In 1514, Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu passed through Gauda on His way toward Vrindavana, traveling with a large group of followers. Sanatana and Rupa, still serving at the Bengal court under their Muslim titles of Sakara Mallika and Dabira Khasa, had already heard of Him and secretly longed to receive His association, but their position made an open approach dangerous. According to Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita, the King himself asked Dabira Khasa - Rupa - what he made of this wandering preacher's growing influence, and Rupa answered carefully, telling the Sultan that whatever conviction arose in his own mind about Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's identity should be trusted as evidence enough. Satisfied, the King himself declared, "I consider Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu to be the Supreme Personality of Godhead. There is no doubt about it." That exchange settled something in both brothers, and that same night the two of them decided to go see the Lord in person, incognito.
In the Dead of Night #
Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita describes what followed in vivid detail: "Thus in the dead of night the two brothers, Dabira Khasa and Sakara Mallika, went to see Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu incognito. First they met Nityananda Prabhu and Haridasa Thakura," who in turn told the Lord that two men named Rupa and Sanatana - names apparently already known to Him by reputation - had come. In a striking display of humility, the two brothers approached with straw held between their teeth, a traditional gesture of deep humility, bound cloths around their necks, and fell before the Lord "like rods." Overwhelmed, Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu asked them to rise, but they got up only to prostrate themselves again, offering an extended prayer describing themselves as more sinful than the notorious brothers Jagai and Madhai, whose deliverance by the Lord was already well known: "We two are millions and millions of times inferior to Jagai and Madhai. We are more degraded, fallen and sinful than they." It was in reply to this outpouring that the Lord addressed them each by their court names one last time - "My dear Dabira Khasa, you two brothers are My old servants... My dear Sakara Mallika, from this day your names will be changed to Srila Rupa and Srila Sanatana" - and told them plainly to abandon their humility, "for My heart is breaking to see you so humble."
Turning the Lord Back from Vrindavana #
That same night, or shortly after, Sanatana offered Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu a piece of practical advice that shows the same sharp practical sense he had brought to his years at court. Learning that the Lord intended to continue on to Vrindavana followed by the hundreds and, by some accounts, thousands of devotees then traveling with Him, Sanatana pointed out that this was no fitting way to make a pilgrimage - too visible, too large a company to move safely or humbly through territory that remained, after all, under Muslim rule. Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita records the Lord privately weighing this advice that same night and, persuaded, turning back after going only a short distance further, as far as a place called Kanair Natshala, rather than pressing on toward Vrindavana as originally planned. It is a small moment, easy to pass over, but it shows something essential about how Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu related to Sanatana from their very first conversation onward - not simply as a devotee to be instructed, but as a mind whose judgment, honed by years of real administrative responsibility, He was willing to trust and act on.
What the Meeting Set in Motion #
The Ramakeli meeting did not end the brothers' troubles with the Bengal court. Rupa was able to resign his post relatively soon afterward and begin making his way toward the Lord, but Sanatana's request to resign was refused outright by Hussain Shah, who was unwilling to lose so capable a minister. What began that night at Ramakeli as a secret meeting of the heart therefore had to be followed, for Sanatana, by a much harder and more dangerous road - told in full in Imprisonment and Escape - before he could actually join the Lord he had just met. The names Rupa and Sanatana, given in that single night, are the names by which the tradition has known the two brothers ever since; their former court titles survive only as a detail of history, preserved mainly to explain how two Sanskrit scholars came to be addressed, for a time, by Muslim titles at all.