Odia Books

Bhupati Pandit During the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries there was an outburst of poetical compositions dealing with the love of Krishna and Radha. These poetical works were genuine expressions of the devotional feelings of the Vaishnavites. Bhupati Pandit was a bhakta poet. His Prem-panchamrita is an outstanding ‘kavya’ dedicated to the portrayal of ‘rasalila’ of Radha and Krishna and to the exposition of the theological import of Vaishnavism. He classifies the Gopkanyas as Vedkanya, Devkanya, Munikanya and Gopkanya, and their number is estimated at sixty-four thousand. Apart from its thematic importance, the chief merit of the work lies in its use of simple, chaste and elegant Oriya idiom in the manner of the
Bhagavata, the classical work of the great saint poet Jagannath Das. Bhupati Pandit came from northern
India on a pilgrimage to Puri and met the king of Orissa, Sri Dibyasingh Dev. Dibyasingh Dev granted him
some land. This may be the reason why Bhupati Pandit preferred to stay in Orissa and settled in a place
called Rathipur, situated between the present Bhubaneswar and Jatani. Bhupati was initiated into
Vaishnavism by Chaitanya Das, a devout Vaishnava in the line of Gopibhava. Accordingly, Bhupati wrote
Prema-panchamrita highlighting the significance of Gopi worship and composed several ‘chautisa’ and
‘chaupadi’ lyrics. It appears that Prema-panchamirita was completed in 1699, the eighth year of the rule of
Raja Divyasingh Deva.

Gopkanya
Devkanya
Munikanya
Rasalila