Gaudavaho

Author(s): Vakpatiraj, Narhari Govind Suru, P L Vaidya, A N Upadhye, H C Bhayani
Publisher: Prakrit Text Society Ahmedabad

Page 92

(Lxxv) VI. Vakpatiraja, as a Poet: Every poet is essentially a deep thinker. The impressions he collects and the experiences he gathers, as he moves about among the people roundabout or in the course of his excursions in urban and rural areas, through valleys, mountains, rivers, forests, villages etc. deeply affect his mind and sets him seriously thinking about who and what he is, his relations with things in Nature and with the Maker, if any, of this wonderful creation, comprising the heaven and the earth. Gifted with powers of deep thought, close observation, penetrating perception and high imagination, in addition to the schooling he gets in the prevalent systems of thought like the Sāmkhya, Mimāṁsā, Nyāya and the reading he does of the legendary literature and of the Mahābhārata, the Rāmāyana and the Purānās, he soon formulates his own philosophy, which serves as the plinth or the foundation, on which he builds the superstructure of his writings. It is in this sense that every poet is basically a philosopher at heart.
Believer as he is in polytheism, Vākpatirāja bows his head in reverence before all Divinities of the Paurānic pantheon, without preferences, although we find from his writings that he looks up to Vişnu, as the supreme God. His earlier work, the Mahumaha-Viaya, must have been in praise of Lord Vişnu, whom, also in his present Poem, the Gaūdavaho, he holds aloft above all other gods even including god Siva.44 Indra, the Sun 44.' In Gātha 812, the Poet humorously describes how God
Siva, overcome by the disaster of the Deluge, tries to escape in the silvery boat of the crescent moon, as it dropped down from His head!