Vidyāpati: Bangīya padābali songs of the love of Rādhā and Krishna

Vidyāpati: Bangīya padābali; songs of the love of Rādhā and Krishna

VIDYPATI THKUR is one of the most renowned of the Vaishnava poets of Hindustn. Before him there had been the great Jyadeva, with his Gt Govinda made in Sanskrit; and it is to this tradition Vidypati belongs, rather than to that of Rmnanda, Kabr, and Tul'si Ds, who sang of Rma and St. Vidypati's fame, though he also wrote in Sanskrit, depends upon the wreath of songs (pada) in which he describes the courtship of God and the Soul, under the names of Krishna and Rdh. These were written in Maithil, his mother-tongue, a dialect intermediate between Bengl and Hind, but nearer to the former. His position as a poet and maker of language is analogous to that of Dante in Italy and Chaucer in England. He did not disdain to use the folk-speech and folk-thought for the expression of the highest matters. Just as Dante was blamed by the classical scholars of Italy, so Vidypati was blamed by the pandits: he knew better, however, than they, and has well earned the title of Father of Bengl literature. Little is known of Vidypati's life[1]. Two other great Vaishnava poets, Chand Ds and Umpati, were his contempories. His patron Rj Shivasimha Rpanryana, when heir-apparent, gave the village of Bisap as a rent-free gift to the poet in the year 1400 A.D. (the original deed is extant). This shows that in 1400 the poet was already a man of distinction. His patron appears to have died in 1449, before which date the songs here translated must have been written. Further, there still exists a manuscript of the Bhgavata Purna in the poet's handwriting, dated 1456. It is thus evident that he lived to a good age, for it is hardly likely that he was under twenty in the year 1400. The following is the legend of his death: Feeling his end approaching, he set out to die on the banks of Gang. But remembering that she was the child of the faithful, he summoned her to himself: and the great river divided herself in three streams, spreading her waters as far as the very place where Vidypati sat. There and then he laid himself, it is said down and died. Where his funeral pyre was, sprang up a Shiva lingam, which exists to this day, as well as the marks of the flood. This place is near the town of Bzitpur, in the district of Darbhang. Vidypati's Vaishnava padas are at once folk and cultivated artjust like the finest of the Pahr paintings, where every episode of which he sings finds exquisite illustration. The poems are not, like many ballads, of unknown authorship and perhaps the work of many hands, but they are due to the folk in the sense that folk-life is glorified and popular thought is reflected. The songs as we have them are entirely the work of one supreme genius; but this genius did not stand alone, as that of modern poets muston the contrary, its roots lay deep in the common life of fields and villages, and above all, in common faiths and superstitions. These were days when peasants yet spoke as elegantly as courtiers, and kings and cultivators shared one faith and a common view of lifeconditions where all things are possible to art. ......Buy Now (To Read More)

Product details

Ebook Number: 38174
Author: Vidyāpati Thākura, active 15th century
Release Date: Nov 30, 2011
Format: eBook
Language: English

Contributors

Translator: Coomaraswamy, Ananda K. (Ananda Kentish), 1877-1947