By the time Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's South India tour brought Him within reach of the Godavari river in around 1510, Ramananda Raya was already a man of real standing in the world. He held the post of governor at Vidyanagara, administering that province of the Gajapati kingdom on behalf of Maharaja Prataparudra — a position that came with genuine authority over revenue, justice and order along a stretch of the empire's territory near the river. Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita simply calls him "a responsible government officer" at Vidyanagara, and Srila Prabhupada's purport to that verse notes that Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura, in his Amrita-pravaha-bhashya commentary, identified this Vidyanagara with a town also called Porbandar on the Godavari — a different place from the better-known Porbandar in Gujarat, far to the west.
A Governor's Life #
Holding a post like this in the Gajapati kingdom meant more than paperwork. Ramananda Raya was responsible for a province that bordered rival powers to the south, and Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita later describes him travelling with the full retinue such a position required — horses, elephants, soldiers, and a large company of Vedic brahmanas who accompanied him even for ordinary religious observances like his visits to bathe in the river. When he later urged Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu to travel on to Puri without him, his stated reason was exactly this: that his own journey home would come with so many horses, elephants and soldiers, "all roaring tumultuously," that it was no fit company for the Lord's quiet pilgrimage. It is a small detail, but it says a great deal about the scale of the life Ramananda Raya was still living even after his transformation had begun.
A Reputation That Preceded Him #
What made this particular governor worth seeking out, in Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's eyes, had nothing to do with his office. Before the Lord ever set out for South India, Sarvabhauma Bhattacharya — the great scholar of Puri who had recently become Mahaprabhu's own follower — told Him plainly that there was a government officer on the Godavari whose understanding of the moods of Radha and Krishna's love had no equal among the devotees Sarvabhauma knew. Sarvabhauma urged the Lord not to let Ramananda Raya's worldly position put Him off: "Please do not neglect him, thinking he belongs to a shudra family engaged in materialistic activities... No other devotee can compare with him in knowledge of the divine sentiments." Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu took the recommendation seriously enough that He later said He had gone to that stretch of river for no other purpose than to meet him.
Poet, Dramatist and Scholar of Rasa #
Ramananda Raya's reputation as a rasika — a connoisseur of devotional mellows — rested on real accomplishment, not rumor. He was a Sanskrit poet and dramatist, the author of Jagannatha-vallabha-nataka, a play on Radha and Krishna's pastimes in Vrindavana that later became part of the repertoire performed and sung at the Jagannatha temple itself. He was also, by every account, a trained musician and a man deeply read in the literature of rasa — the branch of Vaishnava theology, still called rasa-shastra, that classifies and analyzes the different flavors of loving relationship a devotee can have with Krishna. This was Ramananda Raya's genuine field of expertise long before he had any reason to expect a young sannyasi would test it directly, in person, on the bank of a river he had come to visit for entirely ordinary religious reasons.
The Man Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu Went to Find #
It is worth pausing on how deliberately Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu sought this meeting out. He did not simply happen upon Ramananda Raya in the course of His South Indian travels; He went to the Godavari specifically because Sarvabhauma had told Him to, sat waiting at the riverbank for Ramananda Raya's party to arrive, and treated the meeting as important enough to mention afterward as the whole purpose of that leg of His journey. A governor with soldiers, elephants and a household of brahmana priests in his service was, on paper, about as unlikely a partner for a sannyasi's most private theological conversation as could be imagined. What happened when the two of them actually met is told in The Meeting on the Godavari.