In the year Srila Prabhupada records as 1433 Sakabda, corresponding to A.D. 1511, Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu reached Srirangam on his long pilgrimage through South India. He stayed the full four months of Chaturmasya as a guest in the home of Venkata Bhatta. That visit, and the theological conversation between Mahaprabhu and Venkata Bhatta over Lakshmi-Narayana and Radha-Krishna, is told in detail on Sri Gopala Bhatta Goswami's own pages. What follows here is the same story, from Prabodhananda's side.
| Detail | Description |
|---|---|
| Visit | Chaturmasya, 1433 Sakabda / A.D. 1511 |
| Place | Srirangam, at the home of Venkata Bhatta |
| Converted | Prabodhananda, Venkata Bhatta and Tirumalaya Bhatta, all three brothers |
| From | Sri Vaishnava worship of Lakshmi-Narayana |
| To | Gaudiya devotion to Radha-Krishna |
| Later confused with | Prakashananda Sarasvati of Kashi (a distinct, unrelated person) |
Three Brothers Won Over #
According to the Bhakti-ratnakara of Narahari Chakravarti, quoted in later Gaudiya histories, the three brothers were heartbroken at the thought of Mahaprabhu leaving after the four months. They wondered who would now joke with them, and who would go with them to bathe in the Kaveri each morning. Mahaprabhu himself embraced them and tried to console them as he departed. Tradition also records that it was during this same visit that Prabodhananda was given the title "Sarasvati," in recognition of the eloquence and learning that had impressed everyone around him, and this became the name by which he was known ever after. Whatever the exact sequence of events, the outcome is not in doubt: a family of Sri Vaishnava priests, devoted for generations to Lakshmi and Narayana, turned by the end of these four months to the worship of Radha and Krishna.
From Householder to Sannyasi #
Srila Prabhupada's purport to Chaitanya-charitamrita states that in his earlier grihastha life Prabodhananda had been a resident of Sri Ranga-kshetra belonging to the Ramanuja-sampradaya. It was after this meeting with Mahaprabhu that he accepted the tridandi-sannyasa of a Vaishnava renunciant. A few years later he left Srirangam altogether and settled at Kamyavana, one of the twelve forests of Vraja near Mathura, so that, by his own account, he could absorb himself completely in the most intimate teachings Mahaprabhu had given him. His young nephew Gopala Bhatta, still a boy at the time, would in due course follow the same road to Vraja, as told in Life Among the Goswamis of Vrindavana.
A Case of Mistaken Identity #
One persistent confusion deserves to be cleared up directly, because Srila Prabhupada himself took care to correct it more than once in his own purports. A Mayavadi sannyasi named Prakashananda Sarasvati, the leader of the impersonalist sannyasis of Kashi (Benares), appears elsewhere in Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita and Sri Chaitanya-bhagavata as an opponent whom Mahaprabhu eventually converted. Some readers have mistaken this Prakashananda for Prabodhananda, simply because the names sound alike. Srila Prabhupada notes that this error began among sahajiya-influenced writers and entered even the Bhaktamal. His purport to Chaitanya-charitamrita, Madhya-lila 17.104, states the correction plainly:
Prabodhananda Sarasvati was the uncle and spiritual master of Gopala Bhatta Gosvami. In his grihastha life, Prabodhananda Sarasvati was a resident of Sri Ranga-kshetra, and he belonged to the Vaishnava Ramanuja-sampradaya. It is a mistake to consider Prakashananda Sarasvati and Prabodhananda Sarasvati the same man.
The two men stood at opposite ends of the theological spectrum. One was a Vaishnava of the Ramanuja line who became one of Mahaprabhu's most devoted followers. The other was a Mayavadi philosopher of the Shankara line, whom the Lord first rebuked and only later delivered. Srila Prabhupada also points out that the two men's own recorded meetings with Mahaprabhu rule out their being the same person at all. Mahaprabhu met Prabodhananda and his brothers as fellow Ramanuja Vaishnavas at Srirangam in 1433 Sakabda. He could not, two years later in 1435 Sakabda, have met that very same man again in Kashi as the head of an entirely different, rival school of Mayavadi sannyasis.
