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THE INDIAN ANTIQUARY.
AL LJULY 5, 1872.
9122
** The author of the Rasakallola, Din Krishna fruit of the literary instincts which the VaishDås, was a Vaishnava or quasi-religious idler at nava creed awakened in Orissa, as it did in all the great temple of Jagannath at Puri. He is other parts of Aryan India. ro popularly believed to be the son of the god. His is. We now turn to the poem itself. It consists mother was one of the ferriale devotees who live of 32 cantos (chhanda) varying in length from 50 in the temple, and are, theoretically, chaste and to 150 lines. I have not counted the whole virtuous. The lady in question, however, one fine poem, nor in fact have I as yet finished reading morning, was delivered of a son, to the great scan it all through, but from a cursory examination I dal of the highly virtuous, society. Being asked should estimate it to contain about four thousand how she came to do such a reprehensible thing, lines. The metres are generally very light and she related a long and somewhat confused story graceful, and the poem was intended, as most of to the effect that one niglit as she was worship- these poenis are to be súng. Indeed the Panping in the temple while all the others were dits strongly object to our English habit of asleep, the god himself descended from his shrine, reading poetry, and affirm that the full beauty of and honoured her with his society. The story so the metres cannot be appreciated unless they are effectually accounted for the birth of Din Krish- sung, i e..chanted through the nose ima dolorna, and so ingeniously removed all scandal from ous minor key to our years this lugubrious the sacred community, that it was eagerly taken whining, with the harsh voices which alt Oriyas up and bruited abroad. The boy was brought unfortunately possess, varied by an insane howl Cúp as Vaishnava, and, as far as the Pandits of and accompanied by the dulcet tom-tom and the the present day know, spent the whole of his un- harmonious penny-whistle of the country, is not eventfub life at Pari, composing poetry and on the whole pleasing or enjoyable. Still de dawdling about the courtyards and gateways of gustibus, &c. when read, the poem is certainly the temple. His date is ascertained approxi- very pretty, and trips as lightly off the tongue as mately by the fact that some verses of his in an Irish melody or a French chansonette. praise of the reigning sovereign Purushottam The first canto is in & métre called Rag Deb (A.D. 1478-1508) are still extant. These Gujari; and in reading poetry the final short Verses must have been written after that mon- a of Sanskrit words, which is usually dropped in arch's celebrated expedition to Conjeveram, and prose or in speaking, must invariably be prowe may therefore place Dinkrishna Das and his nounced. It sounds however like a very short o. poem, the Rasakallola, at the close of the fif- In this metre no account is taken of long or teenth century, that is a little less than four short syllables, each condonant with the vowel hundred years ago; three hundred years later attached to it is regarded as an instant or unit than Chand the earliest Hindi poet. Dinkrishna of the verse (mâtra), at the eighth instant there is contemporary with the first: Gujarati poet must be a cæsuca (jat)and after the cæsura Narsingh Mehta of Junagadh, with Nanak Shah five more instants, the whole verse (chasan) thie Panjabi reformer, with Kabir and Keshab thus consisting of thirteen instants, and the couDas of Hindustan, and with Vidyapati of Ben- plet (pada) of twenty-six. Thus in the two first gal. Most of these nuthors were followers of lines we must scan thus (I mark off each instant
thic Rew Vaishnava doétrines, and though Vish-1 by- and the cosura by U sinn, under his forum Tagannath, haid Tong been Kara sa | dhufa na mane mana Worshipped in Orissa, yet the restoration of his ku e ka nd o temple, and we'ynay suspect; his complete i iden- Káradhi | redhyâ ( nani 148 1 cha tifiektion with Vishnu as the supreme being, only a fnd 1 ye ka 1. * date from two hundred years earlier, if the an- This first canto opens with an invitation to all nalists of the province may be believed. There good men to meditate on Krishna whose praises is some doubt about the point, as many other are then set forth. He is declared to be the su
Dino signs seem to show that the ancient Siva wor- preme god, and even Siva and Brahma worship
in was prevalent in Origa till a much later date1 him. The last six lines invoke the protection in fact antil Chaitanya himself, by his yisit to the of the god on the poet and his poem. They run province, introduced his distinctive tenets, thus
the biuota -Be this as it may, and the subject is one Karuņa sagara sågaraja-nayaka, which cannot be entered into here, it Nevident Kara abhaya abhayabara-dâyaka ! hat in the poem before us we have the earliest Kashta-mahidhara mahidhara-kantaka
