Jagannath Das (Oriya)

Abstract

Jagannath Das, fifteenth-century poet-mystic, author of the Oriya Bhagabata, and disciple of major mystic Shri Chaitanya, is a household name in Orissa. Scholars tend to agree that Das was born in 1490 and died in 1550. Hagiographical biographies of him date from about a century after his death Commentators have seen Das’s relationship with Chaitanya as a mystical love based on Krishna-Radha love and on the repudiation of conventional marriage and worldly life. In India the relationship between guru and disciple has for centuries institutionalized a shared, almost familial, life for men. I present here the least controversial aspects of the legend.