Totapuri Baba was a Hindu Sadhu who passed away in 1961. Some accounts state that he was born in the early eighteenth century, others say that he was actually well over 350 years old when he died. Whatever the truth may be, he was certainly a remarkable figure. Physically he must have been very imposing, as the picture above hints. He was by all accounts over seven foot tall (and almost as wide!). As a Digambara Sadhu he was entirely possessionless and went around completely naked. Spiritually, he was something of a giant too. The popular story in Puri, Orissa (where he spent much of his time in seclusion in dense woodland) was that he was the same Totapuri Baba who initiated the famous mystic Paramahansa Ramakrishna into the path of Advaita Vedanta - and this took place in 1863! There are many stories told of Totapuri Baba but perhaps the strangest one is all the more remarkable since there should be legal documents which could attest to its veracity. The story is of the dead Rajkumar of Bhawal - a king in the state of Bengal who was mysteriously killed in a legal fight over his property. Thirty years later Totapuri Baba "resurrected" him and the dead Rajkumar of Bhawal returned to his native place and won a court case restoring his property to him!
The resurrected Rajkumar of Bhawal Bone Idle
9 comments:
Wow. Where did you get this crazy story from
Dear Anonymous,
I think that the case of the Rajah of Bhawal is fairly well known. The source for this particular account is `Puri: Heritage of an Ancient Land' by Somanath Khuntia (1997) p166.
Bone Idle
When you say resurrected do you mean spirtually? Wouldn't he have been a bit of a decomposed mess otherwise? Otherwise fascinating! Certainly makes for interesting reading Pete!!
Dear Dave,
No physically resurrected. I've wondered about that too. I would have thought you were talking skeletal rather than visceral remains after 30 years anyway. I daresay it would have been even more fascinating had the good Rajah (like the majority of his fellowcountrymen) been cremated!
Bone Idle
He must have had his guts to win his court case... I am the only one who feels sympathy for the loser in said case? how can you defend against a resurrected being?!
Wow... it appears you are dreadfully misinformed about this whole occurrence with the Prince of Bhawal and Totapuri.
First of all, Totapuri was not involved in the resurrection of the prince. It was actually someone by the name of Dharam Das (and several other Sadhus) that found him a couple of miles downstream from where the prince was being cremated. But torrential rains forced the funeral attendants to flee and the body slid down into the river and washed up some miles further.
When two of the group (of 4 total, I believe) Sadhus chanced upon the prince's body, one of them saw he had breath in him still. So the other Sadhus were called and they carried the prince's body to the cave they were staying in at the time. The later moved him to a shed as that would be drier, and later again to a better shed to nurse him back to consciousness and health.
Wherever you got that information from, it is not correct at all. There are many records and accounts found in the books about the courtcase and such, where you'll see a fuller account of the story.
However, I think I know why the term 'resurrection' came to be associated with the Bhawal prince story, and that is because Swami Rama wrote a chapter about it in his book "Living with the Himalayan Masters." According to him, the person that brought the prince back to life is actually his master, who was known as "Bengali Baba" and whom we may therefore probably identify as Dharam Das.
A further indication Totapuri had nothing to do with this directly is that Swami Rama actually met Totapuri, which he also relates in the same book. So he would know the difference between Totapuri and his own teacher.
And the resurrection after 30 years... well that is completely fabricated and is pure fantasy by whomever came up with that. The Sadhus found the body of the prince in the same time frame that it got washed of the funeral pyre.
@Jonesy: No, you wouldn't feel bad for the defending party. As what happened with the prince is that he got poisened due to a scheme between his wife and brother in law, who wanted to becomes heirs to his property. So he was slowly killed, and then, during a visit to a vacation spot for 'health' reasons, they decided to end him and get rid of the body quickly without any of his other family present. And after the cremation nothing would have been left for proof. But the rain storm washed his body away and he got saved, although he still was very ill from the poison and he had lost his memory. Only after years did he regain his memory and the decision was made for him to go back to the family home.
30 years came from the fact that he reappeared 30 years after dying!
The thirty years is not correct when interpreted that way, either. The prince only stayed with the sadhus over a period of twelve years, after which he returned to Dhaka.
Since my previous (long) post I found out that the body of the kumar actually did not flow down stream in a river. Sw. Rama did mention this in his book about the Himalayan masters but in fact the body was still on the funeral pyre when the sadhus found it. Sw. Rama did know that his master had rescued the kumar, but apparently did not know all the details. Studying the various books and court proceedings information contained in these, a more accurate picture can be painted.
There was an intense storm during the funeral (which was to be a cremation) in Darjeeling which caused the attendees of the funeral to flee for cover. This funeral was held at night, it was dark. A procession was arranged with people attending. They were carrying oil lamps and chanting "Hari Bol". Close-by, unbeknownst to the funeral attendees, several sadhus were staying in a cave or under a cliff overhang. During the funeral proceedings, a violent storm broke and the people attending the funeral had to run for cover, leaving the cremation ground.
Around this time, the sadhus heard a moaning sound coming from the deserted cremation ground. When two of the sadhus checked it out they found a man on the pyre and found him to still be alive. They then called the other sadhus and together they carried him to their shelter. After the storm subsided somewhat, some of the funeral attendees came back but found that the pyre did not have a body on it. They started looking frantically, but could not find the body.
The next day, in the morning, another funeral was held and a body was burned. However, there are several facts (from court testimonies) that would indicate that the (covered) body that was burned that morning was not the kumar of Bhawal. One man who attended the funeral commented that he caught a glimpse of the dead man's body that morning (the cloth covering gave way) and noticed it was blackened, indicating it must have been dead for quite a while. Another testimony made clear that a body turned up missing at the local sanitorium in Darjeeling that day. Read the book by Partha Chatterjee to get all the details.
The day after the (first) funeral, the sadhus carried the sick man they found to a nearby shed. They received some help from a local person. Later they moved him again to another, more suitable building. They slowly nursed him back to health over a period of two weeks. Much later, one of the sadhus present those days was sent to court to testify on behalf of the kumar. This sadhu was Darshan Das. From him we have most of the testimony of the sadhus' side. He was one of the 4 sadhus present then.
This was the start of many wanderings for these sadhus during the following twelve years. It was evident from the testimony of Darshan Das that the man rescued from the pyre had suffered catastrophic memory loss, set on by him being poisoned with arsenic. One of the kumar's family servants who was present at that trip to Darjeeling mentioned that the 'medicine' the kumar was made to drink when he was sick on his bed the night of his death was so strong that when the kumar vomitted it damaged the cloth it landed on. He also mentioned that the kumar looked up at the person administering it and cried out "Ashu, what have you given me?" The person behind all this scheming to kill the kumar was clearly the kumar's brother-in-law, Satyendra Banerjee. He was a very cunning man and a laywer. He was the brother of the kumar's wife, Bibabhati. He wanted the family fortune all to himself.
So the time during which the kumar went missing is from 1909 to 1921. In 1921, memories of the prince-turned-sanyasi began flooding his mind and he realized he was from Bhawal, Dhaka. He discussed these things with his guru and they decided it was time for him to go back to Dhaka.
The final verdict, after all appeals by the defendants (side of the wife/brother-in-law) were exhausted, came in 1946. That same night, the kumar visited a local Kali temple. After this he apparently suffered a stroke and he died on the same day that the final verdict came in.
Some people read this as the 'justice of the goddess' and think it proves that the sanyasi who appeared in 1921 was not the kumar, after all. Another view could be that this was the last thing he wanted to see through, just when people hold on to life in order to see a certain family member one last time. Another interpretation was that the kumar finished his earthly business and decided to shed the mortal coil.
Having studied several different sources pertaining to the Bhawal Sanyasi case I personally lean toward the belief that the sanyasi was indeed the same person as the kumar.
Totapuri was visited by Sw. Rama and a story was written about this. Another source states that Sw. Rama's master was once together with Tota puri at a certain location. So Totapuri cannot be the same person as Sw. Rama's master and thus also not the person who rescued the kumar. I know there are some references to Totapuri as the one who recued the kumar, I have read one such account. But in that book it is not stated, it is expressed as a rumor but never confirmed by Totapuri himself. Sw. Rama knew the Bhawal kumar/sanyasi and he relates meeting and embracing him at Shantiniketan (Tagore's place) one time and mentioning they were 'guru-brothers'. It would be interesting if it could somehow be found out that/if the kumar indeed visited Shantiniketan. We know Sw. Rama did because there is a picture of him at Shantiniketan. That Totapuri was the adept that taught Sri Ramakrishna and reached a very advanced age seems firmly established, however.
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