With his guru's blessing - and permission sought, by tradition, from the elder Vaishnava Raghunandana and others of Shrikhanda - Ramachandra set out for Vrindavana not long after his initiation. The route he traveled is recorded with unusual geographic precision for a devotional text: through Gaya, Kashi and Prayaga to Mathura, where he bathed and rested at Vishrama-ghat before taking darshan of the ancient Adi-Keshava temple and finally continuing on to Vrindavana itself.
Reunited With His Guru, and Introduced to Jiva Goswami #
Shrinivasa Acharya was in Vrindavana when Ramachandra arrived, and Ramachandra's first act was to fall at his guru's feet - and then at the feet of Jiva Goswami, to whom he brought news of the Vaishnavas back in Bengal. Shrinivasa Acharya's affection for his disciple only deepened in Vraja: tradition records that although the Malla king Bir Hambir of Bishnupur later became Shrinivasa Acharya's own formal initiated disciple, it was Ramachandra who served the king as siksha-guru in the practical conduct of devotional life - an unusual degree of trust for a disciple who had himself been Vaishnava for only a short time.
On Jiva Goswami's own instruction, Ramachandra was taken to see the Deities of Govinda, Gopinatha and Madana-mohana, and to the samadhi of Sanatana Goswami. From there he went on to receive the personal blessings of three more of the small circle of direct associates Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu had originally sent to excavate and restore Vraja's lost holy places: Gopala Bhatta Goswami, the South Indian brahmana who would go on to compile the Hari-bhakti-vilasa, the manual of Deity worship Gaudiya temples still follow; Lokanatha Goswami, traditionally credited with first rediscovering the site of Radha-kunda itself; and Bhugarbha Goswami, one of Lokanatha Goswami's own closest associates in Vraja.
Radha-Damodara, Radha-kunda, and an Embrace From Raghunatha Dasa Goswami #
The *Bhakti-ratnakara* devotes real attention to what happened at the Radha-Damodara temple, where Ramachandra visited in Jiva Goswami's company and stood before Rupa Goswami's samadhi. What overcame him there - described as an ecstatic transformation visible to everyone present - is said to have amazed the Vaishnavas who witnessed it, and was taken as a mark of genuine, not performed, devotion. From the temple he went on to bathe in the twin lakes of Radha-kunda and Shyama-kunda - the waters traditionally identified with Krishna's rasa-lila with Radharani and her gopi friends, and by then already the home and bhajana-sthal of Raghunatha Dasa Goswami for decades. When Ramachandra offered his obeisances there, Raghunatha Dasa Goswami - not a man given to casual displays of warmth, even by the admiring standards of his own biographers - embraced him affectionately.
The Kaviraja Title #
It was in this same company, after the Vaishnavas of Vraja - Paramananda Bhattacharya among them, by the *Bhakti-ratnakara*'s own account - had heard Ramachandra recite samples of his own poetry, that Jiva Goswami and the others decided, together, to award him the title Kaviraja: king of poets. Srila Prabhupada's purport to Chaitanya-charitamrita, Adi-lila 11.51, gives essentially the same account in far fewer words, crediting the honor to Jiva Goswami's appreciation of "Sri Ramacandra Kaviraja's great devotion to Lord Krsna." The title placed him among the eight kavirajas - the poet-disciples of Shrinivasa Acharya - and it is by this title, rather than by his birth name alone, that later Vaishnava tradition remembers him.
After some further time in the Goswamis' company, Ramachandra was instructed to return to Bengal. He did so by a leisurely route through Shrikhanda, Jajigram and Kalna, arriving finally at Mayapura to receive the blessings of Ishana Thakura before resuming his life alongside Shrinivasa Acharya and Narottama Dasa Thakura - a partnership tested, not long after, by a very different kind of challenge, told on the-disguised-shopkeepers-of-kumarapura.
Ramachandra's brief time at Radha-kunda was only a visit, not a settled residence - his own base remained Shrinivasa Acharya's household and, eventually, Vrindavana more broadly - but the community of renunciant Vaishnavas Raghunatha Dasa Goswami had gathered there endured for generations after this meeting. Vishvanatha Chakravarti Thakura, writing his own celebrated commentaries at Radha-kunda roughly a century later, belonged to that same continuing lineage of scholar-renunciants who kept Raghunatha Dasa Goswami's bhajana alive at the two lakes long after the generation Ramachandra met there had passed on.
