Vidyapati Thakur

Vidyapati was born into a family of scholars and royal counsellors at Bisfi in Mithila and served several kings of the Oinwar dynasty, above all Raja Shivasimha, whose name and queen Lakhima Devi appear in the signature lines of many of his songs. He wrote learned works in Sanskrit, on law, on pilgrimage and on the conduct of kings, and a historical poem in Avahattha, but Mithila loves him for his songs in Maithili, the speech of its villages. His Radha-Krishna padas, full of longing and tender detail, travelled east to Bengal, where Shri Chaitanya Mahaprabhu is said to have loved them, and shaped the whole of Bengali Vaishnava song. He was also a devotee of Mahadev and of Bhagwati: his nacharis and maheshvani songs to Shiva and his songs to the Devi are sung in every Maithil home. Mithila keeps a famous katha that Mahadev, pleased with the poet, came to live with him as a servant named Ugna, and left when his secret was told; the Ugna Mahadev temple at Bhawanipur marks the account. Tradition says that at the end Vidyapati set out for the Ganga and the river came to meet him. Mithila calls him Maithil Kokil, the cuckoo of Mithila.