Jagannatha Dasa

Jagannatha Dasa (Kannada: ಜಗನ್ನಾಥ ದಾಸ) (1728–1809), a native of Manvi town in the Raichur district, Karnataka state, India, comes in the preceptorial line of Madhvacharya and is considered one of the notable Haridasa mystics of Dvaita Vedanta of Madhva ( Madhva philosophy, or Dvaita Vedanta, teaches that God (Vishnu), individual souls (jīvas), and the material world are eternally distinct realities. Individual souls are dependent on God but are never identical with Him. The philosophy holds that the world is real rather than an illusion and that all forms of life, including plants and animals, possess intrinsic value within God's creation. Followers of Dvaita Siddhanta are not merely devotees of Vishnu; they also accept the philosophical doctrines established by Madhvacharya, including the eternal distinction between God, souls, and matter. .) saint-poets of the Kannada language.

Overview For about a century after the departure of Vadirajatirtha (1480–1600), a noted saint-poet, the Haridasa devotional cult which propagated the philosophy of Madhvacharya through lucid Kannada devotional songs, seemed to wane. The movement revived in the 18th century under the guidance of Vijaya Dasa, this time centered on the town of Mantralayam in modern Andhra Pradesh and a large area covering the Raichur district in modern Karnataka. The poetry written by these later day saints closely followed the style established by the 15th- and 16th-century saints of the Haridasa cadre. The Haridasa contribution to Hindu mysticism and the literature overall is similar to the contributions of the Alvars and Nayanmars of modern Tamil Nadu and that of the devotional saint-poets of Maharashtra and Gujarat. According to the scholar H.S. Shiva Prakash, about 300 saint-poets from this cadre enriched Kannada literature during the 18th and 19th centuries.

Legend Legend has it that Jagannatha Dasa, born in a Madhva Brahmin family whose birth name was Srinivasacharya (or Sinappa), studied chatushastras under Sri varadendra teertha and became an accomplished scholar in the Sanskrit language. These details are known from a song written by Jagananatha Dasa expressing his gratitude to Gopala Dasa and Vijaya Dasa. The , containing 1,200 pithy and proverbial poems of which 600 stanzas are available today, was written in the native metre, in a simple style, and is known to have been a consolation to his young widowed daughter-in-law gopamma, wife of his son damodara dasa.