KABI SAMRAT UPENDRA BHANJA
Born on the day of Sripanchami on 1670 at Kulada, Ghumusara, Popularly known as Kabi Samrat, or the emperor of poets, Bhanja is known for his gift for lyricim and ornamental use of words.
He has written several Kavyas including Baidehisha Vilas and Koti Brahmanda Sundari, Lavanyabati, Premasudhanidhi, Rasikaharabali, Subhadra-Parinya and Chitrakavya-Bondodhya. Even the titles suggest that most of Bhanja’s kavyas center around a most beautiful woman with love and marriage as the dominant themes.
Upendra Bhanja wrote in the last decade of seventeenth and the early decades of eighteenth century and championed a style of poetry called ‘Reeti’ in Sanskrit poetics. Though many poets in the seventeenth and eighteenth centaurs write in reeti style, Upendra Bhanja is decided by the greatest of them all.
He preferred his entire life to poetry rather than to ruling over a kingdom. He had a thorough training in Sanskrit classical literature and mastered Sanskrit Dictionaries such as Amar-Kosha, Trikanda Kosha and Medini-Kosha. He even wrote a dictionary Geetabhidhana for helping poets.