For one full year after his first meeting with Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu at Santipura, Raghunatha Dasa did exactly as he had been told. He ran his father's affairs and gave no outward sign of what he intended. The next year he could wait no longer, and one night he simply got up and left. His father caught him at a distance and brought him home. It happened again, and then again. In the words of Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita itself, it became almost a daily affair. His mother, not knowing what else to do, told her husband to bind their son with ropes. Govardhana Majumadara's reply is remembered as one of the more moving lines in the whole account. He said that no rope could hold a boy on whom Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's mercy had already fallen.
The Blessing of Nityananda Prabhu at Panihati #
Raghunatha could not leave directly for Puri. So he went instead to see Nityananda Prabhu, who was staying at Panihati on the bank of the Ganges, surrounded by kirtana performers and devotees. Raghunatha offered his obeisances from a respectful distance. Nityananda Prabhu laughed and called out that he was a thief who had finally come to be punished. As that punishment, He ordered Raghunatha to hold a festival and give chipped rice mixed with yogurt to everyone present. Raghunatha threw himself into the task. He bought up the food stocks of several villages and provided hundreds of earthen pots of chipped rice for a crowd that kept growing through the day. In the middle of the feast, Nityananda Prabhu brought Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu to the spot in meditation. The two brothers ate together on the riverbank, surrounded by devotees chanting the holy names. Gaudiya Vaishnavas still celebrate this event to this day as the chida-dadhi-mahotsava, or Panihati festival.
Afterward, Nityananda Prabhu called Raghunatha near and placed His feet on his head. He told him plainly that all obstacles to his taking shelter at Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's feet were now removed. He also said that when Raghunatha reached the Lord, he would be placed in the personal care of Svarupa Damodara Gosvami.
The Priest Who Helped Him Vanish #
Even with that blessing, escaping from his own household needed some cleverness. By then Raghunatha had begun sleeping outside the inner rooms of the house, where alert guards watched over him. For some time he could find no way past them. The chance came from someone no one would have expected. Yadunandana Acharya was the family priest who had formally initiated Raghunatha, and he was himself a disciple of Advaita Acharya. Late one night he came to the house and asked Raghunatha to help him persuade a brahmana to take up his temple service again. So Yadunandana Acharya walked Raghunatha out through the sleeping household. Halfway there, Raghunatha respectfully asked permission to finish the errand by himself. Yadunandana Acharya let him go the rest of the way alone, and Raghunatha used this chance to escape. He never returned.
Twelve Days to Jagannatha Puri #
He travelled hard and fast, by back roads and jungle paths instead of the well-travelled route. He went this way so that the famous devotees also journeying to Puri that season would not draw attention to him. Some days he covered thirty miles on foot. In twelve days in all he reached Jagannatha Puri, having managed to eat only three times along the entire way. His father learned where he had gone. He sent ten men to stop him, and a letter to the Bengali devotee Sivananda Sena begging for his return. But by the time the men caught up with Sivananda Sena's party at Jhankara, Raghunatha was already well ahead of them. Sivananda Sena simply told them that Raghunatha had not come that way, whether because he did not know or because he chose not to say.
Thin, dirty and exhausted from the journey, Raghunatha Dasa arrived at last at the courtyard where Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu sat surrounded by His devotees. This was the beginning of the life described in Service Under Svarupa Damodara at Puri.
Already Famous by the Time He Arrived #
News of what Raghunatha Dasa had given up travelled ahead of him. Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita records that the Bengali poet Kavi-karnapura had already described him in his own separate work, Sri Chaitanya-candrodaya-nataka. Kavi-karnapura called him an "ocean of renunciation" whose example every resident of Jagannatha Puri recognized on sight. This was praise from someone who did not need to see the escape himself to understand what it had cost. Later, Raghunatha's father sent money and servants to Puri to check on his son. The Bengali devotee Sivananda Sena then had to explain that the father was asking about a man the whole Vaishnava community there already knew well. Raghunatha chanted the entire day, never left Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's side even for a moment, and lived on whatever came to him at the temple gate.
