Radha Damodar Temple

Founded in 1542 CE by Jiva Goswami, the youngest of the Six Goswamis of Vrindavan, Radha Damodar Temple was built to enshrine a pair of Radha-Krishna deities personally carved by his uncle, Rupa Goswami. Standing in the Seva Kunj area where it was originally established, it is counted among the historic “Seven Goswami Temples” of Vrindavan. During Aurangzeb’s campaign against the temples of Braj, the deities were secretly carried to Jaipur for safekeeping in 1670 and were not returned to Vrindavan until 1739.

The temple complex is unusually dense with history: it holds the samadhis (memorial shrines) of Rupa Goswami, of Jiva Goswami himself, and of Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami, the theologian-poet who authored the Chaitanya Charitamrita. In the 20th century, A. C. Bhaktivedanta Swami Prabhupada, founder of ISKCON, lived and wrote at this temple for roughly six years before leaving for the United States in 1965 to found the Hare Krishna movement.

Of the Six Goswamis, Raghunatha Bhatta Goswami and Raghunatha Dasa Goswami are not memorialized at any of Vrindavan’s principal Goswami temples the way Rupa, Jiva, Sanatana, and Gopala Bhatta are here and at the Radha Madan Mohan and Radha Raman temples. Raghunatha Dasa Goswami is chiefly remembered through his bhajan-kutir (meditation hut) at Radha Kund, and Raghunatha Bhatta Goswami through a small Sri Gaura Govinda shrine his disciples built after his passing and a family seat, Bhatt-ji-ki-Haveli, that preserves relics said to have been gifted to him by Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. Neither site carries documentation independent and detailed enough to support its own verified entry in this directory.