On the death of his father, Vishwambhar, while still a student, married Lakshmi, the daughter of Vallabh Acharya, with whom he had fallen in love at first sight. He now became a householder, and began to take pupils like many other Brahmans of Navadwip. As a _pandit_ he surpassed the other scholars of the place and even defeated a renowned champion of another province, who was travelling all over India holding disputations. On his return from a scholastic tour in East Bengal, in which he received many gifts from pious householders, he found that his wife had died of snake-bite during his absence. After a while the widower married Vishnu-priya. At this time his head was turned by the pride of scholarship, and his victories in argument made him slight other men. During a pilgrimage to Gayá, he met Ishwar Puri, a Vaishnav monk of the order of Mádhavácharya and a disciple of that Mádhavendra Puri who had first introduced the cult of bhakti for Krishna among the _sannyasis_. Vishwambhar took this Ishwar Puri as his guru or spiritual guide. A complete change now came over his spirit. His intellectual pride was gone; he became a _bhakta_; whatever subject he lectured on, the theme of his discourse was love of Krishna. Indeed, he developed religious ecstasy and for some time behaved like a mad man: he laughed, wept, incessantly shouted Krishna's name, climbed up trees, or raved in abstraction imagining himself to be Krishna. He now made the acquaintance of the elderly scholar and _bhakta_ Adwaita Acharya, and was joined by a sannyasi named Nityánanda, who became to him even more than what Paul was to Christ.