Appearance Day of Srinivas Acarya
(compiled by Gauridas Pandit dasa)
Appearance
In a small village of Chakhandi lived a pious Brahman names Gangadhar Bhattacharya and his wife Lakshmi-priya. Both were great devotees of Caitanya Mahaprabhu and Gangadhar was fortunate to witness the sannyasa ceremony of Mahaprabhu in Katwa. He returned filled with such love for Mahaprabhu that the villagers renamed him Caitanya Das. Later the childless couple traveled to Puri to serve Mahaprabhu, and here they received a benediction from Him to soon expect the birth of a great personality. Thus blessed, in the first decade of 1500, Shrinivas was born.
Youth
Shrinivas grew up to be the brightest, most beautiful and beloved boy of Chakhandi. He studied under the famed Dhananjaya Vidyavachaspati, who would later admit that there was nothing he could teach Shrinivas, “since the boy already knows more than I can ever hope to learn”. Due to his fame, Shrinivas came in contact with Narahari Sarakar, an intimate associate and devotee of Mahaprabhu. He accepted Narahari as an instructing guru and later approached him for initiation. Narahari however declined saying that it was Mahaprabhu’s will that he be initiated by Gopal Bhatta Goswami in Vrindavana. He also instructed Shrinivas to meet Mahaprabhu in Puri. On reaching Puri, he took shelter of Gadadhara Pandit, since Lord Chaitanya had already left the planet, to study the Bhagavatam under him. However the only copy of Bhagavatam in Puri had been rendered ineligible by the tears of ecstasy that Mahaprabhu and Gadadhara had shed while reading it. So Shrinivas returned to Bengal to procure the only other copy from Narahari. However by the time he returned, Gadadhara Pandit, unable to bear the separation with His Lord any more had also left the planet.
The Hare Krishna Movement 