Ramadasa Brahmana

Introduction

Chapter 1

The Rama Bhakta Who Began Chanting Krishna's Name

A brahmana who had chanted only Rama's holy name since childhood finds, after one meeting with Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, that Krishna's name will not leave his tongue.

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The First Meal at Siddhavata #

Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's tour through South India brought Him first to see the Deity of Lord Nrisimha, and from there to Siddhavata. This pilgrimage town was known for its great banyan tree and for a Deity of Ramachandra, Lord of Sitadevi, whom Mahaprabhu greeted with prayers and obeisances. A brahmana there invited Him to take lunch. Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami is specific about this brahmana's character before the story moves any further: "That brahmana constantly chanted the holy name of Ramachandra. Indeed, but for chanting Lord Ramachandra's holy name, that brahmana did not speak a word." Mahaprabhu accepted prasadam at his home that day and, after showing him this mercy, continued on His way.

A Visit to Skanda-kshetra and Trivikrama #

What makes this brahmana's story different from a simple pilgrimage-stop encounter is what happened next. From Siddhavata, Mahaprabhu went on to visit the temple of Skanda at Skanda-kshetra, and from there to Trimatha, where He saw the Deity of Vishnu known as Trivikrama. Only after these two further stops did He turn back and return to Siddhavata, to the same brahmana's house, for a second time.

A Different Name on His Lips #

What Mahaprabhu found on returning was a man transformed. The brahmana who had spoken almost nothing but Rama's name at their first meeting was now chanting the Hare Krishna maha-mantra continuously instead. Mahaprabhu asked him directly: "My dear friend, kindly tell Me what your position is now. Formerly you were constantly chanting the holy name of Lord Rama. Why are you now constantly chanting the holy name of Krishna?" The brahmana's answer is unusually open about how sudden the change had felt to him, and how it had come without his choosing: "This is all due to Your influence, Sir. After seeing You, I have lost my lifelong practice. From my childhood I have been chanting the holy name of Lord Ramachandra, but upon seeing You I chanted the holy name of Lord Krishna just once. Since then, the holy name of Krishna has been tightly fixed upon my tongue. Indeed, since I have been chanting the holy name of Krishna, the holy name of Lord Ramachandra has gone far away."

Two Names, One Truth #

What follows in Chaitanya-charitamrita is not simple confusion on the brahmana's part. It is a scholar trying to bring together what scripture had taught him and what he was now experiencing. He recalls verses holding Rama and Krishna's holy names to be on an equal footing as the Supreme Absolute Truth. One, from the Padma Purana's Shata-nama-stotra, explains that "Rama" names the Lord because transcendentalists take unlimited pleasure (ramante) in Him. Another, from the Mahabharata, explains "Krishna" through the verbal root krish, meaning attractive existence, joined to a syllable meaning spiritual pleasure. Yet he also recalls further verses. One is Lord Shiva's own words to Durga, and another is a line that the Laghu-bhagavatamrita traces to the Brahmanda Purana. These verses hold that chanting Krishna's name a single time gives what three full repetitions of Vishnu's thousand names would give. "According to this statement of the shastras," the brahmana says, "the glories of the holy name of Krishna are unlimited. Still I could not chant His holy name. Please hear the reason for this... My worshipable Lord has been Lord Ramachandra, and by chanting His holy name I received happiness... By Your appearance, Lord Krishna's holy name also appeared, and at that time the glories of Krishna's name awoke in my heart."

Falling at the Lord's Feet #

The brahmana's conclusion, once he reached it, was very clear: "Sir, You are that Krishna Himself. This is my conclusion." Saying this, Chaitanya-charitamrita records, he fell down at Mahaprabhu's lotus feet. Mahaprabhu showed him mercy and left the following day, continuing south toward Vriddhakashi and the temple of Lord Shiva there. Nothing further is recorded of this brahmana. In Chaitanya-charitamrita he has no personal name, no later life, and no other appearance. What remains is this one afternoon. A lifelong devotee of Rama's holy name found, in the presence of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, that a different name of God had quietly taken its place on his tongue. And he understood exactly what that meant.

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Closing

A Name Fixed by a Single Meeting #

At Siddhavata, a pilgrimage town near the great Vishnu temple of Sri Ranganatha in South India, Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu met a brahmana remembered in the tradition only as "Ramadasa Brahmana". Here the word brahmana simply names his caste, not his family. Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita records only a single, short episode about him. He was a devotee who had chanted Lord Ramachandra's holy name every day of his life. But after two brief visits from Mahaprabhu, he found that the name of Krishna had appeared on his tongue instead and would not leave.

Three Devotees Named Ramadasa #

Three separate worshipers of Lord Ramachandra are remembered by the name Ramadasa, and Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu met each of them independently. Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita itself gives this Siddhavata brahmana no personal name. It uses the name Ramadasa only for the other two. Later in the very same chapter of Chaitanya-charitamrita, at southern Mathura (Madurai), Mahaprabhu meets a different brahmana Rama-bhakta, remembered here as Ramadasa Vipra. Years afterward, in Bengal and at Jagannatha Puri, a government official of the kayastha caste who served Raghunatha Bhatta Goswami on the road appears as Ramadasa Vishvasa. A fourth man of a similar name, Minaketana Ramadasa, was Nityananda Prabhu's own servant and is unrelated to any of these three; he appears on Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami's page. Chaitanya-charitamrita treats all of them as distinct people who never appear together.

A Second Visit, A Different Name #

After visiting the temples of Skanda and of Trivikrama nearby, Mahaprabhu returned to the same house in Siddhavata. He found the brahmana now chanting the Hare Krishna maha-mantra instead of Rama's name alone. Asked directly why his lifelong practice had changed, the brahmana gave an answer that has since become a quietly moving passage in Chaitanya-charitamrita. He said that seeing Mahaprabhu even once had fixed Krishna's name on his tongue so firmly that Rama's name had faded from his heart, though he had chanted it since childhood.

Rama and Krishna, Weighed Against Each Other #

This brief episode is more than a simple conversion story, because the brahmana himself supplies the theology for it, quoting scripture he already knew. One verse, from the Shata-nama-stotra of the Padma Purana, says: "The Supreme Absolute Truth is called Rama because the transcendentalists take pleasure in the unlimited true pleasure of spiritual existence" (Chaitanya-charitamrita, Madhya 9.29). On this basis, the holy names of Rama and Krishna stand on an equal level as the Supreme Absolute Truth. But scripture also gives some further, specific information (Madhya 9.31). Lord Shiva tells his wife, Durga: "O Varanana, I chant the holy name of Rama, Rama, Rama and thus enjoy this beautiful sound. This holy name of Ramachandra is equal to one thousand holy names of Lord Vishnu" (Padma Purana, Brihad-vishnu-sahasranama-stotra; Chaitanya-charitamrita, Madhya 9.32). Another verse, from the Brahmanda Purana and quoted in the Laghu-bhagavatamrita, goes further: "The pious results derived from chanting the thousand holy names of Vishnu three times can be attained by only one utterance of the holy name of Krishna" (Madhya 9.33). He was not giving up Rama. As a scholar of scripture himself, he was simply reporting the conclusion he could no longer avoid once he had seen Mahaprabhu face to face. "Sir, You are that Lord Krishna Himself. This is my conclusion," he said, and fell at Mahaprabhu's feet (Madhya 9.37).

What the Tradition Does and Doesn't Preserve #

Beyond this single day at Siddhavata, nothing else about this brahmana survives in Chaitanya-charitamrita or in any source that could be located. No birth or disappearance date is recorded, no lineage, no later life, and no writing of his own beyond the words Krishnadasa Kaviraja records him speaking. Srila Prabhupada's own purports to this section explain the Sanskrit word-roots the brahmana cites, but they add no further biographical detail. So, honestly, only a single afternoon remains. But it is one of the clearest small examples in Chaitanya-charitamrita of Mahaprabhu's own teaching that the holy names of Krishna and Rama both call out to the same one Supreme Person. Here that teaching is met in the person of a brahmana who found that meeting could rewrite even a lifelong habit of the tongue.