Leaving Varanasi #
Raghunatha Bhattacharya - later known as Raghunatha Bhatta Goswami - had just finished his education in Varanasi when he gave up all his other duties and set out to see Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu again. Chaitanya-charitamrita describes the departure almost bluntly: he simply left, taking only a servant to carry his baggage, and took the road through Bengal toward Jagannatha Puri.
A Traveler Going the Same Way #
Somewhere along that road, Raghunatha crossed paths with another traveler making the identical journey for an identical reason. Chaitanya-charitamrita introduces him carefully: Ramadasa Vishvasa, a man of the kayastha caste, one of the king's own secretaries in the government accounting department - what the text calls vishvasa-khanara kayastha, and Srila Prabhupada's purport explains as the standard title for a clerk or secretary serving kings and governors of that era. Despite his worldly post, he was, Chaitanya-charitamrita says, "very learned in all the revealed scriptures" and a teacher of Kavya-prakasha, the classical Sanskrit text on poetics - and known besides as a great devotee and worshiper of Lord Ramachandra. Like Raghunatha, he had renounced his household to see Lord Jagannatha, and he chanted Rama's holy name, the text says, twenty-four hours a day as he walked.
An Uncomfortable Offer of Service #
On learning that his fellow traveler was a brahmana, Ramadasa did something that visibly unsettled Raghunatha: he took Raghunatha's baggage onto his own head and began carrying it, and went further still, massaging his legs at rest stops along the way. Raghunatha, a young man clearly aware of how much learning and social standing Ramadasa actually possessed, tried repeatedly to stop him. "You are a respectable gentleman, a learned scholar and a great devotee," he said. "Please do not try to serve me. Just come with me in a happy mood."
"I Am a Shudra, a Fallen Soul" #
Ramadasa's reply, preserved almost word for word in Chaitanya-charitamrita, gives the clearest window into how he understood his own place in the world: "I am a shudra, a fallen soul! To serve a brahmana is my duty and my own religious principle. Do not be hesitant. I am your servant, and when I serve you my heart becomes jubilant." Whatever his actual caste standing as a kayastha implied about his social rank, he insisted on framing the relationship in terms of dharma rather than status - service to a brahmana as something closer to worship than obligation. Raghunatha, for his part, kept objecting, and Chaitanya-charitamrita notes that he felt real hesitation (sankucita mana) at accepting service from a man so clearly his equal or better in learning. Ramadasa carried the baggage anyway, all the way to Jagannatha Puri, chanting Rama's holy name the entire distance. Chaitanya-charitamrita records that the two men filled the miles between them with conversation on scripture as they walked - a natural exchange between a young Sanskrit scholar freshly finished with his studies at Varanasi and an older one who taught Kavya-prakasha for a living, even if neither yet knew how differently Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu would receive each of them at journey's end.
Arriving at Nilachala #
Traveling together in this way, the two men reached Jagannatha Puri, where Raghunatha went at once to Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's feet and was received, Chaitanya-charitamrita says, "in great delight." What happened when Raghunatha then introduced his unusual traveling companion to Mahaprabhu himself - and why the reception the two men received turned out to be strikingly different - is told in No Special Mercy at Nilachala.