Nadia Temple

In 1886 a leading Gaudiya Vaisnava reformer Bhaktivinoda Thakur attempted to retire from his government service and move to Vrindavan to pursue his devotional life there. However, he saw a dream in which Chaitanya ordered him to go to Navadvip instead. After some difficulty, in 1887 Bhaktivinoda was transferred to Krishnanagar, a district center twenty-five kilometers away from Navadvip, famous as the birth place of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu.

Despite poor health, Bhaktivinoda finally managed to start regularly visiting Navadvip to research places connected with Chaitanya. Soon he came to a conclusion that the site purported by the local brahmanas to be Chaitanya’s birthplace could not possibly be genuine. Determined to find the actual place of Chaitanya’s pastimes but frustrated by the lack of reliable evidence and clues, one night he saw a mystical vision.

Taking this as a clue, Bhaktivinoda conducted a thorough, painstaking investigation of the site, by consulting old geographical maps matched against scriptural and verbal accounts, and eventually came to a conclusion that the village of Ballaldighi was formerly known as Mayapur, confirmed in Bhakti-ratnakara as the actual birth site of Chaitanya. He soon acquired a property in Surabhi-kunj near Mayapur to oversee the temple construction at Yogapith, Chaitanya’s birthplace.