Radha Madan Mohan Temple Vrindavan

When Vajranãbha wanted to establish a deity in Vrindvan, his wish was that the deity should appear like Krishna himself. The only person still living who had directly seen Krishna was Uttarã, the widowed wife of Arjuna’s son Abhimanyu. Thus Vajranãbha asked her to supervise sculpting the deities. The carving was complete and after the assessment of Uttarã concluded that “Yes the deities look just like Krishna–up to the wist.”

The deities were lost in the past time until recently when Advaita Acarya discovered the Deity of Madanmohan (Krishna) in Mahavan-Gokul. He served him until he departed for Navadvip entrusting the Deity to Brahmana Chaubhe in Mathura. The original deity remained with bhakat Chaubhe until a great sage named Śrĩla Sanãtana Gosvamĩ traveled to Vrindavan to discover lost places of Krishna’s pastimes and write books.

One day when Sanatana saw Madan-Mohan at Chaubhe place, Sanatan and the Brahman had a dream that night. In their dream, Madan Mohan asked to reside with Sanatan. The next day they both agreed and Sanatna started serving the deities. He was a poor bhakta who had dedicated his life to bhakti, thus he only managed to get a little rashan from bhiksha. Once he received some wheat flour from which he made batĩ (a form of bread made from roasting the wheat dough) for prasãda. Madan-Mohan asked for some salt with plain batĩ which he didn’t have.

On the very next day, a sailor named Krishna Das Kapoor brought a boat full of salt to sell at Agra but his boat stuck in the sand. He asked for Sanãtana Gosvamĩ’s help to which he replied – “I am an old man, you may ask him (Madan-Mohan diety), he might be able to help you.” The merchant bowed his head to the deities and returned to the boat where to his surprise the boat magically came out of the sand. Thus, Krishna Das Kapoor decided to make a temple at that very place where the deities were, at Dvãdasãditya-tiã, in 1581.

In 1670 Mughal tyrant Aurangzeb tried to destroy the temple, but the deities were safely escorted by Maharaja Gopãla Singh (the king of Jaipur) to his capital. The original duties were then installed at Karauli temple in Rajasthan. Afterward, Sanãtana Gosvamĩ disciples built a new temple immediately adjacent to the old one. They installed a prati-bhũ-mũrti (a similar deity with the same potency) of Madan-Mohan there. It is still there to date.