Śyāmānanda and the Winning of Orissa
The third figure of the group, Śyāmānanda Dās, brings us to the expansion of the sect in Orissa.
Śyāmānanda was a man of low caste belonging to Orissa, but, in spite of that fact, he was accepted by a Chaitanya guru in Bengal as his disciple.
Later he studied for some years at Vrindāvan under the great Jīva Gosvāmī, the last of the six Gosvāmīs whom Chaitanya had settled at Vrindāvan.
After finishing his training under Jīva Gosvāmī, Śyāmānanda returned to his native place in Orissa, and soon established a following there by the reality of his devotion and the quality of his scholarship.
Naturally, Orissa was prepared soil for Vaishnavism:
The influence of Chaitanya's life at Purī had been enormous. The power of his own ecstatic devotion, the annual migrations of his followers from Bengal, and the emotional appeal of his whole experience had made his name and faith widely known throughout Orissa.
This had not died out nor been forgotten entirely during the succeeding decades.
So when Śyāmānanda began to proclaim the religion of Chaitanya bhakti, he found conditions ripe for its acceptance.
Many among the men of influence and leading became his disciples, in spite of his low caste. His chief disciple was a young rājā, named Rasika Murāri, who had come into control of an extensive estate:
This young nobleman became a zealous herald of the faith, and succeeded in carrying it into the backwoods districts as well as into the palaces of the aristocracy.
The Mahārājā of Mayurbhanj, and the chiefs of various other feudatory states in Orissa, still acknowledge the descendants of Rasika Murāri as their hereditary gurus.
The ancestor of the present house of Mayurbhanj with his brothers was converted to Vaishnavism in 1575. He built several substantial temples of brick and stone, superior to most temples found in Bengal. Their ruins still stand.
The work of these pioneer preachers was ably carried on and popularised by a group of poets, known as the six Dāses. Their names were:
1. Acyutānanda, 2. Balarāma, 3. Jagannātha,
4. Ananta, 5. Yaśovanta and 6. Chaitanya.
The principal Chaitanya literature of Orissa was created by them, and their poems and songs made them household names throughout the province.
The outcome was that Orissa became such a stronghold of the Chaitanya faith that today the name of Gaurānga is more commonly reverenced and worshipped among the masses than in Bengal itself.