Guardiões
da Devoção
Guardiões
da Devoção
Aparadha-banjana-patha
by Srila Bhakti Raksaka Sridhara Maharaja
Student: How is this part of Navadwip called Kulia, the very special place, aparadha-banjana-patha? Did Mahaprabhu have some special pastimes here?
Srila Sridhar Maharaj: As I have mentioned; this is where Mahaprabhu was most liberal in His mercy, to forgive all the sinners. When Mahaprabhu came back from Puri after five years of sannyasa, He first came here. And He stayed at the house of Vidya Vacaspati, the elder brother of Sarvabhauma Pandit, and formal guru of Sanatana Goswami in Vidyanagar.
At that time there was such a rush of people coming to see Mahaprabhu, from both sides of the Ganges, that the whole Ganges appeared full of human heads.
One author has described the scene at the time of Mahaprabhu’s return to Navadwip in that way: that the whole Ganges was “filled up with human heads”. When I read this, at first, I thought: “Such a description must not be literal; it is a little hyperbolic”. But later, when in my own life I saw (Mahatma) Gandhi, when I experienced the crowds that used to follow him, then it came to my mind: “If Gandhi can draw so many men to see him, then what to speak of Mahaprabhu?” There was such love, so great an intensity of love, that at that time everyone, all of the people, came madly to see that great Nimai Pandit.
His scholarship was so extraordinary, and His figure so extremely beautiful, but still so many tantric pandits had been against Him; and so He had left Navadwip, in order to preach. And the people cried, “Nimai Pandit, we have lost our Nimai Pandit…” The whole of Navadwip was dark without His presence. And now, suddenly: “That Nimai Pandit has come back again to us! He is with us, in our midst!” People were mad to see Him; the whole area was drawn irresistably towards Him. So that author has described it in that way: that the Ganges was “all human heads”.
Mahaprabhu came to this place, Kulia; and here all the previous sinners, all who had criticised Him, who had done any mischief, they all came to be absolved, thinking “Nimai Pandit is not a man, a human being…” They came to Him here for their confession, and to get absolved from their sin.