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Nartanam - Vol IX No. 3

A Quarterly Journal of Indian Dance - Volume IX - Number 3 - July to September 2009

There was the efflorescence of great literature and culture in the wake of the Sankardeva movement. Sankardeva and Madhavadeva themselves composed a good number of songs, dramas, verse narratives and other types of literature, wherein they expounded and elaborated the teaching of the faith they sought to propagate. A host of poets, writers and scholars like Ananta Kandali, Rama Saraswati, Vaikunthanatha Kaviratna, Sridhara Kandali, Gopaladeva of Bhavanipur, Ramacarana Thakur, Daityari Thakur, Gopalacarana Dvija, flocked under the banner of bhakti and formed into a vigorous literary movement. It was the age of one ideal, that of bhakti; of one God, Visnu-Krisna; of one book, the Bhagavata-Purana. All other types of matter, almost invariably taken from some Vaishnavite text were brought under the dictates of the Bhagavata-Purana. The Vaishnava writer’s adherence to the sanction of scriptural authority amounted to a limitation upon their creative ability and a curb upon their poetic genius. Non the-less, the literary output of Sankardeva and Madhavadeva alone is considerable and is characterized by a rare power of rendering the spirit of the original in unimpaired beauty and by occasional, original flights of creative imagination. Their literary works acted as the chief machinery of propaganda of faith and afforded both enlightenment and pleasure to the people.

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