Long before Raghunatha Bhatta was born, his father Tapana Mishra had already been drawn to Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. Chaitanya-charitamrita and the older Chaitanya-bhagavata both preserve the story. Tapana Mishra was a learned brahmana who had studied scripture for years. But he had never settled the question that mattered most to him: what was life really for, and how could that goal be reached? Tradition says the answer came to him in a dream. In the dream he was told that a young teacher named Nimai Pandita was coming, and that he should go and ask him directly. Nimai Pandita was, of course, Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu before His sannyasa.
| Detail | Description |
|---|---|
| Father | Tapana Mishra, a learned brahmana |
| Father's native region | East Bengal, on the Padma river (by tradition, the village of Ramapura) |
| Where the family settled | Varanasi (Kashi), by Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's own instruction |
| Other Varanasi devotee | Chandrasekhara Vaidya, a physician |
| Raghunatha's early training | Sanskrit grammar, rhetoric, and the scriptures |
A Dream, and a Question Answered #
Tradition, as later Vaishnava writers retell it, adds a vivid detail about how that meeting came about. A divine figure appeared to Tapana Mishra in the night. The figure told him plainly that Nimai Pandita was no ordinary human being. Nimai Pandita was an incarnation of Narayana Himself, who had come into the world to perform pastimes, and Tapana Mishra should go to Him without delay. In the morning, after his bath, Tapana Mishra found the young Pandita seated among His own students. His body was so bright that it seemed to light the room, and His eyes were like the petals of a full-blown lotus. This description appears again and again in accounts of Mahaprabhu's early years, before His sannyasa changed His appearance for good. Falling at His feet, Tapana Mishra asked what a human being's real business in life was. As Chaitanya-bhagavata records it, Mahaprabhu answered that every age has its own means of God-realization (meditation, sacrifice, temple worship). But in the present age, Kali-yuga, the one process that actually works is congregational chanting of the Lord's names, sankirtana. Nothing else, He said, comes close. Tapana Mishra never forgot it.
Sent to Kashi to Wait #
Tapana Mishra wanted to move to Nabadwipa and stay near the Lord permanently. But Mahaprabhu told him instead to go to Varanasi, and promised that they would meet there again one day. Tapana Mishra obeyed. He took his wife with him and built his household in the holy city sacred to Lord Shiva. Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita names him as one of only three devotees whom the Lord kept in Varanasi some years later. They were Tapana Mishra himself, the physician Chandrasekhara Vaidya, and, once he was born, Tapana Mishra's own son, Raghunatha Bhattacharya.
Exactly when that birth took place is not settled. English-language sources most often give a year around 1503 to 1505. A widely used Vaishnava calendar tradition places it on the twelfth day of the bright fortnight of the month of Ashvina. None of this comes from a document written in Raghunatha Bhatta's own lifetime. So readers should take the date only as a rough guide, as the birth years of the other Six Goswamis are generally taken.
Raised Between Two Households #
So Raghunatha grew up in a home that had already received Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's personal attention. This was a rare inheritance, and it shaped him from the very beginning. His formal education followed the ordinary path expected of a brahmana's son: Sanskrit grammar, the rules of rhetoric and poetics, and a thorough grounding in scripture. What made his household different was not what he studied but the people around him. Chandrasekhara Vaidya, the physician named with Tapana Mishra as one of Mahaprabhu's three Varanasi devotees, lived nearby and shared the same devotion. Between the two households, Raghunatha grew up among adults for whom Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu was not a distant figure of legend. He was a guest they knew personally and remembered.
This meant that when the Lord visited Varanasi again, years later, He would not come as a stranger at all. It would be like a homecoming for the whole family. That visit also gave the boy Raghunatha his own unforgettable place in Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's company. That meeting, and the affection Mahaprabhu showed him even as a child, are the subject of Childhood With Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu.
