VIDYĀPATI

(ca. 1352–ca. 1448)

Vidyāpati was a Brahman court poet serving the kings ofMithila, just west of modern Bengal, probably in the late 14th and early 15th centuries. His poetry, though written in the local dialect, displays a scholar’s knowledge of Sanskrit. Other facts of his biography are uncertain, though there are many traditions concerning his life. Most important, he wrote some of the most popular poems associated with the Vaishnava sect (those devoted to the worship of Vishnu as god), a group particularly devoted to Vishnu’s incarnation as Krishna. As such, he was involved in the widespread spiritual movement called bhakto (sharing [in god]) that characterized the Hindu religion of the 12th through 18th centuries, though some have questioned whether he was himself a bhakta poet-saint.According to tradition Vidyāpati was born in northeast Bihar in a village in Madhubani called Bisapi. A member of the Brahman caste, he would have studied Sanskrit as a youth.He is said to have received a commission from the Mathili king Kirti Simha to write a poem in praise of the king, and then to have become court poet under Kirti’s son Deva Simha. One legend says that when his king was captured by the mogul leaders of Delhi, Vidyāpati was able to obtain Simha’s release by winning over the mogul king through his poetry. There is, however, no real certainty to any of these biographical details.

Indeed there is no certainty as to Vidyāpati ’s authorship of the more than 500 love poems attributed to him and reputed to have been written between 1380 and 1406. Although Vaishnava poems conventionally include what is called a bhanitā or signature line, the question of authorship in these poems is complex. For one thing it was customary for devotees to assume a religious name, and it was not uncommon for many people to have the same religious name. Poets were futher inclined to adopt the name of an earlier, wellknown poet who may have inspired them as a tribute or as a means of lending authority to their own religious stance. Thus we cannot be sure that the same Vidyāpati wrote all the poems attributed to him. The matter is complicated by the fact that some poems attributed to Vidyāpati appear in other manuscript collections ascribed to someone named Sekhara.

The Vidyāpati poems, though, speak for themselves, whoever their author was. The poems show a familiarity with the tradition of Sanskrit court poetry of love, but focus chiefly on the myth of Krishna’s love affair with thegopī, or herdswoman, Rhādhā, which had become popular with the Bengal Vaishnava saints. The myth of their erotic love became a metaphor for the passionate desire existing between god and the human soul (represented by Rhādhā). The ending of one such poem might serve as an example of the desired unity between god and the soul:

water to fish,

life to the living—so you to me.

But tell me,

Madhava, beloved,

who are you?

Who are you really?

Vidyāpati says, they are one another.

(Dimock and Levertov 1965, 15)

■ Bhattacharya, Deben, trans.Love Songs of Vidyapati. Edited with notes and introduction by W. G. Archer. New York: Grove Press, 1970.

■ Dimock, Edward C., and Denise Levertov, ed. and trans.In Praise of Krishna. Garden City, N.Y.: Doubleday, 1967.