Lord Chaitanya's Meeting With Great Saints

[kbhakt]

Ive read in many places Lord Chaitanya has met great devotees, and saints. Such as in the Chaitanya-Charitamrta, Lord Chaitanya Mahaprabhu meets Sripad Vallabhacharya, then somone had told me that Chaitanya had met Guru Nanak. Does anyone else know other accounts of Lord Chaitanya meeting great personalities apart from the Gaudiya Tradition.

[Gauracandra]

Here is something from “The Life and Times of Lord Caitanya” by Steven Rosen.

 

A sixteenth-century Oriyan manuscript called the Chaitanya Bhagavat says that Mahaprabhu met with the founder of Sikhism, Guru Nanak. The author, Ishvar Das, one of Mahaprabhu’s followers in Puri, was the only biographer to mention the event, perhaps because the meeting was brief and only the eyewitness devotees of Puri knew about it.

 

According to Ishvar Das, “Sri Caitanya, the Lord, joined in the kirtan with Nanak, who was accompanied by his disciple Sarang. Rupa and Sanatan were also there, as were Jagai and Madhai. They all engaged in kirtan, dancing in ecstacy.” (Ishvara Das’s Chaitanya Bhagavat, Adhyaya 61).

 

Ishvara Das continues: “In the congregational singing led by Shri Caitanya and Guru Nanak, Nagar Purushottama followed suit. Two disciples, Jangli and Nandni, also joined in. Gopal Guru, for whom Guru Nanak felt deep affection, was there as well, along with Nityananda Prabhu, who was considered an incarnation of Balarama. They all relished the kirtan at Jagannath Puri.” (Ishvara Das’s Chaitanya Bhagavat Adhyaya 64). Thus there are scholars in the Gaudiya tradition who are confident that Mahaprabhu and Guru Nanak resolved all religious differences in the holy name of Krishna.

 

There are scholars in the Sikh tradition, too, who have documented the meeting of Lord Chaitanya and Guru Nanak. Ganda Singh, for instance, says that the meeting actually occurred in 1510, during one of Mahaprabhu’s earlier trips to Puri. And Trilochan Singh fixes the date at 1512. Still others place the meeting at a much later date, perhaps 1518. Regardless of the disagreement over when the meeting took place, all these references acknowledge the historicity of the event.