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Debendra K. DashDipti R. Pattanaik 39literally means a ‘sea of rasa’ while the original title would mean ‘asong for Krishna’. Here we see the predominance of Vaishnaviteideology in the Orissan society of the times. However, whileArtaballav Mohanty (1973) claims that this is an early 15 th centurytext, the later historians place it in the mid-16 th century (Sahoo:1981, Mishra: 1976). Its importance lies in the fact that this isprobably the first translated text in Oriya, which mutes the revelatorynature of all creative enterprise. Although they were conscious of theauthors of the source texts, earlier translators claimed a divineinspiration, or a revelation as the main motivating factor behind theirattempt at mediating knowledge/wisdom in a Prakrit language.Brindavan Das is however courageous enough to ascribe the text toits human author, Jayadeva, and not to any metaphysical source,which is the repository of all knowledge. He explicitly owns up the“iconic” nature of his translational practice, despite adopting theage-old practice of the reconstruction of the text according to hisown ideological predilections. He has even changed the title of thetext and reworked its introductory portion. Moreover, he hassucceeded in fashioning the rather expansive Oriya language, intosome sort of pithy brevity, which matches Jayadeva’s Sanskrit.Jagannath Das’s linguistic model of a standard Oriya beingpopulated heavily by Sanskrit diction seems to be followed byBrundavana Das with minor throwbacks to a few archaic nativewords and expressions.Jagannath Mishra’s Geeta Govinda is the first proserendering in Oriya, in the form of ‘tika’ or commentary. Earlier mostof the translations were only in verse form. Jagannath Mishra’sprose rendering not only flattens the lilting musical quality of theoriginal text, but it also uncovers the veil of sacredness imposed onit by the Vaisnav cult. It is instructive to remember here thatJagannath was a Brahmin by caste and had profound command overSanskrit as is evident from the Sanskrit slokas he has composed as