JAYADE'VA, a celebrated Hindu poet. We possess hardly noy particulars respecting the circumstances of his life. It appears from a passage in his poems that he was born at Kenduli, hut the position of this town is very doubtful. Some commentators place it in Kalioga, others in Burdwan ; but according to the popular tradition of the Vaishnavas, it was situate near the Ganges. (Wilson, in' As.
xvi. 52.) If the verve at the end of the Cita (local& ' is genuine, the name of Jayadeva's father was Bhojadeva, and that of his mother Ratuadevt. According to Sir William Jones, Jayadeva lived before Calidfisa (` As. Res.,' iii. 183); but this is exceedingly improbable, both from the artificial construction of the verse and the whole tenor of the poem. Professor Wilson places Jayadeva in the 15th century of the Christian era As. Res.,' xvi. 37); but Lassen, with greater pro bability, supposes that he lived in the middle of the 12th century. (' Prolegomena' to the ' Cita Govinda,' pp. iv. v,) The only poem by Jayadeva which is extant is entitled Cita Govinda; that is, ' the poem in honour of Goviudn,' one of the names of Krishna, the eighth ' avatar,' or incarnation, of Vishnu. The poem is a kind of pastoral drama, in which the loves of Krishna and Radha are described in a glowing and voluptuous manner. This poem has
always been greatly admired among the Ilindoos; and the majority of Hindoo commentators contend that it is not to be understood in a literal, but in a figurative and allegorical, sense, and that the loves of. Krishna aud Redha describe the "reciprocal attraction between the divine goodness and the human soul." Among the Enropeans, Sir William Jones and Colebrooke admit this allegorical mode of inter pretation (' As. Res.,' 183; x. 419); but we are inclined to believe that tho ' Otte Govinda,' like the poems of Hale, is in reality what it professes to be, merely an amatory poem; and that the allegorical modo of interpretation Is the Invention of commentators and scholiasts. The eluestion has been very ably discussed by Lateen in his ' Prolegomena.
An English translation of the 'Oita Giovindn' was published by Sir William Jones in the third volume of the ' Asiatic Researches.' The original text was printed very inaccurately at Calcutta in 1808. A new and very accurate edition, with notes and a Latin translation, edited by Lassen, was published at Bonn, 1836.