Every account of Raghunatha Bhatta Goswami's life at Vrindavana comes back to the same fact: when he recited Srimad-Bhagavatam, people stopped what they were doing to listen. Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita was written by Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami, who lived in Raghunatha Bhatta's own time. It gives the reason in a single, often-quoted line. His voice was pika-svara, as sweet as a cuckoo's, and he would carry one verse through three or four different tunes before moving to the next.
| Detail | Description |
|---|---|
| Recitation style | Each verse of Srimad-Bhagavatam recited in three or four different tunes |
| Voice quality | Described in Chaitanya-charitamrita as "sweet as a cuckoo's" |
| Regular audience | Rupa Gosvami and Sanatana Gosvami, and the Vaishnavas of Vrindavana |
| Title earned at Jagannatha Puri | Kirtana-acharya, for his cooking and his kirtana performances |
| Temperament | Never criticized any Vaishnava, however faulty their outward conduct |
Overcome Mid-Verse #
Chaitanya-charitamrita says that reciting for Rupa Gosvami and Sanatana Gosvami was the service through which Raghunatha "attained perfectional love of Krishna, by which he remained always maddened." The ecstasy was not a figure of speech. The text describes real physical symptoms coming over him as he read: tears, trembling, and a voice that began to falter. At last his throat closed with emotion and he simply could not continue. Whenever he read or heard about Krishna's beauty and sweetness in particular, he would forget everything around him. Tradition says his tears often fell onto the very pages of the Bhagavatam he was reading, wetting them as he sang.
Word of this spread well beyond Vrindavana. Even at Jagannatha Puri, during his earlier years of cooking for and serving Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, he had already earned the title kirtana-acharya, a master of chanting. He earned it through his kirtana performances as well as his cooking. The biographical tradition given on the Gaudiya History website adds one more line. It says that even Vyasadeva, the sage credited with compiling the Bhagavatam itself, would have been delighted to hear Raghunatha Bhatta recite it. This may be read as a literal claim or as loving devotional exaggeration. Either way, it shows how unmatched his recitation was considered to be.
A Life With No Room for Criticism #
What made Raghunatha Bhatta special was more than his voice. He also refused to let anything interrupt his absorption in Krishna, including gossip about other devotees. Sources describe him as a man who would neither hear nor speak of ordinary worldly matters at all. Day and night, he engaged in nothing but discussion of Krishna and worship of the Lord. Even when a Vaishnava's conduct gave real grounds for criticism, he would not join in. In his view, every Vaishnava was sincerely serving the Lord according to their own level of realization. So he preferred to overlook the fault, not dwell on it. This small detail says a lot about him, and it fits naturally with everything else remembered about him. The only thing worth his attention was the Bhagavatam's own subject, not the failings of the people around him.
Reciting the Book Later Worshipped in His Memory #
This devotion to the text itself, and not only to a worshipable image, runs through everything remembered about Raghunatha Bhatta Goswami. Later Vrindavana tradition holds that a copy of Srimad-Bhagavatam connected to him is still preserved and worshipped today. It is kept, along with the tulasi garland and wooden sandals associated with his memory, at a site in Vrindavana known as Raghunatha Bhatta Goswami's Peeth. The surviving Chaitanya-charitamrita account describes his personal worship as centering on the tulasi garland and Jagannatha-prasadam that Mahaprabhu gave him, along with his service to a separate Deity of Govinda. We cannot be sure whether the Bhagavatam was a literal worshipable Deity for him during his own lifetime. Either way, the reverence for the book as something closer to a living presence than a text fits well with a man remembered chiefly for the way he spoke it aloud.
That service to Govinda, and the years he spent building a community of devotion around both the Deity and the text, are the subject of Life and Service at Radha-kunda.
