering cows and defecating in temples. They even made several attempts to change the name of Mathura to Islamabad (or Islampur) and the name of Vrindaban to Muminabad, but the steel will of the Hindus always won out.
In October, 1512, Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu arrived at Vrindaban, looking for the site of Krishna’s pastimes. Vrindaban was then a thick forest. Only Krishna Himself, in the guise of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, could have discerned the exact locations of His lila.
He ordered His principal disciples, the six Goswamis, to excavate the newly discovered sites and build temples there. That Lord Chaitanya did this during the height of the persecutions testifies to His fearlessness and supernatural abilities. The Goswamis also displayed great bravery by following Lord Chaitanya’s orders and going to Vrindaban during the reign of a series of fanatical sultans.
Examples of cruelty at this time were recorded by Abdullah in Tarikh-i-Daudi: “Sultan Sikandar Lodi [1488-1516] was so zealous that he utterly destroyed many places of Hindu worship and left not a single vestige remaining. He entirely ruined the shrines of Mathura and turned their principal temples into serais and colleges. Their stone images were given to the butchers to serve them as meat-weights, and all the Hindus in Mathura were strictly prohibited from shaving their heads and beards and performing their ablutions. He thus put an end to all Hindu rites there.”
In contrast was the enlightened reign of Akbar (1556–1605). Akbar tried to fuse the best of all cultures. Although he was illiterate, he would invite Hindu sages to his court to recite the slokas of Ramayana and Mahabharata. Akbar’s religious tolerance permitted a flourishing of temples, particularly in Vrindaban. In 1573, Akbar even paid the Goswamis a visit, and they led him blindfolded into the sacred vrinda groves at Nidhuban, where Lord Krishna and Radha had rested after the rasa dance. There, surrounded by sacred tulasi trees, the emperor experienced a vision of such intensity that he proclaimed Vrindaban to be holy ground indeed. He therefore supported the Hindu kings, who, at the request of the Goswamis, decided to erect a series of magnificent buildings in homage to Lord Krishna.
The varied architectural styles reflecting Akbar’s own eclectic views were successfully combined in the temples of Govindaji, Madana Mohana, and Gopinath. The temples of Keshava Dev at Krishna’s birthsite, and Radha Ballabha and Jugal Kishore in Vrindaban, were built during the reign of Akbar’s son, Jahangir (16051627). Jahangir more or less followed his father’s policy of religious tolerance, but the next emperor, Shah Jahan (1628-1658), reverted to barbaric cruelty, trying to stamp out everything non-Muslim. His son was the cruelest tyrant of all—Aurangzeb.
Aurangzeb (1659-1707) was a compulsive destroyer of Hindu temples. He was so demoniac that Hindus still consider him a reincarnation of Kalayavana, the demon who pursued Krishna and was burned to ashes by the glance of the sage Muchukunda. Like Kamsa, Aurangzeb was so eager to seize the throne that he imprisoned his own father. Shah Jahan died captive in the fort at Agra, within view of his beloved Taj Mahal.
Whenever Aurangzeb saw a Hindu temple, he quickly thought of reasons to knock it down. He leveled the top stories of Vrindaban’s Govindaji Temple because he wanted nothing higher than his own palace in Mathura. Deities were stripped of their jewels and taken to Agra, where they were buried under the steps of a mosque “so that they might be trampled upon them forever.” In 1669, using a Jat peasant rebellion as an excuse, he razed the great 250-foot high Keshava Dev Temple, which had replaced Vikramaditya’s temple, destroyed by Mahmud, and also another Krishna temple built in 1150 A.D. and destroyed by Sikandar Lodi. Aurangzeb constructed his own mosque over the ruins of Keshava Dev, and there it still stands.
Rulers following Aurangzeb also dealt cruelly with the Hindus. Mathura was the scene of dreadful slaughter in 1757, when the army of the Afghan chief Ahmad Shah Durrani passed through. In 1759, the Hindus formed the Maratha Confederacy, a powerful alliance to cast off the yoke of oppression, but they were scattered two years later at the Battle of Panipat.
As the Mughal Empire finally broke into conflicting factions, the British began to consolidate the country. In 1803, Mathura became a military station on the line of the British frontier, which then extended to the Jamuna. As soon as the British took over, Mathura was rocked by the most violent earthquake in recorded history (August 31, 1803). Many buildings collapsed, and fissures opened up in fields. The Jama Masjid’s gateway cracked, and one minaret fell over.
The British annexed the adjacent kingdom of Bharatpur in 1826, and in 1832 Mathura was made the capital of a new district out of the remnants of the old districts of Agra and Sa’dabad. During the 1857 rebellion, the Mathura sepoys killed a British lieutenant and seized the treasury, but after seven months the rebellion was quelled, and Pax Britannia restored.
When digging the foundation of a new courthouse in 1860, the British discovered a number of Buddhist statues, pillars, and bas reliefs, all executed in the beautiful red sandstone that is so plentiful around Mathura. They also found a pedestal, dating from the first century A.D., of a seated figure called Vasudeva, another name for Krishna.
Since India’s Independence in 1947, Hindus have dreamed of restoring Mathura to its former Puranic glory, even planning to build a Radha-Krishna temple adjacent to Aurangzeb’s mosque. This temple will replace the Keshava Dev Temple destroyed by Aurangzeb.
Hindus have suffered through nine centuries of oppression. Now they are looking forward to a reawakening of Vedic culture. By bending like the reeds of the great plains about them, they have prevailed.
Road to Vrindaban
I step off the bus, and legions of ricksha-wallas swarm around me, ringing their bells. “Ricksha, ricksha, sahib? Where going? Vrindaban? Come on.”
These are bicycle rickshas, pedaled by sinewy boys. There are no motor-rickshas in the district. My only option is a tonga—a small, two-wheeled horse-drawn carriage. The horses are hardly bigger than American ponies, and all the poor beasts are quite scrawny.
“Ricksha, ricksha?” the chorus continues, louder and more insistent as they see me considering the tonga. “Where going? Where going? Vrindaban? Radha Damodar? Come on, sahib. Ten rupees only.”
The tonga drivers and ricksha boys understand that most foreigners—uncommon in Mathura-Vrindaban—are now visiting a famous sadhu at the Radha Damodar Temple. Of course, ten rupees for the ten-kilometer trip is outrageous. I stall, and like cats before pouncing, the boys watch my every movement. In the bus station hangs a picture of Krishna as Govinda, the cowherd boy. He’s sitting on a rock in the Vrindaban forest, and in His hand He holds His flute. A river and waterfall flow in the background, and deer, cows, and peacocks cluster around Him.
“Krishna, Govinda,” one of the boys informs me, smiling broadly.
“Hare Krishna, Hare Rama,” another boy says. “Radha Damodar, Seva Kunj. Come on, sahib. Nine rupees only.”
The rickshas are so rickety and my luggage and I so heavy that I choose the tonga.
The driver, an old white-haired man, secures my duffel bag on the footboard. I sit on a narrow bench, and the driver, squatting on a board just below me, cracks the whip. The results are surprising. The skinny little nag snaps to life, jerking forward and breaking into a trot.
The old man starts singing. I try to get comfortable. Where to put my feet? Thanks to the low canvas top, I have to sit with my legs doubled up, my knees almost touching my chin. Gulliver in Lilliput. The horse trots briskly to the Mathura-Vrindaban road. Clip-clop clip-clop. Iron shoes ringing on cobblestones: sounds from the last century. Only yesterday, powerful jet engines were propelling me at least a hundred times faster. Yet I’m impressed with the horse’s lively trot and the driver’s dexterity, maneuvering through herds of goats and cows.
The crowded, winding lanes, the two- and three-story buildings with their grand central archways, ground-floor rooms rented out as shops, the noisy barter, the wrought-iron balconies overhanging the streets, the reticulated tracery carved in the sandstone facades—all give Mathura the atmosphere of a thriving town with some of the ambience of its Vedic days. I think of Lord Krishna’s entrance through the gold and marble city gates.
When the women of Mathura heard that Krishna was coming, they dropped everything and ran to the balconies and rooftops to glimpse Him. On seeing Him and His brother Balarama walking slowly down the street and smiling, they took Them into their hearts and embraced Them. The women on the balconies threw flowers so that the Lord’s lotus feet would touch the soft petals instead of the hard road. The cowherd boys of Vrindaban followed Krishna and Balarama. To them, Mathura City was Big Town. In his palace, King Kamsa trembled, knowing that Krishna had arrived at last to kill him.
Soon the tonga passes out of the crowded streets and heads across flat fields toward Vrindaban. The straight, two-lane road had at one time been a cow path. Five hundred years ago, when Rupa and Sanatan Goswamis arrived, Vrindaban was a jungle. Now the road cuts through farmland surrounded by low stone walls. The grass is chomped to the roots by cows and goats, and only the prickly ganger shrubs survive the thorough grazing. Cows seek shelter from the sun under small kadamba (stephanotis) trees.
Although located on the same latitudinal line as central Florida, Vrindaban has no mossy oaks, pecan trees, pines, or palmettos. But there are plenty of bougainvillea and creeper grass, bahera and acacia, banyan and flaming red dhak, tamarind, kadamba, mango, and the medicinal neem.
Three kilometers outside of Mathura, my driver points to a large new temple built of pink sandstone. “Gita Mandir,” he says. Then: “Birla Temple,” naming the wealthy industrialists who financed it. On one side of the road is a dharmasala, and on the other stands the temple itself, a plethora of spires, lotuses, chakras, and swastikas. Pilgrims check in their footwear at a shoe stall. Sadhus of the Nimbarka sect sit beneath gnarled indrajau trees. The scene is timeless, as if captured in a Rajput miniature of holy men listening to the glories of Lord Krishna’s pastimes.
“Mandir,” my driver says, pointing to workers carrying bricks up bamboo scaffolds. “New temple. Vishnu temple.” Women work alongside the men, placing bare feet slowly and deliberately on each rung of a bamboo ladder. Tiny burros carry sacks of sand to a trough where the bricks are made. Boys put the bricks one by one into baskets on the heads of workers. Some twenty bricks—weighing at least two pounds each—are loaded in the baskets. Remarkably, this work is maintained at the same steady pace from dawn to dusk.
I’ve heard that when Indians perform such arduous tasks, they keep their consciousness focused about six inches above their heads, leaving the body to function by remote control. They’re always carrying, pushing, or pulling loads much heavier than themselves. Perhaps such intense physical hardship helps them attain the brahma-bhuta platform of self-realization: “Aham brahmasmi. I am not this body. I am spirit.”
“In India, knowledge that ‘I’m not this body’ belongs to the commonest man in the street,” Srila Prabhupada once said. “It’s no secret. You don’t have to pay some guru to tell you. Everyone knows it.”
The temples grow more numerous as we approach Vrindaban. Most of these temples are quite modest, their spires no taller than ten feet. Their courtyards are surrounded by walls covered with bougainvillea and flaming dhak. In the courtyards stand magnificent banyans, the cutting of which is a crime as serious as the killing of a cow or brahmin. If no temple stands near a banyan, there’s often a small shrine housing a Hanuman image.
Hanuman, the popular monkey-devotee of Lord Rama, is the embodiment of spiritual strength. In the service of his Lord, he even carried a mountain from the Himalayas to Sri Lanka and back Bas-relief sculptures of Hanuman are hardly recognizable, for they are covered with layers of bright orange sindhur, a powder mixed with coconut oil and rubbed on the deity by devotees eager to receive his blessings. The monkeys that scamper about these shrines are always well fed.
Our horse maintains his lively trot all the way. Herds of cows stir up the dust as boys lead them back from the pastures to the goshalas. As we enter Vrindaban township, side streets branch off the main road, leading to temples and ashrams surrounded by walls topped with broken glass to discourage thieves. Monks in bright saffron walk to and fro in the courtyards.
Many pilgrims have come to Vrindaban for the month of Kartik—October-November—some traveling great distances from Calcutta and Bombay. During this time, Lord Krishna’s rasa dance with the gopis is celebrated. Despite inconvenience and expense, the pilgrims come to circumambulate Govardhan Hill, visit Lord Krishna’s birthplace in Mathura, the temples and holy grounds, and walk the parikrama, the dirt path encircling Vrindaban.
There are many elderly purchasers of one-way tickets, widows whose pilgrimage is their final journey. Some hardly seem to have the strength left to walk. Centuries past, such widows did not wander alone through holy towns. They would throw themselves on their husband’s funeral pyre to join him in the next world—the rite of Suttee. The British, shocked by this ancient ritual, outlawed suttee in 1829, claiming it barbaric. Indeed, widows were sometimes pushed into the fire by relatives for financial reasons.
In any case, many widows now crowd the streets and temples, chanting in soft monotones: Hare Krishna, Hare Krishna, Krishna Krishna, Hare Hare, and Radhe Shyam, Radhe Shyam, Hare Krishna, Hare Ram. There are also many old men who have renounced their families and other worldly ties to live out their last days with staff and begging bowl.
My driver parks at the tonga stand next to the Vrindaban bus station. Suddenly, a procession turns the comer. Teenage boys beat drums and clash cymbals. Men carry a wooden litter bearing the empty husk of a body wrapped in white linen and garlanded with marigolds. It’s an old man with a waxen death face, sunken cheeks and yellow-grey pallor. On his last journey, his face is expressionless. “There goes another one,” someone comments. The singing is joyous, and the litter bounces along as the bearers jog to the cremation ghat. From the comers of the litter, incense billows into the air, and the boys with firewood laugh merrily and dance. It’s natural, not tragic, for the shell of life to be incinerated and its ashes scattered upon the Jamuna. To die in Vrindaban is to go to Krishna. The old man has lived out his years and died successfully in the holy dham; therefore his funeral is festive.
From the tonga I transfer to a cycle-ricksha and enter the crowded streets of Loi Bazaar. Here, I get my first view of Main Street Vrindaban, a stretch of small restaurants and shops terminating at Shahji Temple. The ricksha boy rings his bell, warning people to make way. Loi Bazaar, the Blanket Bazaar. At one time, blankets were manufactured and sold here. Now Loi Bazaar has become the main commercial area where an amazing variety of religious paraphernalia is sold.
How amazing to find a main street where the Vedas and Puranas line the magazine racks! Here, spiritual life is encouraged and cultivated. Indeed, Loi Bazaar offers all the accoutrements for the making of mahatmas. Its beadbags and tulasi beads dangling across doorways challenge us to leave mundane pursuits and follow the path of pure bhaktas like Srila Prabhupada.
The ricksha boy turns another corner, cycling out of the bazaar onto a side street. Nodding toward one temple entrance, he turns and smiles. “Shyamsundar,” he says. “Radha Shyarnsundar. Seva Kunj.”
This is the Seva Kunj area, the vicinity of Lord Krishna’s rasa dance with the gopis. Once it was forest. Now it’s crowded with temples and courtyards.
“Radha Damodar,” I say.
“Achha!” says the boy, pedaling harder and ringing his bell to clear the way.
Srila Prabhupada at Radha Damodar
“Radha-Damodar Temple, Sahib,” the ricksha boy announces as we stop before the modest archway of one of Vrindaban’s holiest shrines. It was here that Srila Prabhupada resided and wrote his first three volumes of Srimad Bhagavatam from 1962 until his voyage to America in 1965.
It was with full faith and surrender that seventy-year-old Prabhupada took up the challenge of his guru, Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati, to venture forth alone on a freighter to New York. Nearly thirty years after Srila Bhaktisiddhanta’s dissapearance, Prabhupada landed in the Brooklyn dockyards with only seven dollars, a pair of cymbals, and a crate of books. The following year, he started preaching Lord Krishna’s message—Bhagavad Gita—in a little storefront on Manhattan’s Lower East Side. For us, that was the apocalyptic year, 1966, the Year of the Guru, the year that changed our lives forever.
Now, after six years of nonstop preaching, Prabhupada is back at Radha-Damodar, where he lived and studied for so long. Now he is working on Vedic homeground, perhaps the most difficult terrain of all. “A prophet is not without honor, save in his own country,” Jesus Christ warned.
Radha-Damodar is a small temple hemmed in by other buildings. Its gateway leads into a courtyard fronting a central altar. Much of the façade of the archway has crumbled, leaving the bare, original bricks exposed. In the interior courtyard are living quarters for the pujaris and also Srila Prabhupada’s quarters. The families in charge conduct daily aratiks to Jiva Goswami’s Deities.
In the back courtyard rest Lord Chaitanya’s principal disciples, interred there since the sixteenth century: the great Rupa Goswami—founder of Govindaji Temple and author of important treatises on bhakti-yoga—and his nephew Jiva Goswami, founder of Radha Damodar. Their samadhis, (tombs) give Radha Damodar its special sanctity.
As I enter, I see wizened old women chanting Hare Krishna and prostrating themselves in the dust of the checkered marble floor. Some circumambulate the temple grounds, touching the pillars and walls of the samadhis to absorb spiritual strength. The stones themselves testify to devotion, having been worn smooth by a million touches of fingers seeking salvation. A tulasi tree in the courtyard is also circumambulated, bowed to, and touched lightly and reverently. The bark is as polished as furniture. Beneath this tree’s ancestor, the great Goswamis sat discussing the pastimes of Lord Krishna.
The wrought-iron gates before the Deities are now closed, but the forms of the Deities in the shadowy alcove can be seen. I set my duffel bag aside and pay obeisances, stretching out on the ground beside the old women.
“Hayagriva!”
I look up to see Yamuna standing in the corridor outside of Srila Prabhupada’s rooms. Yamuna, a devotee from Oregon, was a member of the San Francisco temple during the 1967 “good old days,” when our Society was just forming. She married Gurudas and helped open the London temple. Three years ago, she sang the lyrics of Brahma Samhita—Govindam-adi-purusam-tam-aham bhajami—in a popular recording produced by George Harrison of the Beatles. Prabhupada liked the song so much that he’s incorporated it into our morning ceremonies, at the greeting of the Deities.
“Haribol! Yamuna!” I say. “All glories to Srila Prabhupada!”
She sets down a broom and bucket and washes her hands, then comes over. She wears a white cotton sari and looks quite at home at the Radha-Damodar.
“Prabhupada’s inside,” she says. “He’ll be so happy. We’ve been expecting you.”
On the ground outside of Prabhupada’s door are assorted footwear: American tennis shoes, rubber flipflops, sandals. The screen door is shut, but within I hear Srila Prabhupada’s voice.
“A lot of visitors?” I ask.
“Oh no,” Yamuna says. “Just go on in.”
I bend down to get through the door and enter a small, sparsely furnished room. Suddenly, I’m face to face with Srila Prabhupada. He’s sitting on the floor behind a low desk piled with books and papers.
“Jai!” he says. “Our Hayagriva has arrived.”
I pay dandabat obeisances by prostrating myself and touching his feet with my right hand. Then I place my hand to my forehead. To remember the spiritual master’s lotus feet is to remember Krishna. The effect is as cooling as sandalwood.
“Nama om vishnupadaya krishnapresthaya bhutale srimate bhaktivedanta swamin iti namine,” I say, offering respects. Then I sit before him, and he smiles.
Although seventy-six, Prabhupada seems as ageless as ever. His head is freshly shaved, and the aroma of mustard-seed oil tells me that he has just received a massage. His complexion is radiant, his eyes clear, his face full and healthy. This is the face that attracted me that day when I was walking down New York’s Houston Street and first met him, the face that brought so many young seekers to that little storefront temple on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday nights. For us, his face embodies all the attractive qualities of devotion, for it’s a pure, truthful, and compassionate face. It is both happy and grave. It is magnanimous, gentle, and forgiving. It is also determined and self-controlled, and, above all, most learned and intelligent. It’s a face not afraid to love and give all in love for Krishna.
Indeed, Prabhupada’s face conjures all those virtues that lead to love of Krishna. It’s not an ordinary man’s face. It transports an entire spiritual fact, the Vedic culture, an atmosphere of bhakti. I first began realizing his potency just by looking at his face. Whenever I’m Krishna conscious, it makes me joyful. Whenever I’m not, I’m afraid to look at it; it accuses me, makes me ashamed without uttering a word. What power there is in the spiritual master’s face! What magnetism! What volumes of wisdom!
“So, when did you come?” he asks, still smiling.
“There were some delays,” I say. “I got into Delhi early yesterday. Thirty hours from New York. Kirtanananda Maharaj and all the devotees at New Vrindaban send. their obeisances.”
“So, you’ve come as Professor Wheeler,” he laughs, referring to my black suit.
“Only because you requested it, Srila Prabhupada” I say.
“Yes. That’s very nice. You can speak at our functions and convince many gentlemen to help. They may not listen to us, but an American professor … oh!” He smiles broadly and looks at me as if I were a Harvard Professor Emeritus instead of a lowly Ohio State instructor.
“By your mercy, even fools can be useful,” I say.
“So, how are you finding Vrindaban?”
“Uh—” I hesitate, as usual feeling very stupid before His Divine Grace. Sitting crosslegged on the floor in front of Prabhupada are my godbrothers—Shyamsundar and Gurudas—an elderly Indian gentleman, introduced as Dr. Kapoor, and two Indian boys. As always, others fall into the periphery in Srila Prabhupada’s presence. Customary greetings and chit-chat with others must wait. “Well, I saw the bazaar on the way from the tonga stand,” I say, aware that my opinion of Vrindaban is bound to be mistaken. “I’m afraid I’m going to need a guide to explain everything.”
“Your old friend Achyutananda is here,” he says. “He can show you around, and you can write up an article for Back To Godhead.”
“I never thought such a place could exist,” I say. “Just passing the bazaar was an experience in Krishna consciousness.”
“I told you,” Prabhupada says. “Remember? On 26 Second Avenue, I was telling you and Kirtanananda and others about this Vrindaban atmosphere, how I was always longing for it there in New York.”
“Even the monkeys here in Vrindaban don’t seem ordinary, Srila Prabhupada,” Shyamsundar says.
“No one born in Vrindaban is ordinary,” Prabhupada says. “It may not be very palatable to hear, but those who live in Vrindaban and commit sinful activities take birth as dogs, monkeys, and hogs here. In this way, by eating the dust of Vrindaban, they become purified, liberated.”
“Are these bodies all awarded for the same offenses,” Shyamsundar asks, “or for different mentalities?”
“Too much sex indulgence means a dog, a monkey, or a pigeon body. Or even the body of a tree. And the hog body is there for one who overeats or eats prohibited food.”
“And what about those men down by the river who smoke ganja all day?” Gurudas asks.
“Oh, they get hippy bodies,” Prabhupada laughs, “with big beards and long hair, and they have to take birth in San Francisco.”
“Well, at least we have a Radha-Krishna temple there,” Gurudas says, “so they can take shelter of it.”
“Yes, that is Lord Krishna’s mercy,” Prabhupada says. ‘We may choose to take it or not, but it’s there. Krishna never deserts His devotees to the forces of maya. Na me bhaktah pranasyati. ‘My devotee will never perish.’ For hundreds of years, the Muslims tried to stamp out Krishna worship in Vrindaban, Mathura, Jagannatha Puri—practically all of India—but still it’s going on, and the Muslim and British have come and gone. The potencies of the holy dham are greater than any mundane power. Of course, during Muslim times, the Deities had to be hidden, but this does not mean that They need our protection. The Muslims would break the Deities with sticks and then think, ‘Oh, we have killed the Hindu God.’ Of course, this is nonsense. Simply the marble was broken, not the Deity. Foolish men think of the Deity in a limited, mundane way. God manifests Himself in the Deity out of mercy for His devotee, but He is still present in His eternal abode, Vaikuntha, as well as in every atom of the creation. Krishna is all-powerful, His Deity form is indestructible, and His dham possesses all spiritual potencies. There might have been some damage to the temples, but generally the Muslims did not enter Vrindaban. They were afraid.”
“Even today there are very few Muslims in Vrindaban-Mathura,” Dr. Kapoor says.
“Yes,” Prabhupada agrees. “The Brijbasis prefer to die rather than give up their Krishna. Throughout India you’ll find that some of the lower castes—the sudras, or vaishyas, or harijans—will convert to Mohammedanism, but in Vrindaban even the sudra will not give up Krishna, not even for all the gold in the world.”
“Why is that, Srila Prabhupada?” Gurudas asks. “Is it from living in Vrindaban and being so close to Krishna day by day?”
“Yes, that effect cannot be overestimated,” Prabhupada says. “At every turn, you are reminded of Krishna here, and your spiritual strength increases due to that contact. For instance, from ’62 to ’65, when I lived here, I would sit in these rooms and chant Hare Krishna and see the samadhis of Jiva and Rupa Goswamis. Just by thinking of how they wrote, I got courage to write. I would type and cook a little. I lived very simply, content to be in Rupa Goswami’s presence. These samadhis are the best in Gaudiya Vaishnavism. They actually inspired me to go to the West. Now I have hundreds of temples to go to, but I still like it here best of all. What do you think, Hayagriva?”
“I’m glad you invited me here, Srila Prabhupada,” I say.
“But I think the sanitation facilities are not up to your country’s,” he laughs. Then, seriously: “Since 1965, they have not kept the streets very nicely. The sewage is spoiling it all, even the river. Now there’s no place to go bathing.”
“Most people agree that India’s main problem is overpopulation,” I say.
“Nonsense,” Prabhupada says. “Does that mean Krishna can’t supply His children with sufficient food, clothing, and shelter? No. The creation is perfect because it comes from the Supreme Perfect. Om purnam adah purnam idam. The Supreme Perfect has made perfect arrangements for all living entities. The problem is misuse of Krishna’s gifts, misappropriation. Isavasyam idam sarvam. Everything belongs to the Supreme.”
“But why is it, Srila Prabhupada, that here in Vrindaban, Krishna’s devotees also seem to suffer so?” Gurudas asks.
“Suffer? What is that suffering?” Prabhupada says.
“Many don’t have sufficient food. They sleep on the streets and—”
“Who says there’s not sufficient food? Is anyone starving? Just show me one starving man. In any temple a man can go and take prasadam. And as for sleeping, everyone is sleeping. When you sleep, do you know whether you’re on a king’s couch or a stone road? The Goswamis would sleep under a different tree every night, and then for only two or three hours. There’s no problem eating, sleeping, defending, mating. There’s no lack there, no poverty. The only poverty in India today is lack of Krishna consciousness—that’s all.”
“But most tourists are appalled when they come here and see the conditions,” Dr. Kapoor says. He is dressed in a spotless white kurta and pajama pants. “It will take more than your temple at Raman Reti to change all that.”
“Therefore I’m recommending a general program of clean-up, preservation, and restoration,” Prabhupada says. “True, the beautiful temples of the Goswamis—Madana Mohana, Govindaji, especially—are crumbling due to neglect.”
“Sometimes people even use them as stone quarries,” Dr. Kapoor laments.
“So, we must first protect them. Then restore them to first-class condition, install Deities, and conduct daily aratiks. Then many people will come and benefit.”
“Why has Krishna allowed His dham to deteriorate, Srila Prabhupada?” Gurudas asks.
“It has not deteriorated,” he replies.
“Well, you just said that the Goswami temples were neglected.”
“That’s a fact. But Vrindaban has not deteriorated.”
“Most Americans would be shocked to see what I saw this morning,” I say.
“How’s that?” Prabhupada asks.
“Well, for one, they’d consider it unhygenic.”
“Just see. For a materialist, everything is topsy-turvy because his vision is perverted. Beauty and ugliness are in the eye of the seer.”
“But what’s this veneer covering the holy dham?”
“The ugliness that you see here is yoga-maya,” Prabhupada says. “It’s Krishna’s covering. Vrindaban appears this way to drive away the atheists and impersonalists, just as New York attracts them. For a devotee, this Vrindaban is as good as Krishna’s transcendental abode in the spiritual sky-Goloka Vrindaban. But you must have the eyes to see.”