Purushottama Dasa

Purushottama Dasa (c. 1550–1600) was a sixteenth-century Odia poet and devotee of Jagannath, born into a Karana family in Puri district. A resident of Puri, he kept the accounts of the Jagannath temple and could describe its festivals from direct observation.

His poem Kanchi Kaveri, weaving King Purushottama Deva's Kanchi campaign and marriage together with legends of Jagannath, Krishna and Balarama, became a classic of Odia verse and was later translated into Bengali. He also wrote the puranic poem Ganga Mahatmya and several shorter devotional works.