No Hindu god is closer to the soul of poetry than Krishna, and in North India no
poet ever sang of Krishna more famously than S=urdD=as-or S=ur, for short. He
lived in the sixteenth century and became so influential that for centuries
afterward aspiring Krishna poets signed their compositions orally with his name.
This book takes us back to the source, offering a selection of S=urd=as's poems
that were known and sung in the sixteenth century itself. Here we have poems of
war, poems to the great rivers, poems of wit and rage, poems where the poet
spills out his disappointments. Most of all, though,