Dynamic waterscapes and the contested historic-cultural-religious geography of Vaishnavism

The precise birthplace of Shri Krishna Chaitanya (1486–1533 CE), founder of Gaudiya Vaishnavism, is disputed between two towns on the Bhagirathi River in West Bengal, India: historic Nabadwip and the later-established pilgrimage centre of Mayapur. This paper integrates textual-historical analysis, historical cartography, and published fluvial geomorphology to examine why the dispute remains unresolved. Three objectives are addressed: how the textual record came to support two competing locational claims; how far documented instability of the Bhagirathi–Jalangi confluence explains the loss of physical evidence; and what an interdisciplinary research design for testing these claims would look like. Early hagiographies consistently identify Nabadwip as Chaitanya's birthplace. The Mayapur identification appears in Narahari Chakraborty's eighteenth-century Bhaktiratnākara and was institutionalised from the 1890s onward. Recurrent channel avulsion, meander migration, and cut-off formation have repeatedly altered the Bengal delta landscape, providing a plausible mechanism for the loss of the original site. GIS-based palaeochannel mapping, sediment geochronology, and geophysical survey are identified as future research directions. Sacred geography here is best understood as the joint product of theological tradition, institutional authority, and a continually shifting deltaic landscape. • River dynamics can erase the physical evidence of globally revered sacred sites. • Sacred geography is shaped by theology, institutions, and shifting landscapes alike. • Early hagiographies favour Nabadwip; the Mayapur claim dates only to the 1890s. • Colonial maps reveal ∼15 km upstream migration of the Bhagirathi–Jalangi confluence. • GIS, sediment dating, GPR, and dendrochronology form the proposed research agenda.