Jagat

 (2)   Uddhava-sandeśa and Haṁsadūta are written in a genre fairly well-known throughout the Sanskrit world as dūta-kāvya , first made popular by the immortal Kālidāsa, whose Meghadūta (“The Cloud Messenger”) is the prototype of the genre. The dūta-kāvya is a type of khaṇḍa-kāvya , or shorter poetic work distinguished from the mahā-kāvya , which is divided into several sargas , each dominated by a different meter. [1] According to the writers on rhetoric, khaṇḍa-kāvyas deal with a single subject matter, either of the erotic ( madhura-rasa ) or religious ( śānta-rasa ) sentiment. Stotras are considered to be the religious khaṇḍa-kāvya and the Gosvāmīs and their followers wrote numerous works of this kind, such as Rūpa's Utkalikā-vallarī , Raghunātha's Vraja-vilāsa-stava and Vilāpa-kusumāñjalī , and Prabodhānanda's Rādhā-rasa-sudhānidhi , etc. Most of these stotras are characterized by the use of a variety of meters.   The erotic khaṇḍa-kāvya , however, is ...

Dating Haṁsadūta and Uddhava-sandeśa [1] Haṁsadūta and Uddhava-sandeśa are likely to be Rūpa Goswami's earliest written works. According to Sushil Kumar De, Rūpa wrote three works— Haṁsadūta , Uddhava-sandeśa , and Dānakeli-kaumudī —before meeting Śrī Caitanya Mahāprabhu at Rāmakeli in 1515. [2] His primary reason for making such a claim is that none of these have a dedication to Śrī Caitanya at their beginning, as is found in the greater number of Rūpa's writings. [3]   It should not be altogether surprising if this were the case, as Rūpa came from a South Indian brāhmaṇa family with a long history of Kṛṣṇa worship and Sanskrit scholarship. It also seems that the village of Rāmakeli, where he and his brothers resided, and its surroundings were something of a hotbed of literary Kṛṣṇaism. Two works written by contemporary residents of that district that likely predate the advent or floruit of Śrī Caitanya are the Haricarita of Caturbhuja, a Sanskrit text on the life...