Prabhu Jagadbandhu

Early life

In April 1871 (16th Baishakh, 1278 BS), Prabhu Jagadbandhu was born in the village of Dahapara in the Murshidabad district, within the Bengal Presidency of British India. His father, Dinanauth Chakravarty Nyayratna, was a Brahmin scholar. Dinanauth held the honorific title of ‘Nyayratna’ and made significant contributions to the region's scholarly heritage through his teaching. His mother’s name was Bamadevi.

Prabhu Jagadbandhu spent his childhood in a Vaishnava family in Gobindapur, Faridpur. His formal schooling began at the local Banga Vidyalaya. He subsequently studied up to the third grade at Faridpur High School. Later, after a brief stint at Ranchi H.E. School and finally continuing his studies up to the first grade at Pabna Zilla School, his formal institutional education concluded at the age of approximately sixteen. Under the direct tutelage of his father, he studied Sanskrit grammar, Nyaya Shastra (logic), and major Vaishnava scriptures such as the Bhagavata Purana. When their ancestral homestead was lost to riverbank erosion by the Padma, Prabhu Jagadbandhu, then approximately twelve years old, relocated to Brahmankanda village and subsequently to the Pabna region. During his stay in Pabna, at around the age of sixteen, he used to spend long periods beneath a Keli-Kadamba tree.