In the year Srila Prabhupada records as 1433 Sakabda, corresponding to A.D. 1511, Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu reached Srirangam on his long pilgrimage through South India and stayed the full four months of Chaturmasya as a guest in the home of Venkata Bhatta. That visit, and the theological conversation that unfolded there between Mahaprabhu and Venkata Bhatta over Lakshmi-Narayana and Radha-Krishna, is told in detail on Sri Gopala Bhatta Goswami's own pages on this site. This page follows the same events from Prabodhananda's side.
| Detail | Description |
|---|---|
| Visit | Chaturmasya, 1433 Sakabda / A.D. 1511 |
| Place | Srirangam, at the home of Venkata Bhatta |
| Converted | Prabodhananda, Venkata Bhatta and Tirumalaya Bhatta, all three brothers |
| From | Sri Vaishnava worship of Lakshmi-Narayana |
| To | Gaudiya devotion to Radha-Krishna |
| Later confused with | Prakashananda Sarasvati of Kashi (a distinct, unrelated person) |
Three Brothers Won Over #
According to the Bhakti-ratnakara of Narahari Chakravarti, quoted in later Gaudiya histories, the three brothers were devastated at the thought of Mahaprabhu leaving after the four months - wondering who would now joke with them, and who would accompany them to bathe in the Kaveri each morning - and Mahaprabhu himself embraced them and tried to console them as he departed. It was during this same visit, tradition records, that Prabodhananda was given the title "Sarasvati" by which he became known thereafter, in recognition of the eloquence and learning that had so impressed those around him. Whatever the precise sequence, the outcome is not in dispute: a family of Sri Vaishnava priests, devoted for generations to Lakshmi and Narayana, turned by the end of these four months to the worship of Radha and Krishna.
From Householder to Sannyasi #
Srila Prabhupada's purport to Chaitanya-charitamrita states that in his earlier grihastha life Prabodhananda had been a resident of Sri Ranga-kshetra belonging to the Ramanuja-sampradaya; it was after this meeting with Mahaprabhu that he accepted the tridandi-sannyasa of a Vaishnava renunciant and, a few years later, left Srirangam altogether to settle at Kamyavana, one of the twelve forests of Vraja near Mathura - by his own account, so that he could absorb himself completely in the most intimate teachings Mahaprabhu had given him. His young nephew Gopala Bhatta, still a boy at the time, would in due course follow the same road to Vraja, as told in Life Among the Goswamis of Vrindavana.
A Case of Mistaken Identity #
One persistent confusion deserves to be addressed directly, because Srila Prabhupada himself took care to correct it more than once in his own purports. A Mayavadi sannyasi named Prakashananda Sarasvati, the leader of the impersonalist sannyasis of Kashi (Benares), appears elsewhere in Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita and Sri Chaitanya-bhagavata as an opponent whom Mahaprabhu eventually converted. Some readers - Srila Prabhupada notes that this error originated among sahajiya-influenced writers and entered even the Bhaktamal - have mistaken this Prakashananda for Prabodhananda, on the strength of the similar-sounding names alone. Srila Prabhupada's purport to Chaitanya-charitamrita, Madhya-lila 17.104, states the correction plainly: "Prabodhananda Sarasvati was the uncle and spiritual master of Gopala Bhatta Gosvami. In his grihastha life, Prabodhananda Sarasvati was a resident of Sri Ranga-kshetra, and he belonged to the Vaishnava Ramanuja-sampradaya. It is a mistake to consider Prakashananda Sarasvati and Prabodhananda Sarasvati the same man." The two men belonged to opposite ends of the theological spectrum - one a Vaishnava of the Ramanuja line who became one of Mahaprabhu's most devoted followers, the other a Mayavadi philosopher of the Shankara line whom the Lord rebuked before eventually delivering him - and, as Srila Prabhupada also points out, the historical timeline of the two men's recorded meetings with Mahaprabhu makes it impossible for them to have been the same person at all: Mahaprabhu met Prabodhananda and his brothers as fellow Ramanuja Vaishnavas at Srirangam in 1433 Sakabda, and could not, two years later in 1435 Sakabda, have met the very same man again in Kashi as the head of an entirely different, rival school of Mayavadi sannyasis.