Translations of Gitagovinda

[Srinivasan Pichumani]

Jakub wrote:

>>However I found it curious that GG is most popular in those
>>Eastern provinces and in Kerala  which is quite far away,
>>while it is not so popular in the regions in between (if I
>>am not mistaken).
 
I don't know how popular or not GG is in Andhra/Karnataka,
but it became popular in TN with the development of the 
bhajana paddhati and the nAma siddhAnta movement in the 
17th/18th centuries and later... the aShTapadis were set 
to Carnatic music and were transmitted down the musical
tradition... in this century, the aShTapadis, and their 
musical setting in SRGMPDN notation, have been printed 
by various people including the doyen Semmangudi Srinivasa 
Iyer. 
 
However, Jayadeva's aShTapadis did not become part of the 
dance tradition in TN as it happened with the art forms
of Kerala like aShTapadi-ATTam, Nangiar Koothu, Kathakali,
etc.  There, padams of the "abhinava Jayadeva" i.e. KShetrayya 
and others ruled and still rules supreme...  aShTapadis have 
become popular only in this century with the development of 
academies like Kalakshetra.  The famous danseuse and abhinaya 
exponent Bala, for example, never danced to aShTapadis.
 
As for the GG-Kerala connection, in another post to the list 
I had talked about Nirmala Paniker's book "Nangiar Koothu" 
which gives some details about the Natyamanorama text and 
talks about cultural links between Kerala and Orissa in the 
medieval period... she talks about historical records of 
Chaitanya's visit to Kerala in the early 1500s...  she also 
mentions a Krishna play in aShTapadi form composed by a 
scholarly Vaishnava Brahmin of Kancheepuram at the Zamorin's 
court in Calicut... he trained his disciples in presenting 
it as a dance, which was performed in the Kancheepuram temple 
(Varadaraja ?) as well as at GuruvAyUr.
 
-Srini.