Jayadeva (c1170 ~ c1245 CE), the 12th century legendary Sanskrit poet, has been one of the greatest classical poets and singers of India. Like Kalidasa, his life is also shrouded in mystery and few authentic accounts are available about his life and work. Controversies about his ancestry and place of birth keep these details in the realm of speculation. Owing to the self-effacement philosophy of ancient India’s rishis, poets, singers, literary and scientific geniuses and unfortunate neglect of historiography, writing of biography and autobiography, Jayadeva’s life history went into oblivion and was sought to be re – constructed from bits of information available at various places and interpretation of sundry events.
It is a tragedy, rather a civilizational fault, that unlike the Greeks, ancient India did not bother to create formal schools, institutions and academies to bear the torch of this magnificent civilization and relied solely on the fragile Ashram and family based teaching system,thus losing many treasures and real history.
Our great poets and geniuses including Jayadeva were victims of this neglect. Controversies about Jayadeva’s place of birth and his sphere of literary and music activities have not died down even today, though slightly muted owing to new research by a number of historians and scholars, and recent discoveries of stone inscriptions and archeological remains. Three regions ~ Mithila, Bengal and Odisha ~ have claimed ownership of Jayadeva as son of their soil. Considerable confusion arose because of two reasons ~ existence of at least three poets and writers having the same name and the existence of three villages in three States named Kendu Bilwa, the supposed birthplace of Jayadeva.
The only biographical work appreciating Jayadeva’s genius, life and work I could come across, was the eminent linguist Suniti Kumar Chatterji’s seminal work Makers of Indian Literature ~ Jaya deva (Sahitya Academy, New Del hi, 1973). According to Chatterji, Jayadeva, the author of the Gita-Govinda is pre-eminent among Sanskrit poets and is acknow – ledged universally to be the writer of the sweetest lyrics in the Sanskrit language. His name comes spontaneously at the end as the last poet in an enumeration of the classic poets of Sanskrit ~ Asvaghosa, Bhasa, Kalidasa, Bhartrihari, Harsadeva, Bharavi, Bhavabhuti, Magha, Ksemendra, Somadeva, Bilhana, Sriharsa, Jayadeva. He is in fact the last of the classical poets of Sanskrit of pan-Indian celebrity, whose influence on the later poets and scholars all over India through his single work, the Gita-Govinda, is almost comparable to that of the great Kalidasa himself.
Chatterji adds, He thus stands at the yuga-sandhi, a confluence of two epochs, with a guiding hand for the new epoch that was coming. Jaya deva can truly be called the Last of the Ancients and the First of the Moderns in Indian Poetry. Apart from his exquisite interpretations with English translations of the ashtapadis and the songs contained in various chapters, Chatterji has, in this monograph, analysed at great length the controversy and the competing claims surrounding Jayadeva’s birthplace and the places of his sojourn and activities.
Although he has refrained from giving a final verdict with conclusive proof, his inclination to accept the Bengali narrative is not supported by historical evidence and has been disputed by many modern historians of Bengal and Odisha. Chatterji’s book kept the controversy alive. Mithila’s claim rested on two conjectures (a) Jayadeva was a Kanyakubja brahmin and since the Kanyakubja brahmins hailed from Kannauj and Mithila, he must have been born in Mithila and (b) there exists a village named Kenduli near Jhanjharpur in Mithila (now in Bihar). Mithila’s feeble claim is, however, not supported by any historical or archeological evidence.
While Bengal made a strong case for appropriating poet Jayadeva, it must be remembered that Jayadeva of Gita Govinda had never captured the Bengali consciousness until the advent of Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu who spearheaded the Bhakti Movement in the eastern part of the sub-continent creating a Vaishnava cult with thousands of followers. It is one of his Vaishnav followers, Banamali Das who wrote a book Jayadeva Charita in 1803, which was disseminated by Bengali historians. In an article published in the Asiatic Society of Bengal, M M Chakraborty has mentioned that Kenduli village in Birbhum district where a Baul mela is held every year was the birthplace of poet Jayadeva.
Moreover, the fact that another village adjacent to Kenduli was christened as Jaydev Kenduli and the annual Baul festival was renamed as ‘Jayadeva mela’, which became a place of tourist attraction, proves Jayadeva’s connection with Kenduli. In Gita Govinda, however, Jayadeva mentions his birthplace as Ken du bilva by the sea (Kendubilva Samudra Sambhava) in his 7th Ashtapadi, and Birbhum, unlike Puri, doesn’t have any sea around! It is also contended by many writers like Shrila Bhaktivinoda Thakur that the Bengal King Lakshman Sen was so delighted to hear the sweet lyrics of Gita Govinda that he followed Jayadeva to his hut and invited him to be the royal poet in the King’s Court. In the Ben gali dictionary published by Ashutosh Deb, it was mentioned that Jayadeva was the court poet of Raja Laksman Sen.
The Sikh Encyclo paedia, Mah an Kosh (1926), Kahn Singh Nabha (1926) writes that Jayadeva was born in Kendooli, Birbhum district, Bengal. Sahitya Academy’s The Encyclopaedia of Indian Literature says that Jayadeva, a Brahman of Bengal lived between 1201-1245 (?). Banamali Das’s book Jayadeva Charita, which forms the basis for Bengal’s claims, was written in 1803, almost five centuries after the death of the poet, when hardly any credible evidence existed in Bengal.
It is apparent that the book was composed without proper fact-checking and verification of historical and archeological evidences but basically on certain assumptions and folklore. The assumption that Jayadeva had been the royal poet in the court of Raja Laksman Sen and that he lived in Nabadwip has been proved wrong. Besides, Lakshman Sen ruled Bengal between 1178 and 1206 CE, that was just about a few years after the birth of the poet. Based on their research findings, Bengali scholars, Dr. Satyakam Sengupta and Dr. Asis Chakravarti have confirmed Jayadeva’s birthplace as Kendubilva in Prachi valley, very near Puri town of Odisha. Incidentally, the probability of another poet by the name of Jayadev thriving during the reign of Raja Laksman Sen in Kenduli village of Birbhum which produced a number of Vaishnava saints and Baul singers cannot be ruled out.
This speculation gets credence if one reads an article published in The Gaudiya Treasures of Bengal which mentions Jayadeva as Jaydev Goswami, a typical Bengali Vaishav name. However, forgetting the controversy, from a larger geo-political perspective, Bengal’s claim could be considered vindicated in the context that United Bengal during that period comprised large parts of Mithila (Bihar) and Odisha.
Incorporation of Gita Govinda in the rituals of Jagannath Man dir, live performances by his music and dance choir and practice of his own brand of Vaishnavism (Krishna consciousness) at the temple brought a cultural revolution in Puri, which soon spread to various parts of Odisha. It is Jaya deva who made the Puri Jagannath temple the nervecentre of Odissi art, culture and literature. In fact, the elegant Odissi dance form and the sonorous Odissi music owe their origin to Jayadeva’s Gita Govinda and had evolved with his live performances along with his dancer wife at the Jagannath Temple.
Discovery of an ancient stone idol of Jayadeva at Akhandaleswara temple, Prataparudrapura, inscriptions at the Lingaraja temple and more recently discovered Madhukeswara and Simhachala temples shed new light on Jayadeva’s early life. Inscriptions like Sadhupradhana Jayadeva carved by the contemporary Odisha king on the Lingaraja temple, Bhubaneswar say that Jayadeva had been a member of the teaching faculty of the school at Srikurmapataka. Inscriptions found in Akhandaleswara, Madhukeswara and Simhachala temples establish a linkage of Kurmapataka with Jayadeva’s career.
Relentless research by Odisha scholars and historians in recent years has unearthed new evidences which were hitherto unknown in Odisha. Discovery of Gita Govinda hand written in archaic Odia script on talpatra (palm leaves) by the medieval Odissi musician-poet, Gopalkrusna Pattanayaka, a few poems of Jayadeva hand written in old Odissi language, and the mention of Sasanbilva (Sasan by the seaside) do indicate Jayadeva’s close association with Odisha although his influence spread to Bengal, Andhra, Maharashtra and Kerala, especially in the dance forms of Kuchipudi, Bharatnatyam and Kathakali.
In Vaishnava Lilamruta, Madhaba Patnaik who lived in the sixteenth century clearly mentions that Jayadeva was born near Puri. Poets and writers in Assam, Andhra and Maharashtra have identified Jayadeva with Puri. A pioneer of the Bhakti movement, Guru Nanak Dev visited Puri and was so impressed with the songs of Gita Govinda that he included two hymns of Gita Govinda (in mixed Sanskrit and eastern Apabhramsa) in his Guru Granth Sahib.
Another fascinating saint of the Bhakti movement, Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, during his sojourn from Nabadwip to Jagannath temple three centuries later, did not forget to go to Kenduli Sasan to pay respect to Jayadeva at his birthplace. Sri Chaitanya had been an ardent admirer of Jayadeva, who had been the originator of the Krisna-Radha cult and the divine love songs became Mahaprabhu’s signature music during his Bhakti movement.
(The writer is a former Dy. Comptroller & Auditor General of India and a former Ombudsman of Reserve Bank of India. He is also a writer of several books and can be reached at brahmas@gmail.com)