Conversion did not retire Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya from public life. If anything, the years that followed made him busier than before — as host, as advocate, and as the one man in Puri whose word carried weight with both the Lord's devotees and the Gajapati throne.
Sending the Lord to Ramananda Raya #
When Chaitanya Mahaprabhu prepared to leave on His tour of South India in the month of Vaishakha, 1510, it was Sarvabhauma who outfitted Him with four sets of cloth for the journey and made one final, insistent request: that the Lord not fail to meet Ramananda Raya, the governor of Vidyanagara on the Godavari. Sarvabhauma admitted candidly that he had once mocked Ramananda Raya for talking like a devotee despite his birth in a family of lower rank, and only now, by Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's mercy, could he see that no one in the world understood the transcendental mellows of devotion better (Chaitanya-charitamrita, Madhya-lila 7.59-69). When the Lord departed, Sarvabhauma fainted on the spot, and Nityananda Prabhu had to raise him and see him home.
A Household Bound to the Lord's Daily Life #
Sarvabhauma's home life stayed woven into Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's own. His wife, remembered in the Chaitanya-charitamrita as Sathi's mother, cooked for the Lord with real devotion; his son Chandaneshvara had earlier guided the newly arrived Bengali devotees to their first darshan of Jagannatha. When Sarvabhauma once invited the Lord to eat at his home for an entire month, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, citing a sannyasi's rule against regular invitations, negotiated him down step by step to five days a month — and asked that Paramananda Puri and Svarupa Damodara Goswami be invited on their own separate days, so that no single house would be overwhelmed with guests at once.
Sarvabhauma's Anger and a Son-in-Law's Illness #
Not every episode in this household was gentle. When Sarvabhauma's son-in-law Amogha wandered in during one such meal and openly mocked the scale of the feast prepared for a single sannyasi, Sarvabhauma, furious, chased him off with a stick, and his wife, mortified at the insult to the Lord, struck her own chest in grief. The next day Amogha fell seriously ill; Sarvabhauma took it as just punishment, until Gopinatha Acharya brought word to Chaitanya Mahaprabhu that the whole household was now fasting in distress. The Lord went personally to Amogha's bedside, placed a hand on his chest, and told him that his heart, naturally holy, had simply been let get contaminated with envy — and that his connection to Sarvabhauma's own household had already cleared away whatever sin lay behind it. Amogha rose, began chanting, and Sarvabhauma and his wife broke their own fast at the Lord's request.
An Uneasy Question About Caste #
Sarvabhauma's transformation did not erase every inherited assumption overnight. When Kashishvara and Govinda, the two personal servants of the recently departed Ishvara Puri — the very sannyasi who had given Chaitanya Mahaprabhu His own sannyasa mantra — arrived in Puri to continue serving the Lord, Sarvabhauma questioned why a guru would keep a shudra as a personal attendant. The Lord's answer, that service offered out of affection outweighs service offered out of formal duty and that a spiritual master's order cannot be set aside, drew from Sarvabhauma the reply that a disciple must never disregard his guru's instruction under any circumstance — the old scholar's discipline, still intact, now placed entirely at the service of a very different conclusion.
Advocate to a King #
Sarvabhauma's standing with Maharaja Prataparudra made him the natural bridge between the throne and the Lord. While Chaitanya Mahaprabhu toured the south, Prataparudra, hearing constantly of Him from Sarvabhauma, grew eager for an audience; Sarvabhauma had to explain that a sannyasi under strict vows does not meet kings. Even after the Lord's return, repeated efforts to arrange a meeting failed, though the Lord did eventually agree to send the king an outer garment through Sarvabhauma and Nityananda Prabhu — a small gift that, the tradition records, was enough to bring the symptoms of love of God onto Prataparudra's own body the moment he touched the cloth, the beginning of the process that would eventually bring the Gajapati king fully into the Lord's mercy.
The Praise That Outlasted the Argument #
Years into this new life, when the scholar Vallabha Bhatta came to Puri, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu summed up what Sarvabhauma had become to Him: a master of the six philosophical systems who had, in the end, taught the Lord Himself the true extent of devotional service, and shown Him that union with Krishna is the essence of every mystic path (Chaitanya-charitamrita, Antya-lila 7.21-22). It is difficult to find a more complete reversal of Sarvabhauma's original plan to correct a promising but overwrought young sannyasi.