Dhameswar Mahaprabhu
Information – This beautiful neem deity of Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu stands with His arms lovingly extended towards His devotees. Vishnupriya Devi (Wife of Lord Caitanya), who was just sixteen when Lord Caitanya Mahaprabhu took sannyasa, worshiped this deity for eighty years before she departed from this material world at the age of ninety-six.
When Caitanya Mahāprabhu took sannyāsa, His wife, Viṣṇupriyādevī, although only sixteen years old, also took the vow of austerity due to her husband’s leaving home. She chanted her beads, and after finishing one round, she collected one grain of rice. In this way, as many rounds as she chanted, she would receive the same number of rice grains and then cook them and so take prasāda. This is called austerity.
(SB 4.23.20 purport)
So He was considered to be a householder. And His first wife died at the age of twenty years. Then His mother requested to marry again. So He married again, at the age of twenty years. And . . . but He took sannyāsa at the age of twenty-four years.
He renounced the order, or, I mean to say, household life, in twenty-four . . . when He was only twenty-four years old. His wife was only sixteen years old, and His mother was about seventy years old. But He still He took sannyāsa. Why? For the good of the humanity. He was very well-to-do, He was brahmin, He was learned, and He had many followers, and still, when He saw that, “If I remain a householder, and they will not care for My instruction,” therefore He was obliged to accept the sannyāsa order. Because in India, the system is that sannyāsī, renounced order, a gentleman in renounced order, he is accepted as spiritual instructor.
So this Caitanya Mahāprabhu was so dedicated His life for the whole humanity. In His preaching there is clear statement why He was preaching this movement all over India. He instructed every Indian. The exact verse in Bengali language is said:
bhārata-bhūmite haila manuṣya-janma yāra
janma sārthaka kari’ kara para-upakāra
(CC Adi 9.41)
Wherever the Lord visited, crowds of innumerable people came to see Him. When they saw Him, all their unhappiness and lamentation disappeared.
(CC Madhya 16.214-215)
In this way, my Lord, You appear in various incarnations as a human being, an animal, a great saint, a demigod, a fish or a tortoise, thus maintaining the entire creation in different planetary systems and killing the demoniac principles. According to the age, O my Lord, You protect the principles of religion. In the age of Kali, however, You do not assert Yourself as the Supreme Personality of Godhead, and therefore You are known as Triyuga, or the Lord who appears in three yugas.
PURPORT
As the Lord appeared just to maintain Lord Brahmā from the attack of Madhu and Kaiṭabha, He also appeared to protect the great devotee Prahlāda Mahārāja. Similarly, Lord Caitanya appeared in order to protect the fallen souls of Kali-yuga. There are four yugas, or millenniums—Satya, Tretā, Dvāpara and Kali. In all the yugas but Kali-yuga, the Lord appears in various incarnations and asserts Himself as the Supreme Personality of Godhead, but although Lord Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu, who appears in Kali-yuga, is the Supreme Personality of Godhead, He never asserted Himself as such. On the contrary, whenever Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu was addressed as being as good as Kṛṣṇa, He blocked His ears with His hands, denying His identity with Kṛṣṇa, because He was playing the part of a devotee. Lord Caitanya knew that in Kali-yuga there would be many bogus incarnations pretending to be God, and therefore He avoided asserting Himself as the Supreme Personality of Godhead. Lord Caitanya Mahāprabhu is accepted as the Supreme Personality of Godhead, however, in many Vedic literatures, especially in Śrīmad-Bhāgavatam (SB 11.5.32):
kṛṣṇa-varṇaṁ tviṣākṛṣṇaṁ
sāṅgopāṅgāstra-pārṣadam
yajñaiḥ saṅkīrtana-prāyair
yajanti hi sumedhasaḥ
In Kali-yuga, intelligent men worship the Supreme Personality of Godhead in the form of Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu, who is always accompanied by His associates such as Nityānanda, Advaita, Gadādhara and Śrīvāsa. The entire Kṛṣṇa consciousness movement is based on the principles of the saṅkīrtana movement inaugurated by Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu. Therefore one who tries to understand the Supreme Personality of Godhead through the medium of the saṅkīrtana movement knows everything perfectly. He is sumedhas, a person with substantial intelligence.
(SB 7.9.38)
O my Lord! You are eternally existing—in the past, present, and future—yet You are the son of Śrī Jagannātha Miśra. I offer my repeated obeisances unto You along with Your associates (Your devotee servants), Your sons (Your Gosvāmī disciples or the processes of devotional service, such as the congregational chanting of the holy name), and Your consorts (who, according to regulative principles, refer to Viṣṇupriyā, who is Bhū-śakti, Lakṣmīpriyā, who is Śrī-śakti, and Navadvīpa, which is Nīlā, Līlā, or Durgā, and, according to devotional principles, refer to the two Gadādharas, Narahari, Rāmānanda, Jagadānanda, and others).
(Śrī Caitanya-bhāgavata, Ādi-khaṇḍa 1.2)
There are many ideal young Hindu widows who do not dress nicely at all, do not comb the hair, and who take bath three times daily in the Ganges, wear white sari and are engaged 24 hours a day in chanting Hare Krsna Mantra. The vivid example is Visnupriya devi, Lord Caitanya’s wife. When Lord Caitanya left home accepting the renounced order of life, sannyasa, at that time Visnupriya was on the summit of youth, 16 years old, but when her husband became sannyasi she also became greater than sannyasa. She was chanting her rounds on the beads and after one round she was collecting one grain of rice. In this way all day and night, as many rounds as she could finish, that many grains she would cook and eat. Just she how much austerity she underwent! Visnupriya is the incarnation of the Goddess of Fortune but to teach us how much austerity and penance she underwent, I think you should follow the footsteps of Srimati Visnupriya.
(740430 – Letter to Govinda dasi written from Bombay)
“Let us offer our sincere most obeisances to the lotus feet of the Lord of Lords who superficially accepted the renounced life of a sannyāsī, in order to give effect to the curse of a brāhmaṇa, upon Him. But in fact in the garb of a sannyāsī He initiated the transcendental ecstacy of spontaneous love of God, as was felt by Śrī Śrīmatī Rādhārāṇī in Her amorous desire to meet Śrī Kṛṣṇa. In the quest of such spontaneous love of God, the Lord relinquished the association of His eternal consort Śrī Śrīmati Lakṣmī Viṣṇupriya Devī who was devout to Him and whose mercy is sought after most ardently by all true devotees of God or even by the denizens of heaven. The Lord accepted this order of life in terms of a prediction in the Mahābhārata and in order to bestow His causeless mercy upon us who are addicted to the false enjoyment of vain glories, women and wealth in this material world.”
(19530330 – Divinity of Lord Caitanya)
Then Lord Caitanya married Viṣṇupriyā, the goddess of fortune, and thereafter He conquered a champion of learning named Keśava Kāśmīrī.
(CC Adi 16.25)
Śrī Buddhimanta Khān was one of the inhabitants of Navadvīpa. He was very rich, and it is he who arranged for the marriage of Lord Caitanya with Viṣṇupriyā, the daughter of Sanātana Miśra, who was the priest of the local zamindar. He personally defrayed all the expenditures for the marriage ceremony.
(CC Adi 10.74)
“I had some doubt about your daughter-in-law, but today that doubt has been removed.”
COMMENTARY – When Śrī Gaurasundara offered foods cooked by Viṣṇupriyā devī, He often observed that half of the offering was eaten by the Deities. Therefore Mahāprabhu said, “I had a doubt in My mind that your daughter-in-law, Viṣṇupriyā-devī, ate it. But now after hearing about your dream, I am firmly convinced that most of the offered foods were eaten by the Deities Themselves and the rest was left for us.” Within another room inside the house, Viṣṇupriyā-devī, the mother of the universe, smiled on hearing these words of Śrīman Mahāprabhu.
(Śrī Caitanya-bhāgavata, Madhya-khaṇḍa 8.049)
Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu’s transcendental feelings of separation from Kṛṣṇa and His consequent madness are not at all understandable by a person on the material platform. Nonetheless, a so-called party of devotees named nadīyā-nāgarī has sprung up and introduced the worship of Viṣṇupriyā. This certainly indicates their ignorance concerning Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu’s pastimes. In the opinion of Bhaktisiddhānta Sarasvatī Ṭhākura, such worship is a product of the imagination. Many other methods of worshiping Caitanya Mahāprabhu have also been introduced, but they have all been rejected by stalwart devotees like Bhaktivinoda Ṭhākura.
(CC Antya 14.7)
For further reading, please refer to:
Śrī Caitanya-bhāgavata, Ādi-khaṇḍa : Chapter Fifteen, entitled, “The Marriage of Śrī Viṣṇupriyā.”