Gopāla Campū

A campū is a literary composition mixing poetry and prose, displaying literary ornaments and various verse forms, often using words with double meaning. Śrila Jīva Gosvāmī has written Gopāla-campū describing the pastimes of Kṛṣṇa from his appearance until his return to Vraja. Though Kavikarṇapura has written Ananda-vṛndāvana Campū on the same topic, the unique feature of this campū is that the whole story has been arranged to lead to Kṛṣṇa’s final union in marriage to the gopīs.
The Gopala-campū narrates the pastimes as found in the Srimad Bhagavatham with the addition of rasa. Jīva Gosvāmī writes that it is a “work composed of the bliss of Radha and Krishna” and “those who desire to see Vraja and to attain Goloka will achieve that destination by this work.”
Śrila Jīva Gosvāmī’s use of words and grammar is often difficult. The text is taken from the Puri Das’ edition (1947). The numbering system is taken from that edition, though other editions have different numbering systems. The numbers in square brackets at the beginning of a line indicate a prose portion. The numbers between vertical lines at the end of a paragraph indicate a verse. Where whole verses are quoted in Sanskrit in the original work these have been reproduced with translations. Where a few words of a verse are quoted, only the translation is given, without quoting the Sanskrit, though the verse reference is given. Since the whole story is narrated by two young boys alternately, who often relate conversations between individuals which contain conversations within conversations, conventional use of quotation marks is awkward. For long sections where one person speaks or when one person speaks over several numbered sections colons are used to indicate the commencement of the speech. For short conversations within one numbered section conventional quotation marks are used.