চৈতন্য সমসাময়িক বৈষ্ণব কবি যশোরাজ খান : একটি অন্বেষণ/ Chaitanya’s Contemporary Vaishnava Poet Yashoraj Khan : An Exploration

Abstract

Yashoraj Khan was a Hindu royal official in the court of the Muslim ruler of Gauda, Sultan Alauddin Husain Shah. Under the patronage of Husain Shah, he composed a poetic work titled ‘Srikrishna mangal’. Although this work is now lost, a single Vaishnava lyric by him has been preserved in Pitambar Das’s ‘Rasamanjari’, where it appears under the ‘Abhisar’ (love-journey) section, Yashoraj Khan was a resident of Srikhanda and was born into a Vaidya family. The Bhanita (signature line) of his preserved lyric contains a royal eulogy dedicated to Husain Shah. This lyric is considered to be the earliest example of a Brajabuli composition written in Bengal. From the presence of royal praise of Husain Shah in the poem, it can be inferred that the work was composed during his reign, that is, in the time contemporaneous with Chaitanya. Therefore, Yashoraj Khan can be regarded as a Vaishnava poet contemporary to Chaitanya. Although he was not widely recognized as a major poet within the Vaishnava Padavali tradition, his surviving lyric holds immense significance in understanding the broader landscape of Vaishnava literary practices of his time.