Srila Raghunatha Bhatta Goswami

Srila Raghunatha Bhatta Goswami is remembered among the Six Goswamis of Vrindavana for one gift above all others: a voice. When he recited Srimad-Bhagavatam, Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita says, his tone was as sweet as a cuckoo's, and he would carry a single verse through three or four different tunes before moving on. People who heard him could not help but weep. Born in Varanasi as the son of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's devotee Tapana Mishra, he spent his boyhood in the Lord's own presence, was personally forbidden by Him to marry, and was sent at last to Vrindavana to spend the rest of his life reciting the Bhagavatam beside Radha-kunda.

A Boyhood Spent Near the Lord #

Raghunatha's father, Tapana Mishra, was already a marked man in Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's eyes long before his son was born. Chaitanya-charitamrita records that Tapana Mishra first met the Lord while He was still travelling as a young teacher of Sanskrit, and that he received harinama initiation from Him directly. On Mahaprabhu's own instruction, Tapana Mishra then settled in Varanasi, where he raised his family and, together with the physician Chandrasekhara Vaidya, became one of just three devotees Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is said to have kept in that city. When Mahaprabhu passed through Varanasi again on His way back from Vrindavana, He stayed two months at Chandrasekhara's house and took His meals at Tapana Mishra's every single day - and it was young Raghunatha, still a boy, who was given the task of massaging the Lord's feet after lunch. The fuller story of this household, and of the dream that first drew Tapana Mishra to Mahaprabhu, is told in Birth and Early Life in Varanasi and Childhood With Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu.

Once his formal education in Sanskrit grammar, rhetoric and scripture was complete, Raghunatha could not stay away. Twice he walked from Varanasi to Jagannatha Puri simply to be near the Lord again, staying eight months each time - cooking for Him, taking His remnants, and on his second visit being sent onward, by Mahaprabhu's own order, to live at Vrindavana under Rupa Gosvami and Sanatana Gosvami. Along the way Mahaprabhu asked one thing of him that shaped everything that followed: lifelong vairagya, a life without marriage. That instruction, and the tulasi garland and Deity remnants Mahaprabhu pressed into his hands at parting, are described in Sent to Vrindavana by the Lord's Order.

The Bhagavatam in a Cuckoo's Voice #

At Vrindavana, reciting the Bhagavatam for Rupa Gosvami and Sanatana Gosvami to hear became Raghunatha Bhatta's entire occupation, and it is here that Chaitanya-charitamrita gives him its most memorable lines: his voice was pika-svara, sweet as a cuckoo, and a single verse would pass through three or four tunes before he finished it. Often he could not finish at all - tears would choke his throat and stop the recitation outright. Word of this spread quickly among the Vrindavana Vaishnavas, and he came to be honoured as a kirtana-acharya, a master of chanting, whose sessions nobody wanted to miss. The details of this gift, and of the character that came with it - he is remembered as a man who never once spoke ill of another Vaishnava - fill The Voice That Recited Srimad-Bhagavatam.

Chaitanya-charitamrita also settles a question later readers sometimes raise about him: was he a formal guru in his own right? The text does not record a separate diksha, or initiation, ceremony for Raghunatha Bhatta distinct from his lifelong attachment to Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu Himself and his years of training under Rupa and Sanatana Gosvami at Vrindavana. What is certain is that Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami names him, alongside Rupa, Sanatana, Jiva Gosvami, Gopala Bhatta Gosvami and Raghunatha Dasa Goswami, as one of his own six instructing spiritual masters in the opening invocation of Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita - even though his diksha-guru, by his own later account, was specifically Raghunatha Dasa Goswami. The two Raghunathas were close companions rather than guru and disciple to each other; Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition has always kept them carefully distinct while praying to them together as a pair.

Settling Beside Radha-kunda #

Raghunatha Bhatta gave the rest of his working life to Govinda. Under his direction, disciples built a temple for the Deity in Vrindavana, and he personally fashioned ornaments for Govinda, including a flute and a pair of shark-shaped earrings. Chaitanya-charitamrita says plainly that those lotus feet became his life and soul. He eventually made his own home near Radha-kunda, not far from where Raghunatha Dasa Goswami had settled into his own decades of bhajana, and the two men's names have been linked ever since - not as guru and disciple, but as two of the six who together gave Gaudiya Vaishnavism its Vrindavana foundation. The temple, the ornaments, and his enduring reputation as a spiritual guide for devotees are covered fully in Life and Service at Radha-kunda.

Disappearance and Living Memory #

Raghunatha Bhatta Goswami is generally said to have left this world around 1579, though - as with several of the Six Goswamis - the exact year is not settled beyond dispute. Srila Prabhupada kept his memory alive in the invocation Gaudiya Vaishnavas still recite daily, the Sri Sad-gosvamy-ashtaka, and explained to his own students exactly who "the other Raghunatha" was. According to the Gaura-ganoddesha-dipika, a traditional register of the eternal identities behind Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's associates, Raghunatha Bhatta Goswami serves Radha and Krishna eternally as the gopi Raga-manjari. What became of his physical body, and what still remains of his worship and his memory at Vrindavana today, is the subject of Disappearance and Legacy.