Vidyapati

Vidyapati (c. 1352-1448) was a poet, playwright, biographer, legal theorist and court priest who wrote in both Sanskrit and Maithili, the language of the Mithila region in northern Bihar, India. He lived at a time when Prakrit-derived forms were giving way to the early Eastern Indo-Aryan languages, and his role in shaping Maithili is often compared to that of Dante in Italy or Chaucer in England.

He was born in the village of Bisapī, today Bisfi, into a Maithil Brahmin family. His name means roughly "master of knowledge." He served as a priest and adviser at the court of the Oiniwar rulers of Tirhut for decades, beginning with a long verse praise-poem, the Kīrttilatā, commissioned by his first patron. Later he became close to King Sivasimha, whom he was reportedly called "the new Jayadeva" in a royal grant. When the court went into exile after Sivasimha vanished in battle in 1406, Vidyapati went with it, and in later life he returned to his village.

His output ranged across Sanskrit, Prakrit, Apabhramsha and Maithili. He wrote legal treatises, devotional manuals and prose stories, but he is best remembered for some five hundred love songs about Radha and Krishna in Maithili. He took the Sanskrit tradition of erotic poetry and fitted it to a plain, musical vernacular, drawing images from the landscape of his home. These songs were both love poetry and acts of worship, and many refer to the court itself. Late in life he also wrote hymns to Shiva, to whom he was especially devoted, as well as to Durga, Vishnu and Ganga.

His legacy was broad. His songs spread beyond the court and became a model for Brajabuli, an artificial literary language that reached Bengal and Odisha, where Vaishnav poets such as Chandidas and Ramananda Raya adopted it. He remains a central figure in the poetic tradition of Mithila.