A History of the Mahrattas v1.c5.s4.37

v1.c5.s4.37

Two years before Rāmdās’ death in 1681, was born at Nazre, near Pandharpur, the famous Srīdhar, a Deshasth Brahman, who is perhaps the most popular of all Marāthā poets. ‘In every town and village in the Deccan and Konkan,’ writes Acworth, ‘especially during the rains, the pious Marāthā will be found enjoying with his family and friends the recitation of the Pōthi of Srīdhar, and enjoying it indeed. Except an occasional gentle laugh, or a sigh, or a tear, not a sound disturbs the rapt silence of the audience, unless when one of those passages of supreme pathos is reached, which affects the whole of the listeners simultaneously with an outburst of emotion which drowns the voice of the reader.’ Srīdhar’s chief poems are the Rāmā Vijaya and Harī Vijaya, composed in A.D. 1703; the Pāndava Pratāp in 1712, and the Shiva Līlāmrita completed in 1718. Acworth quotes on page xxviii of his introduction to The Ballads of the Marāthās certain observations of Srīdhar on the value of the Marāthī tongue, which ‘offer a good illustration of his pleasing style, the sweetness of his diction, picturesqueness of ideas and images, and multiplicity of metaphor and simile.’ Srīdhar’s influence is not directly religious, except in so far as the stories he reproduces have a religious character. He died in 1728, at the age of fifty.