Early History of the Vaishnava Faith and Movement in Bengal, from Sanskrit and Bengali Sources c11.s5.70

c11.s5.70

The Biruda-kāvya, called the *Govinda-birudāvali*, illustrates the extreme limits to which can be carried the inexhaustible talent for ingenious verbal devices of alliteration, rhyming and similar tricks of rhythmical repetition of syllables. But it also makes a clever attempt to evolve an extremely original series of rhythmic and alliterative prose forms (the interspersed verse in orthodox form and metre being negligible), which certainly demand a more exhaustive study than what is possible here. Viśvanātha, no doubt, defines the Biruda-kāvya as a poem of praise in honour of kings, composed in prose and verse,¹ but he does not consider its characteristics, nor are earlier discussion of the subject and illustrative specimens available for our enlightenment. The Bengal Vaiṣṇava Biruda Kāvya, also composed in a somewhat unique kind of prose and nominal verse (or sometimes in nominal prose and unique verse), but dedicated to prayer and praise of deities, perhaps represent an original trend of literary composition. The credit of elaborating it should go to Rūpa Gosvāmin, although Kavikarṇapūra has one Stotra in the Biruda-form in his *Ananda-vṛndāvana Campū* (xv. 220-256). Rūpa also composed a work called *Sāmānya-birudāvali-lakṣaṇa*,² in which he defines and illustrates nearly fifty varieties of the form, and from which Baladeva Vidyābhūṣaṇa quotes profusely in his commentary³ on the *Govinda-birudāvali*. Jīva wrote, in imitation, the *Gopāla-birudāvali*⁴ and inserted some Biruda-stotras in the last chapter of his *Gopāla-campū*; while Viśvanātha Cakravartin and Raghunandana Gosvāmin, in the 18th century, composed respectively the *Nikuñja-keli-birudāvali*⁵ and *Gaurāṅga-birudāvali*, which are highly ingenious imitations. In spite of these sectarian attempts, the form does not appear to have succeeded in obtaining popularity or currency, its elaborate artificiality probably standing in the way of general acceptance.