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Arjuna Das he was an early medieval poet. Nothing is known about his parentage or the place of his birth. His pious attachment to Lord Jagannath and the lively descriptions in his works, of the details of daily worship and important Yatras (ritualistic festivals) of the Lord lead to the surmise that he lived in Puri. His time is likewise uncertain. However, his ideas of pre-Chaitanya Jnanamisra Bhakti and his language including the obsolete words used by him as well as the profuse references to his lines in the works of poets posterior to him are fairly sufficient evidence to place him around 1450-1525.

Of the two Kavyas of Arjuna Das discovered so far, Ramabibaha (literally, the marriage of Rama,
published in 1931) is doubtless the earlier one. A kavya of twelve cantos its theme has been taken from the Ramayana ending with the return of king Dasaratha’s party to Ayodhya after the marriage. The style is puranic. There is otherwise little poetic excellence, nevertheless in Ramabibaha he carves out a canto-based Kavya form followed by his successors afterwards.

In his other Kavya, Kalpalata (literally, the creeper fulfilling all desires, published in 1961) so named after its Nayika (heroine), Arjuna Das writes on an original love theme, detatched from the Puranas, the epics and religion, with fictitious characters on the model of the traditional Sringara (erotic) Kavyas in Sanskrit. In course of treatment he divides it into thirteen cantos with guidance as to Raja (metre) and/or Vani (tune of an earlier popular song). His concept of this erotic Akhyayika Kavya (verse-tale) has become, as it were, to his medieval successors in matter of form and content, of technique and development, a finished model to be copied with marginal variations only.

Arjuna Das was thus a pioneer poet who assimilated into odia Akhyayika Kavya literature the structual peculiarities of the Sanskrit Mahakavya with a view to producing Sringara Rasa (erotic relish). Although so astoundingly original, he was too simple and unsophisticated in language as well as presentation, so that both his works had the indigenous Puranic touch but lacked the characteristic excellence of the courtly Sanskrit Kavyas. BIBLIOGRAPHY: Artaballabh Mahanti: Ramabibaha (Introduction); Kedaranatha Mahapatra, Kalplata (Introduction); Nilmani Misra, Kalpalata O Kabi Arjuna Dasa., The Nabajibana – Vol. III No. 6; Surendra Mahanti, Odia Sahityara Madhyaparba.

Sringara Rasa
Akhyayika Kavya
Kalpalata