Raghunatha Bhatta Goswami is generally said to have disappeared from this world around 1579, though a few sources place it a year or so later, and - as with several of the Six Goswamis - no single date carries full agreement among modern accounts. One detail recorded consistently is stranger and more specific than most disappearance stories in this tradition: fearing that hostile hands might desecrate his body after death, Jiva Gosvami is said to have had it cremated rather than buried in the usual Vaishnava manner, with the ashes then divided between two samadhi sites - one at Radha-kunda itself, the other in the area of Vrindavana known today as the Chaurasi, or Sixty-Four, Samadhis.
| Detail | Description |
|---|---|
| Disappearance | c. 1579 (a small number of sources give 1580) |
| Body's fate | Cremated, by tradition on the order of Jiva Gosvami, to protect it from desecration |
| Samadhi sites | Radha-kunda, and the Chaurasi Samadhis area of Vrindavana |
| Preserved relics | A Srimad-Bhagavatam volume, tulasi garland, and wooden sandals (paduka), still honored at Raghunatha Bhatta Goswami's Peeth, Vrindavana |
| Literary output | None - unlike the other Goswamis, he wrote no books, having "learned everything simply by hearing shastra" |
No Books, and No Need of Them #
It is worth pausing on something Raghunatha Bhatta Goswami did not do. Rupa Gosvami, Sanatana Gosvami, Jiva Gosvami, Raghunatha Dasa Goswami - every other member of the Six Goswamis left behind a body of written work that shaped Gaudiya Vaishnava theology for centuries. Raghunatha Bhatta Goswami wrote nothing. Gaudiyahistory's biographical tradition explains this simply: he was a scholar in every subject, but he had learned it all directly by hearing scripture, and his genius expressed itself in voice rather than in ink. In a movement that produced an entire cartload of handwritten books from Vrindavana, as Srila Prabhupada once described it, Raghunatha Bhatta Goswami's contribution was the sound of the Bhagavatam itself, carried through a single unforgettable voice into the ears of everyone who heard him.
What Srila Prabhupada Taught About Him #
Srila Prabhupada returned often to the invocation Gaudiya Vaishnavas recite daily in praise of the Six Goswamis, and made a point of explaining who "the other Raghunatha" actually was. In a 1968 lecture in Los Angeles on the Sri Sad-gosvamy-ashtaka, he told his students plainly: "There are two Raghus: one Raghunatha dasa Gosvami and one Raghunatha Bhatta Gosvami." He went on to explain that while Raghunatha Dasa Gosvami carried the title dasa on account of his family's social standing, both men belonged equally, in spiritual terms, among the six who "picked up Lord Caitanya's eight verses and wrote so many books" - a description that, for Raghunatha Bhatta specifically, applies more to what he preached aloud than to what he wrote down. Elsewhere, teaching from Narottama Dasa Thakura's own verse in praise of the Six Goswamis, Prabhupada insisted that no one can rightly call themselves a follower of this line, a rupanuga Vaishnava, without following the standard the Goswamis themselves set - a standard Raghunatha Bhatta Goswami met not through books like Narottama Dasa Thakura himself, but through a lifetime devoted entirely to the Bhagavatam's own words.
A Living Address in Vrindavana #
Unlike a name confined to old texts, Raghunatha Bhatta Goswami still has a physical address in Vrindavana. Tradition holds that the tulasi garland and betel Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu once placed in his hands, along with a Srimad-Bhagavatam volume connected to his memory and his own wooden sandals, are preserved and still worshipped at a site known as Raghunatha Bhatta Goswami's Peeth, near the historic Bhatt-ji-ki-Haveli in Vrindavana. Pilgrims visiting the wider Vraja circuit today can still walk to his samadhi near Radha-kunda, not far from where Raghunatha Dasa Goswami himself is buried, and to the Govinda temple whose construction he once inspired.
His Place Among the Six #
Raghunatha Bhatta Goswami's legacy was never meant to stand alone. He belongs to a set of six names Gaudiya Vaishnavas have chanted together for five centuries - Rupa Gosvami, Sanatana Gosvami, Raghunatha Bhatta Gosvami, Jiva Gosvami, Gopala Bhatta Gosvami, and Raghunatha Dasa Gosvami - a lineage that runs forward through Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami, who named him as one of his own instructing spiritual masters, and onward still through Narottama Dasa Thakura, Vishvanatha Chakravarti Thakura and Baladeva Vidyabhusana, down to Srila Prabhupada and the worldwide movement he founded. Of all six, Raghunatha Bhatta Goswami left the smallest paper trail and, in a real sense, the largest living echo: every time the Bhagavatam is read aloud with feeling in a Gaudiya Vaishnava temple anywhere in the world, something of the standard he set five hundred years ago at Vrindavana is still being followed.