Sunday, July 25, 2010

THE BEGINNING AT BISHNUPUR :




A robbery in the Malla kingdom in 16th century changed the face of Bengal's architecture. Vaishnav guru Srinivas Acharya and two other greats, Narattoma Das and Shyamanand were taking three cartloads of scriptures from Vrindavan to Puri . The writings were priceless.....these carts contained books by great Vaishnavites Sri Jeeva Goswami, Sri Rup Goswami and Raghunath Das among others *.The dacoits knew that cartloads of great treasure were being moved from one location to another.They had no other clue. There were only ten foot soldiers 'protecting' these cartloads. The 'treasure' was easily looted during one night when all the travelers were asleep. This happened at Gopalpur village, within the territory of the Malla king.

Srinivas Acharya stayed back in Bengal determined to recover the books .The robbers' allegiance was to the local King Vir Hambir. Srinivas had a face-to-face interaction with his court's religious supremo Vyasacharya where Srinivas Acharya demonstrated his depth of knowledge regarding Vaishnav religion. King became his ardent disciple and the books were restored to Srinivas.

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