Jagat

I have probably posted these verses somewhere before, but I don't know where, so I am just giving them again. These verses are found in Padyāvali , but the fact that most of them can be found in  Sad-ukti-karṇāmṛtam  shows that they date back to at least the 12th century. aṅgulyā kaḥ kavāṭaṁ praharati kuṭile mādhavaḥ kiṁ vasanto no cakrī kiṁ kulālo na hi dharaṇidharaḥ kiṁ dvijihvaḥ phaṇīndraḥ nāhaṁ ghorāhi-mardī kim asi khaga-patir no hariḥ kiṁ kapīśo rādhā-vāṇībhir itthaṁ prahasita-vadanaḥ pātu vaś cakra-pāṇiḥ "Who's knocking on the door?" "Don't be cunning, it's Madhava." "The spring?" "No, Chakri." "What, a potter? What do I need with a potter?" "No, it's Giridhari." "What, a two-tongued snake?" "No I am not a snake. I am the destroyer of the terrible snakes." "Then you must be Garuda, the eagle." "No I am Hari." "A monkey, then?" May Krishna...

The Gopāla-vijaya by Devakinandan Singh Kavishekhar is an interesting work for several reasons, but mostly because it seems to represent a response to Radha Krishna and the Bhāgavatam in Bengal which is roughly contemporary to Chaitanya Mahaprabhu without necessarily being directly influenced by him. As is often the case, we have sparse historical information that can reliably pinpoint the author’s dates. So, Durgesh Bandyopadhyaya, the editor of this fine critical edition (Shanti Niketan: Vishwa Bharati, 1966) goes through an extensive discussion of the author’s dates without giving sufficient weight to the one piece of hard evidence: Devakinandan Singh, known for his literary skills as Kavishekhar, worked in the courts of both Hussein Shah (1493-1519) and Nusrat Shah (1519-1533). This makes him an exact contemporary of Chaitanya and a neighbor of Rupa and Sanatan at about the time that they leave for Vrindavan. But since he is not named as an associate of Chaitanya, we must co...