A dream. Goes to Vrindavan and settles there. 478 BENGALI LANGUAGE & LITERATURE. [ Chap. |
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anxieties; the hand of death took her away, only ©
a few months after she had become a widow and the ©
poor children were placed in charge of his relatives. |
Krisna Das was not much cared for and he grew |
up to be a lad of 16, not running wild as such —
boys are likely to become, but sober and quiet—
a prey to melancholia and occasional gloom caused
by the bereavements he had suffered which weighed —
upon his soul. A follower of the saint Nityananda —
—Minaketana Ram Das by name, paid a visit to ©
Jhamatpur at this time. His preachings produced ~
a deep effect upon Krisna Das who now yearned for
the religious life. Ram Das was however treated
to ridicule by Syam Das, the younger brother of |
our author who took the matter sorely to heart.
Minaketan had gone away, but the disappoint-
ment caused in Krisna Das’s mind by _ his brother's _
conduct, together with the impressions of a holy
life left on him by the devout Vaisnava, made him”
give up the idea of following any wordly pursuits. —
It is said that at this time Nityananda appeared 69.
him in a dream and advised him to go to the Vrinda’
groves and pass his life there. The dream became
a real force with him and he could not resist the com=_
না
mand. He walked about 800 miles on foot begging —
alms for his subsistence and arrived at Vrindavana, —
where the purity of his life and his high characte ০
even as a boy interested the six distinguished”
Gosvamis, the appostles of the Vaisnava faith of
that time, who volunteered to take care of the young ©
man’s education.
The beauty of the Vrinda groves, the scenes of
which are rendered ever’sacred by their association
with Krisna, added to the austere lives of the apostles,
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