Jayadeva

Jayadeva (also spelt Jayadev, Jaydeva or Jaideva) was a Sanskrit poet of Brahmin birth who lived in eastern India in the twelfth century. He is best known for the Gita Govinda, a poem about the love of Krishna and the gopi Radha that became central to the Bhakti movement. He is also regarded as one of the earliest musicians of Odissi music, and his name appears in many spellings in the sources.

Little is known about his life with certainty. The dates of his birth and death are uncertain, and so is his birthplace. The poem itself mentions a village called Kindubilva, which scholars have linked to several places in Odisha, Bengal and Bihar. Most Indian scholars place it near Puri, in Odisha. His parents were called Bhojadeva and Ramadevi. He studied Sanskrit poetry at Kurmapataka, possibly near Konark. Tradition says he wandered as a mendicant and that in Puri he married a dancer named Padmavati, although early commentators do not support this story.

The Gita Govinda describes Krishna's romance with Radha and presents Radha as greater than the god, an idea that shaped later devotional thought. In his poem Dasa-kriti-krite he popularised the idea of the ten avatars of Vishnu and the tribhangi pose of Krishna playing the flute. He is also credited with institutionalising the devadasi system in Odishan temples.

His legacy is wide. His work is sung in the nightly Badasinghara ritual at the Jagannath temple in Puri, and many manuscripts of his poem survive in Odisha. Two of his hymns were included in the Guru Granth Sahib, the holy book of Sikhism.