with its meaning and is known as a very beautiful piece of poetry of the old times. The story according to Kirtan Sampraday is a little different. There was a conspiracy to convert Jagannath Pandit to Islam. Jagannath called to play chess with the emperor Shaha Jahan. He introduced him to his daughter and asked him to compose a poem on her beauty. As soon as he did this, the emperor said that since you are so enchanted with her beauty, you marry her. This indirectly meant conversion. The other option was simply to deny the Emperor's order and face death. Jagannath was smart and said that he will abide by the royal wish, however, the wedding would be in accordance to his family rituals. With this intelligent answer and his friends like Dara Shuko, he avoided conversion. The Emperor awarded him one village as wedding gift. However, later when Aurangzeb took over Sultant of Delhi, he gave his option to accept Islam or leave the court. Pandit Jagannath left Delhi and stayed in Varanasi in his final days with his wife Lavangi. Work Bhaminivilasa - a collection of miscellaneous verses composed on different occasions. "Rasa Gangadharam" (Alankara Sastram), Ganga Lahari, Five Vilasams The Bhāminī-vilāsa The Bhāminī-vilāsa is divided into four chapters, each called vilāsa, and containing about a hundred verses (in the manner of a śataka). Only two of them, namely the first and the last, have been published. Many of the verses are infused with personal touches serving as the poet's memoirs. The collection is named after the poet's first wife Bhamini whom he had lost at a very young age before he launched into his scholarly career. The number of verses per chapter varies between manuscripts: The first, anyokti-vilāsa, contains allegorical (anyokti) stanzas about life in general (nīti). It has 100 to 130 stanzas. The second, śṛṅgāra-vilāsa, contains love poems. It has 101 to 184 stanzas. The third, karuṇā-vilāsa, contains laments mourning the death of the beautiful lady (Bhāminī). The fourth, śānta-vilāsa, contains verses on renunciation (vairagya). It has 31 to 46 stanzas. Example verses From the Rasa-gaṅgādhara From the Bhāminī-vilāsa Devotional poems He composed five devotional poems, each of whose names contains the word laharī ("a large wave"): Amṛta-laharī, in praise of the river Yamunā, 10 stanzas long, Sudhā-laharī, in praise of Sūrya the sun god, 30 stanzas long, Gaṅgā-laharī, addressed to the river Gaṅgā, 53