01Kenduli and Padmavati
Jayadeva names his village as Kindubilva. Odisha tradition places it at Kenduli Sasan near Puri; Bengal places it at Kenduli on the Ajay river in Birbhum, where a great mela is held each Makar Sankranti, and links him with the court of Lakshmana Sena. Both remember his wife Padmavati, a temple dancer, who danced as he sang. Bhakti tradition tells that when he could not bring himself to write the line where Krishna asks Radha to place her foot on his head, he went to bathe, and returned to find the line written in his own hand. Krishna had written it.
02Sung before Jagannath
The Gita Govinda has twelve sargas and twenty-four songs of eight couplets each, set to named ragas and talas. It opens with the Dashavatara hymn, ‘pralaya payodhi jale’, which ends each avatar’s verse with ‘jaya jagadisha hare’. A Gajapati inscription of 1499 CE in the Jagannath temple orders that only the Gita Govinda be sung before the deity, and the custom continues in the night offering. Two hymns of Jayadeva are included in the Guru Granth Sahib. Ashtapadis are sung in Kerala temples as sopana sangeetam and in bhajan sampradaya across the south.
