The Gita Govinda names its own author only once, and only in a puzzling way: a poet from a village called "Kindubilva." Eight hundred years later, that one word is still at the center of a real dispute between two regions of India, and it has not been settled.
Two Villages, One Name #
West Bengal's claim rests on Kenduli village in the Birbhum district, on the banks of the Ajaya river. Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita follows this view in Srila Prabhupada's purport. The purport names Jayadeva's birthplace as Birbhum and his parents as Bhojadeva and Vamadevi. The Gaudiya Vaishnava Abhidhana adds a devotional detail. It says that Jayadeva found his Radha-Madhava Deities in the waters of the Ajaya itself, and that he used to rest and worship at a nearby Shiva temple called Kusheshwar.
Odisha's claim rests on Kenduli Sasan, a village near Puri, and it is not a weak one. Temple inscriptions at the Lingaraja, Madhukeswara, and Simhachala temples were read and published by the scholar Satyanarayana Rajguru. They describe a Jayadeva who taught, and may have studied, at a school in nearby Kurmapataka. The Odisha State Museum in Bhubaneswar alone holds around two hundred and ten Gita Govinda manuscripts, more than anywhere else in India. They come in forms from ordinary palm leaf to ivory, bamboo, and paper. Some are shaped like a fish or a garland for easy carrying. The earliest known commentary on the poem was written in Odisha, around 1190, only a few decades after the poem itself. Also, Odisha's Jagannatha temple has sung the Gita Govinda every night, with no recorded break, since a time that tradition places within Jayadeva's own lifetime.
Serious scholars on both sides have argued their case for well over a century, and the question is still open. Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition, and Srila Prabhupada's purport to Sri Chaitanya-charitamrita, follow the Bengal telling, because it connects most directly to the sampradaya's own history. But the Odisha claim rests on real evidence of its own. It deserves to be remembered as an open question, not dismissed.
A Life Near the Royal Court #
Whichever village he was born in, Jayadeva lived during the reign of Maharaja Lakshmana Sena of Bengal. For a long stretch of his life he lived in Nabadwip, then Bengal's capital, not far from the royal palace. Later Gaudiya Vaishnava tradition, drawing on Srila Bhaktivinoda Thakura's Navadvipa-dhama-mahatmya, tells how the two men came to know each other. Lakshmana Sena's court scholar, Govardhan Acharya, heard the Dasavatara-stotra and told the king who had written it. This hymn to Krishna's ten incarnations opens with pralayo payodhi jale. It is the same hymn that this temple's own song collection still preserves as Pralaya Payodhi Jale. The king was curious, so he visited Jayadeva's house disguised as an ordinary visitor. He could see from Jayadeva's manner that he was a truly realized soul, and he invited him to live in the palace.
Sources also disagree about how close this royal connection really was. One account describes Jayadeva as Lakshmana Sena's actual court poet. Another source, independent of the first, is the preface to an old Calcutta edition of the Gita Govinda. This preface ties Jayadeva instead to "the king of Orissa's" court. It notes only that a courtier of Lakshmana Sena's named Shridhar Das included several of Jayadeva's verses in his own collection of poems, the Sad-ukti-karnamrta. Both accounts agree that Jayadeva and Lakshmana Sena's court belonged to the same time. They disagree on how official the connection was.
Turning Away From the Palace #
Jayadeva was already living a renounced life, and he had no wish to move into royal comfort. According to Gaudiya tradition, he asked instead to be allowed to live at Jagannatha Puri. Lakshmana Sena was disappointed but respectful. As a middle way, he offered Jayadeva a cottage in the nearby village of Champaka-hatta, known today as Champahati. The king said it was a place suited to a life of meditation, and he promised never to disturb Jayadeva there again. Tradition says that it was at Champahati that Jayadeva received a vision. First he saw Radha-Madhava, and then Their combined form as the golden, champa-flower-colored Gauranga Mahaprabhu. This vision foretold Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's own appearance there centuries later. In this same vision, tradition holds, Jayadeva was told to go on to Jagannatha Puri, where he would later write his masterpiece. The next page tells this story in full, and it can be read alongside the story of his marriage to Padmavati.
