The song of 'VIRAHEE'  ....

A few centuries ago in a small insignificant village in Nadia district of Bengal there lived a poor farmer who employed a little homeless boy named Madan for maintaining his herd of cows . Little Madan had come wandering to the home of his master searching for a job . After being thus employed he would take the herd to the banks of local river called Yamuna and let them loose to graze while he would sit and play on his flute . The cows would wander away and create a menace for neighbours . The villagers soon complained about this to the farmer .

Enraged at his careless acts , the farmer set out to chastise him . But Madan fled the scene and miraculously entered into a tree trunk in front of all villagers . By then , the farmer's daughters had started treating Madan as one of their own brothers and now they were broken hearted at his sudden dissapearance .
That night the farmer had a dream from the lord who revealed that it was infact he who had come down to him as Madan . The tree was ordered to be cut and to everyone's amazement they found a deity of krishna inside ! The farmer installed his newfound deity and named it Madangopal

And on the day of bhaatri-dwitiya (bhai phontaa/ bhai dooj) the farmer's daughters came to put tilak on the deity madan's forehead , as they had been doing when the boy madan was there .

Following in their footsteps , even today all ladies of the village and beyond join in to put tilak on Madanmohan on the day of bhaatri-dwitiya ! Even muslim ladies partake in this tradition !


Days were happy until MadanGopal vanished miraculously from temple , only to be found out again in a distant village . When such dissapearances started occuring repeatedly villagers realised that Madangopal is straying so far in search of Radharani . Hearing of MadanGopal's predicament Maharajah Krishnachandra of Nadia ordered a new deity of sri Radharani to be built and installed beside Madanmohan . That was accordingly done in the year 1760 .

Since Madanmohan had strayed in 'viraha' or seperation of Radharani , the village came to be known as 'Virahee' and the village from where he was found again was named Madanpur .

" sri sri MadanGopal mandir , established by Maharajah Krishnachandra , Virahee ( 1760 a.d. ) "

The river that flows by is poetically named Yamuna

Some original woodwork ( daaru shilpa ) still survives on the arched doorway to the sanctum

Madangopal temple at Virahee

Madangopal and Radharani

The temple , although heavily altered and renovated , still shows signs of antiquity with lintels on ceilings and alcoves in the walls