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By Lakshman Das<\/strong><\/p>\n Caitanya Mahaprabhu’s participation in the rathayatra is described in the madhya-lila (chapter-13) of Sri Caitanya Caritamrta, “The ecstatic dancing of the Lord at rathayatra,” and it is briefed here. As said before, the miraculous pastimes of Lord Caitanya’s dancing exhibited during the rathayatra was a fascination to the crowd five centuries ago. After an early morning bath, Mahaprabhu took darshan of the Deities (Jagannatha, Balarama and Subhadra) and got on to their carts, and that glorious occasion is called pandu vijaya. His close associates Nityananda, Advaitacarya, Srivasa, Ramai, Raghu, Govinda, Mukunda, Haridasa, Govindananda, Madhava, and Srivasa Thakura, and others accompanied Him. Svarupa Damodara was made a main troupe leader. They sang and danced around the Lord. Worshipping Lord Jagannatha, Caitanya Mahaprabhu prayed, “My obeisance to Sri Krsna adorable to all brahmanas, the bestower of cows and pious humans, and the world’s beneficiary, I worship You again and again, You Supreme Person, O Krsna, O Govinda. All glories to You the Supreme Lord, the son of Devaki. O the Supreme One, You are the light of the Vrshnis, O glorious One, Your body is bright as a new rising cloud in sky and soft as lotus petals. All glories to You, who arrived on earth to rescue her from the tread of demons, O liberator of all. O Krsna, O the utmost Destination of all, O the son of Devaki, son of Yashoda, You directed the Yadus with Your almighty arms and dissipated all impious and inauspicious omens. Your presence destroyed all wicked life among the movables and immovable. Your blissful smile aroused lust among the damsels of Vrindavana. O glorious Person, please dwell in happiness. I am neither a brahmana, kshatraiya, vaishya, or sudra nor I am a brahmachari, grahastha, vanaprastha, or sannyasi. I am an insignificant servant of the servants of the servants of the lotus feet of Krsna, the lover and protector of gopis. You are an ocean of nectar, the transcendental bliss, and may You ever dwell in glory.”<\/p>\n When Caitanya Mahaprabhu danced, jumped high and moved in circles, if appeared like a whirling firebrand. While He roared and treaded, the whole earth, hills and seas appeared trembling. Many blissful transcendental emotions transpired in the Lord when He danced. His bodily hairs stood on end in ecstasy, and He sometimes cried aloud, trembled and perspired. Occasionally His body appeared in various hues and aroused emotional symptoms of humility, arrogance, peace and agitation. Sometimes He crashed on ground and rolled like a mad man and sometimes Nityananda Prabhu stretched out His hands to behold the Lord, while Advaita Acharya walked behind and chanted aloud, “Hari bol, Hari bol….” To protect the Lord from the crowd, they moved in three concentric circles and bounded with locked hands and Nityananda Prabhu secured the inner circle. Devotees like Kasisvara, Govinda and others formed the second circle, while King Prataparudra (said to be King Indradyumna reborn) locked hands with Haricandana and other royal guards framed the third circle. All danced ecstatically in circles with their attention affixed on Lord Caitanya. Even the manifest Deities were keen watching the ecstatic dance of Caitanya Mahaprabhu exhibiting the eight glorious mellows of perfect bhakti-rasa and His body appeared like a thorny silk cotton tree with erect hairs and eruptions of blood and sweat. Tears sprayed from His eyes wetting his accomplices and He turned pink. Occasionally, He looked stunned, stood firm, and unmoved, and His body became hard like wood. Sometimes, He fell down and rolled, or lied breathless with flowing tears, wet nose, and foaming mouth. Devotees like Subhananda tasted the eruptions of His embodiment like nectar flown from moon. When Caitanya got up, He asked Svarupa Damodara to sing and he sang, “I have now got the Lord in my life and Cupid wandered me bereft of Him.” Hearing it, the Lord danced again exhibiting his ecstasy.<\/p>\n As the carts moved on, Nitai and associates took to the front of Jagannatha and danced, and it was a majestic show of mellows to all participants and onlookers of the rathayatra. Occasionally, the Lord and His sankirtana troupes sang and danced at the trail of the rally as well. Sometimes Jagannatha’s car stopped when Mahaprabhu moved down and then He moved up and danced in front and the car starts again to the astonishment of all spectators. It showed a test of love between the giver Jagannatha (Krsna) and receiver Gaurasundara (Radharani) and it proved that the provider wil function only in the presence of the real lover, which exemplifies the significance of perfect bhakti to the devotees.<\/p>\n \u015ar\u012b Caitanya-carit\u0101m\u1e5bta: (Madhya-l\u012bl\u0101 Text 1-69) The Ecstatic Dancing of the Lord at Ratha-y\u0101tr\u0101<\/p>\n sa jiyat krsna-caitanyah “May the Supreme Personality of Godhead, \u015ar\u012b K\u1e5b\u1e63\u1e47a Caitanya, who danced in front of the car of \u015ar\u012b Jagann\u0101tha, be all glorified! By seeing His dancing, not only was the whole universe held in wonder, but Lord Jagann\u0101tha Himself became very much astonished.”<\/p>\n jaya jaya sri-krsna-caitanya nityananda “All glories to \u015ar\u012b K\u1e5b\u1e63\u1e47a Caitanya and Prabhu Nity\u0101nanda! All glories to Advaitacandra! And all glories to the devotees of Lord \u015ar\u012b Caitanya Mah\u0101prabhu!”<\/p>\n All glories to the listeners of Caitanya-carit\u0101m\u1e5bta. Please hear the description of the dancing of Lord Caitanya Mah\u0101prabhu at the Ratha-y\u0101tr\u0101 festival. His dancing is very enchanting. Please hear of it with great attention.<\/p>\n The next day, \u015ar\u012b Caitanya Mah\u0101prabhu and His personal associates got up in the dark and attentively took their early morning baths.<\/p>\n \u015ar\u012b Caitanya Mah\u0101prabhu and His personal associates then went to see the ceremony of P\u0101\u1e47\u1e0du-vijaya. During this ceremony, Lord Jagann\u0101tha leaves His throne and gets up onto the car.<\/p>\n King Prat\u0101parudra in person, as well as his entourage, allowed the P\u0101\u1e47\u1e0du-vijaya ceremony to be seen by all the associates of \u015ar\u012b Caitanya Mah\u0101prabhu.<\/p>\n \u015ar\u012b Caitanya Mah\u0101prabhu and His prominent devotees-Advaita \u0100c\u0101rya, Nity\u0101nanda Prabhu and others-were very happy to observe how Lord Jagann\u0101tha began the Ratha-y\u0101tr\u0101.<\/p>\n The very strongly built dayit\u0101s [carriers of the Jagann\u0101tha Deity] were as powerful as drunken elephants. They manually carried Lord Jagann\u0101tha from the throne to the car.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Caitanya Mahaprabhu’s participation in the rathayatra is described in the madhya-lila (chapter-13) of Sri Caitanya Caritamrta, “The ecstatic dancing of the Lord at rathayatra,” and it is briefed here. As said before, the miraculous pastimes of Lord Caitanya’s dancing exhibited during the rathayatra was a fascination to the crowd five centuries ago<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-10646","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10646","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=10646"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/10646\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=10646"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=10646"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.dandavats.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=10646"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
\nBy His Divine Grace A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada<\/p>\n
\nshri-rathagre nanarta yah
\nyenasij jagatam citram
\njagannatho api vismitah<\/p>\n
\njayadvaita-candra jaya gaura-bhakta-vrinda<\/p>\n![](\"http:\/\/dandavats.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/512012-07-02-17-2351.jpg\"\/)
By Lakshman Das<\/strong><\/p>\n