27 Facts About Vidyapati

Vidyapati was a devotee of Shiva, but wrote love songs and devotional Vaishnava songs.

Vidyapati had knowledge of, and composed works in Sanskrit, Prakrit, Apabhramsha and Maithili.

Vidyapati's influence was not just restricted to Maithili and Sanskrit literature but extended to other Eastern Indian literary traditions.

The language at the time of Vidyapati, the prakrit-derived late Abahattha, had just begun to transition into early versions of the Eastern language such as Maithili.

Vidyapati was born to a Maithil Brahmin family in the village of Bisapi in the present-day Madhubani district of the Mithila region of northern Bihar, India.

The name Vidyapati is derived from two Sanskrit words, vidya and pati.

Vidyapati was the son of Ganapati Thakkura, a Maithil Brahmin said to be a great devotee of Shiva.

Vidyapati was a priest in the court of Raya Ganesvara, the reigning chief of Tirhut.

Vidyapati was heavily associated with the Oiniwar dynasty of Mithila and worked in the courts of seven Kings and two Queens of this dynasty.

Vidyapati developed a close friendship with Devasimha's heir apparent Sivasimha and started focusing on love songs.

Vidyapati wrote some five hundred love songs, primarily between 1380 and 1406.

Vidyapati returned to serve Padmasimha and continue writing, primarily treatises on law and devotional manuals.

Vidyapati is recorded as having two wives, three sons and four daughters.

The independence of the kings Vidyapati worked for was often threatened by incursions by Muslim sultans.

Vidyapati seems to have only composed love songs between 1380 and 1406, though he kept writing until near his death in 1448.

Vidyapati seems to have ceased writing love songs after his patron and friend Sivasimha went missing in a battle and his court had to go into exile.

Vidyapati applied the tradition of Sanskrit love poetry to the "simple, musical, and direct" Maithili language.

Vidyapati drew from the beauty of his home in Madhubani, with its mango groves, rice fields, sugar cane, and lotus ponds.

Vidyapati's work did differ from his predecessor's in two ways.

Vidyapati's songs were independent from one another unlike the Gita Govinda, which comprises twelve cantos telling an overarching story of the couple's separation and reunion.

Vidyapati is particularly known for his songs of the love of Shiva and Parvati and prayers for Shiva as the supreme Brahman.

The earliest composition in Brajabuli, an artificial literary language popularized by Vidyapati, is ascribed to Ramananda Raya, the governor of Godavari province of the King of Odisha, Gajapati Prataprudra Dev.

Vidyapati recited his Brajabuli poems to Chaitanya Mahaprabhu, when he first met him on the bank of river Godavari at Rajahmundry, southern provincial capital of Kingdom of Odisha.

Vidyapati set the poet's Bhara Badara to his own tune.

Vidyapati has been kept alive in popular memory over the past six centuries; he is a household name in Mithila.

Vidyapati resolves that if his piety was pure, the river would come to him.

Vidyapati's works have been translated to several languages, including English.