Jayadeva Goswami

Jayadeva was born in a village called Kenduli. Odisha places it at Kenduli Sasan near Puri, Bengal at Kenduli on the Ajay river in Birbhum, and both keep a festival in his name. His wife Padmavati was a temple dancer devoted to Shri Jagannath, and the Gita Govinda was made to be sung by him and danced by her.

The Gita Govinda is a Sanskrit poem in twelve sargas, built around twenty-four songs of eight stanzas each, the ashtapadis. It tells the separation and reunion of Radha and Shri Krishna in the groves on the Yamuna, and Jayadeva gives each song a raga and a tala. The first ashtapadi praises the ten avatars, and every stanza ends with the cry Jaya Jagadisha Hare. The Vaishnava tradition reads the love of Radha and Madhava as the soul's longing for Bhagwan.

A katha is told in Puri. Jayadeva could not bring himself to write the line in which Krishna asks Radha to place her foot on his head. He put down the leaf and went to bathe. When he returned the line was written: dehi pada pallavam udaram. Padmavati said he had come back early and written it himself. Jayadeva knew he had not.

The Gita Govinda is sung daily in the Jagannath temple. In Kerala it is sung at the steps of the sanctum in the Sopana style; Odissi dancers dance its songs; and two of Jayadeva's hymns are kept in the Guru Granth Sahib.