Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita itself, written by Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami, does not narrate the manner of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's disappearance directly — a reticence Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition has generally preserved out of reverence rather than historical omission. What is clear is that Raghunatha Dasa remained at Jagannatha Puri afterward, continuing to serve under Svarupa Damodara Gosvami, who himself carried on the kirtana life of the Puri circle for some years more. When Svarupa Damodara in turn passed from the world, Raghunatha's life at Puri, by every account, became unbearable.
The Walk to Vrindavana #
Having served at Puri for roughly sixteen years in total, Raghunatha Dasa finally set out for Vrindavana in his own turn, arriving there in the early-to-mid 1540s by most reckonings. Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition — recorded, among other places, on the Gaudiya History biography site rather than in Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita's own text — holds that his grief on the journey was so overwhelming that he intended to end his life by throwing himself from the summit of Govardhana Hill. This episode belongs to a later layer of oral and hagiographic tradition rather than to Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami's own written record, and readers should hold it with that distinction in mind even as it remains a well-established part of how Raghunatha Dasa's story has long been told among Vaishnavas.
Received by Rupa and Sanatana Goswami #
Whatever the precise circumstances, Rupa Gosvami and Sanatana Gosvami received him at Vrindavana with evident affection, and it was they who persuaded him to live rather than end his grief by dying. Their argument, as tradition remembers it, was practical as much as compassionate: no one else remaining could tell the Vrajavasis what had actually happened during Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's eighteen years at Puri, since Raghunatha alone had lived at the Lord's side through nearly all of them under Svarupa Damodara's direct supervision. He agreed, and for the rest of his life spent several hours each day recounting those Puri pastimes to the Vaishnavas of Vrindavana.
The Source Behind Chaitanya-charitamrita #
Among those who came to hear him was Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami, who arrived in Vrindavana in the following years and eventually accepted Raghunatha Dasa as his own initiating spiritual master. It is difficult to overstate how much this relationship shaped Gaudiya Vaishnava literature: the intimate detail that fills the Antya-lila of Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita — the only substantial written record of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's final, most private years — traces back through Raghunatha Dasa's own memory and, in places, his own earlier poem the Gauranga-stava-kalpavrksa. Fuller treatment of this literary legacy, and of the works Raghunatha Dasa wrote in his own right, appears in Literary Works and the Stavavali.
Joining a Mission Already Under Way #
By the time Raghunatha Dasa arrived, in most reckonings somewhere in the early-to-mid 1540s, Rupa Gosvami and Sanatana Gosvami had already spent years in Vrindavana carrying out the specific charge Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu had given them: recovering the lost sites of Krishna's pastimes and giving Gaudiya theology its first systematic scriptural foundation. Raghunatha Dasa brought something neither of them could supply from their own experience — a witness's memory of the Lord's last eighteen years, spent almost entirely out of Vraja, at Jagannatha Puri. In that sense his arrival completed something rather than merely adding to it: between the two Goswamis' scholarship and Raghunatha Dasa's firsthand memory, the Vrindavana Vaishnava community now possessed as full a picture of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's life as anyone would ever be able to assemble.
The Only Witness Who Remained #
What made Raghunatha Dasa's presence at Vrindavana so consequential was less his scholarship than his simple irreplaceability. Svarupa Damodara Gosvami, who had overseen Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's private life at Puri more closely than anyone, had died there without leaving behind a written account. Raghunatha Dasa was the one person who had lived through nearly all of those years at the Lord's side and could still describe them firsthand — which is precisely why, when Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami later needed exactly that material for the Antya-lila of Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita, it was to Raghunatha Dasa that the tradition points as its ultimate source.
Settling Beside Radha-kunda #
Rather than remaining near Rupa and Sanatana Gosvami at the center of Vrindavana town, Raghunatha Dasa made his home beside Radha-kunda, the small lake a few miles away that Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu Himself was said to have identified during His own visit to Vraja as the very spot where Radha and Krishna had once bathed together. It became, for the next four decades, the fixed point of his life and the place identified with him above every other — the subject of Bhajana at Radha-kunda.