01Rupa Goswami’s Govinda
The Gaudiya tradition says Rupa Goswami, sent to Vrindavan by Chaitanya Mahaprabhu to find the lost places of Krishna’s lila, found the murti of Govinda in a mound called Goma Tila, and set him up at the Yogapitha, the meeting place of Radha and Krishna. Akbar’s farman of 1568 recognised Jiva Goswami as manager of the Govind Dev and Madan Mohan temples. Raja Man Singh of Amber, Akbar’s great general, then built the temple in red sandstone, cruciform, with vaulted halls; an inscription on it gives the year 1590. Travellers said it rose seven storeys. Its hall, with brackets and balconies of carved stone, is still among the finest interiors of its age.
021670 and the road to Jaipur
In 1669–70 Aurangzeb ordered the temples of the Braj country brought down; the Keshavdev temple at Mathura was demolished in January 1670, as the Maasir-i-Alamgiri records. The priests of Govind Dev did not wait. An inscription dates the removal of the murti to August 1670, and it travelled with Radha and the goddess Vrinda Devi into Kachwaha territory, first to Kaman, then from halt to halt for decades. The temple at Vrindavan was not razed, but its sanctum was dismantled, its upper storeys came down and the figures on its doorway were defaced. Sawai Jai Singh II installed Govind Dev in his new city of Jaipur in 1727 and declared the deity the true ruler of the state. In the 1870s the Mathura collector F. S. Growse had the damaged building repaired.
The life of this place
- 6 October 1568Akbar’s farman names Jiva Goswami manager of the temple.
- 1590Raja Man Singh’s sandstone temple is completed.
- August 1670The murti is taken to Kachwaha territory as Aurangzeb’s order falls on Braj; the sanctum is dismantled.
- 1727Sawai Jai Singh II installs Govind Dev in Jaipur.
- 1870sThe building is repaired under the Mathura collector F. S. Growse.
The old temple is an ASI monument; worship of Govind Dev continues in a small shrine behind it and at the Govind Dev Ji temple in Jaipur’s City Palace.
