Five hundred years ago in the district of Puri, in the village of Bentapur adjacent to Brahmagiri Alalanatha, there lived a great devotee named Bhavananda Raya.
Bhavananda had five sons, the eldest of which was Ramananda. Descendants of this family-line are known as Choudhurya Pattanayaka. It is said that Lord Caitanya visited the birth-place of Ramananda in Alalanatha every year.
Ramananda was the Governor of East and West Godavari and a minister of King Prataparudra.
A great statesman of that period, Ramananda was also a poet and a scholar.
When Bhavananda met Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu, the Lord embraced him and said, “Formerly you appeared as Pandu, and your five sons appeared as the five Pandavas.”
The Gaura-ganodesa-dipika (120-124) states that Ramananda Raya was Arjuna in his past incarnation. He is also considered to have been an incarnation of the gopi Lalita, although in the opinion of others he was an incarnation of Visakha devi. He was a most confidential devotee of Lord Caitanya.
In Lord Caitanya’s final pastimes, both Ramananda Raya and Svarupa Damodara were always engaged in reciting suitable verses from Srimad Bhagavatam to pacify the Lord in His ecstatic feelings of separation from Krsna.
Sri Ramananda Raya left this world after the disappearance of Sri Caitanya Mahaprabhu.
Source: https://www.ramaiswami.com/sri-ramananda-raya-disappearance/
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