Beyond Bhajahu Re Mana, Govinda Dasa Kaviraja is credited with two named collections, Sangita-Madhava and Gitamrta, and with a larger group of single padas that later collectors gathered under his name. Together these works place him in one clear literary movement, the Vaishnava padavali tradition. For centuries Bengal produced a great wealth of devotional lyric poems built around the love story of Radha and Krishna. This poetry grew most richly in the two centuries after Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's own life. Historians of this poetry regularly name Govinda Dasa Kaviraja among its finest poets, together with Chandidasa, Jnanadasa Thakura, and the Maithili poet Vidyapati. Vidyapati's work came before the whole movement and strongly shaped it. These four poets are sometimes each linked with one main theme. Vidyapati is remembered for lyrics of separation, Chandidasa for love and union, and Jnanadasa for tender affection. Govinda Dasa Kaviraja is remembered above all for the lovers' secret meetings themselves, and the anxious feelings that surround them.
Writing in Vidyapati's Shadow #
Govinda Dasa Kaviraja composed mostly in Brajabuli. This was an artificial, courtly literary language that blended Bengali and Maithili. Vidyapati had made it popular among Vaishnava poets more than a century before him. Govinda Dasa is sometimes called Bengal's "second Vidyapati" because his verse took in that inheritance so fully. Some accounts hold that he traveled all the way to Bishphi, Vidyapati's own home village in the Madhubani region, to study and collect his work directly. Still, what he made from that inheritance was his own. Vidyapati's poetry dwells on separation, and Chandidasa's on union. But Govinda Dasa Kaviraja's padas are especially linked with the anxious, unsettled moments of the lovers' secret meetings, above all Radha's uneasiness at Krishna's restless, wandering ways. His influence lasted even longer than the padavali tradition itself. Centuries later, Rabindranath Tagore drew on this same Brajabuli style of Vaishnava padavali poetry, including Govinda Dasa Kaviraja's poems, when he composed his own early collection Bhanusimher Padavali.
Not Every "Govinda Dasa" Is This One #
There is a real difficulty in the old manuscripts of the padavali tradition. Several poets of this time signed their songs in the bhanita line with the name "Govinda Dasa" or a name close to it. Later compilers have not always agreed on which songs belong to which poet. The collection of devotional songs here shows the same difficulty openly, instead of hiding it. It keeps the songs that can be surely identified as Govinda Dasa Kaviraja's, Bhajahu Re Mana among them, as a small, separate set. A much larger group of songs about Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's own pastimes also carries a "Govinda Dasa" signature. But judging from their content, these songs seem to belong to a different poet with the same or a very similar name. Readers should also keep him separate from Krishnadasa Kaviraja Goswami, the author of Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita, and from Govinda Ghosh. Govinda Ghosh was one of the Ghosh brothers, hereditary kirtan singers who were personal associates of Chaitanya Mahaprabhu. These are three different men with three different bodies of work. Only variations of one common name join them.
A Song Still Sung #
Some things remain uncertain about which padas belong to him. But there is no serious doubt that Govinda Dasa Kaviraja wrote Bhajahu Re Mana. Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita names him directly. The song carries his own bhanita signature. And Srila Prabhupada treated the matter as settled when he gave purports on it in both 1967 and 1972 (see The Song That Reached Jiva Goswami). Four centuries ago, a household of Srikhanda poets sent a song to Vrindavana and received a title in return. Today, when Gaudiya Vaishnavas everywhere speak the name Govinda Dasa Kaviraja, that song is what they mean.
