VIDY_PATI TH_KUR is one of the most renowned of the Vaishnava poets of Hindust_n. Before him there had been the great J_yadeva, with his G_t_ Govinda made in Sanskrit; and it is to this tradition Vidy_pati belongs, rather than to that of R_m_nanda, Kab_r, and Tul'si D_s, who sang of R_ma and S_t_. Vidy_pati's fame, though he also wrote in Sanskrit, depends upon the wreath of songs (pada) in which he describes the courtship of God and the Soul, under the names of Krishna and R_dh_. These were written in Maithil_, his mother-tongue, a dialect intermediate between Beng_l_ and Hind_, but nearer to the former. His position as a poet and maker of language is analogous to that of Dante in Italy and Chaucer in England. He did not disdain to use the folk-speech and folk-thought for the expression of the highest matters. Just as Dante was blamed by the classical scholars of Italy, so Vidy_pati was blamed by the pandits: he knew better, however, than they, and has well earned the title of Father of Beng_l_ literature. Little is known of Vidy_pati's life. Two other great Vaishnava poets, Chand_ D_s and Um_pati, were his contempories. His patron R_j_ Shivasimha R_pan_r_yana, when heir-apparent, gave the village of Bisap_ as a rent-free gift to the poet in the year 1400 A.D. (the original deed is extant). This shows that in 1400 the poet was already a man of distinction. His patron appears to have died in 1449, before which date the songs here translated must have been written. Further, there still exists a manuscript of the Bh_gavata Pur_na in the poet's handwriting, dated 1456. It is thus evident that he lived to a good age, for it is hardly likely that he was under twenty in the year 1400. The following is the legend of his death: Feeling his end approaching, he set out to die on the banks of Gang_. But remembering that she was the child of the faithful, he summoned her to himself: and the great river divided herself in three streams, spreading her waters as far as the very place where Vidy_pati sat. There and then he laid himself, it is said down and died. Where his funeral pyre was, sprang up a Shiva lingam, which exists to this day, as well as the marks of the flood. This place is near the town of B_zitpur, in the district of Darbhang_. Vidy_pati's Vaishnava padas are at once folk and cultivated artÑjust like the finest of the Pah_r_ paintings, where every episode of which he sings finds exquisite illustration. The poems are not, like many ballads, of unknown authorship and perhaps the work of many hands, but they are due to the folk in the sense that folk-life is glorified and popular thought is reflected. The songs as we have them are entirely the work of one supreme genius; but this genius did not stand alone, as that of modern poets mustÑon the contrary, its roots lay deep in the common life of fields and villages, and above all, in common faiths and superstitions. These were days when peasants yet spoke as elegantly as courtiers, and kings and cultivators shared one faith and a common view of lifeÑconditions where all things are possible to art. It is little wonder that Vidy_pati's influence on the literature of Eastern Hindust_n has been profound, and that his songs became the household poetry of Bengal and Behar. His poems were adopted and constantly sung by the great Hind_ lover, C_itanya, in the sixteenth century, and they have been adapted and handed down in many dialects, above all in Beng_l_, in the Vaishnava tradition, of which the last representative is Rabindran_th Tagore.