: Lalit Madhav of Rupa Goswami

Language: Sanskrit
Pages: 306





INTRODUCTION

It gives me a great pleasure in placing in the hands of Sanskrit readers and scholars, this edition of Lalita Madhava Nataka of Rupa Gosvamin along with the old commentary of Narayana, for the first time critically edited with the help of four manuscripts-two manuscripts with the commentary of Narayana, obtained from Bhandarkar Oriental Research Institute, Poona and two manuscripts obtained from Vikram Jyoti Prakashana, Calcutta.

Rupa Gosvamin - The Author

Rupa Gosvamin was a scion of the Gosvamin-Iine and was a poet and rhetorician of high order. The previous history of the family of Rupa and Sanatana Gosvamin is given by Sri Jiva Gosvamin as below :- There was a prince of Karnataka, named Sarvajna Jagadguru of the Bharadvaja Gotra. His son Aniruddha was also a renowned prince. Of Aniruddha’s two sons Rupesvara and Harihara, by his two wives, the first became an accomplished scholar, but the second took to evil ways and turned out his elder brother from his principality. Rupesvara, who had somewhere in the east, a son, named Padmanabha, who settled down on the banks of the Ganges at Navahatta Grama performed a sacrifice (Yajna). He had five sons, of whom Mukunda was the youngest. On account of a quarrel with his relatives Mukunda left Navahatta Grama and went to Fateyabad. Mukunda had a son named Srikumara. Srikumara appears to have three sons- Amara, Santosa and Vallabha, to whom Lord Chaitanya Deva gave the names of Sanatana, Rilpa and Anupama respectively.

The eldest Sanatana appears to have learnt Sanskrit from Ratnakara Vidyavachaspati, a scholar of Navadvipa. He became a high official at the Mohammadan Court of Hussain Shah of Gauda and settled with his brothers at the village