Parishads: Sri Saranga Thakur

Sri Saranga Thakur is mentioned in the listing of branches of the Chaitanya trunk of the tree of devotional service along with Rama Das, Kavidatta, Gopal Das and Bhagavata Acharya (Chaitanya Charitamrita 1.10.113). He is also known as Sharnga Thakur, Sharngadhara and Sharngapani.

He used to live in Godrumadvipa, which is the island in Nabadwip which represents, of the nine types of devotional service, the service attitude. The name of the town is Mamagachi. He would sit in a secluded place by the banks of the Ganges to meditate and chant the holy names. Through these practices he obtained many miraculous powers.

At first, Saranga Thakur did not want to make any disciples for fear of disturbances to his bhajana, but Mahaprabhu repeatedly encouraged him to do so. The following account is given in the Gaudiya Vaishnava Abhidhana,

Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Goswami Thakur writes in his Anubhashya: Having been ordered by Mahaprabhu to take disciples, Saranga Thakur decided that he would make a disciple of the first person that he met the following morning. As fate would have it, the next morning, a dead body washed up against him while he was taking bath in the Ganges. He revived the corpse and made him his disciple. This disciple was known as Thakur Murari, or sometimes as Sharnga Murari.

In the Gaudiya Vaishnava Abhidhana, it is further said that Murari was a boy who had been killed by snakebite and his parents had set his uncremated body afloat on a raft in the Ganges, as was the custom in that time. Saranga Thakur himself become an empowered preacher of Mahaprabhu’s dharma. Descendents of his disciples still live in a village named Shava.

Sharnga Thakur’s deities were served in the town of Mamagachi. The original temple was built in front of a bakula tree. The deities of Radha Gopinath can be seen in this temple, as can the deity of Mahaprabhu’s other parshad, Vasudeva Datta Thakur, Sri Madana Gopal. The devotees who do parikrama of Nabadwip Dhama visit this temple for darshan. Srila Bhaktisiddhanta Saraswati Goswami Thakur established a temple not far from the above-mentioned home of Sharnga Murari at the birthplace of Vrindavan Das Thakur.

Saranga Thakur disappeared on the thirteenth day of the waning moon in the month of Agrahayan. An alternative opinion is that he disappeared on the Asharh Krishna caturdashi.

[Excerpted from "Sri Chaitanya: His Life & Associates" by Srila Bhakti Ballabh Tirtha Maharaj]