Mithila to navadvIpa

Source: TW

Around the 12th century, Gangesha Upadhyaya, author of ‘Tatva Chintamani’, a book of Logic, started the Department of Logic at Mithila University. Later, a professor of Logic, Pakshadhara Misra, excersised monopoly of ‘Tatva Chintamani’, not allowing any transcripts of the book. This was the only single copy manuscript available with him.

One of Misra’s students at Mithila, Vasudeva Sarvabhauma, who also studied the Upanishads at Benares, memorized the ‘Tatva Chintamani’. Vasudeva Sarvabhauma broke the monopoly of Mithila University by setting up a School of Logic at Nabadweep (Nadia) University in Bengal where he taught the subject drawing references from Chintamani. Vasudeva set a perfect example of the ‘moving oral library’, i.e. spreading knowledge/learning from one region to another through oral .

In no time Nadia University etched a distinctive niche in the field of Logic. Vasudeva wanted Mithila University to deliver a charter for Nadia University to confer degrees. He sent his student Raghunatha for the purpose. In a debate and discussion that took place at Mithila University between Raghunatha and Pakshadhara Misra, the former won. Mithila University thus started conferring degrees for this subject.

This Vasudev Sarvabhauma is none other than Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya who later became devotee of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu and mahaprabhu also manifested his six armed form in front of him. He composed many works on Mahaprabhu like Caitanya Shatak, Sacitanyastkam etc