Govinda dāsa

Srila Govinda Dasa Kaviraja, 1535 to 1613, is one of the best documented poets in this whole anthology and among the most celebrated names in the wider Vaishnava padavali tradition of Bengali devotional poetry on the Radha-Krishna legend. Initiated by Srila Srinivasa Acarya, one of the principal acaryas who carried the tradition forward after the six Gosvamis of Vrindavana, he was given the title Kaviraja, prince of poets, by Srila Jiva Gosvami himself, and is separately credited with two other works, Sangita-madhava and Gitamrta. The twenty-four songs gathered under his name here are almost entirely gaura-candrika, glorifying Sri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu's golden form and His appearance at Navadvipa, and they make this chapter the third-largest single-poet collection in the whole book, after those of Srila Narahari Dasa (fifty-seven songs) and Srila Vasudeva Ghosa (thirty).