("Sur Ocean") Surdas, a northern Indian poet-saint, is credited with a corpus of poetry in the Braj Bhasha language known as the Sursagar.
The Sursagar is traditionally split into twelve sections to
reflect the organization of the Bhagavata Purana, which is the most significant
Sanskrit source for Krishna mythology.
Surdas was a Krishna devotee (bhakta), and this arrangement
gives vernacular religious poetry the glitter of an official Sanskrit book.
The Sursagar is most usually connected with verses painting
personal and adoring portraits of Krishna's boyhood, much as the Bhagavata
Purana lavishly portrays Krishna's juvenile escapades.
Although Surdas' poetry is attributed to him in Sursagar
publications, the most of it is undoubtedly pseudonymous.
Surdas's poetry has at best a few hundred verses in the
earliest manuscripts, and the corpus nearly increases every century, reaching
the five thousand poems in the current Sursagar.
The tone of the early poems is also markedly different in
terms of topic content.
Although they feature Krishna's boyhood, the poet's
sufferings of separation (viraha) from Krishna or complaint (vinaya) about his
spiritual woes are expressed in a significantly bigger percentage.
Even the oldest manuscripts indicate no common body of
poetry, and it is probable that the "Surdas" literary tradition was
derived from the songs of roaming singers from the beginning, a description
that fits well with the poet's persona.
For further detail, read John Stratton Hawley's Krishna: The
Butter Thief (1983) and Surdas: Poet, Singer, Saint (1984); also check John
Stratton Hawley and Mark Juergensmeyer's Songs of the Saints of India (1988).
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